One Hundred Three: Artonan Conversations (Patreon)

[A/N:  Just a warning, guys! The backlog has been thin for a while now. I started ten chapters ahead of you and I'm now down to one and a half and my outline, mostly because of the larger size of the chapters post-Thegund and also because I devoted a week to thinking about the Boe arc and making sure I was happy with it. (When people make a lot of noise about something, even if they're in the minority, I do want to think about it and seriously consider my rewrite options. I did. I decided I actually liked it even more, wanted to stand by it, and gave it the extra content instead of doing a cut. That kind of thing does take time though.)

The 8k+ chaps also really slow me down. I know I could break them, but it's been my policy to break things where it feels like a good chapter with a satisfying ending to me rather than just chopping to inflate post counts. So that's why you sometimes get a 4k and sometimes get this one, which is 9500 or so.

But all of this also means there's a chance of me having to skip an upcoming post or freeze payments on the Patreon so I can catch back up. Hopefully, it will work out so that I don't have to. A good writing week this week could put me far enough ahead. I'm just letting everyone know so that if I do have to say 'Only one post this week,' you'll know why. If it's more than a single posting day I need to skip for a month, I'll freeze the Patreon instead, which means nobody would be charged and no chapters would be posted while I pull ahead of you all again.

For now, just enjoy the chapter!

I really have fun writing about Stuart.]


********

Alden was constantly reminding himself to be careful of cultural differences and, more importantly, personality differences when he spoke to the son of the Primary. For example…if, when you were sleepy and focused on not biting your own tongue, you said, “We can talk all day tomorrow,” Stu of House Art’h did not hear, “We can talk lots.”

He heard, “Call me at the crack of dawn and stay on the line with me until one of us needs sleep.”

Alden was in his boxers, kneeling on his learning cushion and getting in some practice time with his auriad when the call came in. Startled, he threw the iridescent indigo loop over his head, leaped to his feet and ran to the closet.

Thirty seconds later, he was dressed in the first things he’d laid his hands on—jeans and one of the moisture-wicking black turtlenecks LeafSong had sent him in the replacement human necessities package.

I didn’t intend to wear one of these unless I got really lazy about the laundry, he thought as he accepted the call.

They were comfortable, but they were turtlenecks and the material was faintly shiny, like silk. He was on the fence about whether it was a tolerable amount of shiny or not.

“Good morning, Human Alden,” said Evul-art’h.

She was outside leaning against the mirrored wall of the house, waving at him with fingers covered in thick rings. It almost looked like she was wearing hand armor. “My brother wants to—”

“Thank you, Evul!” Stuart snatched the tablet.

“Hey, you actually managed to take it from her,” said Alden as the Artonan boy scurried down one of the outdoor paths.

“She let me. She’s busy right now. Good morning! I’m very happy you want to talk all day. I was afraid our opportunities for conversation would be limited by your schooling.”

That’s right. I did say…

Stuart would understand if Alden explained that he’d been exaggerating. But he looked excited. It was rare for him to show excitement, so he might actually have been very excited.

They’d spoken for hours at a time on most of their previous phone calls. There was a lot of ground to cover when you lived on different planets, didn’t know that much about each other, and only got one chance to talk every two-ish weeks.

It isn’t really that weird for him to think all day means all day.

“Yes. I can’t actually talk to you when I’m in class, but you can…um… observe and comment. I can text you, too, if that works? Your sister’s paying for it, so…”

“Technically she isn’t,” said Stu-art’h. “Evul may use common System resources like this as much as she pleases.”

It would be kind of hard to argue that she shouldn’t be able to.

“All right.”

“You have a learning cushion!”

Oh, we’re zoomed out so he can see stuff around me.

Thank goodness he’d been practicing from memory and not with his spell books this morning. It was only because yanking them from System storage was too expensive to bother with for just a few minutes. He usually waited until he was settling down for at least an hour or so at a time.

