Chapter 18: Chapter 18 – Finite Simple Group of Order (n+1)

When I wake up, I think I’m delirious, mostly because I’m lying on an extremely comfortable couch. A moment later I’m a little more confident about the delirium, because it’s not the couch that’s so comfortable; I don’t particularly care to wake up or to figure out what’s actually happening, and instead I snuggle firmly into the pleasant softness of the lap my head is in.

“He rises, or awakens.” The voice comes from above me, and I’m guessing it’s whoever’s got a hand in my hair, gently scratching my scalp. It feels amazing; she’s using just enough fingernail to get the right sensation. It also feels strange and almost inappropriate, since I can feel the missing tightness of my braid, and I don’t remember -

“Good. I know you weren’t worried, but…”

“You are as a glove shaped for no hand, without him.”

“Yes.” Amber. Her voice is familiar because I know her, know her well enough to remember her name. Amber Ashborn. She’s a… Paladin. My brain is fuzzy, in a way, mazed with sleep and the dreams I’d been dreaming, which had… I shake my head, face rubbing against soft, smooth skin.

I can’t remember my dreams, not even a moment after I wake up. Sometimes I can remember the emotions they held, and I know I used to remember them sometimes, but even the memory of what it feels like to remember them is a couple decades old.

“How long…” My voice is scratchy. Even the two words are almost too much, leaving me fighting back a cough that I’m pretty sure isn’t going to help.

“Thirty five minutes, by my best reckoning. Not long, but long enough for worry, in a faint rather than fair slumber.” Zidanya. The name comes to me with a feeling like my mind is surfacing from a haze.

“She made a keyhole, I used your Home Key, and … are you … well, Adam?”

I open my eyes, blinking a few times. The light is lower than I was worried about, a pale amber illuminating the room without a sufficiency in point sources. That minor mystery fails to distract me because my head is on Zidanya’s lap, who’s wearing a dress that barely reaches her thighs. It takes me a moment to have enough volition to try to raise my head, comfortable as I am and pleasant as the view is, but as soon as I do, a pair of arms behind me is helping me rise to a seat.

Amber, gentle as I’ve never known, strong as a mountain, has a tall ceramic mug with a straw poking out of it, and she presses it into my hands, sliding onto the couch next to me. I’m leaning on her as I drink, not because I can’t sit up straight but because she’s there and a pleasure to lean against, and I don’t splutter at the unexpected flavors and texture because I don’t want to move away from her.

“Weird,” I say after a moment. The scratchiness is all but gone from my voice, along with the urge to cough. “Cold, fatty, a little sweet, and weird. What is this?” I drink more, shivering a little. It’s good, for all of its strangeness.

“The Magelord has never drunk milk?”

“Like, from a breast?” The dubious, somewhat grossed-out tone in my voice isn’t intentional, but it’s honest.

“From cows, or goats or sheep, traditionally, though in the great desert they milk camels.”

“What great desert?”

“After your time, Zanya. It was formed in the Great War -”

“Zanya? So familiar you’ve made yourself to me, so soon.”

I sit up, smiling a little, looking to each side at my … partners, I suppose. “Not to interrupt,” I say, interrupting on purpose, “but are you telling me that you have breeds of animals that you raise so that you can drink their breast milk?”

There’s a pause, before Zidanya shrugs. I’m distracted enough by what that does to her chest that I miss what she said, but I’m pretty sure it’s just yes in some sort of quizzical and slightly archaic tone.

“ - you might consider shifting a little.” I miss the first part of Amber’s sentence, and then remember I’m supposed to be paying attention. “He’s … easily distracted.”

“I’ve a skill for finding and analyzing weak points, Dame Ashborn. Easily distracted? Amorous and Susceptible, you mean, and Lonely.” Zidanya’s laugh, and the way she stretches her arms up high while she’s laughing, mean I’m not thinking about much of anything other than how she looks and how it felt to have my head in her lap.

Amber pokes me in the side, and I startle, and turn. I’d turned a quarter turn, cuddling into Amber’s arms while watching - ogling, if I were being honest - Zidanya, and I grin and blush in embarrassment, turning back to my Paladin. She’s smiling at me, but there’s a tension in her face, and I want to smooth it away but don’t know what to say.

I kiss her, still holding that mug of milk, enjoying warmth of her lips and the softness of her breasts pressing into my chest. She’s divested herself of the chainmail, so I run my free hand under her shirt, enjoying the way her muscles move as I touch her.

“I suppose I’d best get used to this,” Amber says after a while.

