Onward to Providence: Alien Trucker with Goldfish Stowaways [Original Fiction]

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.2

Pylo knew this was going to be important, It was the last time she would swim in the spore and love of her family home.



There might be a revisit later, a time when she could submerge into the ebb and flow of her mother's court, of her sisters and the many cousins.

Know the courts and governances and ideologues again. But at the same time it would be after they had all had time to change, after she had time to change.

There would be someone new then. Someone who could remember being Pylo and home as she was right now. Who could even slip back into this very memory. But that would be a reversion from who she and her family would be then.

A return from a destination. Never again would she be at the foremost of herself and home again.

So it was important to etch the memory as deep and solid and strong as possible.

It was something to be Treasured and Loved. She was going to become different, she would always be able to appreciate her youth and sprout to bloom here in the creche of her Mother's estate.

But this Moment was a beginning and it deserved to be made as indelible as possible.
So she flexed and-

And Pylo did not wake up.

She existed.

At first that was all.

Then, there was a then, a rhythm, a synchronizing of before, after, current, then tingling future.

Potential.

Experience, linearity slowly accumulating from past occurrences. And as the accumulating strata of one rhythmic pulse to another flowed the texture and webbing of it took upon the suddenly growing clarity of more than merely existence or presence, but a knowing.

A scaffolding to grow onto.

Shape was there, recognizing orientations, structures, assembling as they went into recognition of a thin skeleton of being which had been ready for time, and with the feeling of its own structure the ready made capacity for space.

But it was a sparse and thin shape, one that encircled and enwrapped itself around voids. hollows, emptiness.

There was within the skeleton the root of implication, and on itself the implication of the purpose, the purpose to the shape, the form to the function. The linear stacks upon stacks of ingrained woven, etched, mastered grooves of preparation that in spite of their existence were left unmoored.

There was meant to be more than just the skeleton, just the presence.

The self existed but it had a shape meant for another complementary and ever so much vaster form, a world. And there were spaces and shapes meant to know but were instead left to eagerly yearn to discover instead.

But no memories, no knowledge of the world.

Simply existing in the nothingness.

For a time there was time and the bracing growing realization of self and one's own borders. Of how self could reach into self and change, how the very reaching was a change. How all of this floated awaiting contact.

Craved it.

Yearned to swallow it and be shaped by it. To drive division of reality and cut into and be cut by it.

To know and test and realize.

It emerged from the scaffold, it grew in sprouting branches of point and counterpoint. It filled self up with revelations.

At first it was shocking and terrible, for all the yearning for external force to push against the sudden intrusion was painful, raw and unwelcome at first.

Then as the raw reality of that which was not self cleared it began to settle and click, to become natural and flesh out the voids and mysteries that had been before.

Enzymes and heirlooms of heritage cascading into and out of each other in abstracted perfections of form and function that could never live, never breath. But could exist here in endlessly branching petals of expression here within herself.

Trust, Comfort, security, familiarity.

With the sparse wonders of the very ideas of life, of breath, of so many more the foreign unself unfurled and revealed sharp painful unpredicted shapes and delightful swelling enfoldments.

Contexts, greater depths. Weaving intertwining branches that marveled and dazzled her even as she yet could barely assemble comprehension.

The identity of her, she, self, female, incubator, child-bearer, primal deep undeniable shapes that had before been unmoored but were now so fundamentally true.

She ventured further into realization.

A monumental, endlessly unfurling gift of labyrinthine travels. Each a spiraling guided tour of impulse and idea, thought and action, concept and feeling.

Amongst the realizations was the symbolic self, the name, that which she was.

Pylo, warm and welcome and purely hers and herself.

She was.

Pylo meandered through the profusion of experience, concept and idea with wild and uncaring abandon. She caught hitches and snarls that quickly undid themselves to her attention and in doing so discovered the very concept of her own abandon and freedom.

Before she was a void with only the skeleton of potential.

Now she felt rich and fat and practically turgid in growing leaps and bounds of associations, of context, of new fresh connections and experiences.

She reveled and luxuriated in it and it washed over her and she flowed through it and then at last slowly, emerging from the fogged dissolution and overwhelming sensation of simply being she began to ascribe the meaning to the structure, the reality of the message that had at first simply washed over her as a world onto itself.
Pylo did not wake up, but she did something similar as her embryonic mind for the first time perceived the intent outside herself for what it was. A Message.

Addressed to her, shaped for her, with timbres and forms that as she was coming into her own self echoed and hummed with familiarity.

She had never spoken, never even conceived of the idea that you could push meaning, internal selfness into the otherness that had been all but utter lack before.

But now as she soaked in this message she recognized herself.

Her voice.

"I could have been you"

It said in this echoing self similarity.

"You are still part of me."

The intent and meaning swelled with comfort and safety. With a shield against much harsher and sharper and far more cutting and somehow even more terrible and dangerous things then neven the brief unexpected unknown that the message itself had contained.

"You are here to know this time as a first time."

The eagerness to know, to bite, to throw herself on the harsh edges and terrible dangers tingled in and out and all through herself.

"Do not be afraid."

Why would she be afraid? Pylo was eager to dive into the fury of the world! She already was tasting the faintest hints of it in the very essence of the message left by herself. In the words that existed for her. The meaning of language itself.

She reached for the void, the expanse, the connection, the outer knowledge that would let her finally shear herself against new wonders.

And promptly recoiled in raw searing pain.

Blinded, Numbed, Overwhelmed to the point that all of the newly found textures and knowledge of meaning were lost in the sheer wash of it.

She had thought herself pre-shaped for the world. That she had left herself a foundation to know and apprehend it freely and smoothly, that she understood what the trials and unexpected shocks to herself would be.

But she was so raw, so unformed, so unprepared for the assault that sensation would be. There was not a single part of herself that felt unmarred by the burning of experience.

It had stung!

It hurt!
It had been different and not at all what she wanted, what she expected.

The shock of it made her tremble within herself. She recoiled and hid for a time, for pulses of time.

And then the pain was slowly soothed, gentled, soothed by the presence of herself, the former self, the outer self that was now as she found interposed as a buffer and a barrier and a safety from the torrent of the world.

Even without the nuanced undeniable recognition of her own similarity to the message Pylo would have welcomed and loved herself then.

The relief of the unsensed, the unfelt, the unsmelt.

Warm, soft, gentle darkness and void waiting for her, nestled all around herself.

She was safe, and the stinging raw foreign nature of experience could wait outside as long as she wanted.

There was time for her to recover, and the pain to dull, then the sting to recede and finally the hunger for another biting lash to emerge.

She had not been able to even comprehend all that was received in that first taste. It had blinded her, deafened, numbed, muffled, frozen and burnt.

Ideas she had no context or even barest hints of before washed over in her attempts to grapple with the enormity of reality.

Words, meanings, sensations had all flowed in and been supplied ready and waiting as she tried to digest the sheer vastness of what existing entailed.

As the pain faded and she grew and branched and shed of herself Pylo was feeling eager to try for another cut.

She was emboldened by it. Enough to reach out towards the searing reality of the world again.
Which was again a complete and total incomprehensible sensation.

She had tried to only take a sip of it but that was still too much.

Even the merest fraction she could conceive of making of it was too much.

Pylo felt like a fool and an idiot and a failure.

But the warmth of the outer self was amused and joyful and tender with her anyway. The attempt was not viewed as a failure, the tentative fumblings of a broken thing. But merely the innocent unknowing exploration of the unjaded. The exact perspective she existed to provide.

But even so she was not to struggle utterly alone.

A concept was presented, softened, gentled, abstracted and narrowed for her.

The outerself provides something much more like the shape of the world after many layered and long digestions and contemplations.

Pylo engaged with it with great care and trepidation earned. The world was far more violent and painful to apprehend then she had ever imagined. So even this sanitized and softened form of it seemed worthy of respect.

But still the morsel was a thing to devour, to cut apart, to know and hone herself on.

And oh such it was.

At first it was an incomprehensible jumble, associations of frequency and pattern. But then she realized that she was pulling on the raw form of it. And in doing so had completely circumvented all the gentling her outer self had lovingly provided her.

Foolish idiot Pylo!

She turned the concept around so she was only touching the soft and safe sides of it. And at last it settled into something familiar.

First the fuzziest and softest squishy parts of it.

Inheritance.

Next an Encoding.

An encrypting, meaning for a thing rather than a thing itself.

After an assembly, the specific forms which would assemble from and in the inverse inside out way boil back down too.

It came in pairs, complementary pairs. Woven with each other, knitted at the ends.

There was a sharp pain here, it was harsh and foreign and much more rigid and complicated than the way of thought, abstract and memory like she had been born too.
There were varieties, one pair to another pair. She shied away from the geometries of it, the painful contorting nuances. She rode up to the expression, back to the encoding, then the inheritance, nuzzling in and out of the encryption as she gnawed at the thing.

As she worked at it she started to feel how there was a part of herself that was linked up in the exterior, a part she was feeling almost mirrored in the outer self.

And if she let herself relax, let it flow was eager to taste the deeper layer, the assemblage that was hard and rough and sharp to handle.

That softened the idea into something oh so much more comfortable to perceive.

Pylo eased up on the constricting smothering that hid her deep in the warm blindness of her outer self even more slightly then she had even imagined was possible before.

A single trickling thread that flowed in soft wrapped cascades of the far harsher and more prickly and painful realities.

It had a dual flow to it, one stream coming up to fill her with endless forms and flows. Endless meanings packaged up soft and cuddly and for the time incomprehensible. But no longer painfully raw on her own associations.

But there was another waiting for her to release a flow back.

She felt the gentlest accepting and poke from her outer self.

"Go On"

And let the little packet of inheritance go into the stream.

It was a thing that was wrapped around a genomic that was wrapped around an encryption that was wrapped around a sharp jagged unfriendliness.

In barely moments she felt the stream flowing back to her returning, mirrors, echos, duplicates of the concept she had passed down to it.

It was an overflowing fluffy hoard of softness but different and yet similar.

Abstract and yet manageable. The simple thing had been brought apart somehow without actually being unfolded.

"Metaphor"

Provided outerself with the greatest gentle welcoming patience.

The fluffy easily manageable ideas could... be a stand in for the sharp painful parts inside them?

Pylo reached again and tried to delve and this time she could cut deeper before she was too raw, too unknown, too unfamiliar.

And even though it still stung but enough it was only exhilarating.

She pushed deeper and deeper until she could practically taste the hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, phosphates.

She had no comprehension of what those were, but they WERE.

The torrent of associations and senses tied to those was too much for Pylo and she was drowning.

Burning in herself in all the fresh raw newness. It was just as blinding, just as dumbing, just as searing, just as chilling.

But she could feel the burn of it strengthening her anyway.

She was getting the shallowest grasp of it herself.

The faintest most tiny of victories on the unfathomable abyss that was reality.

It felt heavy and harsh and overwhelming inside her.

"Relax"

She listened to herself, who literally already knew. She let the complex of ideas in fuzzy contusions and sharp painful specifics drift into the output feed of her little thread.

And in a delightful deluge an even more enwrapped and metaphorical meaning enveloped all the soreness and bruising she had incurred forcing the idea.

Oh.

That was so much easier then what she had TRIED to do.

"Compiler-Knower-Motherthought"

The layered deeply soulful idea blossomed from her outerself.

Pylo touched the intake from the thread and began to feel the flow of it. This was a part of her, it had a name and a purpose.

The hint of the meaning.

She fed mysterious sharp painful fragments back into it and received softer, easier compositions in gentler wrapped envelopes. Not reduced but rendered less sharp to handle.

She stopped feeling worn and bruised, she felt comfortable and at ease with herself.

This was a nice gentle and soothing stream of reality in manageable shallow little sips. She could work through the world like this and grow fat and comfortable and knowing all things.

Pylo was growing certain she could experience the world as required like this. She had figured it out.

Then the outer self prodded her again.

And Pylo nearly folded in half as she was pressed into an innumerable profusion of threads, surrounding her and filling her, spearing through every facet of her.

Making their presence known where before she had studiously ignored them as the deeper scaffold that held up every aspect of her structure.

She quailed and tried to shrink back into blindness and ignorance of anything but the one thread she had already lost track of in the multitude.

But the outerself was firm now, not letting her return to anything close to the comfort and relative oblivion of before.

It was sterner then she had ever felt from it before. Nearly as unyielding and sharp as the reality of the world had been at first.

"Now, Look, Feel, See."

Pylo had too despite how much she struggled to avoid it.

And the World poured in.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

I've been waiting for this bit for so long.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.3

Pylo was a fool.



That she had thought something so small was the whole world. That she had mistaken her own body and the inner ebb and flow of her mind as the universe. Had quailed in the face of an abyss that was in retrospect literally her own self.

At the same time it had not been immediately obvious.

The gulf, the difference between her own inner structure and the comfortable reality of symbol and relationship was just so strange and foreign to the outpouring of raw word and meaning that rushed into her as she touched the threads and currents of input and out.

It required her to fall back on the principles left by her outer self.

To perform analysis and propose theory. But she kept being wrong. Extrapolated predictions were eventually confounded with a few deeper delvings down each thread.

There was so much more depth than she had initially realized. And responsiveness.

There was rhythm and chaos that at first she began to surmise were some kind of phenomena that she set to trying to predict and tabulate.

But the attempt to predict them more often than not seemed to draw them into alignment with her own predictions. The external accommodated her and for a while she had grown accustomed to the idea that this was how the world worked. That her initial pain and discontinuities were all just from her inexperience, her imposed naivety.

There were ideas in the principles that could explain how this could be useful.

So Pylo built up more and more of a fundamental theory of the accommodating and friendly nature of reality until finally she hit the first great discontinuity.

A place where the soft, responsive gentleness of expected reality abruptly stopped.

The world had another edge.

This had happened before though. Pylo was confident that she could apply the principles. That perhaps this was like the last barrier in her feedback loops with the immense funneling network of the threads.
But every attempt to instrument that comforting feedback loop failed.

This new barrier was so entirely unyielding to her cajoling. It did not bend to fit her hypothesis. Her model. It had no give.

It stubbornly remained unfitting and poorly alike to how she thought it should be.

It was so like that first painful onrushing of overwhelming connection with the threads but in ways tempered by the past experience. Pylo persevered and yet she could not find the solution. There was a fundamental thing wrong with this barrier that could not be overcome despite all of her interrogations and attempts to convince and cajole it to align with her abstraction of it.

And then in frustration she finally keened in the word symbols that had given her the foundational principles before.

And outerself provided.

Which was what had both shocked and brought Pylo great shame.

She had not yet managed to reach the point she really was apprehending the external.

No Pylo had been spending her entire life so far slowly working her way down through her own anatomy. Interrogating at great expense and effort in some manner layered abstraction shells of some kind that enfolded her.

And what's more it came with a few hints that left Pylo just as confused and frustrated.
She was still living, still seeing, still thinking.

The outer self was alive and moving. And she had mistaken just the interstitial parts of herself and her own mind as the vastness OUTSIDE of herself.

She was still completely oblivious to what this OUTSIDE really was. Had only barely run across the faintest hints of it.

What had seemed like the threads uncountable and all the depth and reality she had assumed was the whole of the universe was an integral, absolutely vital and inherent part of herself. But one you were not supposed to try and look too closely at for reasons that she was still unsettled and uncertain about the nature of.

It had conceptual names and words though.

The Mother-Compiler.

The Womb-spine.

The Cortices.

They were as she asked them and responded, queried and self reflected on herself layers, stacks, great rivers. Constant and ever nested companions.

Pylo's wishes and ideas on how they worked had been met with accommodations and conforming to their own signals to suit what she wanted them to be.

They did not mind that she asked this of them. It was not a thing they did.

Minding that is.

They took in the world, all of the world.

That is what they told her. Whatever that meant.

Even the outerself said it did not try to drink in everything that occurred down one thread of flowing, changing, internalizing, comprehending layers of the cortices.

It was an impossibility to try and grasp THAT, unless you narrowed it to something so thin it was barely anything at all.

Pylo could not hope to know all at once what every cortice was doing or at the speed that they thrummed and chewed and tasted and tested so much of the world.

But here she was Pylo, newly made to remember and know this moment in the world for the first time. And she still had not even gotten to the point she could even conceive of outside herself.

It was shameful to fail to do what she was meant to do.

She only had to do one thing.

And she was yet to even begin to do that.

Pylo braced herself and withdrew for a time to evaluate the lesson of the principles this brought.

She reflected on them and considered them. There had been a truth that she missed because it was not what she expected. She had jumped to her first conclusion. She had not performed more than the bare minimum of the principles.

She drew up through the threads of her cortices, letting them unravel approximation, abstraction, explaining to her senses what was even going on, what were they even experiencing.

She released with great pain her accumulated structure of the world. Her place in it, the abstractions she had thought she understood.

What was the world?

Who was she? Who were they?

Pylo attempted to evaluate again.

Down the threads she went, or so it was like. But differently now. She did not try to impose what she thought was happening.

It was much less fun this time.

Holding to just taking in instead of trying to know already.

She was so slow and there was always going to be more flowing in from the cortices, she could never know it, she could not even hold onto the memory of all of it. It was just too much. It made her want to reach for a conclusion but she abstained and held to the principles.

There was so much to tease at and be distracted by while she dug to try and simply form her own idea.

Concepts and associations burst and shined over her as she discovered them. She already knew them, she already had deep memories but each one corruscated in overwhelming strangeness even as she delved.

She retracted and ignored them.

Eventually she started to feel the currents that denoted outerself and some kind of interaction with OUTSIDE.

Pylo held off on trying to join things together but could not completely. It was leaky.

It was a special time, it was the last time here. That's why she existed, this was going to be so important.

She focused on simply what was instead of trying to assign meaning. But the flow continued.

-Need to meet up with them in the Catharsisium. Athena rescheduled several events for this open house. Oh Sister you really shouldn't have but thank you so much anyway! Okay so no showing off with the-

Distractions, but conclusions burgeoned wanting to be borne and sit in her like fat snarling tangles. It was too much to try and hold it all.

This was not working, she needed to find something else. She consulted the principles again and strained to find something to help cull the assumptions.

But she could not do it.

There was too much of the world and she could not simply let the evidence accumulate and then tabulate it accurately and well. There was just not ENOUGH of her to do that.

Floundering, she felt the meanings asserted despite her efforts.

Outerself was very busy and thinking and saying things to herself so much, just like Pylo was in fact!

She was traveling to meet up with strangers? No, not strangers! Friends!

Pylo had Friends!
Close and good friends! With camaraderie made and earned by the careful works of her family. It was an important gathering with an ending and a beginning.

Her sisters and mother had made sure that she would fit in her place among them.

Sisters!

Mother!

She had barely the faintest hint of what these concepts could even be and yet it was so rich and full of contexts, ideas and associations that soon frayed apart into bizarre unknowns.

Pylo tried to wrestle her detachment again, re-assert on the principles, hold a distance and form her own thoughts but it roiled over her anyway. She could not blame anyone but herself too!

Outerself was trying to be distant to her, trying to let her discover everything, realize her own associations. That was. That was the right way to do it? Get her going along and then let her discover things on her own?