“I do.” Alden looked down at the faux-leather cushion. “There were some at the lab with Kibby. I liked them. You’ll get to see some of them in one of my classes today, too. But I can’t really find any as nice here on Earth. They all seem to be more cheaply made.”

“That’s <<appalling,>>” said Stuart with a frown. “Does your new school not have proper respect for the <<sanctity>> of your education?”

Wow…

Alden had temporarily forgotten his plan to send Kibby videos of his classes so that she could rant about late teachers and people who ate chips during the sacred hours of knowledge acquisition.

“It’s fine. Human school is less…it’s not always less serious. If you’d been watching my talent development class last night—the magic and physical education I wanted to attend this program for—you’d have seen it can be very serious. But my daily classes aren’t as formal as an Artonan school.”

“Worli Ro-den is unusually informal for an instructor,” Stuart said.

“Yeah, I can’t imagine most teachers threaten their students that much.”

“It is barely forgivable in his case because he manages to present it as a consequence of eccentrically high passion for his field and exacting standards.”

“You’re saying he gets away with being mean-mean because he’s so gifted everyone else really does come across as inferior when he’s around,” said Alden.

“That’s not perfectly accurate, but it’s close.”

“People are probably just afraid to complain after they’ve sat through a class.”

“He’s pushing the boundaries of student tolerance farther than he should lately,” said Stuart. “His assignments are becoming more <<punitive>> than educational. The dissections…”

Alden gasped. “Are you criticizing an instructor?”

Stuart turned his nose up. “I am merely saying that when a couple of my classmates lose their composure and seek vengeance, I may not be able to condemn them for it.”

******

Alden was sure roommate code dictated you not spring a sentence like, “I have this very important Artonan friend, and he’s watching us all through the System,” on innocent people before 6:15 AM.

The guys deserved to wake up without being observed by the curious wizard in Alden’s head. And Stuart was curious about everything.

“Who is that?” he asked, as Alden stepped out of his room with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder and encountered Lute coming from the opposite one.

“What is that animal on the wall? Oh, another boy! What’s his name? How many people do you live with now?”

Instead of responding to the question stream right away, he jogged through the kitchen and out into the corridor. When he was safely out of the room, he answered, “I’m living with three other boys. The one with the pale hair is Lute.”

He took the stairs down to the first floor. “The animal on the wall was a polar bear. Not a real one. The boy with the dark hair is Haoyu. Lute’s a Chainer, we’ll see him in a few hours. Haoyu is a Stamina Brute who’s planning to pick up some spell and skill overlaps with the Strength subclass.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s mostly because that’s what his mom and dad both do,” said Alden. “But I haven’t asked. We’re just getting to know each other. They call it a Dura Brute build. He wants to have some more offensive abilities without losing the advantages of his class.”

“I see. What are those plants?”

After a brief tour of the garden and a trip across campus, Alden ended up drinking coffee and eating vegan sausage rolls in the student area on the roof of the Forthright building. He was the only one up there. The early hour and the gloomy weather were probably keeping everyone else indoors.

“I just remembered something I wanted to ask you,” said Alden, when Stuart’s questions finally stopped for a moment. “There’s a food they served us when we were working on campus at LeafSong. I think they sell it at one of the restaurants nearby, too. It’s this short, thick tube. It’s crunchy. It’s cooked in hot oil maybe? And inside, it’s full of some kind of vegetable. And the vegetable tastes like meat. To me. Earth meat. I really want to know what it is, so I can try to import it.”

Stuart was in the woods right now, preparing a hunting game for his ryeh-b’t. He had a small basket full of creatures he was calling “bugs” for her to find. They did look like beetles, if beetles were rat-sized.

“Was it coated in a substance similar to <<coagulating>> blood?” Stuart asked.

“I was thinking of it as a delicious sauce, but now that you mention it…yes?”

“The tubes are k’rethkan. The majority of the <<first and second wave of settlers>> to Artona III were from a culture in which it is popular. The vegetable you like is native to III, and <<colloquially>> it’s called ‘meat petal.’ So I’m sure that’s what you mean.”

