#worldwalker novel

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Brennath/Crispin for the ask meme, 5, 8, 9, 22

NICE TRY, anon my dear, but “first I love you’s,” “first kisses,” and “preferences in bed” are all spoilers

[worldwalkernovel]

also also, in the hypothetical timeline where everything turns out fine and everyone lives happily ever after, do shiko and krei move in together? where? do they have pets? kids? houseplants that shiko makes endless jokes about?

In any “everything is okay” timeline, Shiko and Krei DO in factmove in together!  Krei spends all herfree hours for the first month and a half in their new home putting up shelvesand buying pots to fill them, until every room is dripping with greenery andsmells sweetly of growth and fresh soil. They get a place with either big windows or lots ofwindows, so that Krei can grow flowers in the sunlight and weave them intoShiko’s hair.  Shiko picks up books inAlleirai that start to fill their shelves, first children’s books—the Alleiraiversion of Have You Seen My Hat and Hop On Pop or whatever—and then,as her reading improves, books about religion and about history and about the arcane and about traditions of the dead.  She’s fascinated by the idea of dead gods,gods who were and now are not, and by the idea of runic magic, and by the way funerals on Alleirat were shaped by civil war, and Krei is fascinated by the way Shiko tucksher hair irritably behind her ears as she talks about something she loves.

Shiko also picks up a cat, after a couple years.  It is a non-traditional cat.

It’s dead, okay, she has a skeleton cat.  It’s some extraordinarily advanced runicmagic that really wouldn’t work on anything larger or more complex than youraverage housepet, but binding the cat’s—something, Shiko says cats don’thave souls like people do but at that point Krei kind of tuned out—back intoits bones means it can operate a little more on its own impulses and keepmoving while Shiko is asleep.  It takesKrei a little while to stop jumping every time the thing comes into the room,even if Shiko says that it doesn’t mind being alive again.  Shiko did it mostly as a proof-of-concept, away to make her name as an arcane scholar, but once she had the cat,what was she going to do?  Kill it again?  Obviously not.

She did not tell Krei that she was bringing a dead cat home.  This is because Shiko, while not actually a bad person, is a little bit of an asshole.

They do have children, I think—just one, a son with handsome darkskin toned with gold and hair as pin-straight as Shiko’s and eyes as emeraldgreen as Krei’s.  He’s the onlybiological child among the four of them, and grows up much loved, into a scholarjust like his mother.  Shiko always saysthat, when the other options were warrior, hero, and nightmare, he went withthe best option he had, and if that means her kid spent three years boring themall silly with his research about architectural styles in pre-Unification Obalin,that was fine by her.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

hey star I saw the tags on that post abt brenneth's pockets and I would love a rundown of several more times brenneth was Unimpressed on earth bc that shit's hilarious

Things That Brenneth Likes On Earth:

1) Cars.  She doesn’t own one but she appreciates that they exist.  Better than walking.  Bicycles, which she does own one of, are also better than walking, so honorary mention.

2) Cell phones.  Convenient.

Things That Brenneth Does Not Like On Earth, In No Particular Order:

1) Small pockets.  Bad for carrying things.

2) No magic.  She keeps burning herself on hot stuff.  It sucks to not be fireproof.

3) Racism.  Alleirat’s prejudicial problems are mostly class-based, which Brenneth finds a little easier to handle.

4) Waitstaff/customer service reps not allowed to be rude to customers.  Call Her Sweetheart One More Time, She Dares You.  (Ask Crispin why Brenneth has been fired from more jobs than he’s ever had, he dares you.)

5) Planes.  Less nauseating than portal travel, also way more expensive and obnoxious.

6) No magic????  Brenneth’s stove pilot light broke and she spent an hour wondering how people handled that before she remembered that matches and lighters existed.

7) Funerals.  Absolutely stiflingly miserable, and this coming from someone who used to officiate mass pyres.

8) Lots of languages.  Impractical and prone to causing problems with #3.  Pretty to listen to, though.

9) Swords not acceptable to own in a dinky projects apartment, apparently.

10) Global warming.  You know what would help with that?  Magic.

11) No magic!!!!!  Honestly how do people handle getting banged up if they have to just…wait for it to go away.

12) Weddings.  Boring.  

13) High school disciplinary procedures.  Brenneth was Not Well Liked by teachers and administrators.

14) Uncomfortable repressed vibe about sex.  Brenneth sure would have loved to be able to use that as a coping mechanism once she was of age on Earth again!  Too bad she learned to flirt in a dimension where people were chill!  

15) Cell phones.  Too convenient, spam calls.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Yo does anyone here know Japanese?  If so, does Japanese have a word...like, something like “I did it” or “Victory” or something, that you might say about yourself or someone else after they manage a difficult task?

[words-writ-in-starlight]

1, 3, 5, and 6 for brenneth/crispin? it sucks about your family - i hope things get better!