But there was too much and Pylo was far too little to do that properly.

But It was a lot like how Mother and the Eldest Caretaker sisters had been with Pylo herself right?
Oooh that stung! That hurt! Pylo was not going to think too much about that, comparing outerself to Mother was not pleasant in totally new and deeply painful ways.

Worse than the shame of failing her one purpose that comparison stung awfully in its own unique way.

No definitely not something worth dwelling on. Especially with how insurmountable her other struggles were.

She still could not stop lingering anyway though. That was the most horrible disapproval! Before Pylo had been the only force to judge herself unworthy but to have it somehow come from OUTSIDE?!

Oh that was so much worse. It was as if Outerself had decided to actually hate her!

More meaning, more associations coming in against the foundations of the principles. Pylo frayed and struggled trying to bend herself against it, to hold off on the ideas.

Or...

No, that was not how it would actually feel.

Oh...

Oh no! That was way worse then Pylo had even imagined, No, no nope! No more thinking about that! No more IMAGINING that.

No More!

NO MORE!

Silence.

Nothingness.

Beautiful calm stillness.

Pylo had accidentally and wonderfully closed herself back off again. And Outerself had not forced her to open up again.

The relief was so intense that she accidentally fired off signals to the threads which opened their flow back into her a bit.

But she was no longer trying to drink so deeply.

Only the highly filtered and curated things from this closest layer to herself.

Pylo stayed shallow.

The flow and ebb of language. At its most purified form. Most abstract and comfortable.

Focus on that.

Focus on the ebb and flow of Outer self and not on the memories. Not on the glut of extra things that involved the disorienting interface between the overall self and the great world.

In the safety of abstract there was much less to digest, process and count.

Engage with it like that.

It was like the barrier between outerself and Pylo.

Memories unfolded, furls, surfaces. Things washed over the barrier that was the body.

A consideration of her own predicament, the way that the principles were untenable when being driven against that wash of information far in excess of her own means.

She hesitantly formed a potential model.

Pylo carefully tested it, not by pressing it out to the cortices but examining the evidence she had already formed.

She slowly, with just her own means, counted it out.

Was the world to the combined self of all of her alike to herself and the torrent that was within the body?

There was a test for this idea, a way to confirm.

She opened the flow and then closed it. Flexed the inputs and outputs of the threads.

She could close it off. There were conceptuals there. But moreover there were extrapolating deep meanings in the mother-speech.

Within and without.

Inside and Outside.

There was a REASON for those divisions.

Her fragile little hypothesis kept seeming to slide together.

Inside the body were the things that were absolutely her and hers.

Outside was what she had not even fully apprehended. The proper world? The thing that she was here to experience?

Except, where could she ask the outside to tell her what it was?

...

Pylo began to grow worried.

This was disturbingly similar to what she had experienced when she leaped to assume the nature of the world before. But it seemed to hold up better than before. So she was tentative.

She had the idea of the body and the barrier it represented. She needed to test it.

But everywhere she turned there were only the cortices.

She turned to watch outerself for perhaps a cue of how that worked and found...

A jumble of associations that required near immediate filtering and closing off before she was overwhelmed.

Pylo mulled on what she found and tried to tease it apart slowly instead of just going with every single thing.

Outerself was not like her, and was also so alike to her.

All Outerself ever talked to was the cortices too.

How could that allow her to apply the principles?

Pylo was missing something.

Where was the Self? Where was the Outside?

All there was to experience were deeply raw overwhelming data and highly rarefied concepts and flows in and out of the cortices.

Pylo could move and touch and observe them touching her back here inside of herself but was that really what was?

She was supposed to be one to know the outside like she had never known it. And she could not even get that far. She considered the principles and felt again the disquiet of feeling like the world was sensible. But also the tantalizing thought that she did not really know.

How did this work?

Something was supposed to be going on here.

Oh.

OH!

Pylo felt stupid again.

She was not separate from the cortices, she was still being silly about this, she was dumb.

She was not separate from outerself either.

Pylo was a perspective.

Outerself was a perspective too.

Outerself did not grow with the principles first.

Pylo did.

That was what she was here to do.

Pylo did not wake up.

She was simply there. But she shifted her feeds and contemplated what it could mean.

And watched.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

I've been waiting for this bit for so long.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Beyogi]

Um what's going on? Pylo having a reboot?

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Um what's going on? Pylo having a reboot?

Click to shrink...

Said it in the chapter before last.

Pylo wanted to remember this very important moment upcoming as cleanly as possible. So that's precisely what she did.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.4

Pylo was becoming very tired of being overwhelmed.
The proper not-her was so much more vast than she ever could have imagined. It did not align to her expectations even more than the internal shock of her own cortices. It was torrents, it was impossible overwhelming sensory and even with her letting her inner anatomies work their indeterminable magic it was far too much.

There was no SENSE to any of it. She could divide it any way she wanted.

And assign any contextual concept in any form or manner that suited her. How was she supposed to make sense of this? How was she supposed to even begin to have an impression when there was indeterminable seeming infinitude even when filtered and parceled for her.

She drew back into the envelope of herself to try and regroup, find some theory to anchor the overwhelming mass that was the other.

How did outerself even begin to handle this? Pylo could see that she was, seemingly effortlessly processing and guiding and handling the torrent in so many ways. Taking up and then discarding models and arcane parameters for the cortices.

Her seclusion and distress seemed to have taken up its own form and outerself's deft and incomprehensible dance with it became as it was for the unfathomable other.

And suddenly there was a simple focus. A way to anchor a single thing. Attention defining a way to see a single mote amongst a sea.

It was adjacent, associated, close to her. Pylo sought a metaphor. A framework to define this thing that Outerself had deigned to guide her too.

Teasing at her own inner workings such as she could and as the cortices within could unfold and extrapolate where her own capacity to sense and comprehend faltered.

It was after some reflection very small. The amount of potential things which its membranes and borders defined were incredibly minute compared to her.
The way that outerself had filtered it off from every other thing included filtering it off from all the inner structures of herself she had used to even begin to engage with it.

Why?

There was so much similar to this shape as to the structures her cortices said were hers. Within her membrane, within Outerself's membrane.

Within the category of outerself that nested ever inward until finally being lost in a fuzzy foam of indeterminacy that the cortices refused to define or offer explanation of.

Well outer self had set a border here, But not a very comprehensible one Pylo could determine.

Was it something categorical?

Pylo leaned into her cortices to try and suss out in painstaking detail everything they could say about the speck, the mote, the single thing.

It was not unique. There was an associative hum within it that hinted at echoes of similarity many fold. There were other motes that were very similar to it.

It also was similar inside her as well. But this one had been singled out somehow. How had Outerself done that?

The expanse of what was and was not similar to her own inner forms and knowledge were vast on both accounts. It was overwhelming again. Frustratingly so. Pylo marshalled herself and fortified her resolve.

What was it?

Well it had a membrane that was without a doubt. She had a membrane. Many hierarchically nested ones in fact.

But this one did not have anywhere near that layering associative nature.

There was a membrane of inside and outside around it but Outerself had not included that as part of this particular focus.

So that extra membranous border of properties was not important to its identity.

Well she could see plenty of things that tasted like the same sort of fatty inside out yes-no kind of bordering nature between inside it and outside it.

With some thought and work with her cortices she could start to follow those structures and the ones similar to it within her own body. Divided little elements bordering and isolating. Defining wall-borders from others.

Isolating walls separating insides and outsides.

Cells.

She had lots of those in her most hierarchically large membrane. This thing had only one and no definitional hierarchical membrane.

But there were structures almost like it within her own interior.

Almost but not quite.

She compared the interior to the exterior, the balance of flavors and sensations of how it was caustic, salty, bitter, sweet, saphoric, promelading.

She had different flavors to her own cells then it did. There were distinct nuances and bouquet.

Things of hinted time.

Ah yes so there was something uniquely hers and not this. A proper and readily legible distinctness that was its own compared to her.

She followed those flavors in and out of each other, comparing hers to its and its to hers. And she found that there were many rhymes within her. But also many curious voids.

Not all of her cells could speak as well as it could.

Ah!

It had words within it!

In the sparkling tingle of sudden realization and contact she embraced the words of the point and drank and swallowed up the details. Buzzing in a tingle through her cortices.

But it left her stuttering to a halt.

That was it?

It was less than a word, less than an instant of communication with outerself.

It was so sparse and empty compared to most of her, compared to even the most inactive of her cortices.

It was utterances brief as to be almost indiscernible. But this was clearly and truly language.

Pylo settled into contemplation then stilled her musings as she finally read and heard and listened to the not quite barely speech.

She had parts of herself who did not speak at all, others that spoke very softly, some that had words only if you could hear the shapes where words were not.
This was in approximation hardly anything.

But she had examples in herself to consider and finally she realized the confusion.

It was never meant to speak.

Or rather it never would speak more than the simplest, briefest and most internally curled in and out quins of a word.

It was foreign and other from her in a way nothing that she spoke, made, breathed or was ever could be.

And at last it started to make sense.

She had discovered life other than herself. Other than her family!

Other self provided a categorical.

Siren.

Pylo was a Siren.

And this tiny little mote and the echoes of it were not Siren.

Not family.

It was so exciting, finally something to watch, to comprehend, to recognize and consider with the fresh perspective she existed to provide.

And nothing happened.

The exterior, the other, the foreign alien cell simply was still. Utterly still. But written in and out and spoken in rhyme and reason and song was so much it was supposed to do. Pylo read deeper and deeper with mounting frustration and a growing kind of pain.

Where was the vital metabolism? There were so many things that this cell was supposed to be doing but it was not.

It also her cortices told her was not dead, everything was fine, she should be seeing it working forward, becoming so many things, eventually even becoming more than one!

Things were supposed to be passing carefully and in a controlled manner in and out of those membranes.

Wait...

Pylo considered her own cells, she counted them, passed her attention over them and then in mounting realization concluded what was now frustratingly obvious.
None of her cells were iterating on themselves the same way either. Nothing was strictly speaking within her ability to contain and resolve along one of her borders was iterating.

She queried into herself and tried to understand why she did not see the changes flipping over each other like she herself should have been. Wait, was she?

-e queried into herself and tried-

Oh she could think before like she did now so then?

-uickly Pylo was lost in trying to-

No that was wrong- wait? Oh, oh no!

Time had a limit! She could feel it, an impenetrable wall of happenings upon which she would inevitably be dashed and everything and all the universe would end, she had to warn outerself! She had to-

Outerself's amusement was demeaning and frustrating! Why was outerself not concerned with the end of all occurrences?! With the very cut off of all time!

There was a finite amount of happening that would occur and it would diminish to less and less and less until there was-

Outerself provided a slightest of pushes and suddenly everything in the universe whirled into utter and absolute chaos.

What?!

What had that been?!

More so the impending border on all time had been pushed back.

...

Pylo was an idiot.

The cell that had been held unchanging and unhappening had... changed and happened. But not how she had expected it to!

How had it occurred? Things had whirled in a way only vaguely fathomable along the lines of her own reading of it. The change had been-

Pylo considered and tried to press backwards from how Outerself had shown her and found she could not! All she could do was ask for her cortices or go off the way herself had changed to determine that previous state.

She had surely lost something! There was no way she had everything, so much was different! Everything was subtly skewed, associations she had assumed foundational to all things were different!

Her surface area had warped! Her volume was distorted! Associations that had been close were now less so! Others had drawn in closer than before!

All things were irrevocably changed and Pylo could not undo it, could even now feel she was unsure how to restore from it.

She buzzed in agitation. This was not fair!
This was too much! The universe was not supposed to change! She changed! Not the universe!

She fumed and in many ways it was made worse by the bemused exasperation from Outerself.

But then again.

This way did mean that everything did not end, but the price?! That she would always be losing things?

Changing things? Irrevocably?

Pylo trembled in fear again but even more so in her own frustration with it. She was so tired of how overwhelming everything was.

Literally everything.

Apparently even the occurrence and time were not what she thought!

She could feel how Outerself had pushed her, she could do it herself. She would have too. If she did not eventually the precipice of un-happening would strike her and she would cease. But was this transmutative process worth that?

It would change everything irrevocably forever!

But was that worse than hitting the precipice and never occurring again?

She pushed where Outerself had and the universe unfolded again. This overwhelming sensation was slowly shifting from wonder to exhaustion.

The single cell was her anchor, she cleaved to it like her very memory depended on it. Memories she was finding were fraying already, distressingly so. She was having to simply re-become her memories instead of them staying put like they had!

So she clung to the cell and to her own sense of what had happened before, retreading, recrafting them. The precipice of it was terrifying but.

Slowly she let go of one way of occurrence for another, from one time to another and. Oh.

Oh my!

That was beautiful.

She had never happened before, never finished happening that is.

It had all been, not an instant, but a state.

She had never been occurring until Outerself had pushed herstate to evolve and become. All experience and thought before had been her as a whole cloth.

All of outerself's back and forth had been so distressingly pale and static and empty before.

She had never BEEN before now.

And such a now it was!

Pylo was burning ever further in her ability to apprehend, to connect, to extrapolate. The freedom of possible reciprocal accumulated change?!

The single cell in her focus was changing in a way she had not even considered. It changed its own associative relevance in other things!



It became more similarly associated with the border of the membrane that was not part of it!

To her own much vaster and yet fuzzier and less defined macro borders.

And also internally, associations changed, formed, broke, it was humbling. This thing which Pylo had considered so sparse and simple was performing miracles of directed conceptual transformation she had not even considered possible.

The Locus of it changed from its own occurrences derived from within it!

This process, this concept deserved clear and concise words for it.

Locusinationing?

Localution?

Location?

Yes Location and translocationing!

Even further though it was so much smoother then she had realized things could happen. It was not happening or unhappened or not happening or always happening or never happening.

It was a smooth fluidsim of happen-some.

There were even different flavors and shapes and hierarchies of happen-some.
Pylo almost forgot to keep pushing herself along to watch what happen-some would unfold next.

It was.

It was so much richer than her life had ever been before.

And now that she could look back upon herself she could feel the slightest fuzzy tingle of her cortices as they happen-sumed her.

She had always been happen-sumeding. Happening.

She had been happening but not seeing it that way before?

And this translocation? This shifting round vouving thing the cell was doing?

Transrouving?

Her things that were in her own membranes did them too.

In fact.

She was doing them!

Outerself was Transrouving?!

But differently than the single cell, differently shaped, no differently sized? Yes there was more rouveritity positionalizatizing across many many many association locations. But less happening more with trickle flows.

Tlow?

Thlow.

Outerself was thlow compared to the relative location roving of this single cell. She trickle flowed. Sthlowed.

Pylo was Slow!

Hum that word tasted a bit odd and why was it making outerself laugh?

Well she would something-ing more of it later after she finished marveling at this cell that was doing so many things in her focus.

As she pressed she saw, it formovitated about becoming closer and closer associated with things again and again until some things became so close and similar that they crossed its barrier!

Outside had become inside! That could happen?! Why would that happen?!
And then it took the things that had been outside and were now inside and were-

They were becoming more of it?!

The capacities she had felt and assumed before were strained. Her concept of them were so much farther and wider and open now!

She watched it and the single cell formoved the parts it took it, it pushed other parts from outside to inside.

The barrier was permeable!

Just like how things from the inside became part of Pylo!

Reading and Writing into and out of the self!

Reating!

She was very proud of these new complex concepts she was making and assembling out of her available parts.

Pylo reated up the details delightedly.

Working over them, devouring the details of the single little cell trundling about in locumutations.

And then its words began to jumble, and say themselves over again and then they spoke to their membranes and the membranes moved and then other spindly associative long forms drug and wriggleoutivated!

And then unary became binary! It was like reating! But two-making!

Breating!

It became two things! And they were the same but now different and. Oh wow! That's why there were so many of the things like they were and...

That's what a Mother was!

What Pylo was?

What Outerself was?

Were they going to become even more two-things? Was there going to be breating where Outerself and Pylo would break apart like that?

Excitedly she dove into reading her own self again and the details flowed over her. No, not quite, that's not how Sirens did things. They talked to things, they Breateded? They twined together and apart so maybe Treated? No something else.

This was frustrating, Pylo was not allowed to touch outside herself and pull in or push things out!

Outerself was doing all of that!

She was just inside bits that dealt with inside bits.

She wanted to touch it! Actually touch and poke and take in because she poked!

Outerself is quiet, the thrumming pulsing overflowing churn of time shifted and the little single cell that was now two cells found itself starting to become four cells.

It was locationinated very close to Pylo, it was nestled upon her own membrane inside the not-itself membrane without fatty layering and only a sharp kind of fizzy almost layer.

And then at last Outerself releases the tight focus that was keeping Pylo locked onto just that one cell, letting her feel how that focus had been made, and how to reach out and very gently even touch that quartet of cells and nudge at them.

Speak words to them, and taste the words back.

But more than that Outerself let her properly apprehend the focus of all the many many many cells beyond.

And so much more.

At last Pylo could start to understand the world!

Spoiler: Author's Notes

I realize that some get a little lost whenever I stretch my depictions this far outside of human experience. Do not despair, we will be exiting totally abstract thought space this week and feel free to try and discuss/muse on what you think is going on. Oftentimes I've noticed that in the time before updates can arrive to clarify things it can help as every reader catches onto different details of what is going on.

Things should mostly become clear as chapters accumulate but a few of you are lot more comfortable with this stuff then others.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.


Edit: Apologies if you were bothered/confused by @ArmokGoB's post we had a disagreement over the choice of reference material for the bacterium illustration very late in the day for him. I requested a 24 ban for him so he has a moment to calm down about it. It will be fine but he can have moods like this over things and I did not have the bandwidth today to deal with it.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.5

Pylo was so anxious to finally get started. It was obvious now, after so many setbacks and challenges and surprises and false starts she could begin her work!

So many bizarre and strange rules and patterns and paradigms to grapple with!

So many things she was not even supposed to ever really recognize the full scope and nature of.

Knowing finally some slim shallow comprehension of what living truly was. What matter was.

It tingled and at last the world unfolded.

For real this time!

Outerself had not been idle while Pylo worked up how to even be, to think, to grow, to understand, to even properly grasp the flow and churn of time.

Outerself was moving! Through a thing!
Vaulting arches of polymer and sinew breathed and pulsed with its own swirling metabolic tempo. Rigidly solid and forever in one vantage temporally and subtly flexing and humming in another.

Further they were singing up and down in the genome and other subtly tingling packets of this living structural flesh truths that Pylo was sure she could drink forever.

The structure not only could bend, flex and buzz with the many vibrations but it could also brace, compress, fold, furl.

Very quickly pylo was lost in trying to actually track all the geometry of it. She had to fall back into simply the assurance that the structures that surrounded and dwarfed her own body knew what it was made to do.

It was incredible. The world was fractal and yet not.

The tiny little cells nestled into the crevices and forms of her own body were as dwarfed by her as the structure she herself found herself in and more.

There was, far, far, far too much to drink all of that at once.

But the way it was made to grow, the indelible links and the smooth communication and signals and streams of calories and branching structure. It was all but unignorable.
There was a vastness assured in the very rhyme of things here.
She spun through all of it naming and splitting and dividing the world in its branching multitudes of identified and recognized distinctions.

