sugar berry

[imeanforever]

Near a stream that pours off a high cliff and then snakes away is a garden, carefully tended, and a house, built of wood and stone and transmuted pearl. Fairies weed the plants. One is fixing the roof. A berrybush, hair atangle with spidery branches, is painting gold stripes onto her purple arms.

Comments

[imeanforever]

This is actually pretty boring after a while but Promise is definitely not complaining.

[infinitely_stranger]

And Arcane does not appear to get bored. He watches the ground and doesn't say anything.

[imeanforever]

Promise is not going to bother her benefactor. If he wants quiet travel he may have quiet travel.

[infinitely_stranger]

An hour or so past the rainstorm, it occurs to him to ask,

"Would you rather settle in a part of the forest with more complex harmonics, or less?"

[imeanforever]

"...You know the place that well?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"Sky-veils each have an extra sense. Mine is for harmonics. That and good situational awareness are a large part of how I have managed to be the Queenscourt's best sorcerer by such a margin for so long."

[imeanforever]

"If it's really deserted right now, I'll take a complex spot so I have a head start on learning the place before anyone else moves in nearby."

She doesn't say luckyyyyyy but she thinks it.

[infinitely_stranger]

"Sensible."

[imeanforever]

[infinitely_stranger]

"I'll find you somewhere tricky, then."

[imeanforever]

"Thank you."

[infinitely_stranger]

"You're welcome."

[imeanforever]

[infinitely_stranger]

[imeanforever]

Promise watches the land underneath them go by as they streak through the air.

[infinitely_stranger]

It continues to do that. Look at that land, and all the going-by it is doing. Rapidly.

[imeanforever]

Eventually Promise ventures to ask a question.

"Did you pick me to take away or did Thorn?"

[infinitely_stranger]

"Thorn did. Do I correctly surmise that you were troublesome to him in some way?"

[imeanforever]

"He didn't like my - attitude."

[infinitely_stranger]

"I can imagine he wouldn't have liked mine much either, if he had been foolish enough to try to keep me. He seemed like the sort of person it is easy to develop a bad attitude about."

[imeanforever]

"Some of his vassals like him. One way or another."

[infinitely_stranger]

"He's clever, I'll give him that. I'm sure that berrybush didn't invent and set up her own dart traps."

[imeanforever]

"Ber- oh, Sugar. No, I wouldn't think she did."

[infinitely_stranger]

"But he has just been introduced to the rare but significant hazards of capturing unknown passersby, so maybe he will reconsider the traps. I could have been some much more temperamental member of the Queenscourt."

[imeanforever]

"He probably didn't expect Queenscourt members to be ranging so far from her epicenter."