I figured I had three options.\u00a0 I could play stupid and probably get kicked for it later.\u00a0 I could play knowledgable and probably get kicked for it later.\u00a0 I could play it straight, and, well, there would be a whole lot of fonging going on pretty much no matter which choice I used.\u00a0 The differences were subtle.\u00a0 One of my fellows had done a lot of study on the fey, so I had a good idea of how to negotiate.\u00a0 Alas, a lot of it seemed to boil down to, “But, they’re capricious, so no promises.”\u00a0 I don’t like “no promises” as an answer, so it might be good to just blindly follow the, “I’m just a dumb mortal,” route (“Me E. You sparkly.”), and hope I was actually clever enough to not end up in some bad place.<\/p>\n
I could just brazen it out and face what was coming to me.\u00a0 I never claimed to be smart, right?<\/p>\n
“Oh.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 You’ve found him, then,” I said.\u00a0 I like to think my inherent lack of suaveness…suavity? Um.\u00a0 That it was in deliberate reaction to the kind of soft glow filter the fey put on things, anyway.\u00a0 I’m crude edges.\u00a0 One thing this fellow of mine had said (his name was “Thomas,” and I may speak of him more in the future) was that only practitioners come across at all three-dimensional to their kind.<\/p>\n
Crude edges.\u00a0 Like an axe.<\/p>\n
She smiled.\u00a0 I had half-expected her to titter, which proves that my prejudices are quite close at hand.\u00a0\u00a0 I tried not judging the smile because it was another pathway of opportunities I couldn’t navigate without a trustworthy guide.\u00a0 Either it was deliberate, and it was meant to look like a mortal smile, or it was a natural reaction (but I wasn’t sure of it) and was it too wide, or too short in duration or…\u00a0 A man could go mad trying to wend his way through the labyrinth.\u00a0 But I will guess that I amused her because I wasn’t blasted to bits on the spot.\u00a0 See?\u00a0 Easy as cake.\u00a0 Pie.\u00a0 Bacon.\u00a0 Whatever.<\/p>\n
“Good,” she said.\u00a0 “I was looking for you.\u00a0 You are the doctor?\u00a0 Of places in-between?”\u00a0 She made a hand motion kind of like opening something.\u00a0 I was uncomfortable with the phrase.\u00a0 I had a feeling that her words were being chosen deliberately and had additional meanings I was going to be kicked for in the future.\u00a0 In fact, I felt a headache coming on already.<\/p>\n
“I close simple portals to this world, if that is what you mean,” I corrected slightly.\u00a0 Correcting meant I felt like I was a little more in control of the game.\u00a0 Linguistics aren’t my forte, but I could habla some kind of rudimentary patois, I hoped.<\/p>\n
“Indeed,” she said, and the look she gave me I recognized from other women.\u00a0 It was some sort of reminder against either bragging or modesty, but I’m not always sure what side of the coin it represented.<\/p>\n
Women aren’t my forte, either.<\/p>\n
“I have a ‘simple portal’ that needs closing by one anchored to mortal blood.\u00a0 You will be compensated.”\u00a0 She paused just long enough.\u00a0 “It should not hurt you.\u00a0 We leave now.”<\/p>\n
Thomas suggested they couldn’t actually read minds as their own were too alien.\u00a0 Still, she had hit some of my concerns.\u00a0 Of course, “should not,” was a “no promise,” of a similar colour each uisge.<\/em><\/p>\n “I am contracted to this mortal labor,” I tried speaking the speech trippingly on the tongue.\u00a0 “I may not cross that boundary as a matter of honour.”\u00a0 I hesitated before offering a stronger principle, like, “Ability to feed myself,” but it seemed to fit.<\/p>\n “This is work a simulacrum could do,” she said.\u00a0 She reached out faster than I could stop her and pulled a hair from the top of my head.\u00a0 With a quick knotting, she unfolded -something- and scared me half to death.<\/p>\n I was sitting at the desk.\u00a0 A call came in and my double picked it up, convincingly.\u00a0 In fact, I think it might have done it better.\u00a0 I’ve been at jobs where I thought a trained monkey could do the work, but never had I thought, “So easy my simulacrum could do it.”\u00a0 I mean, I could see the differences between this creation and myself, but no one looks at temps that hard.<\/p>\n And she did it without words, time, or any of the principles of illusion or mindbending magic I had learned.<\/p>\n “Scared” covered it, but that’s because I’m not good at the talky thing.<\/p>\n “Is your honour satisfied?” she asked, impatiently.<\/p>\n I nodded.<\/p>\n “Then let us depart.”\u00a0 And with that, she opened a portal right in front of me, pushing me towards the abyss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I figured I had three options. I could play stupid and probably get kicked for it later. I could play knowledgable and probably get kicked for it later. I could play it straight, and, well, there would be a whole lot of fonging going on pretty much no matter which choice I used. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-two"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}