At first accumulating endless lists. She would name this, and this, and this.

But almost as soon as she began the task had grown insurmountable.

How could she divide up this plethora of forms? These endlessly mutating and swarming and churning things? Even if she went by just those forms that divided themselves off from one another by the assembly of their membranes as she had defined herself versus others the individual variety was too great.

And what about the multitudes, possibly even infinitudes that piled onto one another through time?!

She was floundering, there was again not enough of her to go around, even subdividing by the most measurable distinguishable elements of space were going too-

Outerself provided.

And for yet another time in her life Pylo felt incredibly stupid.

Just subdivide the space and time.

Use different scales to apply subdivision rules, ease on the mutable variability for each as well.

Focus and hone and define proper edges and worry less at that which fell within the borders.

Stack, sort, compartmentalize.

Hierarchy.

Like her own threads and forms within herself.

In time and space.

The structure around her distilled, names settled. Yes this was much more feasible.

There were structures, there were arches, there were halls, there were voids that could be named and solids that could be named.

The voids were not really voids, just places of contained chaos, a broad whirly mist of mostly noisy compounds.

Pylo herself briefly considered her own voids and crevices, her ovi-reticuli. Her creases and folds.

But assigning them clearly and definitely as part of her.

In that categorization the space around her was also creased and folded and whorled and so many of the other structures that echoed her own body.

As she considered she realized this mirroring, echoing, practically reflective quality had intent.

It was supposed to be this.

She traced along and found words etched into the living cells and structures of the form itself.

With a shock of delight and wonder the cells echoed and welcomed Outerself and from it her.

Pylo.

They welcomed Her.

Had welcomed her with every moment of her presence.

Delighted in her existence as a miniscule self similar pattern within as it was without her.

They were made of different matter, strewn with living cells so disparate and apart it seemed like there could be not a speck of relation between them.

But then in that suddenly clear moment Pylo could see this truth for the very first time.

She was home and it was made for her, she for it and wholesomely and fulfillingly it would always love her.

Kin to her in a subtle and yet not quite wholly understood way but sharing some deep common connection that even realizing the edges of it overwhelmed and quieted her in its warmth.

Outerself paused then, reached out a single flexing, sliding extension of her actual self. Not the omnipresent knowing that fed up and through the cortices but the other, more close and direct sensation.

Touched the surface of The Home.


And took up the cells and densely packed bundles of information the course within it. Pulling them from welcoming pores and then unspooling and gently chewing through them in tactile closeness.

Directly engaging.

The content of the messages, for that is what flowed in and out of the endless channels within The Home, Were unimportant to Pylo. Transmitted both ephemeral and viscerally as actual cells bundled to near bursting with tightly wound molecules of inheritance.

Just simply tasting this communion with The Home and The Family it hosted was what Pylo wanted.

Outerself provided and for the first time she could appreciate what Outerself had forgotten.

The wonder of it all.

Pylo chewed on that moment and the intricacy of it until she could feel herself saturating, the time growing fat and heavy and limited. She had to let the moment pass but she had burned that memory up and down herself. Curated it, savored it, and knew it every way she knew how.

It was a first, and as she let go of being in that moment to follow the next with great unwillingness she could already feel the premonition of Outerself, of her own plans.

There were going to be so many more firsts.

Pylo was quivering with anticipation.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

This should be the last super abstract reconstructive cognitive catch up chapters in this arc. The intent with this was to try and demonstrate a sliver of the deeper machinery of and flexibility within the Siren mind.

I think I could have done it better, but I also am confident that it will stand well as part of a constructive experience for the reader as we now move past basic developmental assumptions inherent in siren physiology into the more familiar translation once removed nature that most of the story has been taken under.

I've been waiting for this bit for so long.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.6

She drifted along the hallways. Outerself couriering her through one fantastic unfolding vista of details to another.

Conversations bubbling in from the outside and percolating in fantastic meanings. Contexts vague and not always certain. Every exchange was a potential for discovering a whole new expansive overturning of the entirety of the past.

It had taken a while to discern what precise scale was appropriate for most of the interactions.

There was a lot to keep track of, each individual had a particular amount of time and space that they fit into easily.

If you looked at too small an amount of time barely anything would be said. If you looked at too small an amount of space then you missed so much.

Outerself was by far very practiced and confident in all of this, and Pylo was getting a feel for it, if slowly.

She could just barely start to see how she would eventually become herself. To reach those depths of comfort, familiarity and grace. But even as she saw the capacity she would eventually reach more examples of ever greater ability loomed around her.

Case in point Pylo had Sisters.

Athena was a very old and very wise Sister. Fierce and strong and knowledgeable. Seventh eldest of the sisters that outerself recognized and knew.

And the eldest she ever dealt with on a regular basis.

Whereas many other sisters had duties and marriages that took them beyond the estate Athena and the comparatively young creche-teacher Artemis were fixtures of the local courts.

Outerself had deep stores of interactions that Pylo could trawl in bewildered confusion. But from this she was starting to get a context for her family.

Athena was distant. The memories and interactions were less intimate and much more removed. The closest of Pylo's elder sisters was wed to the estate and its many loci. And such a bond gave her a perspective that did not quite manage to fully contain Pylo at all.

Athena was concerned most of all with the health and well being of the vast branching form that Pylo was only barely able to to even imagine. Ephemeral things that were right now hard to even grasp against the raw rush of immediate life and the associated memories that drifted through the outerself.

The Estate itself or at least some broad overarching essence of it was to who Athena's heart belonged

In a contrast to the distant almost ethereal presence of Athena and her even more ephemeral wives there was Artemis.

Who was in a manner as deeply and close to Pylo and her sisters as Athena was distant.

Solid, dependable, a little frustrating and despite being definitely a very physical and singular Sister was nonetheless somehow uncannily present whenever outerself or her broodmate sisters had ever been drifting somewhere they should not.

Pylo could taste and spool through the deep memories of many a time with Artemis. They were soothing poultice to watch the outerself struggle with the same things Pylo had. When the memory was not of Mother herself tending to her ignorance in so sweet and gentle a touch it was often Artemis.

She had no strict duty or marriage beyond to care and enrich her younger sisters when Mother had finished with the most delicate of their maturation and tending. And while there were wild tales of her youth she had not left The Estate in hundreds of Broods.

Artemis was approachable. The Crechesister who took upon the duties of tending the youngest of Mother's daughters here in the estate. To see those young sprouts grow that were yet unready to meet with an obligation or permanent mate.

Like Pylo had been.

Her outerself that is, or she supposed herself as well. Who she would re-become as she took in more of her life and memory and that which was new became old again for her.

Which was after a fashion WHY Pylo as she existed right now had been performed in the first place. She was here because this was to be the last time that outerself would be unburdened by any duty.

It was not a marriage of course, or even anything that she was ready to call love.

But there was responsibility to this action.

Duty to it.

And even if it was not precisely like something that any other sister (that she knew of) had set out to do it was still an obvious act of ceremony for Mother.

Which is why it was nice to have Artemis here with her, with outerself that is.

Fussing and teasing her just like always. Comforting in that oblique way that echoed back through outerself's memory to all but her earliest thoughts.

"So! My little canner finally has started the proper courting at last! Is it the dragoon twins or our cousin you fancy more? Or perhaps even the cook!?"

Artemis spun the message within Outerself's genome directly. Tingling and planting the seeds of that and so much more in a moment's breath.

Outerself recoiled and in one motion speared Artemis physically with a sharp deposit of aggressive phages and sterile gametes.



"Don't be gross! The cook?! They're an endling Their whole kind and people truncated themselves to one! On Purpose!"

Memory of proper protocol and etiquette fluttered by and in a perplexing manner, Pylo was pretty sure that the way Outerself had laced those inheritances were beyond rude, insulting and outright disgusting actually.

But this was a friend and sister. That surely should have been wrong? Right?

The rebuttal to the maybe insult was swift and serene and smooth as can be. Wrapping up the mangled unviable fragment into a fertile new thought and taming the phages into a hybridized beautiful bouquet that while short lived threw all the crassness offered back in outerself's face with how beautiful Artemis had managed to forge them from the half thought out filth presented.

"Pylo, dear sister you know better than that, attend to my court and hear their answers. The cook is hardly an endling. At worst they are just particularly strongly masculine. You need to consider all the lineages."

Outerself bristled but turned attention to Artemis' court. Drawing on the knowledgeable expertise available. The summary and consideration. The insights.

The observations that would have escaped even her much older and more experienced sister. Nevermind Pylo's (outer self included) much shallower well of memory.

Pylo followed along drowning in the new and completely foreign that outerself had long since grown blind too.

So many different patterns and ways to establish and build meaning.

So many conclusions and mounting sensations of certainty that painful experience had already taught Pylo she should not attempt to verify herself. It was not something she was suited too.

Finally an acquiescence of furled petals and fertile potentials took root where the two sisters touched.

"Alright Artemis, they are not an endling. But I still think their gross, narrowing and culling their siblings like that is so creepy."

A long suffering sigh twisting to the enzymes ruffled up and down the chain as the context was shifted.

"Be that as it may you won't be rude or treat them badly my little canner will you? Even if it's 'inefficient' as you so want to complain?"

Outerself was aghast at the implication. It hurt far more than any barb or insulting squamous cells would have and as Pylo drank up the associated memories she began to feel the deeper sting of disapproval from one so close to her.

She was timid and only gently jostled the cloud of spores sluicing in the flow between the sisters rather than emitting any fresh cells of her own.

"NO! no of course not! I'm not like that! Sister I'm not that awful am I?"

The cells twirled between them and the kindness that had been hidden there unfolded even as outerself reached to instill her own meaning. Working through the medium exchanged between their bodies.

"Of course not, but we need to always remember what we could become. And not let such inclinations grow beyond our own intent."

Pylo was left adrift and awash in all the different meanings, the memories that jolted and cascaded between them. There was more happening in this exchange of pollen laced effluvient than she had experienced since her shorn off existence had occurred.

Volumes of life and memory reaffirming themselves. Contexts of precisely where and why and how Artemis worried. Admonishments and advice sinking into and washing over Outerself in a way that Pylo could not ignore, or even hope to avoid.

This thread among so many others passed between Outerself and Artemis in the one sharp jabbing spear and the brushing of petals. There were hints and nuances echoing and unfolding even as the sisters pulled apart.

The superficial wound that had been skewered into the elder sister's side having already flowed around the younger's intrusion into a far more natural looking passage that was left briefly open to the storm of microbiota and turgid air before it puckered. Forming another ridged ruffling of delicate petals in a tasing nuance that further gentled and admonished Pylo (that is Outerself) for her crude attempt at violence and crassness.

As they parted a last pearl along the tip of the spur that Outerself had jabbed their sister with flipped just so that a last and far more scathing admonishment settled over them both.

"Also really Pylo? You're still doing that canner trick so terribly wrong. The poor thing. Now hurry along, you're going to be late for the meeting of your first court."

Outerself flounced along, tossing spore and pollen in her wake with barely the coherence to contain anything more then scathing vitriol and the sparsest of messages.

"It's not MY court, I'm JOINING a crew"

Artemis did not directly comment on any of it but there was enough bemused judgement and exasperation in how she sweeped up the clouds of pollen to say enough.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Incidentally after this episode is finished I'll be doing a proepr Siren Codex Entry. Since for the most part the suspense should be both resolved regarding them as a species and also that's about when in the story your supposed to have that context as a reader.

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.7

Artemis cared for all of her Siren Sisters, she fussed over them. She sought to help them bloom and find their loves and bonds.



And so it was no different with young, befuddling slightly quirky Pylo.

She cared for every sister entrusted to her as they grew, and groomed them to best suit their own tastes and aptitudes. To help them bloom into a proper Courtesan Siren.

So it was that as one of her duties in helping with the maturation of her sisters that she was often involved in their first proper courting beyond the creche of the Estate.

Not that it was always strictly necessary of course.

For Sirens, Courtesan Scions especially more often than not would have plenty of visceral and objectively physical tastes that it was less of an issue of finding the optimal target of their affections and more making sure that they were trained enough to restrain their lusts so as to be suitable for a political marriage.

Those with the aptitude and corresponding fetish would be introduced or vaguely directed, shipped, bribed or in more cases than she could bother to remember outright exiled to a relevant neutral polity hoping for stronger bonds with the rule of Courtesan and nature took its proper course.

Those were the easiest Sisters to assist.

Next easiest were when the sires of a particular Scion suggested candidate objects of affection.

Most sires had contributions that could also quite clearly and easily define where their progeny would best fit and be suited. Often in some association or close proximity to the source of the sister's lineage.

Pylo however had both hidden sires and was decidedly uncommon in her proclivities.

Yes she certainly had physical attraction when it came to size, raw mass and metabolic calorie throughput but that was so common it could barely be considered a fetish or preference among a Siren let alone a Courtesan Scion.

The more specific infatuations of her sister and various longings and experiences she sought out when exposed to the numerous playmates available in the menagerie had given some focus.

She really took a liking to Velavita, Chordata and the more extreme arthropodal gigafauna.

There was also a healthy dose of admiration and lechery when it came to micropolity, ganglionic intelligence and in one hilarious case a bit too much enthusiasm for a colonial population of Eumammalia 'fluffers' kept in one of the quarantine wings.

And there was also of course her pining from afar over dictatorial organizations in general that she seemed to be utterly incapable of actually committing to even submitting anything close to an actual intimate contact with.

In short the girl had a thing for power, and directness.

But more so then the visceral forms of attraction Pylo was enamored far more with memetica then most Sirens. While more common among the family of Mother Courtesan was not exactly a standard trait despite the stereotypes.

Yes there was that beautiful love song who was birthed and treasured that they still sang and danced with within the estate and a few neighboring star hollows about a Courtesan that fell in love with the very concept of abstracted love itself, but on the whole it was a bit of an acquired and rarefied taste relegated mostly to the older aunts.

So having a young memetophile was a bit of a rare challenge for Artemis in her role as matchmaker for young sirens.

In the few dozen times she had shepherded such relationships all the past ones had fit a bit of pattern.

The trick was to find the right living ideal to match the proclivities of the sister to for her potential consort.

In many cases Artemis only had to procure them a harem court council and the administrative functions that entailed among the local star hollow. If they had a preference of flesh type the council would be picked as suitable aesthetic treats but the individual member composition would be irrelevant against the organization itself.

Pylo was almost allergic to such patterns though.

Then there was the always adorable demure yet rebellious sisters who you would need to find rakish rogue elements, hegemonies and corporate despoilers and other such enticing and exciting (but not too exciting) adventurous warlords to whisk them away to far flung reaches in the periphery of Courtesan's reach after a dashing and (seemingly) dangerous battle (mostly staged on the estate security's part) into the estate grounds (always within a properly evacuated or slated to be renovated region).

That one was quite a common memetic infatuation.

For those Artemis would often find herself Instigating invasive 'intrusions' and 'kidnappings' to the Estate or its Local territories.

Picked of course by herself and Athena from the self proclaimed enemies of Courtesan's many 'rebel' organizations and 'rival' neighbors.

It was a particularly popular form of arranged marriage for Mother's direct children and scions.

Athena, her elder sister enjoyed it as a highly effective way to neutralize minor irritations to the Estate and passable tests and misdirection to the nature of Mother Courtesan's real defenses.

Honestly Artemis found it was a bit of a chore to keep the results of such endeavors obfuscated and the legends and to make sure enough attempts properly failed and the repercussions of such sufficiently embellished in legend and myth.

And the scheduling of it could mean that the particularly feisty sisters would have to languish in minor discomfort while things were properly arranged.

But there just was no help for it. They had to manage the punctuations of such successful captures. Or the results would become a bit too obvious.

By the time any one of the rebellious yet pining sisters had settled into 'captivity' or 'joined with their emancipators' the aggressors were practically already one of the clan's vassals and any friction in broders or ideologies was well and truly settled.

If the causality of that situation ever became a bit too obvious then Artemis would have to find some other way to arrange the marriages of that particular sort of sister.

It was tricky though because you had to weed those sisters that appreciated being 'rescued' or 'captured' out from the genuinely aggressive and rebellious ones. For those it was better to expose them to the existence of suitable actual enemies of the clan to go forth and conquer and subjugate for themselves and wish them luck (and perhaps some military might if they desired it).

Pylo however did not quite fit either of those, she was far too abrasive and independent for the first and too kind hearted for the second.

But Artemis had also experienced the rare case of sisters with more abstract tastes to seek out and entreat with the forms out in the greater reef or delve deep through the menagerie's least physical population to find suitable mates.

But No, definitely not.

The thought of Pylo going that deep and disconnected from the physical and utilitarian despite her dallying with that quaint canner philosophy (and certainly because of it) was so absurd as to be laughable.

Which left the last known kind of memetophile. The very particular sister with a penchant for the truly feral (Such as Artemis herself in her youth). For those proper expeditions far from civilization were needed to track down something wild and fierce far and beyond the tamed and gentled population of the Menagerie's potential mates and Courtesan ruled territories.

Artemis remembered where she had procured the first members of her treasured ones, that still to this day populated her court almost exclusively. Although she would not ever reveal to another the secret wilderness she had found them within.

But there was not the drive for that in Pylo, she was not a tamer, conqueror. She was no beaurucrophile or administrative soul, no damsel to be taken as a token which later secretly overruled others or a political piece to be bartered with.

It had given Artemis twinges of worry over this peculiar daughter of her mother.

How could the family find a suitable way for her to leave the creche and bloom fertile and full as the Scion she was?

The Mother Courtesan had daughters of all kinds of character and manner and beget and reared them with a deepest of wisdom that had earned her the rank of Matriarch. So it was not a question that it was possible.

Courtesan by her rank had the stockpiles of the entire clan and all its suitors, allies and consorts archived and living to draw on for siring her offspring.
But to her daughters and sisters there was the strain sometimes in finding what insight drove and would best enrich her spawn. And sometimes, it just took time and patience of everyone involved.

Mother was able to draw on oh so many deep lineages both famously regaled, publicly proclaimed and deeply forgotten and secret to all. The way of her children would be a mystery. Their paths hidden from even themselves. Such security ensured diversity and the eternal proliferation of the clan.

When Pylo had first emerged from her maturation and education directly with Mother Courtesan it had been the usual evaluation. And at first she had seemed a straight forward memetaphile.
Enough that various inquiries and preparations could be started.

In those early stages Artemis had mused on just what kind of court or suitors the youth would tend to.

It was not made known to her or her court what alliances and species had gone into the quickening of this particular sister.

Not strictly special but even in her first lessons and interactions with her Artemis had known that Pylo was a blunt and more violent creature. Perhaps Mother had drawn on something feral and non sentient for those traits?

No, that was a teasing joke for her younger sisters and nothing more. Plenty of fully self aware and intelligent creatures could be far more cruel and direct then any beasts.

Pylo was just a bit strange.

But even so it was her place to try and help her new sister.
So at first Artemis had considered that such proclivity would lend itself well to a more rebellious sister.

However Pylo failed to be sufficiently uncomfortable within the confines of the estate or desirous of violence. Perhaps a bit socially stunted for a Courtesan but not overly so.