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“Kissing me?” My tone is as close to playful as I can make it, but she doesn’t fall for it, and I don’t expect her to.

“You react so powerfully to me. It’s almost painful to know that it’s… not to me that is the critical component.”

“I’m sorry.” My voice is soft, and I bury my face in her shoulder.

“I did say almost, my lord.” Her dryness isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty close. If I hadn’t been getting to know her better, I’d not be able to tell that she’s the slightest bit upset. “Do you need fewer distractions abounding, that you might keep up with me?”

“Not in the slightest.” I do my best to match the casualness in her tone. I sit up straight, running my eyes over her and then looking her in the eye with all the seriousness I can muster.

My stomach growls, low and loud, and the moment shatters. I’m laughing, and Amber is laughing; between peals, she tells Zidanya why, and she’s laughing too.

I recognize where we are, once I’m no longer mazed from unconsciousness - Zidanya points out with a sternness that surprises me that that’s different from sleep, and I’m aware she’s right - and the flesh-hunger that you’d expect from how and where I woke up. There’s still a little of that, especially watching Amber and Zidanya move around the small home, but mostly the hunger is of the literal variety.

Mostly. I still lose myself in watching, in the meantime.

They bring me up to date on what I’d missed while out, Amber mostly sticking to the facts while Zidanya adds color commentary about things like how I’d screamed and how oddly twitchy I was. Amber had gotten a notification, a few moments after my memory stops, and she’s able to pull it up for me with a gesture. I read it, laughing, and Zidanya looks mulishly furious for a second after she looks at it and then relaxes, shaking her head.

You have BEFRIENDED The Herald of the Cataclysm (Gatekeeper, Third Floor, Temple of the Godsforsaken Wanderers). Your grace period of 24 HOURS begins.

We’re down to closer to eighty kiloseconds than ninety, but that’s still a whole lot more grace time than I’d gotten on previous floors. My guess is that the Temple had been snippy about the solution to its first-floor, or technically fifth-floor, puzzle - look, if you don’t want a metapuzzle solved with only one component out of eight, don’t give away so much structure in the context - and had deducted me points for ungentlemanlike conduct on the second floor, because I’d only gotten a little under thirty kiloseconds, eight hours, for those.

My two companions don’t know enough to confirm or deny my hypothesis, but they allow that it’s possible, after I explain a little more just what I’d done with the puzzle. They’re distracted, and I cut the explanation short because they’re not really following it, and that’s fine; after all, what they’re doing is more important than my rambling about the ways in which you can figure out which things are unique or paired by coincidence versus on purpose.

They’re cooking, and I’m fascinated.

Nobody cooks at home, on the Spirit of Life Itself. We, they, the people who lived on the Spirit or on Itself, depending on which vernacular you prefer, eat in communal meal halls, three meals a day and take-aways if you need them for whatever reason, and the cooking is done by the hall-workers. There are - were - exceptions, trends for doing pickling or baking at home, a little while where you’d make jams and sauces and bring them to the meal hall to be incorporated into the meals, but mostly outside of Festival you didn’t cook at all, and even at Festival you were bringing the food to your Commons and eating in company, no fewer than ten people, and the crechelings-in-arms don’t count because they’re not eating.

It’s not like I’ve never cooked, mind you. At one point I had my reasons to work the meal hall for an interval, and I learned, though I never got any degree of mastery at, frankly, anything involved in the process. But cooking in a home is different from cooking for three hundred, so I’m staring while they work, fascinated even more by everything they do than by how they look while doing it.

“- it hardly counts as seasoned if you’re putting so little -”

“- gracious Kazir, you’ll drown the flavor -”

“- quite serious, this is the correct amount; the lime and potatoes will balance -”

“- oven at three hundred and fifty, but I’ll need to adjust the timing if we put these both -”

The words flow over me like a stream, and I can feel muscles that have been knotted for days unwind. At some point during the process, I find myself falling asleep, and I don’t fight it; I just drift, so very content.

The thunk and clink of things being put on the table wakes me up, and the smells of fresh bread. It’s Festival food; mashed potatoes, gravy, early peas, and chicken in with the roast vegetables.

“Food,” Zidanya says firmly, “and your story. As I am to travel with you, bound partner and companion, I’ll have the knowledge from you of who I’m traveling with. No hidden histories.”

“No more hornets in the weeds, no secrets festering in the heart,” Amber says quietly in agreement. I can’t find it in myself to argue with her, not on any rational basis, and not on an emotional one. Not when she’s that somber, that serious. “No more surprises.”

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