Thanks, friend.  For this ask meme!

1. Howdo they fall asleep? Wake up? Any daily rituals?

Crispin has the gift of stillness, both naturally and because it was drilled into him by his teachers.  Brenneth does not--she’s only still when she’s sick, depressed, or sleeping.  This means that, functionally, they set their bedtime by Brenneth’s internal clock when they intend to go to bed together.  Crispin is okay with this--it’s soothing for him to listen to her breathing and feel her heart beating steadily away.  When it’s cool enough, they sleep curled up together, on their sides or with one person’s head on the other’s chest.  When it’s too warm to be touching someone--especially a fire worker, Crispin would die for Brenneth without hesitation but she doesn’t notice or suffer from heat the way most people do, and she feels hot to the touch all the time, and quite frankly he doesn’t truck with that shit in midsummer--they usually end up sleeping face to face, like a set of parentheses.  Sometimes Crispin tangles their fingers loosely together between them and puts up with Brenneth’s teasing.

Crispin always makes breakfast if he gets up first--Brenneth can cook, but only as a pragmatic thing.  Her food is--fine.  It’s fine.  Perfectly serviceable.  She can follow a recipe to the letter, but without one her cooking is just incredibly basic, because she doesn’t have a vested interest in making food better than “fine”.  Crispin, on the other hand, likes to cook, and the difference in their outcomes is clear.  Who wakes up first depends on the circumstances, but whenever it’s Crispin, he does a real breakfast.

3. Are they open about their relationship? How do they feel about publicdisplays of affection?

Brenneth has lost the capacity to give a fuck.  She dumped weedkiller on her fucks and burned the survivors.  She’ll tell any random jackass that she’s seeing Crispin, and if they want to fight her about it, fine, she’ll prove to them that they shouldn’t get mouthy with creatures of legend.  She has access to the city training grounds and an ax to grind, she’ll throw down with any motherfucker.  Crispin is much cagier, because he worries far, far more about Brenneth’s reputation than she does.  But also most people don’t talk to Crispin that much once they know who he is.

Ironically, given how things usually go, Crispin is much more naturally inclined toward public displays of affection (he’s the kind of person who likes to kiss Brenneth’s hands and throat and shoulders and cheeks and forehead any time he walks close enough) but much less likely to actually do anything.  Brenneth doesn’t mind--she likes to keep a few fingers linked with Crispin’s when they wander the city, so as to keep him close--but it doesn’t generally occur to her unaided.  Then she realizes that Crispin is intentionally avoiding displaying affection to protect her reputation and she starts kissing him and wrapping her arms around his waist and the like much more frequently, out of pure spite.

They argue about it a lot for a while.

5. Nicknames?Pet names? Any in-jokes?

While they were on Earth, they adopted “Bren” and “Cris” as a sort of cheat code--their given names sounded profoundly wrong in each other’s mouths, but outright abandoning those names for the more comfortable “Brenneth” and “Crispin” wasn’t really a viable option for a pair of ten-year-olds.  Crispin just let people believe that he preferred “Chris” over “Christopher,” and frankly Brenneth didn’t really talk to people on Earth unless necessary.

In terms of pet names, sometimes Brenneth affectionately dunks on Crispin for his reckless fondness for heights--common in weather-workers but stressful to see--by calling him kadantha, or “skylark.”  Crispin sometimes calls her “love,” but only in private, and always with far more seriousness than pet names normally get.

They have a lot of in-jokes--even with all their complications, twenty-eight years is a long time to build a history--but the ones that freak other people right the hell out are the ones that take a while to be okay between them.  Like Crispin joking that he didn’t poison Brenneth’s lunch when she forgets to eat--not this time, at least, he says dryly--or Brenneth threatening to cut his hand off if he doesn’t stop messing with her price listings.

6. Any tasks that are alwaysleft to one person?

Crispin always does Brenneth’s mending, because he finds sewing relaxing and also because, for some reason, the coordination that makes Brenneth so gifted with smithing does not transfer over.  She sticks herself with the needle a lot, is the outcome, enough that Crispin would suspect her of doing it on purpose to get him to do her sewing if she wasn’t obviously frustrated by it.  He wouldn’t mind if she was doing it on purpose, it makes him feel helpful and also he finds her aggravation very endearing.  Honestly, Crispin likes a lot of housework, the stuff he wasn’t really allowed to do as a kid--cooking, mending, keeping Brenneth’s books balanced in the shop--and is glad to take it on as a way to fill time.  After all, he’s not likely to get hired somewhere, and there’s really no reason that he would want or need to spend his day away from Brenneth at a job.  They can live easily on Brenneth’s income as a smith--her prices aren’t exorbitant, but she’s also Brenneth and the prestige keeps people coming back even if they don’t really need high-grade weapons, so she’s booked out for months at all times--so Crispin is happy to be her house husband.