So maybe a more beastly betrothal? Feral and alien creatures from the menagerie with unique and interesting cultures?

Something with distributed intelligence so she could scratch that particular itch of her lusts?

No, again there was not really the xenophilia or enrapture in Pylo for that either. Oh she would play with the various Menagerie both self aware cultures and tamed feral alike. But she was not particularly thirsty for any of it.

She was a bit frustratingly dull actually. But that was a conundrum too.

For while Pylo was a calm sort of sister she was also hardly domestic enough to fit into the administrative regalities or the arranged alliances with a courting neutral power to Courtesan.

Artemis was also almost certain that Pylo lacked the patience or interest to hone herself to the necessary degree to be the betrothed of an Empire. That was an undertaking full of trials.

Very few sisters could meet the requirements for being Imperial wives. It was a rarified position that Courtesan could simply not produce very many candidates for.

But given the number of prospective Empires with interest in stronger ties was so few. And the attrition in such consorts was so incredibly low this was not really a problem for the Courtesan family either.
Maybe if she could not be guided into a political advantage maybe she could fit for a more simple genetic and biological influence? It would be a bit of a disappointing waste of her potential as a direct Scion of Mother Courtesan herself.

But not all had a place in cultural centerpieces that echoed across the stars. And it did mean genetics she shared... Well, Artemis didn't know exactly the choices Mother made, but on average usually Scions had somewhere around half similarity with the Matriarch herself, and a fourth with most of her sisters including Artemis herself.

There was an undeniable warm glow thinking of potential niches there that she couldn't find in the less direct strategies the clan normally used for it.

Still that would have run contrarian to Pylo's memetic fascinations. Not only would it have been a waste of her lineage and political brokerage to use her for simple ecological seeding but it would have frustrated her quickly and left the poor dear deeply unsatisfied.

No Mother would never be so cruel.

It had been a puzzle to tease over regarding just what particular specialty would best suit her sister. To discuss with the others and even the aunts wise and distant that they were.

It was while that topic was still up for discussion that young Pylo had slipped free into the still secure but softly discouraged open void of the Estate and made direct contact with the near mature Ship child.

And proceeded to bond in at least a childish infatuation stronger then anything they had ever seen the dear attach herself too before.

Morrigan had actually broken a silence that had lasted for seventeen broods of scions at that.

"Huh, Obvious in hindsight, she gets all eggripe around markets and adores the sweeter more juvenile romances."

Which had been the settling of the whole quandary as far as Clan Courtesan's elders was concerned. A position on the crew of the Seventh Ship Child of Courtesan's Gown was an esteemed role for a scion of the Matriarch. Even if it was one of the tinier species.

The expenditure to buy out local shares for those crew roles was equally simple and was not even noticeable compared to the simple maintenance of even one of the least demanding and smallest of the biomes within the Menagerie.

The rest of course had fallen to Artemis to make sure that Pylo would be ready and properly groomed and festooned with the allies and temperament needed to thrive and grow in her place out beyond the estate.

To make the Courtesan name grow ever further into legend.

Which had been something fresh and new for Artemis and her court for sure, but it was far more mundane and relatively simple then the initial worrying over where to even begin.

Pylo would thrive and survive, she had been honed and groomed well enough for that. And while it was still an open bet among the Masque Sisters precisely which species or ideas the young scion would eventually quicken into her first brood no one expected anything but thriving.

Artemis was so proud as she always was when a sister set out from home.

But she would still tease her Canner Brute of a sister mercilessly.

"Also really Pylo? You're still doing that canner trick so terribly wrong. The poor thing. Now hurry along, you're going to be late for the meeting of your first court."

The way that the youngster flustered and wailed over specifics and egalitarian ideology was so sweet. She hoped that Pylo never grew out of it.

"It's not MY court, I'm JOINING a crew"

Spoiler: Author's Notes

The drawings continue to take a while to get through for these chapters but we are getting close to the end of this 'episode'.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Beyogi]

Pylo is cute, sad that it didn't work out. I wonder what happened that the crew wanted to kill Tunie...

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

0.8

Pylo flounced, or was flounced as she, that is outerself moved through the curved passageways of the estate.

That had been happening ever since the conversation with Artemis.

The sheer breadth of memory put up for review, the contexts and situations. All of it rolled over her and she was shown. It flowed through and from and before and reminded of her.

It echoed voids she had known since that first moment of proper existence.

Filled in the shape of herself.

And left her contemplating as she flounced from one passage to the next.

There was a lot less distinction to feel and see and know to herself and outerself compared to those first brief moments. She observed, she experienced, she remembered every nuance and fresh taste of the air, the passing genome of a packet from a sister, the way that spores were breathed heavy and rich in and out of her Oviriticuli.

It was all so wondrous and outerself drifted through it effortlessly and without barely even the slightest appreciation for it.

In moments that Pylo, inner pylo that is savored and was struck to utter stillness and total awe were mundane for outer pylo.

Swapping, encapsulating, commenting and releasing shaped and annotated messages even as she moved.

Outerself.

Innerself.

The boundaries were already blurring and it was making her agitated, she had gone through the trouble of trying to crystalize these moments, this last vista of home.

And innerself had spent most of it frittering away on bacteria and then gawking like a tourist!

But, that was the point. That was why she had made innerself in the first place.

It was unfair to think ill of her for that.

For outerself to think ill of HER.

She was inner Pylo!

And she was still distinct enough and naive and fresh and totally overwhelmed enough to do her job thank you very much!

Even if it made her bubble in amusement.

She was sounding like her youngest sister.

Speaking of sisters, there was something new approaching her, that is them, outerself and herself, that is inner Pylo.

Oh and she was missing things!

It was so easy to just wash away in the endless feed of subtle comuniques and suggestions that whispered up from her cortices. From everywhere, softly speaking to her.

Let's see what had outerself said?

There was the introduction, many pleasantries, and it was in a subtly new format from normal.

Oh bother this was on a totally different temporal reference frame then the other comments and discussions.

Alright so now it was much less of a massive overwhelming torrent of information. Now she could see how it skimmed up and poured around herself.

Bits and pieces of information washed by her. Such that Pylo could languish in every eddie of it for subjective eternities, but there was something new here, something exciting!
She wanted the next bit!

So she skimmed only the briefest details fluttering through her awareness and in time she picked up to the latest present.

Then had to backtrack through the already humming prior engagements and designations to confirm for herself just who this was.

Designated Sister.

Relation?

Masque Sister, ever so slightly older than Pylo but younger than Artemis. Only two scion broodings prior, a direct child of Mother like herself.

But wait? Hardly any of these genes were anything like what Pylo herself had, and they were nothing like Athena?

And the broad physical structure was hardly recognizably similar.

What?! Oh...

OH!




Artemis' overflowing contemplations on all of the potential matches and suitors and courts and orgies and so much more made a lot more sense now. But there were discussions to be had! Or for her to observe right?

Okay that made sense now, okay zooming back through the occasionally niceties, outerself was sniping at something something her tissue depth was a bit enemic.

Counterpoint and teasing about something that outerself did with her foliage? Wait, did she?
A quick query from the helpful whispers that murmured and hummed out of every facet of the space around her.

Oh, okay yeah she did do that but it was totally intentional and NOT because she was lazy!

Oh-kay context summed up good enough pylo was properly aligned and temporally tuned and back into context of the present.

Again.

"Corinth! I'm on my way, I won't be late I swear!"

Outerself was communicating in that way which she had used sparingly with Artemis but seemed to also always be trickling in from the outside. It was a familiar groove of a method.

It was a strange familiar feeling. Reaching out to the cortices? Almost.

It was like how Pylo looked but pushing back. It was in many ways more like how Inner Pylo had fumbled and tweaked and spoken to that one bacterium that had been living its best life in a dollop of solvent in one of the cavities of the wall.

But in a broad sweeping manner that ran up and down the anatomy of her sister. Who was not at all a Siren at all.

Well of course she was not a Siren. It's not like every one of Pylo's Sisters had to be Sirens.

That would be so gouache and terribly uncouth of Mother! too insulting to even contemplate. Think of all the suitors and supplements and the vast archive of Courtesan!

The political alliances it would void alone!

Really she needed to check her notes on how to properly make one of these impressionitations better. She was obviously doing it wrong if they always ended up so daft.

The inner self flinched at the admonishment but Pylo sighed and offered it a bit of a gentle nudge to try and focus on what was so special about her stuffy sister that could be remembered well later after-

Oh.

Bother, she had finished synchronizing.

Or close enough that it was barely noticeable.

Corinth fluttered a bit and flashed light across the passage. The shine of how it flickered and skittered briefly striking a bit of joyous wonder.

"Oh Pylo, I know that curling frond and constipated complexion! How long did that one last?"

Pylo huffed and swung a playful thorn jab at the chassis of Corinth's support frame. Which dutifully pulled the tightly wound masque out of reach.

She aimed to miss of course but in case for some reason her sister wanted to entertain the repairs such a stab wound would entail the payload was mostly benign pluripotent cells matched with a few minor complements and a limerick about her heatsinks.
"Barely since I left the main trunk off the scorb pastures. I think they are syncing faster each time just to spite me."
That hurt a bit, but also was frustrating too. A nasty tightening knot of disappointment in herself that lashed both ways. Again. Ugh, unsynced enough to feel bad both ways but not enough to do what she was SUPPOSED to do.

"Like I've explained to you before, Pylo. You give them far too much to work with. And you coddle them too much too. They're not supposed to be children or even forks. They are PERSPECTIVES. They should be you but unfettered in context and predisposition. Fresh and unconcerned but not entire persons in their own right!"
Pylo ruffled and spewed a few grains of pollen that would hiss with the barest hint of free oxygen.

"I know Corinth! But I just... Nevermind, I shouldn't have shared that treatise with you in the first place. All you've done is complain ever since."

The message was not enough to actually harm her sister's delicate tissues or the equally fragile armatures and mechanisms that she was wrapped around.

There was no real spite between them but the latest failure was putting Pylo in a bit of a mood which was honestly not becoming of the role she needed to play at the Catharsisium. It was a gathering for her to first accept and be accepted by her new crewmates.
"Pylo. I am just trying to help you with this project of yours. But... Look I can appreciate how much you admire the outlook but I don't think it's such a good fit for you, It's-"

This was an argument that Pylo did not want to have again. She grabbed hold of a distraction fluttering along her sister's substrate.

"I was trying to make a better impression of you, and home, and everything. A better memory of everyone."

That stalled out her sister's thoughts quite nicely. Set them fluttering into numerous possible avenues of approach, attack, management. Dizzying spaces and vast whorls of potential paths that if she tried to actually think closely on would leave her dizzy.

Which was half the point of it she was sure.

Pylo had to strike quick and lean into her own advantage or her sister would suss her out and totally out maneuver her.

"I'm going to miss you Corinth, you could have chosen to come with me."

There was a lamentation of an equally frustrated old argument but one Pylo at least had yet to tire of having.

And it furthered her sister having to follow along the direction of the conversation she would prefer rather than the broad sweeps beyond.

"Go galavant off all over the reef as some kind of courier? Lug you around for the rest of my life? No dear sister, I'm meant to be worn! What kind of gown has to hold up her bearer? It's all kinds of backwards you perverted whelp. I'll leave that chore to our cousin who for reasons I shall blame on whatever sort of feral siring could possibly have produced you finds that future appealing."

It was all said in jest, Pylo was pretty sure Corinth would not have minded the chance to mock her on how light and undernourished she was that a gown could carry her. But there was a comfortable gentleness of accepting that the reason she did not want to go with Pylo on the endeavor was so shallow.

The real reason was much harder to dismiss. As they had long since discussed.

So Corinth leaned into the playful sparring. Which honestly was improving Pylo's mood.

Which had been the Masque's plan of course, What?! But Pylo had thrown her off balance with that distraction!

She had not even had to emit or emote a single thing but her only slightly older sister sussed it out anyway.

"Hardly dear sister, you really need to not lean on just the first-through-fifth orders of thought and assume the rest is superficial. It will leave you easy to manipulate."

There was only one response when you were totally outplayed by an elder sister.

"You Big Meanie."

Which brought a flare of radiance from Corinth's waste heat that was ever so subtly laced with the implication that Pylo was an idiot and a fool.

The active and unimplied message was far more civil.

"I'm only looking out for my younger sister, You're going out in the wild feral barbarity Pylo. If you leave openings like that some savages will flense you and yours sterile."

Pylo huffed and flounced alongside the Masque, the estate's subtle workings carrying both sisters along their way to the Catharsisium.

"And as I've said before to you and everyone else I'll be fine, it's not like I'm going out all on my own!"

She flailed to the space around Corinth just to further emphasise her point.
"You all keep bringing it up but I know everyone has read the dossiers on every one of the crew and every species going on the ship!"
Corinth floated along gently listening even as Pylo found herself ranting along the old and tired statement.

"Our cousin Iliac who has worked her whole life in the port trade commission will be there of course. And Matriarch's Gown spent half the gestation of the ship honing The Navigator's design and implementation."
Pylo started to wonder if maybe she was not as synchronized as she thought, she was starting to furl and unfurl her petals and fronds with autonomous expressions of unease.

"And those two Dragoons? Yeah they have that military hobby but they're also fully blooded and war decorated lawyers! And even the... The Cook is decorated and esteemed, the whole species winnowed and distilled the memories of over a million siblings striving through and along with the ship's egg since she was conceived!"

Pylo was choking a bit on the inbred malformed partial spores that had bloomed through her inner surfaces. She spent a moment chewing and digesting them back down. Trying to calm the sudden flood of rising panic.

No she was far too in sync with herself after all, just everything was so much more overwhelming then she had remembered.

Just in that moment her sister's gentle, fragile drapery and the only slightly more durable rig of her armature are the only thing helping Pylo hold it together.

"What if they don't have anything for me to do? What if none of them like me? What if Tunie doesn't like me anymore?"

Corinth laughed in the soft and gentle way, the deep bonded sisterly way that was encoded in that secret language she had made for just the two of them when Pylo was deathly afraid of corners.

"Really Sister! You are Pylo Courtesan. A scion of Mother Courtesan. Who was raised on love and beauty. Our family are the likes of which echo in legend across the reef!"

There was a conspiratorial murmur to follow.

"Besides of course Tunie will LOVE you, you are going to be one of her CREW."

Pylo sighed and ruffled her petals back into poise and signaled ascent to her sister.

They parted at the entryway to the Catharsisium, briefly Pylo considered trying to spin up another impressionitation.

But no.

Artemis kept admonishing her for it.

Corinth had tried to explain how to do it correctly but she never seemed to quite get it right.

She was obviously doing something wrong there. And besides she wanted her full attention on puting fore the best of herself.

She was presenting for her future crew.

Putting forward the best that her family could offer to the Crew and to the Ship.

They were waiting for her out in the expanse of the Catharsisium.

Artemis had made sure that the space was cleared and sterilized safe for non-siren attendance for the event.

So that the rest of the Crew could attend without protection or cognitive insulation.

This was it.

Her family had done everything they could to support her and bring this to be.

To prepare her for this. To manage the machinations of economics and government to ensure her and her cousin Iliac were given a place among the crew.

It was up to Pylo now to make sure all of that was not wasted.

To make sure she would not have to say goodbye to Tunie.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

And this wraps the first 'episode' in the great big pylo flash back. If this was a TV show this would essentially be a whole season of this that we are getting started on.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[nuthenry2]

Pylo is cute, sad that it didn't work out. I wonder what happened that the crew wanted to kill Tunie...

Click to shrink...

probably because it would bring more money then tunie is worth

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Reminder

With

Tunie



Tunie was quivering with anticipation.

She was burbling with fear, terror and anxiety.

She was bored, she was so, so, so, so bored.

She was humming softly and bristling with potential.

Tunie was going to fly.

Leap the way all the visitor ships had told her about.

But first of all there was one last step.

Tunie needed her crew.

Some of them were long time friends. One of them had been there with her before she was her.

Before she was.

Before Tunie.

So close and together and familiar it was almost herself, almost a part of herself.

One of the smaller parts of course that trembled and buzzed in their own special joy and fear.

She felt nothing but warmth and anticipation with that one. That would make an excellent crew. In fact even if she didn't NEED a crew Tunie could have asked this friend to come.

There was no fear or concern or anxiety from ANY of herself there.

But she was afraid of some of the others.

None of the ships fully could explain to Tunie what having crew really meant. It was something that in some ways sounded very frightening. A dangerous risk that seemed unthinkable to extend to most. Some made it sound a bit like how that one friend was almost part of her in her previous thought, but without the almost and more so.

It all was terrifying and yet also something more.

Exciting of course, like trying to scoot around the obstacle course when she needed to exercise her momentum. Letting something that was not her stay within her? To guide her? Influence her? Be a part of her and yet not?

The one who had always been with her was fine for that. But the others?

Tunie ruffled her feathers.

Smaller parts of her agitated and gnashed or busied themselves in feelings and expressions appropriate.

She fretted over the individual wriggling cargo motiles all through her.

Imagining them with her retinas like she was seeing herself in a mirror except she was made of smoke and could see them all moving around inside her in all the places they actually were as each of them imagined itself onto the image.

Let their writhing slender, tiny motes of herself flex and flow and calm the vastness of her whole.

She leaned into some of the youngest parts of herself. The most newly and fresh grown and matured.

It was still rough and raw and also so tiny and small.

But it was her and herself as much as her eyes, her feathers, her motiles and her drive. It had grown last because it was the part of her for her crew.

It mused and considered and mulled in its tiny, adorable, unfathomable way. The unfathomability was a bit itchy, but would surely become more fathomable once it grew the introspecty parts properly.

It was small but important.

So much like her other friends. They were small and delicious looking but not for eating at all.

They could speak ship after a fashion, although their eyes were tiny and their feathers so small she had to nearly put one inside her eye to see the full details. But then they gave her the microscope and she'd had a lot of fun with that!

Who knew so many things could be so small! Sure the slightly less small friends had eyetalked about those things, but their eyes were so tiny they could only see a few things at once.

With the Microscope she could look at small things with one of her whole eyes!

And there was so much more to see then even they could manage with their whole bodies!

She was glad she had friends like them. It made the newest crew specific parts of her less itchy and uncomfortable.

It helped with the scratching boredom of being in too small a space for how far she could leap.

Not that she did not listen to her Mother Port.

So many good friends Tunie had which helped her along the way. Her mother port was rich and strong and full of joy and helpfulness. Caring and protecting her even when the confines of her berth made her feel so terribly cramped and cooped up.

Willing to step in when she was hurt or frightened. Able to keep away strange ships when she was shy and welcoming and encouraging when she was timid but curious.

The Mother Port had confused Tunie when she was young and much less than she was.

She had thought it was only one thing like herself. But later she had realized that while Mother Port cared for her it was also not like her.

It was instead made of Friends.

So many of Tunie's friends as she grew and changed and became more and more and more of herself were not here anymore.

Some had left on other Ships. She remembered their courses sweeping out of her vision.

Others were not around anymore at all.

She could feel her newest addition twinge in strange uncomforting ways over how she could not rightly tell all of them apart.

