“This is perfect,” she says. And really, I must agree.
Silvestrus is sitting on a mat in front of me, twitching. Twitching a lot. She’s staring at me so haughtily you would think I was the one credited with seducing her out of her safe zone, but she can’t hide her desperate panic from our kind. It’s in the back of her retinas. In the magic rolling off her, practically turning itself black. Her free golem- what did he call himself? I can never be troubled to remember the names of these man-forged little magiken, golems worst of all- is sitting behind her like some kind of ridiculous bear-crow totem, watching us with nary a screw out of place.
Days like this I badly miss my old hookah, the one from the Old Country. Still don’t know what I was thinking, giving something so sentimental to a confused sot like Echidna.
Silvestrus is talking to me and I pay attention with the very basest portion of myself, logging away whatever she’s saying to look at later if I ever feel a reason to. I know she’s talking about her husband or maybe their daughter, human stuff, stuff I don’t care about. I don’t know how Bassem stands this sort of thing, there’s a reason I never started my own cult. I have to hear Silvestrus out because she’s high and mighty but so often it is hard to care.
She wants something, so I make a show of considering. I straighten up in my seat, looking thoughtful, and run a hand over the sagging, loose flesh that hangs off my abdomen like an apron, like some discreetly modest appendage of the flesh, so I can be naked and upsetting in front of the humans without actually insulting their innocence. I made that a long, long time ago, since so many of my visitors have been female, biologically or otherwise, and spent too much time looking at or away from my penis. Now they look at the flesh that covers it just once or twice and can pay attention to me properly.
Not that I am in the habit of actually manifesting a penis. Manifestation is very easy, customization is not. It’s all but effortless to make a limb or an organ or an accessory, a little tricky to shape it specifically, but altogether troublesome to alter its design. It was such a chore to define pathetic, rattish, cropped ears that actually heard as well as I wished, and to wear watery, pink eyes without sacrificing my vision was even more complex. On the occasions where I made a penis, it was subject to harden with excitement, to distract me, to remind me that maybe sometimes I should consider giving it a purpose, to piss or fuck through it.
Silvestrus wants something. I smile for her. I like my smile. My teeth are better than hers.
“What would a pretty, dark bride like you want with something as fickle as iprit-fire?” I asked her politely. “Doesn’t the king have enough trifles for you to root through?”
A birdcatcher laughs, scratches herself under her wrappings. Silvestrus ignores her. She answers me with something sensible and powerful. These people have been fascinating to watch, in hindsight. Every generation labors to better imitate the musty tomes they make. No tone, no emotion. No fear. In the old days I would caper and bluff at my handlers, and the dark-skinned mages would caper and bluff right back, as if I was but a man from a rival tribe, and we would settle our dispute with a ritual wrestle like the jungle fowl do. They were relatable. They didn’t equate strength with stoicism, like this new crop on this cold continent. They made a spectacle of their bravery, with fanfare and headdresses. They were much more fun to rely on.
That only serves to make Silvestrus’ state worse for her. Look at her, shaking and twitching like and old cannibal wife. Slurring and speaking from the side of her mouth and raising her limbs to slap at nothing. She’s terrified of it, more than she must have been of her husband, more than any form of pain or bodily sickness she fears whatever’s eating her mind, whatever’s idly tugging away control of her own self strand by strand.
I put my fingertips together so the gnarled old nails make the softest of taps, hold them to my lips, purse them and pretend I am considering. Everything’s theatrics, remember that. Everything.
“Very well, my Parasite Queen,” I say, because it will offend her. Her shoulder jerks and her scared eyes tighten and I smile very happily and that isn’t a theatric. “You want your little trifle? Then your payment is accepted.”
She’s so scared, holding herself as still as she can, as her physical form rebels. I like it. I like seeing them out of sorts, seeing how much it upsets them. I’ve been there. All of us have, at some point or another, as our magic and power waxes or wanes like a climate. It is not uplifting, to be reminded just how little power you have over your own matter when it comes right down to it, but that’s just the way it is. It’s just that humans and other animals usually don’t have to know that unless they’ve taken a grievous affliction of the brain.
I reach behind me, run a hand down my back, down the swatch of dark, soft, oversized feathers I planted there, and pick one, ripping it out like a weed that smuggled itself into my flesh. My skin twitches, doesn’t like when I do that sort of thing. Without looking, I am aware the hole it leaves is enormous.
I hold the blue-black plume up before Silvestrus’ eyes, leaning forward to practically waggle it over her head. I wave it once, twice, letting the air tug at it, and see how the vulnerability in her eyes clarifies into hope. Her desire is so pungent the golem and I feel it at the same moment, he lifts his head and looks at me more directly, anticipating a coming order, though she knows enough to keep her lips shut.
“The fickle fire is yours,” I tell her. I tell the feather, hold together. “Provided… you can catch it.” And I tell the feather, you are free.
Before her very eyes, the shaft darkens, the quill smolders, and from the bottom up her desire crumbles into charcoal and is snatched off by the wind, spattering the air with the briefest after-image of blue and red flames. “Chase as you will. Now, get out of my tent.”
The birdcatchers clap their monkey hands in delight and fall on the dark king’s bride, snatching her up with animal glee in their haste to have her gone and wallow in her frustration. I grant her a final smile and wave a dismissive hand, meeting the golem’s eyes as the drapes are pulled shut between us.