I figured her interruption wasn’t just her being a good hostess. As people, real people, we’re allowed to be rude to our guests. It still means something, of course, but I’d been around enough to probably be counted as family and could get my own darn lemonade.<\/p>\n
“Meaning you have a thought?” I asked her.<\/p>\n
“I have lots of thoughts, dear, not the least of which is that your narcissism is oriented in such introspective analysis that you almost seem humble.”<\/p>\n
“Uh, thanks, I guess. Oh, wait. I am interpreting that for a insignificant sense of well-being.” I smirked. “I don’t know if it’s unfair to suggest that I only really focus on the things I can change.”<\/p>\n
“Well, it is the first step for a number of self-help and self-actualization manuals,” Ed’s mom mused. “I just listen and hear that your superpower is really super tunnel vision.”<\/p>\n
“Can’t make popcorn with that,” I sighed.<\/p>\n
“Oh, it’s a type of laser, for certain, intense in beam and focus,” she smiled. “Now, before I let Matana answer, I have two questions. The first is, are your cube-eye,” she said it carefully, “really creatures of lust or are they of passions? Because wrath is a passion, too.” She held out a hand while pouring the lemonade with the other, indicating for me to stay quiet. “The second is more philosophical. If what you’re saying about the idiosyncratic effects of observation on what you call magic is plausible and not just a new age handwave implying physics and that ineffable quantum,” she grinned, “do you really want to open yourself up to a bigger pond?”<\/p>\n
“Huh. You were paying attention.” I thought about it.<\/p>\n
“Every time you and Ed spoke, too,” she wasn’t quite smiling, but she wasn’t having me on, either.<\/p>\n
Matana nodded slowly. “Fight Club,” she said. The corners of her mouth twitched.<\/p>\n
I grinned. “Yeah, it’s the basis of all those rules in secret societies, too. Don’t open your mouth or ears unless you want to be bound by the rules. Heck, it’s part of the baptism ceremony in a way. It’s your opt-in to the whole cycle.” I sighed. <\/p>\n
Matana shrugged. “I could tell you all sorts of East Coast gossip and manueverings. Presuming that I see more than what I’m involved in is, indeed, presumptuous.” She smiled a little, more genuine smile. I wish she weren’t the type I was attracted to, sometimes. “There are physical boundaries mapped to this world as well as,” she shrugged again, “others. Sometimes we attract the interest of things to which we are but krill, and their great eye sees past all of this.” She shivered.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, great old eyes,” I muttered.<\/p>\n
She nodded that strange nod again. “But to gain their attention is still to be but a flash in the waters they travel.”<\/p>\n
“A flash as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced,” I said, smoothly. Alas, Ed was asleep, or he would have caught the reference.<\/p>\n
“But it is still a flash,” she said. “And it still garnered attention. The worlds of Dragons,” she smiled as if to say, “for example,” and then continued, “are vaster and richer than many, and yet, that philosophy,” she used the word Ed’s mom had, “has that there are things that are Dragons to the Dragons.”<\/p>\n
“Tarrasques,” I muttered.<\/p>\n
Matana shrugged. She probably hadn’t played those editions. “Whatever they are called,” she said. “This area has a lot of activity, but not a lot of,” she chose a word deliberately, “leadership.”<\/p>\n
“Great, is this the age of a hundred kingdoms or just the post-apocalyptic gang war stage?” I asked, leaning back. “We have some folks I’d consider serious Ms and Ses, and two Dragons I personally know of in the metro.”<\/p>\n
“Maybe,” Ed’s mom asked, from where she sat back down with her knitting, “you should ask how you got involved with them.”<\/p>\n
I looked at her for a moment. Why was she knitting? Who was she knitting for? I was suddenly seized with the desire, nay, the requirement to know. I was about to ask her, when my mouth closed and my mind went somewhere else. I opened my mouth again with effort. “Doloise said she had been misdirected…” I closed my eyes to try to remember. “Doctor of places in-between, compensated for a simple portal closed by one anchored to mortal blood. Compensated? Anchored? Huh.” Too many meanings for too many words, and I might have gotten them wrong. “Do the fey have doctors?” I asked.<\/p>\n
Matana shrugged. “I suppose they must have healers.”<\/p>\n
“Magical healing is mostly a myth, I thought.” Of course, I’d seen what had happened to Matana’s wrists, and felt that vision bring a little bit of dizziness. “It’s mostly a time dilation back to healthy or forward to healed, and time manipulation has its own side effects, right?”<\/p>\n
Matana shook her head. “Attempting to quantify real magic like that would just leave you vulnerable.” She smiled. <\/p>\n
“Even if I don’t have the language for the rules, it has rules,” I smiled back, but I was adamant.<\/p>\n
She shrugged. Agreeing to disagree was the coward’s way out, right?<\/p>\n
“So, this salon on the philosophy of knowledge is all well and good, but where does it leave us?” I asked, stretching. <\/p>\n
“Close enough to lunch to start waking the lovebirds?” Ed’s mom asked, inclining her head towards the couch.<\/p>\n
“Do I have to?” I whined. “Let me think if I have any smart questions.”<\/p>\n
Ed’s mom raised her eyebrow and it clearly meant, “Do we have time for that?” I ignored her.<\/p>\n
“Seriously. The truth is, I need to know what the Shadow King is doing, and what the Messenger’s goal is. Matana, what’s your plan?”<\/p>\n
“Lunch,” she said. “And then telling Magda that I will return to my home as I find her hospitality wanting.”<\/p>\n
“Peredur will just let you go like that?” I teased. I could see that I had struck a hit of some sort, but since I was just joking, I hadn’t meant it. Still, her smile faded and something was disturbed in her manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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