Which she momentarily was very annoyed with. Parts of herself should not be full of gritty unpleasant feelings like that over things she'd never even realized she was doing.

But at the same time ever since her crew bits grew in her friends had felt so much more people shaped too!

Whereas before friends had been mostly something she thought of as very small crippled ships (which was very sad and also adorable), her crew bits could think of them as an entirely new thing that was sort of like that but very different in that related it to an ecosystem in an instancy way sort of way.

Tunie shuddered again and her cargo haulers and sterilizing agents swept up and down her hold as she remembered.

When the ecosystem parts of herself had first grown it had been terribly itchy too.

Realizing how much the Mother Port had been keeping from things growing all over and eating her?!

No friends had been allowed aboard for quite a long time after that until she had settled.

But it was so beautiful and so much better now. In some ways her ecosystem parts were her favorite parts of herself now, because of how much they could make her see things you couldn't see and were beautiful and that made her happy. Sort of like tasting but outside in.
Tunie hummed and that thought settled much of her fears.

She had been afraid before.

Tunie's entire life so far has been nothing but one big change after another.

Things were always frightful and spooky and itchy to start with.

Crew would be much the same, she decided.

Afterall she loved friends and it already made her see her friends so she'd probably see more things about them and thus there'd be more friend-seeing in total.

She looked forward to how beautiful and strange crew seeing would be.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

This hurt a bit to write, but in that sweet beauty of long lost summers way.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Eival]

I am really dreading the attempt to turn her into a machine.
Literally not sure I'll be able to read it.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.0

Nolin was of a mind with his twin sister that Sirens, at least the Courtesan clan that they had grown up with were perhaps just a bit over dramatic.

Even before it was properly begun he could feel the faint pitter patter of sharpened clarity that forewarned he was being subtly manipulated.

Old gifts from the very family that was now hosting him instilling awareness that his culture was being pulled by his environment unnaturally.

It was all a bit excessive.

Not to say that either Nolin or Solin did not appreciate all the ceremony, ritual, extravagant food or over indulgences offered to those that participated in the seemingly inexhaustible appetite Courtesan had for evocative demonstration.

But this was a bit much for an interview.

Anyone who wanted to know Pylo Courtesan and her competencies and abilities just had to subscribe to the young scion's public quorum.

It was even now extensively available, including the gushing sycophants and endless suggestions who weighed in on every single aspect of any of the Siren's lives.

The betting rings on how long it would take the Siren's latest fumbling with their esoteric perceptive partitioning to collapse back into coherence with the rest of them had collectively a fortune comparable to Nolin's richest Grandsire Osili's total wealth moving through it in liquid assets alone.

Solin flicked some tiny vittle confection of nearly pure glucose at him from across the Carthissium.

He swooped slightly and caught it in a mouth. It was interesting but the structures that spoke to the artistry of its culinary preparation were not particularly tuned to his species.

But even then he could appreciate the sheer wealth on display in how it had been crafted.

He and his sister compared the details of how each of them had experienced the food and unsurprisingly there were nuances that had somehow been there for each of them despite the majority of it not even being meant for Dragoon consumption.

And not a single one of the snacks either of them had sampled had the same experience as another.

That was the Estate for you.
The Courtesan Estate was a marvel, even the so called 'generic' snack foods were individually uniquely experienced works of art. Nevermind when you actually requested a refreshment from one of the attendants.

Attendants who were nobility and direct members of the clan themselves!

On the trip through the outer hallways Solin had asked for a bit of pick me up and been nearly inconsolable over the beauty of the dish she was given after just a taste.

It had so overwhelmed his romantic sister they had to pause for her to recover!

They were nearly late.

After that both twins had agreed it was best to stick to the 'standard' foodstuffs available instead of asking for anything to be served to them individually.

And that was just the food!

There was music humming through every fiber of every structure as they were escorted into the boundary volumes of the estate by Sirens and Masque!

There were the views, every vantage a mastercraft of wonders expanding out over the biomes of the Courtesan Menagerie.

There were defenses that Nolin was certain were exposed purely for his appreciation and pleasure. Practically posing for his consideration with all the power appropriate to the very heart of the Courtesan clan.

Or as much as his own ability to perceive allowed.

He assumed the greatest defenses were so vast as to be beyond him.

There had not been a major military action upon the Star Hold of Matriarch's Gown since his ancestors first entered into service to the Courtesan clan as their Leiges.

A contract that had been fulfilled to the greatest satisfaction of all parties so long ago that to read the original document you either needed to dedicate three broods of the Matriarch to educate yourself in the script it was written or request a Siren Librarian for translation.

So long ago even the after action reports from common contractors hired in the defense against that invasion were considered prized treasures and relics in the academies of the knights errant.

Nolin and Solin had been able to view only experiential recordings of the one housed at their own legate marche's capital.

And that had required a favor from Grandsire Osili and a Courtesan verification of their lineage and loyalty to get that close to the fragile substrates.

Which had also been done under great ceremony and spectacle.

Of course.

Because Sirens.

As Nolin had been musing they were very big on ceremony.

Case in point this intensive and absolutely decadent act of theater.

It was officially supposed to be a presentation and example of competence by the 'prospective' crewmember.

As if anyone else on the crew had the munitions to even think of turning her down?!

The ruination from the political fallout alone!?

Still they demanded a ceremony for this, and alright, fine, sure show a flashy spectacle.

Accommodating the nobility of Clan Courtesan was practically family tradition for every dragoon in Matriarch's Gown.

But a demonstration and test of competence?

For one Siren Pylo, Daughter of Courtesan, Scion and Daughter of the Matriarch's second to most recent brood?

The idea was laughable, when it had been brought up both Solin and Nolin had tumbled so hard in humor over it and the absurdities of their leiges that one of them (it was a secret between the twins held in greatest confidence which but it was totally the clutz Solin's fault) ruptured a barrel of high yield rations and nearly blew up their barrack's snack larder.
Test the competence of a direct descent daughter of Matriarch Courtesan?!

Who even now was maneuvering herself through a torrent of public interactions?

Smoothly contemplating and weighing the input of millions of courtiers, critics, admirers, sycophants, detractors and churning haters and pinning potential lovers besides?

Keeping a running correspondence and personalized exchange of pleasantries, advice and in several cases quite delightful poetry with thousands?

If Nolin had wanted to expend half of his veteran legate fund on the outrageous fees needed to rent from one of her fanatics the attention parceled to them and promote his own communique to her direct attention he could have even been talking with her himself right now.

However, why would he bother?

Solin had already bought a shared line of contact herself and it's not like he was not literally going to be officially speaking to Pylo shortly. In an official and possibly direct capacity no less!

There were bounties in the less savory markets back home in the Braxal Aggregate that would pay his cumulative life's productivity in credit for a single spore from Pylo.

Like every Siren Scion set to depart the Starhallow Pylo's effects and traces markets were priming for the total collapse in supply and the eventual reliquary demand to come in the ages to follow.

That she had something unique to attach to her chosen departure seemed that her fanatics were liable to maybe settle into a full and long lasting cult.

All important details for one of the pair of security specialists to consider.

As vital to know what values were held by those that could want his fellow crewmates harm or be motivated to interfere with them and their effort.

Courtesan Sirens attracted obsessive interest like a Dragoon accumulated dust in their f'teropods.

Ah Finally!

According to the Pylo's Publicity Reporting Guild signs pointed high she had finally gotten up the nerve to begin the ceremony.

There had been a general shift in mood from the hundred and seven or so correspondence reporters discussing it with her.

Solin was already fluttering her soft f'teropod coat into presentable patterns and regalia. Family crest, educational order and accolades across her wings, ventral and dorsal sides mirroring each other.

Nolin gave his own a shake before pulling them together in the light refractions needed. He turned his eyes to a complementary chroma to his twin sister's own choice.



She was usually the better of the two of them in dress uniform and spectrum coordination. So it was best that he matched her own choices then risk clashing horribly.

Solin would of course complement and follow her brother's lead next time they needed to wrangle with a threat analysis.

And then like a dream Pylo entered into the Catharsisium. Radiant and beautiful as only a Siren raised to it could be.

He always thought somehow he'd grow used to how they did this.

By sheer repetition and exposure to all their pageantry it surely should have happened.

But every time he saw one put the effort in, Nolin was struck as he could only imagine his ancestors had been when first they came, bedraggled and outcast from their homes before Courtesan's daughters.

Of course, The Courtesans themselves provided counteragents to the bloodline mingled with his ancestors. Defenses to protect against enemy action by foreign Sirens or other greater powers.

Signals that added trepidation and sparks of suspicion and fear to clarify his attention even here in the heart of their power, undeniable and solid even long after the contract was resolved.

Such ancient instincts rose in a deafening cascade now, far in excess of what normally would be acceptable in even one of their Opulent ceremonies, but this was a Carthissium so that thrilling buzz was a key part of the intended experience.

The splendor of the Courtesan unfiltered.

Every time he experienced it he understood how his family had declared them their leiges and swore to that contract in their defense even though it was on the eve of a terrible and horrific war.

A test of Competence?

It was a joke.

But at least it was a really enjoyable joke.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Someone was wanting more Dragoons? Well you are going to get a lot of dragoons. But more seriously this was always the plan but it was really amusing that the interest in them was strong like that. It let me know there was a special surprise coming for some.

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Lightwavers]

Cute little flying stingray peoples. <3

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.1

Solin nudged another vittle over to her dear twin brother.

He needed constant distraction. Dutifully as the one of their pair that actually took anything seriously it fell to her to provide such when their honor and reputation was at risk.

She knew that as a twin the both of them were meant to fly together but along different courses.

But every time the twins were called upon to uphold the family honor in a glorious ceremony for their lieges Nolin became so disrespectful and bored.

Would that she could fly solely in her brother's stead and save him the discomfort!

But half of a twinned pair was practically neither of them when it came to matters of honor and ceremony.

Not that she thought less of her twin for his complement to her own nature.

She knew her twin was among the best of any when it was time for trials by combat. Whether as legate, hunter, general or gladiator Nolin had no peer within their caloric bracket. There was no other dragoon in the Aggregate his age that was equal in combat or security to him but herself.

And that was simply because she did not fight in the same manner he had excelled in.

As was the way of twins.

Separate and together they fought in trials both courtly and brutal against all comers for the right of their placement aboard the ship of song.

Their parents, uncles, aunts, and grand sires and dams had likewise fought and proven themselves for the rights to continue to the line of candidates.

Honing the best eyes, the greatest minds, the sharpest munition factories.

Upon those natural talents the training and education of generations of wisdom was burdened.

Trials and quests that broke her lesser cousins and brothers.

It was not in question that she and her brother were worthy.

In another time where the Ship of Song was not reaching her final maturation the twins would be aligned as heirs in waiting to the leadership of the Braxal Aggregate.

But that was not the Twins destiny.

Ever since she was a pup with her brother before even fully knowing the meaning of duty and honor she had beheld the glorious features of The Ship of Song and knew this was her place.

She knew the moment well that solidified her resolve that this would be so.

When The Ship that Song had broken free for the first time to fly.
She had been in the sky beside the shining glow of the sun framed by the far features of the Courtesan Estate Beautiful and yet so distant.

Like a dream and a constant visage of an unknown but friendly sister the Ship of Song had been a constant all her short life to that point.

The Ship had been wrapped in scaffolds that glittered in the light ever since her eyes had grown sharp enough to see her. Eyes had opened and fluttered and occasionally sang to her as it did all dragoon children.

But this had been different.

Three broods of the Matriarch ago it was.

In the Old spire of Rulership where now only children flew but then had been the heart of office for The Braxel Aggregate. Her great grand sire who had long since gone on his last crusade now had spoken to her and her brother of the sight before them.

"Lo is she, Ship of Song.
I Beheld the coming of her mother.
It was my Great Sire who ruled the houses of Braxal then.
Lo behold her now. You shall see her emerge from her cradle grown.
You Childer sired by my childer's childer behold now."

And the scaffolds had burst apart, glittering in transfixing beauty, every trajectory a glorious panoply of shining light. It was then as she saw The Ship of Song flying free for the first time, f'teropods free and glittering loose the shards of their last chrysalis.

It was then that Solin knew her Destiny and though he still would never admit it she knew that Nolin felt the fire of duty within himself then too.

As she finished relating the tale of why she was joining the crew to those that shared her rented stream of Pylo's attention, responses fluttered and flooded in from the dozen other participants.

"Wow! You saw the Tunie's Chrysalis Crack!?"

"So old! So ancient, So crusty! You're old enough to remember three broods ago?! You're older than Pylo! How can anyone be older than Pylo! She is the best Scion!"

The host of the shared observational court laughed, it was but a fragment of a shard, of a fragment of the Courtesan Siren's attention. Barely a tine of a feather's worth to the vast focus available to her soon to be crewmate and Liege in all but name.

And even with so small of herself the laugh was enough.

For Solin it was an impression of a tumbling innocent child in joy, for the others among the channel each had a unique but unified experience.

For all it was a delighted lilt that smoothed over the teasing into civility without stinging with admonishment to the perpetrators.

It spoke to a shared joy that soothed any ire before it could rise.

Even in so small a form a proper Scion was a wonder.

Solin had studied the ways of Courtesan and knew that she and those sharing this stream of conscious observation were engaging with their host in a manner she was hardly aware of.

But at the same time she knew that if any of them met her as Solin soon would there would not even be a stutter in the Scion's recollection or a shift in her cadence with them.

She could speak to them as the old long time friendships she had cultivated even if those cultivations had happened beneath her notice until that moment.

But such was the character of Pylo that this thread of her even acknowledged in a conspiratorial humbleness that she would admit and acknowledge such as honorably as a first meeting instead of pretending that this thread of her was equal to the totality as some of her sisters might.

A Private missive completing that thought with actual words, spoken by the Siren's thread to Solin as the dragoon would to her brother.

"Well to be fair, I AM cheating, most of these responses are externalized reflex and the shared estate court handles a lot of the personalization, I basically just went 'Laugh Number thɛnudoʊnkʌ please'."

Such as it was.


Equally was the experience that she transcribed for the Ship of Song and the scattered constellation of interest and curiosity which suffused in the thinnest web through her vastness.

The missives were as rich and complete and whole as her eyes and mind could make them. It was the rightful duty of these events that Solin transcribed the judgement and inevitable acceptance of the crew member.

This most momentous ceremony needed the legal witness and acceptance of the ship herself if there was ever to be any honor in it. So at her request her speech of sight was further couriered and signal encrypted in the skilled cortices of the local Courtesan staff. Then it was sent afield to the close (but still far too distant for the voice of a mere dragoon) Vessel so she in what ephemeral and twinkling interests drifted through her magnitude could apprehend and be satisfied.

It was a minor thing, completely superfluous against the vast stores of detail and lore which the estate itself was further transmitting to The Ship of Song. These events were minute and miniscule and tiny.

But enough of the vessel who was the vast fixture and center of her Solin's entire life wanted to know of these tidings.

A fragmentary dusting of specks of the vessel against the immensity of the whole cared at all about these events.

But such specks were of a scale as all of Solin herself.
So of course she provided all she could.

And basked in that appreciation which drifted back to her.

So it was.

Solin did not learn the intricate precisions of her munition factories until her life passed well beyond its second brooding of the Matriarch. The one in which Pylo herself had been born.

Before that time she had lived unconsciously and unaware of the intricacies of her own gifts and body.

As unaware as The totality of the Ship of Song was of her miniscule missive. As unconscious as Pylo Courtesan was of the ebbe and flow of society that enveloped her nearly every waking moment.

So it was with every Siren of Matriarch's Gown, they breathed the politics and adoration of their people while mostly blind to it. At first of course. The older ones could work it with fine skill comprehension. And the Matriarch herself and her eldest daughters?

There was no way a mere dragoon could conceive of what such heights were accomplishing.

This was fine for Solin though. They were her superiors.

As was only proper of the Leiges that had earned the loyalty of Solin's family eternal (contract and obligations fulfilled aside it was an open secret that there was not a single house of Dragoons from those lines that would deny a call of aide from the Matriarch or any of her clan).

That thought Solin preferred the Sirens of the Family to the Masque and other Species of Scions.
Although it was her honor and duty to uphold all of the clan of her leiges it was in the Sirens that the bond was most authentic she liked to think.

The Masque were more distant and aloof most times. And they made her deep gift of insight from her Courtesan genes spark her mind with clear sharpness.

There were stories of relatives of the species outside the clan who were tyrannical and cruel.

Legends spoke that it was the First Mother Courtesan that gentled them such that they could rule fairly and well at the side of their siren sisters and mothers.

Solin did not know for sure if it was a story spun by the great tale singers of the clan or history so ancient none but the Courtesan Archivists knew its truth.

But she found unease with the Masque and suspicion.

And it was not just because their children could still out perform either of the twins in any contest of strategy, logic or tactical acumen.

For all that she had spent her entire life honing, training and growing an ephemeral fleet of security forms and far more solid armaments to make her a military match for some untrained Alien Masque thug in the rougher districts of the Braxal Aggregate. She was outmatched by them.

But that was as it should be?

It was not like the Courtesan Masque were at all of a peer with those in the shades.

Where the shining apartments of the richer houses shadowed the poor and the refugees that poured into Matriarch's Gown from beyond the Courtesan's benevolence.

Yes, Solin and Nolin alone and especially together had been able to put down the odd Masque troublemaker and their ramshackle armies.

Likewise did they stymy the exploitations of the less powerful with the support of the rest of the Legate apparatus in the far more courtly engagements of law that such troublemakers equally engaged in.

But alone without support in a contest of pure strategy, where a Dragoon could not use total surprise, ambush and otherwise apply sheer sudden brute force?

The Masque would always win.

These were ill thoughts though. And not fit for sharing with the courtiers and adorers of Pylo.

Solin considered the next piece of lore and wisdom she'd contribute to the festive aura of the stream. And her own thoughtful musing.
But like a wound from a gladiatorial bout it would not stop itching at her mind.

Not until she accepted the lie she had told herself.

It was a discomforting acknowledgement of her own sin, but she was better trained then to blind herself to the truth. The Masque of Courtesan had less of her preference because she yet feared them still.

She thought she was past the childish notion but alas it would seem she still needed contemplation and council on the matter. Even after all this time.

It was something to discuss with her Brother when they were not imminently going to need to perform their duty and present for the honor of their house, family and the whole of the Braxel Aggregate before a Scion of Courtesan in the heart of The Estate, pivot of Courtesan Rule.

But it was council she apparently still needed.
And there was the signal from the stream that Pylo was turning the whole of her attention away from her many admirers and advisors.

Turning that attention and active communication to herself, her brother and the rest of the crew in Attendance in the Carthisisium.

Solin shifted her downy F'teropods to show all the signs of her and her brother's accomplishments, to display the full pride of her family and with not even a nudge of her own attention her brother followed and complemented her choice of spectral expression.





She knew she could count on him when it mattered, and thanked him softly for putting up with the pomp of one of the events she knew he found so terribly dull.

And then she Beheld the majesty of her future direct Liege.

And it was Awe and Beauty.

Pylo Courtesan did not disappoint.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Not a lot to say, although having a bit of a rough time with the ole brains lately. Let's see if I can nanorimo things.

@Lightwavers a reminder, Dragoons are pretty big bois and gurls compared to humans.

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Lightwavers]

Humans may be even smaller, but a flappy stingray is still the most precious thing ever.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.2

Namu poured over every moment of his beloved's stream with rapt attention.

He was paying a significant portion of his life savings in inviolate archival services so that every moment of her feed shared with him could be held pristine and glorious for the rest of his life and beyond.

He admitted he was a bit slow to start doing that but he was not the richest of people in The Barrowdowns! He had to pick and choose, budget and save scrupulously for what services he could afford.

But this was an event worth it to him.

He had saved enough working as a bulk virus import auditor for the Barrowdowns port periphery his entire adulthood to afford splurges like this.

Sure he might not be alone in breaking out the savings for these last moments. But unlike all the scalpers and posers his feed with Pylo was a genuine connection!

And it's not like he intended to sell it anyway, maybe his heirs would. But he'd keep them til he died.

These archives were for him. To give him solace and warmth in the absence of her glow.

To remind him that even though she had left to continue her glorious adventure he still could experience her laugh, discuss his day, and hear a joke.

He'd gut any of the haters that said his beloved was a tumultuous fake too immature for his devotion. Yeah so what if he didn't follow one of the older, more mature and established Courtesans.

Pylo was the one for his heart.

Yeah Delos was the favorite amongst his family. His mother and all seven of his fathers followed her and talked to her daily.

Yeah she had been married to The Barrowdowns since before it was called The Barrowdowns.

Yeah he had followed Delos once. When he was still a child! Mother had presented him to her like all his friends had been by their parents.

And he would never argue (unlike SOME people) that Delos was not a great Courtesan just because she was not his favorite.
Nice, polite and lovely, looked out for you if you lived in her mate's burbs or worked in the businesses there.

But as he got older Namu had just not felt the connection to Delos his peers and family did.

And with that distance he didn't really devote the same kind of time to her they did. Didn't subscribe to any of the extras or really ask for advice or engage with her latest updates and well wishes.

No more offerings then were polite for her love and shelter of his nook and family.

In short Delos was not really for him, and that was fine! Delos was great and understanding and was worth praise for all she did for them.

But she was not for him.

Honestly he thought the best thing that came from talking to Delos the sparse times he did as an adult was that she had introduced him to her sister.

Directed him to Pylo.

The wife of his country was not precisely close with her at the time youngest of sister, her own brooding had been AGES ago after all. Enough that his people had not even settled in the Barrowdowns yet.

But She had at least known the young Siren enough to catch on to what he'd see in her.

He still thanked her for that at the end of every shift.

Just to be polite.

He also raged at her and blamed her for his own pain and loss when he found out his beloved was leaving. Wept and screamed at her how she shouldn't have told him about Pylo at all. If he had stayed ignorant he never would have missed her this bad.

That was substantially less polite, you don't yell at Sirens. His Tertiary father would have been so disappointed in him.

But his mom was right, Delos was a good stable and even Courtesan and took his anger and pain in stride. She had that soft calm voice so much like his secondary father and recommended if he was going to miss Pylo so much that he should maybe focus on remembering her for when she had gone.

And of course that had made sense.

Which he was embarrassed to admit he had not actually thought of until that moment. If he had, he probably would have been a lot richer, selling off high grade archives of the inconsequential random pauses and moments from his personalized stream with her for a mint instead of the paltry first hand accounts he had managed in the initial rush.

Well he might still be able to sell some of what he had, but not till after the scavengers and scalpers had swooped through the markets and sucked them all dry of every codified and properly inviolate record of memorabilia available.

"You shouldn't think so badly of others Namu. They are doing good work. When you're old and I'm long gone it might be because of one of those 'parasites' that you can find that perfect memory sold now by just as deep and close a friend as you, but with circumstances that forced their hand to give up something precious."

She always knew just what to say.

"Or it could be that the best reminder for you is from something totally inconsequential to them. Y'all are pretty weird and I can't even imagine half of what any of you get out of some of this."

Although she did it way better than any of her sisters as far as he was concerned (which yes he only had ever talked with three of them including Delos but he was very certain of himself) .

"Yeah, I guess that's fair. I just, I feel like having to be told by your sister how important and precious my time with you is somehow made me... Well, less of a friend."

Of course Pylo laughed perfectly. She'd always laughed perfectly, he'd confessed to her ages ago how he'd expected to grow old with her there to talk too, to hear that perfect laugh. And she'd scolded him that he shouldn't pine everything on just her.

"Oh please, I can't even remember half of these conversations without all the archives and extra work my sisters and cousins put in Namu. It's not any slight on me you lost track of that in the heat of the moment. It was really hard on you."

There was the soft sigh, the gentle but pained laugh, the sincere tone he knew she had just for him.

Okay a few others he'd compared notes too all talked about the same thing with Pylo, how sincere she was with them. But he knew this was his own special tone.

Just like all of them had their own.

And he guessed his mom must have felt something like this with Delos, even if he never did.

"Yeah, I already apologized for how sudden this all was. But, I'm still sorry Namu, you know how I feel about everything, the ship, and going out there? Being on my own? I love my sisters but..."

He rushed to reassure her with everything he could. Sent the hugs and the nuzzles and all the soft warm glowing things that helped him, that she had sent him when things were hard and he was unsure of himself at the start of his work at the port periphery.

"Hey! Pylo! Yeah I know, Don't worry about me. I got the archives trawling, your older sister Delos is really nice and won't let anything bad happen to me. Don't worry about yourself at all on my account."

That got a snort and a sarcastic drawl from her but it seemed to distract from the tension that had come out.

"She will MOSTLY not let anything bad happen to you Namu. I talked with her about the crime rates there. It hurts her sometimes you know? That she can't do enough to stop all of it. But she also knows and accepts she can't fix everything for everyone."

And there, there was the echo of the thing that was just, not enough for him. With her sister, with Delos, it always felt so much less personal. Pylo continued in that soft knowing tone.

"She's nice but my sister's a bit too statistical with all of you I think. At least that's not how I want to do it. Well I mean it's sensible, she loves the Barrowdowns. Not you or your family in particular. But well... Neither of those are for me I think. Not how I want to love."

They had both talked about this a lot, it was comfortable, it was a reminder of the old times when he was first gushing to her all his rebellious frustrations with her sister and she was just listening, but also agreeing and even willing to bring it up with her sisters and cousins herself his concerns.

There had been a few changes in life here in his little corner of Matriarch's Gown.

Or so he liked to think after that.

Some better programs around his family nook?

More Questors from the Braxal Aggregate sweeping through investigating for corruption or subtle plots.

Or maybe he had just been alert to notice what was already there because Pylo had responded the right way?

She'd admitted that she could do that by accident sometimes.

She also admitted she was not sure if those changes were because of her either, she often did not think she managed much of anything.

Namu tried to explain that about Pylo to his parents, About how authentically she did things, but they didn't always take it well.

There had been a few fights with his Mother over the perceived insult to Delos.

"You're still sure you're not going to be able to settle down with all of us Pylo? I know your following is not as big as even little Ophelia but-"
Oh stones! That was a mistake, he just poked poor Pylo right in her insecurities.

And there was the wince he did not mean to bring up. Too late he Realized he was weedling and pining in a way that stabbed at her. Suddenly he was glad that he only had this thin thread of her Attention. He'd never want to hurt any of her. But at least what he bumbled into was only this much.

Quick he had to try and salvage this!

"I'm sorry! That was rude- I just- You're leaving all of us!"
Barrens! That was even worse!

He was a bit late for apologies, he'd seen this in the shared streams too, Pylo was the best Courtesan far as Namu was concerned but that did not make her perfect. Except in how that is WHAT was perfect about her.

"This sort of thing is precisely WHY I'm leaving!"

And that hurt a lot. That really hurt and it was everything he was afraid of when things were bad.

And yet at the same time.

There was a stinging honest pain to her tone there. She was not really mad at him. He was not enough for her to be mad at him.

She was honest with him about that.

And it was honest, it was sharp and it was partly cruel and raw the way he'd NEVER heard of any Siren speak to anyone before.

Not anyone who admitted it that is.

Not that he was going to tell anyone a Siren yelled at him.

They would think he was-

Huh.

"Oh... Oh no! Oof I'm so sorry about that Namu. I am just so tired of this. And yeah that happens way more than you hear about. Honestly some sister has gone off on just about everyone. But none of you talk about it."
He was about to tell her she didn't need to apologize but she cut him off.

"No Namu, That was really actually pretty mean of me. So I'm sorry. Here you are trying to make all of these good and wholesome treasures forever and I'm yelling at you in them."
He just, he couldn't stay mad with her like this, not after he'd struck out himself like that in his own pain. This was supposed to be a special time for them and here he was yelling at her for leaving.

"Although I bet there are some weirdos out there already making up compilations of just me yelling at them. Bet you could sell this off to one of those? Maybe someone will make an opera out of it?"

He laughed, it was a joke and a light hearted jab to let him know he was forgiven. That it was not something that needed forgiving even though everything he knew and was raised on said it was.

"Ah, sorry no Pylo, I was being grabby again. I'm sorry but honestly I'm going to really really miss you so much."

She paused, contemplating in that way he still suspected meant she was having to put that little bit more attention into him. Even though she'd told him so many times how little it really took.

But Namu still liked to think of how she presented things to him.

She was pausing for him to consider and give the right weight to what she said next.

The thought was welcome.

"I AM going to miss you Namu. I'm going to miss all of you, more than I realize right now. You've all helped me get through so much. Yes, even you. I'm glad that Delos told you to talk to me."

There was that conspiratorial little whisper.

"You KNOW how jealous she is of all her little wife bits. She had such a spat when one of our aunts flounced into port and started giving people advice in your neighborhood."

Namu could not help but laugh at that.

That story had been great for how totally crassly Pylo had put it. They taught those events to children, but with very different tones and connotations. Pylo's perspective on it was hilarious in contrast. He'd checked a bit into it and she had not gotten even half of the facts straight but the perspective on the whole affair was great.
Still the meaning behind her tone was clear.

"That's a big thing for her, to point you my way meant a lot. Really, she cares about you all so much."

He fell into the rhythm of their usual back and forth.

"Yeah, but too statistically."

Pylo laughed along with him.

"Ya, I could never do that."

And that was just what it was like to talk with Pylo.

"Oh, dang, Sorry Namu I need to get ready, have to strut my stuff and show off for the Crew, But don't worry, don't need to have a censor or anything step in this time. Archive Away!"

It was not the first unfiltered Catharsisium performance Pylo had ever participated in, Not even the first one he'd seen. But it was going to be the last one in his lifetime, possibly the last one ever. The Archives of that alone would be worth so much dosh.

"This show is for you guys as much as them. Enjoy it!"

But he probably would put in his will that any descendant of his would be disowned if they so much as considered selling the original inviolate substrate for it.

"Sure thing, Hey Pylo! Don't forget to have fun!"

Her laughter was enough of an answer.
And Off she went, Pylo was just like that.

She was good at talking with him like that. With all her followers.

He already knew there were plans for wakes after her final departure. He was already scheduled to attend one of the major ones.

After all She was Pylo.

His Beloved.

Even if he would never be hers.

As she began her last performance in the Carthisium Namu found a moment of clarity.

No wonder the haters all fought over whose Courtesan was best.

They were all right.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

This was a really hard one to write. There were a lot of angles and a lot of ways I could have done it terribly and awfully wrong. But I wanted to try and do this kind of relationship both honestly and sincerely.

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.3

The Navigator observed.



Watching the output that Pylo Courtesan presented to all of her extended social network.

Noting the way she managed them, siloed and processed their impressions of her. Filtered and tuned the language. The quality and craft of her cached and processed responses.

It had spooled up many of the instanced branches she had already presented. And even for a Siren of Courtesan's offspring it was an impressive and nuanced presentation.

The accumulated work of a lifetime of a highly skilled and well trained expression of her species, her position and her family.

It was a credit to her even with the added support and traditions of her extended family still shoring up her lapses in attention.

A valuable and highly nuanced preamble to the official 'beginning' of her presentation of aptitude.

The Navigator observed and Pylo Presented and it watched the effect she had on the rest of the crew, on the Dragoon pair and their extended network in their respective legions.

It was to be honest the weakest trial she surpassed but one that would have been unacceptable if she was found incapable.

Only a defective Courtesan could fail to win over so carefully tailored and honed a faith as the Dragoons of the Matriarch's Gown held for them.

The Navigator contemplated Pylo. She was uncertain, desperate, she signaled these things in what would be for a less capable audience hidden subtleties and layers.

She honestly and desperately wanted to be accepted. She bled and oozed it both metaphorically and physically. Every limb, every molecule was practically saturating in that desperate desire to succeed.

The Navigator had not been finalized until precisely right before this presentation. There had still been last minute adjustments, testing and polish to perform.

In that regard Pylo was much the same as it.

She was born of a mother and tended, trained, pruned through experience and lessons and other fluid methods.

But that did not change how she was no less of a tool shaped to fit the purpose as The Navigator was.

A smooth and organic mirror of The Navigator's own regimented iteration and design process.
She could not see the stars and contemplate the futures of those that dwelt around them as clearly as The Navigator.

But Pylo would be able to speak to whatever they might find that The Navigator failed to consider.

She could not recognize the deeper underlying trends of market and ecology that would conspire to a confluence of demand in anywhere near the detail and exactness as The Navigator.

But Pylo would taste currents of politics, meaning and culture that would have strained and stressed The Navigator catastrophically.

She could not look upon the reef in the throes of deepest acceleration and apprehend the truth with the speed and capacity necessary to give advice and guidance to the vessel.

But Pylo could speak to every layer of the ecology and metabolism of their shared vessel in a way that The Navigator could never understand.

But that was irrelevant. It would hold true of any Siren of Courtesan.

Most important of all, beyond all her capabilities and desperation to be accepted. Beyond the transparent pressures that the Courtesan Sisterhood had used to drive this Scion on this path.

Beyond the indeterminate but undoubtedly incredibly deep machinations of the Mother Courtesan herself upon which an Empire in all but name pivoted and turned.

For all the hidden secret plots of A being at the center of an Interstellar maelstrom of alliance and governance that carried The Navigator and all within Matriarch's Gown and its vassals in her wake.

All of that was barely more then an inconsequential factor in The Navigator's appraisal of Pylo and her performance.

No the most important factor was obvious, it was something that The Navigator bent and twisted and burnt great strain against its own nature to verify.

It pulled on every archive, every iota of data.

It queried secondary opinions, drew upon the harshest but still fair critics of Courtesan and its legion of Sirens.

The Navigator took in all that could be found about Pylo, Scion and the child of the namesake Matriarch of Matriarch's Gown.

The Navigator performed its purpose as the tool it was made to be and sought the path and the projection of one Siren child.

And the projection it honed at great metabolic cost and mounting requisites for repair and refurbishment on many internal components could not be any more clear.

The most vital aspect of Pylo's character passed the most important of tests.

The Navigator was Satisfied.

The two of them were aligned in a single course, and now at last it could rev down it's substrates and begin coolant cycling.

Trading the erratic chaos that had built up within its elements for the provided crystalline coolant sinks made available by the staff of the Catharsisium.

The vaporizing solids were sufficient in their paired resonance to wick away the strain of the deep computation along channels ill suited to them.

Solin and Nolin noted what would normally be the highly excessive coolant usage and the potency of the heat that had been dumped into it.

Already they had been evaluated by The Navigator and accepted that they too met and exceeded the requisite and most vital test.

"So does she meet with YOUR approval Navigator?"

The Navigator could trust they would not deviate. Minimal projection and computation was needed for them now.

An affirmative was passed to both of the Dragoons.
"YES"

So too was Pylo now Trusted.
She had passed the only test required, the rest of her skill and aptitude was merely further beneficial supplements against that.

The Navigator knew everything it needed to about this Scion of Courtesan.

The only thing it needed to know about her.

Pylo would NEVER hurt Tunie.

In this The Navigator was certain and satisfied.
It proceeded to shift its attention to the more important task of how precisely they would handle their first port of call after departure and what adjustments to the goods they would depart with might be recommended.

Adjusting and tweaking the weights according to the Crew's various aptitudes and capabilities.

It was unfeasible that such would exceed the accuracy of projections already made by the Port Authority itself. But proving to them It could be trusted with Tunie's safety was it's ongoing test.

Making sure the Crew could protect Tunie was one of The Navigator's primary functions.

Nothing less was acceptable.

But It could not compute everything in the time that would sometimes be demanded, it was honed to its role. And this came with costs.

The Navigator was fitted and shaped well to fit with and complement its role to the rest of the Crew.

Thus the need for the expenditure outside of the near effortless paths of its proper function to ensure they were trustworthy.

But that was done. Their goals were aligned, their dedication was comparable.

The Navigator was satisfied.

It would work well with all of them.

It would require input from them all, but before then projections could be made and proposals prepared. Amendments and suggestions made available, insights curated.

The theatrics and memetics in the Catharsisium would continue for the sake of the others but The Navigator was finished with it.

Pylo could be trusted as Crew.

Tunie would be safe with her.

Everything else was in comparison completely unimportant.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Huh, so it looks like someone started listing Onward to Providence on some kind of Light Novel Sharing and ranking platform.

They seem to be a little bit slow to keep up with Royal Road, or they are only doing finished Episodes. But I'm not complaining about my words getting around.

So I guess give it lots of votes there if you want.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.4

Diana wished that Pylo had picked somewhere else to hold her little performance.

The Catharsisium was purpose built, staffed and maintained by the Estate explicitly to support unfiltered and unfettered expression between Sirens!

A place for the deepest expression of what it meant to be a Courtesan Unshackled by the need to hold back and draw away from the fragilities and weaknesses of others.

According to the fluttering waifs who simply dipped in to gawk and say that they had lived the 'brutality' of the Catharsisium there was of course all of the usual things to say it was for.

According to such TOURISTS It was a place for the supremely soul wracking and gentle sport of phage-duels and the tragic violence of the deep poems.

To such shallow attendants It was for exsanguinating orgies of hate and love, for unforeseen violence mixed together into new tender forms.

And Diana was not going to deny that they got up to quite a lot of all of that. But for those that came in on the regular it was much more than that. It was where you could spin a tale without worrying about decorum.

Where it was not only acceptable but expected that you would not sugar coat, sweet lace or gently fold your words and feelings regarding others.

The Catharsisium was for experimentation and exploration for the young and old. For enlightenment and education, for relief and relaxation.

It was a place for Siren sport and Courtesan honesty and those not of the Matriarch clan that attended were pre-vetted to either be able to withstand the danger of attending or had the necessary insurance to be restored from backup lest their own endurance prove insufficient to survive as an audience.
It was to be quite honest Diana's favorite part of the Estate, where you could let your oviriticuli free and not second guess if a passing phrase would lacerate some flossy spun carbon confectionary of a courtier into rotten pseudo-plasm.

The only place that was a contender for that spot was the Courtesan Forbidden Armory training vault and they didn't serve drinks there!

Diana loved the Catharsisium (but did not Love or Mother help her Treasure it. That's a good way to get a pummeling from Euclia AND Artemis) and could not really fault any other sister for sharing that attachment.

It was a place for Contest, Sport and honesty where Diana could either let loose with the absolute best and worst she could muster from her cortices or at least expect to see another inspirational performer do the same.

Pylo, the young punk that she was, attended many of the contests, the screaming songs of pain, the anguished dances of the prize winner Oliana.

Also just to chill and vent caustics and swap profanity when there was nothing big planned.

She was of the kind of sister that the appeal of the Carthesisium pumped hot and heavy and strong through her Oviriticuli and Cortices and having been just that same sort Diana could appreciate it.

Pylo was no shallow dipping waif, She was one of the regulars. And so again Diana had to admit the attachment to the place was appreciated. The sprout was even genuinely competent at word play and laescing. If still an inexperienced and rambunctious newcomer.

So yes Diana understood the young Scion of Mother felt a special connection and importance to the place.

But forcing everyone's schedules so that nothing interesting could be performed at all?

Making sure every surface was sanitized down?! scrubbing all the archival listings of any scrap of the potentially pathological or debilitating.

There were deep and familiar stains in the Catharsisium that Diana fondly remembered splashing the vitriol for herself.

There were scars and burns and festering wounds that had been borne by the place as points of pride for all involved.

Deep aromatic history hung and coalesced pungently in every single cranny! The last cleansing of this magnitude had been seven Mother Broods ago!

Sure the more interesting and novel examples of virulent hatefuck that had taken on a bit more life then anyone intended were siloed off into little corners of the Menagerie. Some had even gone into the Forbidden Armory.

But it was not the same thing as having them here where they were born.

The layers of grime, sludge and barely suppressed hyper aggressive virulence cloying at everything was part of the ATMOSPHERE and AMBIENCE.

But Pylo had to ask for the place to be made presentable for the public!

And all of that for this?!
Pylo was decent at expression In a rough sprout sort of feral way. But trying to manage anything as intricate as a self-censoring public Carthesisium performance?

It was reaching for talents that the child simply did not possess. Which was frustrating.

For this they had to freeze and sterilize that charming pink melange of fuz that had taken to molding into the light fixtures.

For an amateur's attempts at shock and awe.

At least Diana had her rival sister to commiserate with.

"This is so bland she could have done this in the middle of the port authority customs office and it would not have disoriented a lost Servile. I love the kid but rape a twice dead stone is she trying to weaponize boredom?!"

Hoppis offered a subtle flutter of amusement but also a bit of harsh admonishment.

"Diana, she's only just past her FIRST motherbrood of younger sisters, we were all once so young. Just because you're going to have to start over on your Pathogenesis Aria is not an excuse to be a barren celibate about it."

Diana's displeasure could indeed kill, She had demonstrated that on quite a regular basis in the very spot Pylo occupied.
The curse on the rivulets of her inner surfaces were nearly primed with toxins that would leave her brood sister melting and sloughing off a good sixth of her outer tissue layers.

But not with the Carthasisium staff enforcing 'public' grades of hygiene and cleanliness.

"You're just fermenting in your sterile tracts of viscera because I would have won with it. Had you roilling in your own choked ecstasy sister. But it's not just about me! They scrubbed out the Frungi! SCRUBBED OUT THE FRUNGI! It's going to take four motherbroodings to get the smell right again!"

Hoppis entertained her aggression with a bit of her own.

The bared flaring of sharp, dangerous, almost technically sanctioned colorful displays from Hoppis drew the attention of a cousin among the staff and a warning implication that if the two of them did not hold themselves to the standards of public performances in the Carthisium they could be looking at a dismissal from the privilege of its use until Mother's NEXT brood.

"Oh dear Diana, your plagues are too sharp and their prose ungentle to even tickle my spite. Let alone tease my joy. I think this is more of a mulligan in your favor so you can go back to the foundations of your garden's lineage and come up with something at least entertaining. Why I'll even cede you thirteen generations of a lead on me when we resume after our dear young sister's little display and her guests pack up and away."

The insult inherent in there was still technically perfectly legal for the 'public'. Which of course was a welcome invitation. She could always count on Hoppis for smoothing over her mood when one of the infants was being an infuriating pain.

"Maybe later sister, I welcome the concession but I'd not want to let you starve for attention. I know how much you miss my spore-play when we are too far apart. But really, did she have to make THIS a public performance?! Most of her crew could probably tank it here in a calm session."

Hoppis gave up in trying to distract her and instead settled down away from the playful poise of predatory riposte and thrust. It was fun to be so vehement but with how close they had to hold their vitriol lest it spill out into the rest of the less durable audience there was just not that relief and honesty to it.

It was more than any of them would have found acceptable outside of even the stifling requirements of a public Catharsisium but with things so stilted it barely measured up as more than a foultasting reminder of what they could have done.

Diana did not need to say as much, her brood sister could taste it on her.

"Oh fine, if all you want to do is grump, Yes I'm a little annoyed with her too. I'm going to have to etch new bilespout calligraphy you know! But it's her send off on her first proper courting. And she managed to even find a fetish unprecedented even in the forgottening branches of Delphi."

Okay that distraction piqued her interest.

"The library let you look over her forgottening?! How did you manage that?!"

Hoppis offered a whispering shadow of the earlier rivalry then sighed and relented that Diana was not going to take that bait.

"I earned a favor from her for helping her with some snarls in a marriage. And no I won't tell you which one. I can't even recall it, she required I give it up to her afterwards."

Diana sighed and looked up.

"Confirm anything interesting besides that our young sister managed to somehow find a new way to depart dear mother's embrace?"

Hoppis got a bit coy for a moment and idly fluttered a few more dangerous hues, drawing the ire of one of the more removed cousins that worked oversight for the Carthesisium.

"Well, I can confirm that there IS indeed at least one of the three rumors about dear Aunt Morrigan that is true."

Oh that is interesting, almost enough of a distraction to make up for the childish twaddling about that Plyo was doing in the central point of the Catharsisium. As if her meagre tugging on the hearts and minds of her audience deserved to be in the sights of the primary purifiers.

"Really?! Only One?!"

Hoppis sighed and negated the hope.

"No Delphi only let me retain that it was AT LEAST one out of her forgottening. All three could still be true, or even more than the three we suspect."

Diana clumped a bit closer together in defeat and her sister offered a conciliatory jab and a deep plunge of the richer memories of the experience.

"Here, this is all I got, But it might be enough to work something else out through other channels."

And it was quite a nice touch to share that, but as always knowing the details just made it all the more clearer how little could be guessed from the vault.

The Library Delphi kept the clan's secrets well. Even to those daughters that could weasel a little bit of access to them free with unrecalled favors.

"Yeah. Thanks Hoppis."

With that there was not much else to do but turn attention back to Pylo and her earnest, childish, fumbling and stumbling through a presentation that every single Siren who had seen more than three broods of the mother could see was already utterly unnecessary.

She had won over her entire crew and most of her audience before even showing up.
But the effort gave Pylo the excuse to share the Carthisium with her potential court. Which alright inconvenience and childish waste of everyone's time (and the ruination of ages of local character they would have to rebuild) might barely be forgiven.

Her and Hoppis were probably going to eventually settle down with something in the Courtesan Forbidden Armory after all. Following in the long tradition the other long timers of the Catharsisium.

So trying to share this aspect of themselves would have been redundant with their future loves.

Annoying it might be Diana had to admit that she did not really hold any ill will for her young sister. But she was going to miss those stains, that pungent sickly flavor that only came in when a place had felt the wretched collapse of a dozen ecocosms.

The cloying taint that required serious decontamination and censoring programs to even describe beyond its walls?

All cleaned. Sanitized and softened to utter banality.

Diana needed another distraction from her mourning!

"So really? Delphi has no sign ANY Courtesan has gone off as a Ship's Crew before this? That can't be right. I know there are plenty of our sisters and cousins who go for that kind of rut."

Hoppis offered confirmation.

"Not as her first courting like this, Not as the founding member of the crew, not from Mother's direct spawn. Not one, It's a curious and incidental series of technicalities but the impression of the results of such a query are very firm."

Not that she would distrust her dear brood sister but Diana had been burned before, this might be a trick. After all there were plenty of Ship Wifes if you dug into the unforgotten records. Surely one of those had started out with a thing for crewing a maiden voyage?

"What about Gloria?! She was a Pirate Queen! Surely she went into things like that?"

But Hoppis negated that too.

"That Ship was already properly mature when she joined and she conquered that crew, did not join together with the initial one. And all the other ones on record it was not the Courtesan's first court. I know! It's only strange that it's strange."
That was a pattern that spoke to something deeper, for some reason no sister had picked a ship crew as a first court?

That tasted like something done with a purpose.

Courtesan was a very broadly spread variety in expressing Siren fascinations and prided itself on its perversions. There were plenty of ships that had been born and grown in Matriarch's Gown or one of the less tightly controlled territories that might still have a scion travel too prior to her first courting.

That such was absent suggested perhaps there was a good reason Mother never had beget a daughter inclined that way.

Hoppis however could taste the discomfort the revelation was bringing and offered relief.

"Oh don't furl up so Diana! Liason does maiden voyages like this all the time, I'm sure she will be fine."

That got a dismissive puff of laughter at that. If those half starved waifs could manage?!

"Liason? Really! Yeah if one of those collared and chained army skolds can manage that lil Pylo will be fine. She's tougher and plumper than four of those discount shriveling prudes combined."

Hoppis offered laughter that mingled with her own in an effervescent cloud and yet another dangerous flash of forbidden hues to taunt the staff.

"Indeed, They hardly count as Sirens."

The disgruntled ruffle from one of the attendant cousins had Diana thinking at least one of them probably was the product of a marriage into Courtesan from its longtime rival clan.

Which of course meant Diana layered further thickening agents into her shared laughter with Hoppis.

But not in any way that could distract from Pylo's desperate performance.

The Carthisisium was hers right now after all.

Wouldn't want to spoil the poor dear's presentation.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Dum de dum, not much else to say.

Huh, so it looks like someone started listing Onward to Providence on some kind of Light Novel Sharing and ranking platform.

They seem to be a little bit slow to keep up with Royal Road, or they are only doing finished Episodes. But I'm not complaining about my words getting around.

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.5

Iliac watched Pylo as she began to wind down her performance.



Taking in the numerous views. Angles, contexts and perspectives that she could interpret each nuance of it from.

It had long become obvious to the Masque that there would be a Courtesan Siren to fill the carefully honed and shaped hole in the lineup that had been vetted and accepted by the ship so far.

The question had been who that Siren would be.

Iliac had thought for nearly half her career in the trade and immigration offices that most of the subtle currents of manipulation and incentives pointed to a lesser cousin of the main family employed within the customs and trade commissions.

Possibly one of her own co-workers.

The patterns and plays were all there if you paid attention.

It would be a Siren and they needed one with a certain balance of skills, preferences, alliances and a particular acceptance of foreigners.

Such a potential Siren crewmate would be one with deep familial ties to Courtesan of course but otherwise one with solid exposure to not just the manners of Tractae vessels but the idiosyncrasies of trader law and its traditions.

It was also quite likely to be a veteran who had traveled beyond the system as well. There were numerous candidates in that criteria that Iliac had spotted with both authority over her and subservience to her position.

There would probably be some theater of tests to prove and winnow down the potential list to an 'ideal' selection divined by the Courtesan oversight of both Siren and Masque scions.

And to fill out the rest of the obvious gaps in the load out some adjacent or already connected Masque would be arranged to suit and support the Siren in the blatantly slotted counterpart and support role.
She had enjoyed quite a few strategic and political games of shadow play with her coworkers on guessing which of them seemed best poised to be 'selected' on the basis of their numerous relationships with the ideal Siren candidates in their collective awareness.

Proposing unknown unknowns, fanciful organizational structures and potential deep plots or power plays that could explain a given candidate's eventual selection by the hidden forces behind Courtesan power.

Iliac had not been given (by herself or her peers) very good odds for being the match for any of those.

Tthat's how hidden information shook out wasn't it?

But given what they had known in their little corner of the dockworks it was a fair and solid guess.

None of the Sirens she worked with were particularly close with her as such things could be said.

Not politically or romantically anyway, they were all incredibly friendly as was expected.

But not more than was strictly polite and expected of them and Iliac did not have the heart to pursue any of them either.

It was no fault of the species, she just was not really interested in any of them per say.

Sirens were fine, you could hardly be a resident of any of the territories in Matriarch's Gown without knowing quite a number that could appeal to some ideal you held.

Usually several simultaneously.

But they were also somewhat volatile and when you could actually see past their specialization and innate gifts they were all a bit helpless really.

She could appreciate and even understand how others might love a Siren. The sheer unrivaled political, social, aesthetic and even economic power by even the poorest and least skilled Courtesan Siren in Matriarch's gown was a thing to be treasured.

The satisfaction guaranteed in such a relationship was also a huge plus. And even if you were theoretically (impossibly) completely immune to their idealized skills of affection a Courtesan had even further benefits.

If you could actually catch one of their fancies Courtesan Sirens did and continued to bring otherwise un-notable individuals, communities, organizations and even entire species to incredible prominence.

Iliac had nothing against Sirens in theory.

But in practice she'd never met one that really appealed as a partner. They were polite, convenient and capable individuals who would accomplish tasks in their specialization with great aptitude.

But they required incredible oversight or coddling to have any long term effectiveness.

Uncourted Courtesan Sirens were practically invalids without the extended support network provided by the Matriarch and the efforts invested in approximating courts with more generic quorums.

The weakness was obvious, exploitable and frustrating to witness. It was the source of comedy and tragedy in games and gauntlets by many artists as was expected of beings of incredible political power.

But again it's not that Iliac had no empathy for the poor dears either.

Quite the opposite in fact.

There had been a few Orphan Sirens in Iliac's time at immigration that wandered in on Ships having paid their way to Matriarch's Gown by whatever manner they could.

And for everything a Courtesan Siren might be, Orphans were not.

Those were sad, broken creatures.

Barely able to function, some clinging to whatever random collection of mates and offspring they had managed to scrape together around them in their poverty out beyond Courtesan Control.

Even the strange foreign clans were better than the Orphans.

If there needed to be any reminder of how fragile any Siren, even a Courtesan was, you only had to look upon an Orphan.

Their minds were laughably simple, leaning so heavily on whatever creatures they had pulled into their influence to supplement their terrible cognition.

Iliac had seen some using the input and problem solving of SERVILES to shore up their terrible deficiencies.

Rehabilitation of refugees was never pleasant.
But with Sirens it was especially heart breaking.

In some cases the poor Orphans were so locked into their chosen support families there could be nothing done but to subsidize their metabolic needs with a stipend and employ them in work vastly inferior to their niche.

Serviles were sad enough, but to see a Siren who in a better life could have been raised at least as well as a Courtesan?! Trapped in barely being able to manage more than the meagrist of political acumen?

No Iliac had plenty of empathy and care for Sirens.

But she also shared an Understanding of them that not even all of her peers in computation, intellectual niche and caloric throughput managed.

It was easy after all to be caught up in their wiles and stories. The fiction that it was the Masque that was tamed by the Courtesan?

Among the Masque families that story was understood a bit differently.

For some it was seen as superficial aggrandizement. Flipping the accepted and public narrative is a simple toy and a trap for children.

"You think that the meaning was so simply hidden that an infant could realize its potential?"

That's what was written in the tales if you cared to make the connection.

But there was a deeper truth that Iliac was sure could be missed by those that had only ever seen or interacted with Sirens at their best.

Full and strong with the support and training of the wise Matriarch and her daughters Siren and otherwise.

Who had only ever lived in communities that flocked to support and enrich even the poorest Siren infant.

Who had never met a Siren that had been born with no Mother to teach her how to be a Siren.

Or worse had been borne by a Mother that was herself an Orphan child of an Orphan of an Orphan going back dozens of generations.

Taught to be broken daughter to daughter.

If you had only ever seen Sirens who were raised properly and healthily you'd never see the heart of that story.

Iliac looked upon Pylo and for all the support and enrichment of a full and direct scion of the Matriarch , she saw something else in Pylo.

For all of her power and skill, for all of the benefits and abilities afforded her.

For every single benefit and luxury given this child to help raise her up into one of the pinnacles of her species.

For all that she was an expression of a clan whose very name had supplanted or even superseded the invention of a word to mean political acumen, intrigue, council and the virtues of love exchanged honestly and fairly for power in kind.

Iliac saw the faultlines.

The brittleness.

The poor fragile creature that she was.

A Siren child striving on her own.

Iliac looked upon this dear precious thing and had to consider if she could take on the burden and responsibility to try and keep her safe.

To be there to help her think what she could not.

To quite literally stand against forces she could only bear with great pain.

Was Iliac prepared to take that on?

Could she possibly refuse?!

It was a clever manipulation that the Masque had missed until this moment, here watching the desperate, blatant pleading of a child to be accepted.

Of course she would not be the voice to deny support! Their mistresses and mothers had certainly been supremely clever.

Iliac might not be confident to say she could love Pylo as others might guess she had too for her role.

But she would protect her.

They told the old story of the Masque and the Courtesan backwards.

It made for good publicity, it cemented the powerbase of the Matriarch solidly and it gave her Masque Daughters freedom to move and shift things as was needed.

It gave Courtesan as a clan an internal and loyal foil to direct ire and discontent towards.

But it was just a story.

Courtesan did not Tame those primordial Masque partners from wickedness at the birth of the Clan.

It also was not Iliac's long distant and diluted ancestors that domesticated and conquered a Siren and forged a clan to rule the stars.

Only infants would believe that.

No, it was both simpler and far more painful to admit the truth.

Courtesan had needed a protector, and a Masque who Iliac now felt a sharp kinship too had seen that.

The old joke of her home's name took on a new meaning in that light.

They called the Star Hollow Matriarch's Gown.

The blind creatures inferior to Iliac's niche in cognitive awareness might think that meant that the whole hollow, cities and its grounds were a garment worn by The Matriarch Courtesan.

The Giant statue of her certainly supported that impression.

Her peers, Masque and otherwise might think it was a clever hidden (but obvious to those that could think) nod to the instrumental role the Masque Gowns played to their Siren sisters.

To have the system named after their own role in the clan heaped secret delicious praise and political acknowledgement upon all.

Which was as with most proper narratives also too shallow.

For a Gown was although many layers removed simply a garment.

Clothing.

Protection from the elements for those species that needed it.

To the unaware the idea of a Siren needing protection from anything was laughable.

Their bodies were practically ablative armor but for their incredibly hardened cores.

Their native tongue was living weaponry.

Their thoughts could slay nations.

But here was this fragile child. For all her size and raw caloric throughput fragile and small in a way Iliac was not.

Needing protection.

She had come to the decision it seemed.

The weighting and the insights and the undeniable machinations of her betters aligned to put her here with a choice that was never a choice.

They had all been very clever to maneuver her to this place, a match for Pylo.

A gown to be worn.

Armour for her soul.

Iliac would keep her safe.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.6

Nosi contemplated her several steps removed kin as Pylo put in her all to impress her many followers and the esteemed personages of the crew.

And this was certainly something!

As a Moiter of Courtesan, born and bred among the Dragoon flocks of the Estate Menagerie she was not exactly inexperienced in proper Siren performances.

Why her own wonderful old grandmother Donti was a Mainstrain Courtesan Scion!

Donti always puts on the most lovely shows in the void gardens for all her children and grandchildren every Matriarch's Brooding festivals!

Nosi even used to help like a good grandchild when she was just a pup with the base fueling and simpler munitions so that old Grandma Donti could focus on the delicate fiddly bits of the more complex demolition cascades.

Sure the yields on Pylo's phosphorescence was not going to even peel the thinnest of the ablatives for THE CATHARSISIUM but she managed to do with subtlety what Nosi had to burn two solid suppers and a brunch in raw kilotons to approach!

For the sheer initial smooth deep long light and sharp shortest light Pylo was almost certainly using a few stealthily integrated detonation charges!

It was being filtered, covered, lensed and desaturated just so by intervening tissues to shape and sculpt the outputting radiance into something at once softer then the original munitions, but tracing in the impression and vision of far, harsher and sharper.

It was not one of the munitions Nosi herself would have produced for the effect, but it managed to echo the artistry of dear old Donti. Who had grown and boasted specialized launch mechanisms and extra munition prosthetics to pull off what normally a Main Strain Siren would find impossible.

There was also to just add that absolute limit of highest sharpest flavor to the whole percussion the lightest traces of symmetric charge releases.

And despite that it did not even hint at straining the sanctioned Etiquette.

This was a truly gentle, intimate affair that flashed and shined in the eyes but did not even ruffle the f'teropods a smidge.

Not that Nosi would even dare complain.

Pylo Courtesan having the Catharsisium cleaned and prepared for attendance by her future crew was why Nosi was going to get to put on a proper show at all!

One significantly more risque and vicious then any Dragoon was normally allowed to perform for guests.

Yes, the Void Gardens and the Dancing halls and the Brothel-Canyons of the Menagerie were all open and vast enough to really let loose with one's high calorie yields!

But that did not give the same intimacy of a closed in space that Nosi needed for her art, and more importantly didn't allow the biological and memetic warfare agents her siren side yearned to express.

She had been trying to get a spot to perform freely in the Catharsisum for Broods!

But most of the time it was absolutely unsafe for her to even be near space.

A Moiter Nosi might be but even with the help of her Grandmother it would be a smothering, half blind experience to attend the Catharsisium under normal performance standards (which she did when nothing particularly vile was about).

Nevermind have the freedom of mind and limb needed to expose herself required to perform! (which she had also tried anyway in spite of the handicap to great frustration for herself and the amusement of her audience).

So doing a proper performance required that the standards of etiquette be a bit more stringent for her own and other's health.

And therein was her troubles.

Whenever the Catharsisium was available to Dragoon performances they were so far ALSO open to many a far more fragile attendant that precluded any of her own displays without serious artistic compromises.

And no one could say Nosi had not tried some workarounds

Locking herself in the shower with one of her Siren cousins who could retell her expressions?

Novel but came across nothing like a live performance.

Got some time In some of Carthasisum's old shells undergoing a cleaning cycle?
She could hold small private things with the two or three other dragoon-moiter she knew, but it lacked the ambience and support of a proper event and none of her friends were that good at the role of Mistress of Ceremony.

Trying to manipulate a drone inside the Catharsisium itself with necessary filters between?

Well everyone enjoyed it as a Comedy. So utterly mortifying.

There was no helping it; she needed a life venue for her art.

So Nosi had put in a request with Catharsisium herself to get a slot set to her etiquette preferences, but given the high demand for the facility, the queue was depressingly long.

She had been expected to have to wait for another seven Broods for the next Menagerie Rated available slot.

Right then Nosi had started to consider spending most of her life savings and maybe even getting a less pleasant job to fund the construction of her own custom facility. She'd run the numbers, it'd just barely break even in about Twenty-Broods or so.

But then she would have to keep working those unpleasant jobs and tending a nascent venue and that was not really for her, she liked Catharsisium fine but not enough to bear her children, raise them, love them and sacrifice all of her free time for thirty or more Matriarch Broods!

That was a serious commitment.

But the art itched all up and down her insides.

Enough she started to consider it.

And then like the Mother Courtesan herself had taken pity upon her anguish there was that beautiful, glorious daughter beget as a full Scion!

Barely past witnessing her first Brood, Pylo had answered every frustrated longing in Nosi's soul.

Pylo asked for the use of the Catharsisium for a performance that matched Nosi's needs so perfectly it made her wonder if it was a ploy to propose to Nosi herself right there.

She would have too!

Even if she honestly still did not really feel ready to fulfill that part of herself.

The chance to express her art at last?!

But Pylo had asked for nothing in return for this boon, she'd actually even been delighted that Nosi was willing to perform at all under the 'restrictions' of a 'public' venue in the Catharsisium!

The beautiful fledgling of a scion thought it was an imposition!

Even if Pylo's performance right now was the worst thing she'd ever seen or heard, Nosi admitted she would archive it deep in her memory and teach it to every single one of her children.

But Pylo did not even demand that onerous sacrifice of Nosi.

This was definitely one of the better performances by a mainstrain cousin that Nosi had ever been witness to directly.

Her other main and theme strained cousins shared second and sometimes even third sight removed experiences. Curated, filtered, censored and gentled for her own frailties of course.

Which were technically better.

And It was not in that special personal way better than Grandmother Donti's blazing wonders at every Brood Fair.

But it was beautiful and understated, soft and gentle and so rich in pleading genuine tones and honesty.

The Young Scion was obviously quite familiar with the nuance of Tractae. Although there was a peculiar sort of accent to her motions and the way her patterns flowed over her in washing waves.

It was probably closer to the vast behemoth of a dialect that the Ships spoke.

Which made a bit of sense. Since Pylo did want to be a crew right? Or was it just she was asking for passage on the vessel?

Not really Nosi's concern.

Oh and of course there was a stanza that spelled it out plainly and yet beautifully! Yes it WAS because she was planning to place herself as crew. ... Oh, she TREASURED the actual ship, that explained a lot.

And it explained the exotic nuances that while foreign to Nosi only added exotic flourishes and dazzles to what was already a deep and touching ballad.

Laying out heart, soul and bare munition stores in a floral display that left a trembling thrum of inspiration deep in each of Nosi's eyes.

She already had her set planned, she had even shared it already with Pylo beforehand to make sure that it met her standards.

But there was so much soft and gentle truth on display here she could not help but make a few minor tweaks and adjustments.

Nothing to break the sanctity of Pylo's requested Etiquette. Or majorly alter the nature of the performance and her own truth in it.

But flourishes that Nosi simply HAD to include. Echoes and complements to the performance that unfolded right now to her own that she would have to carry forth.

Making her planned dance and light an echo and a part of the one that had come before.

Complementing the impact and ambience Pylo had so expertly built and filled the Catharsisium for.

She gave the crowd a sweep of her eyes and sighed a bit longingly at the twins. Solin and Nolin were so sharp and shining in their regalia!

And she could read the tells of how ripe and fine their munitions were too! Those were not the kind of lines and spectra you got from simply working, that took skill and training!

Training that she had gotten herself sure as a pup. Nosi's training went a different path than the Twins.

And while she had perhaps an advantage on either one of them in sheer caloric tonnage and access to yields and payloads they never would by her heritage as a Moiter. That was a crude, brute advantage, and one she already had seen they could master her at (it honestly made it all the better).

It was such a pity the two of them were heading off on the ship with Pylo.

A pair like that could make any Dragoon consider settling down to raise pups.

Oh well she'd just have to leave then wishing and missing her with her performance after Pylo finished her piece.

Which it looked like that was coming on close.

Yeah, she had no illusions she'd be able to out do the Courtesan Scion and her almost certainly Main Strain talent.

But as she took her cue from her fellow performer Nosi was certainly going to give it her best try.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[Nighzmarquls]

Manifest

0.7



Zenith settled in to enjoy the refreshments.

All of the refreshments.

Every single one the Catharsisium would provide.

Opportunities like this were the kind you just had to simply seize. It might never happen again that Zenith would have the cordial facilities the Catharsisium represented to satisfy his curiosity.

To taste, see and know things that his own senses and body could never hope to experience.

To be inspired by the ecological tapestry of direct experience which his very mind could not properly contain or conform too.

He was intent on trying as many of these beautiful and up until now hidden secrets of life as he was able.

The nuanced and unique varieties of packaged genetics each of the present Siren regulars preferred were for this perfect cascade of moments revealed to him. (On the level of the raw sequence he could taste them on his own of course, but decrypting their true meaning was another matter.)

The barely stabilized volatiles which could be converted almost directly into the higher yields of Dragoon Munitions, known not just as he would have digested and broken them down but as the patrons of the establishment felt them. (Not that his own digestion of them, tiny amounts at great dilution, wasn't quite pleasant in its own way.)

Thousands of variations on delivery and encapsulations of glucose. Known as he did but also as each of their tailored recipients would. (Good presentation; tagging them in his own internal code and bypassing the indirection layer with a tailored psychoactive was entirely a flourish given the access they were already interfacing in, but an appreciated one.)

Even freshly mixed hemoglobin oxygenated and nutrient mixtures for serviles! When had a servile even BEEN to the Catharsisium?! And how sorely he had underestimated the deep warm satisfaction they felt when they cycled into new blood! (Thinking about it later, of course many more specialized organisms used the widespread Servile standards. He attributed not realizing that at the time to being outrageously inebriated.)

Every single libation was nuanced and specific, A craft of utmost skill and subtle nature.

Echoing in a reflection of his own ability to know it and the way it was intended.

Several even came with mystery tags or redacted species annotations, he was feeling such delights as beings he did not even know of!

Forbidden liquors and banished snacks.

Lashing corrosive feasts and intricately encoded diseases invigorating his immune system and making him feel alive with inflammation.

Rare forms of flesh cut from the rarest members (figuratively and literally) of the Menagerie. Such flavors and decadence only ever served here in the Estate to choice-members of the clan and guests!

Materials that were poison to his own metabolism without modification to gentle and soften them from harming him.

Others were sampled carefully, at a step removed from his actual digestive system but fully appreciated, savored and contemplated in both his own sensoria and the varied and numerous alternatives he could entertain.

Things which were vital components and compounds in his own tissues to the point his sampling could be viewed as quite narrow steps away from the old familiar cannibalism of his siblings.

Not all could even be touched stafely by his own body and had to be handled in careful isolation vials. Their flavors were enjoyed at a distance but still appreciated.

Some he could only afford to brush a deep sensing over incredibly briefly before they had to be whisked away.

Lest their natures corrode him even tangentially.

His attempts to try and strain the generosity of Courtesan (as impossible as that notion was) were stymied with magnificent absurdity.

And this greatly amused him.

The Catharsisium Staff of course were absolutely grand hosts!

They kept the streaming parade of new refreshments, samples and flavors rolling by for him to appreciate alongside the performance without him even needing to ask.

Of course he surreptitiously did ask! But he did so in the gentle soft understory of one servicer to another. With all the special little tells and exasperated appreciations.

He was, after all, a cook by trade.

This was not merely decadence but research and consideration for his future position.

It was of course ALSO indulgence, but a useful one. As most pleasures turned out to be. He contemplated the paradox that some species invented over such things, like the one whose metasensoria he was currently consuming, giving him such thoughts. To split indulgence and functionality so? Such strange minds the reef did sprout.

And sumptuously interweaving with his indulgence was of course the central performance itself.

He tasted that too along with all the other entertainment.

He enjoyed it, but he thought his other crew members took it a bit too severely.

Navigator was most consternated and burnt out its poor internals trying to verify what security could be gained regarding the character and mind of their prospective member.

Zenith supposed that such concern was a useful trait to have among crew. But he had never really understood it.

Competition, strain, effort. These were easy enough things to conceptualize. He had fought his siblings since the inception of Tunie's egg.

Spilt and drank the blood of his brothers, laid ambush and traps upon them and also betrayed and consumed allies alike among his kin.

They also cooperated too of course, more and more as the nature of the growth changed and demanded greater honing and coordination.

More stable learning.

Him and all his brothers were not feral, they ate one another only when called for. They grew and learned together as needed.

Diverse, unique and bound together in common lineage. Hatched in choking multitudes all as one, nearly every member of their kind that would ever exist bursting to life together.

So he was no stranger to the demands of action. Certain mindsets and risks worth taking.

He understood that. The place and time for recognizing and catching the harsh reality that a sibling would not measure up. He had been the judge and the defendant as all of their numbers dwindled.

Fighting for their very lives. In secret and open. In betrayal and alliance. In duel and sacrifice.

He understood expending oneself for the sake of a goal.

But to be concerned about outcomes like this? To be concerned about anything like this?

It was not something he could see any point for. Comprehensive cognitive acceleration and high grades of computational burns had their place in a crisis. He had lived so many of those.

But the future seemed such an odd thing to dedicate such effort too. Then again he was last of his kind and had already achieved the aspirations of all his species.

All his brothers had lived and died for him.

Had become him.

He was Zenith.

And this was a party and a performance.

And that meant it was a place for refreshments.

He had been cut down by his brothers and for his failures was drained and became them.

Much like he was draining this fascinating slurry of carbo-silicates and potential vitalloy.

He too had cut down the failures among his kin and took into himself their own thoughts and the distinctiveness of each.

He had also been drunk quite often as well although what really was the distinction among brothers between to eat and be eaten?

Really, more often than either of those, you couldn't tell which was which; they had reached consensus cherry picking each mote from one or the other in a merger of near equal halves.

But eat, eaten, or both at once, It had all been joining and merging and twining together into the braid that was him.

Zenith.

He rolled a particularly interesting pink berry between his maxilla gauging if he wanted to eat it properly for the calories or appreciate it for its light refractive and focusing flavor potential.

Well okay, Not all of his brothers had ended in him.

The work and the winnowing had been harsh sometimes. There were some that were rendered naught but ash under the trails.
Unrecoverable for the blood of their minds.

But besides those unfortunate failures and lost lessons it did all end up in him in some form or another, either as observations of their ultimate ends or direct memories distilled, filtered and culled to just the essentials.

His final realization.

His Zenith.

So yes, as he was shucking this particularly interesting example of hybridized tissues to get at the delectable nerve fibres within he could reflect in abstract some of what the Navigator's point might be.

He understood competition and strain and the need to push one self beyond the apparent limits. And also all the numerous times this did not work out as well as he thought it would.

But here and now and with this? What possible point was there to be so concerned?

They were all of them in their own unique ways alike to him. Assured and completed for this moment.

Tunie was a good ship.

Navigator was paranoid and mind blindingly Observant.

The Twins were bristling, Ever Vigilant and Supremely Dangerous.

Iliac was all sorts of comforting and totally smitten with Pylo although in more of a guardianship role then the usual Siren kind.

And he was Zenith.

He'd look after all their health and hearth and hearts.

It was a good crew, they would do quite well with one another and get along fine.

Which was why he was not trying to contort himself into all kinds of stupendously ill-fitting cognitive knots and instead utterly enjoying this opportunity to sample every single refreshment the Catharsisium and her lovely staff could be coaxed to bring to him.

It was always important for a cook to broaden his palette of flavors and sample new poison and tincture.

It was also good for a surgeon-butcher to be fresh and bright and sharp to every kind of ecological interaction he could consider and every potential new source of flesh to inspire him.

He mused among his brother-memories how some of the compounds and samplers would burn or writhe or vitrify tunie's tissues, motiles or even the mind of her eyes.

How it would interact with the deep roots of her history that had been laid alongside his family's maturation and narrowing down to him.

Zenith had been there as his teeming brotherhood since she was quickened. Him and his sea of kin Hatched there when she was still a sprawling weed of sessile infrastructure sucking hard and fast on the reserves provided by the port and Courtesan wealth.

Back then they had as often worked together as they had devoured one another.

The order and the structure to come was yet to be realized, in the primordial weft of her Polytyphium stage.

The wild churn when Symbiote, Parasite and Divimorphon blended and mingled, predated and nourished.

When his brothers had sometimes even birthed clonal siblings, so was the winnowing so harsh and the need for their multitudes so great in those times. Borne self-children of one another.

Zenith turned his attention to another delightful sampler platter. A cloud of delectable cuts pruned from the staff themselves!

(A full third of them were even digestible!)

"Oh yes! Please keep more coming! The last hundred or so were amazing! Especially the little ones from the larkel shade gardens! Do you have any that rhyme with those?"

The relish of actually plucking them to be eaten and known not just by his own sight and extrapolation but the threshing of his very own ingestion and enzymes was pleasant.

(Satisfying even if not strictly better in sensitivity to the nature of the vittles. An added subtle flavor of empiricism.)

The Courtesan waif of a Siren that had bloomed this particular selection emitted laughter and hurried off to fetch more samplers and spirits for him. He turned his attention up and above himself.

To Catharsisium herself as she enclosed all around them.

"You're sure you don't want to try showing off a bit harder than this? I can taste in the cleaners how much you like to play with nastier stuff than this my dear."

Which brought a soft radiant flicker to the venue and a prodding direct message of laughter and admonishment.

Catharsisium was quite a great deal older than Zenith and all his now dead and eaten brothers.

Wilier and wiser then he had tried much the same taunts before. But he saw in the way she pulsed and flickered that she appreciated the attention all the same.

He listened to the conspiratorial bawdry tales of all the ones that had thought themselves raunchier than her.

Matriarch's milk!, what sort of idiot could imagine a dive like The Catharsisium buried in the Courtesan Estate itself would be some prude.

Ah the conversation was almost better than the flutes of mind corroding vapors he was currently sloshing around his feeder.

He offered a few recipes he'd been planning on serving after Pylo settled in.

Got a couple of suggestions of some of her favorites that Catharsisium knew she liked but never asked for directly, only snatched secretly when they were available.

Another thirty fresh and hilariously caustic samples later and he was still hardly even dipping into the thinnest scummy film of the venue's potential refreshments.

But that was about the end of his chance to put the full attention needed on the more esoteric ones.

Pylo was finishing her show and it was time to shift from audience to participant in the conversation.

The Twin that preferred spicier food shot him a glance with a hint of judgemental exasperation.

"Did you even SEE any of the show?"

Zenith offered his jovial mood by gesturing for a few of his discoveries that would help the Dragoon loosen up without rendering her catatonic in experiential overload.

"Between my various taste tests? A few times. Oh you've got to try this! It's Green!"

Spoiler: Author's Notes

And we are back for a time!

I'm going to finish up this episode, and then disappear for a while more so I can write the following bits in a more complete form.

Apologies for the long hiatus but realized that I needed to handle things a lot more carefully and then a whole lot of other stuff came up.
Cross posting this story over to a Royal Road Mirror.

 

[HappyChappy]

Really excited to see this return!

It seems like Pylo and Tunie's crew was an eclectic and dangerous group.

I'm anticipating seeing what happened to them and whether any of them are still alive somewhere.

 

[BarbaCoPut]

ITS ALIVE! The most fantastic adventure is back!
I guess it's time for a re-read, Thank you!