“Meat petal,” said Alden reverently.

Stuart gave him an odd look.

“Hey, you’ve got giant bugs crawling up your arm! I’m not the strange one. Meat petal is a great name for a plant.”

“They don’t bite,” said Stuart, knocking the two escapee beetles back into the basket. “Meat petal does, though. The jungles of three are known for their carnivorous plant life.”

“It bites?”

“The <<masticating petals>> snap shut when something touches them.”

Alien venus flytrap. Let’s eat it.

He was soon distracted from his plans to import alien plant life, though. Stuart had stopped walking. He set down his bugs, shook his arm slightly, and a soft loop of string slithered out from under the loose sleeve of the coat he was wearing and fell into his hand.

His auriad.

For a second, Alden wondered if it was a new one. Then he realized it wasn’t quite unbonded white. It was just a very pale shade of purple. Like his father’s hair was. Or like his sister Sina’s had been.

Alden felt an unexpected urge to compliment him on it. Then he realized he had no idea how to do that or if it was even appropriate, so he just watched in silence while Stuart cast a spell.

Something was different about the way he used it. Alden couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, and the spell was over too quickly.

A scoop of soil was taken from the ground as if by an invisible trowel. Stuart dropped a beetle into the hole and kicked the dirt and leaves back over it with a booted toe.

“They’ll just sit there,” he explained. “Alden <<fixates>> on visually tracking her prey. She needs to practice using her sense of smell, too.”

Human Alden was too busy watching the young wizard’s hands as he cast again to answer.

Stuart was elegant and precise. Alden had seen him make wevvi before, so that wasn’t a surprise. And he wasn’t faster with his hands than Alden was, but the string was moving through the patterns…

It moves more for him than for me.

It was almost like Stuart had a couple of additional fingers to use.

Alden touched a hand to the base of his neck. His own auriad had been getting more and more helpful. He could make it tighten or cling just by wanting it to. So maybe one day, they’d be at that level, too.

“You’re quiet suddenly,” said Stuart. “Are you sad the bugs will be eaten? You don’t have to observe if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that. I was just really enjoying watching you work. I hope Other Alden has fun with her hunt.”

Stuart paused with a beetle held in his hand over the fifth hole, then he dropped it in and covered it up. He looked away from his task to examine Alden. Then he held up his right hand. The loops of string draping his fingers shone.

“This is my auriad,” he said. “It’s a casting tool. A more personal type of one. I’ve had it since I was small. It aids me in shaping my authority for more complex spells. It gives me focal points. Let me think how to…”

He trailed off.

He’s trying to think of how to explain it to me, Alden thought as he took in the look of concentration on Stuart’s face.

“…it’s like a helpful hand that works alongside my intentions to perform magic,” Stuart said finally. There was a note of annoyance in his voice at the inadequate description. “It’s part of me. A piece of my power. I don’t know if that will sound reasonable to you. I can’t quite imagine how to say it otherwise.”

“Thank you, Stuart,” Alden said. “I understand what you mean.”

“Do you?”

Alden wanted to say yes, I really do. He tried to think of how to do it without revealing personal experience.

“You look…there’s an English saying, ‘comfortable in your own skin.’ You look like that when you use it.”

He waited.

Stuart blinked a few times, then he smiled. “That’s a pleasing thing to hear.”

“There’s a bug on your shoulder,” said Alden, brushing the last crumbs of his sausage roll off his hands. “Better start digging."

******

Stuart’s presence was a major distraction during the science lecture.

It wasn’t his fault. He was minding his own business out in his forest with his ryeh-b’t. But a video feed of a small red dinodragon hunting buried beetles was much more entertaining than organic chemistry.

Other Alden was a capable but lazy bug finder. She would dig one up with her large hind claws, eat some favored squishy part out of its interior, then flap back to Stuart to cling to his shoulders or his legs and make begging sounds.

“I am not going to dig up the next one for you,” he said every time. “Go hunt.”

“Go hunt” was obviously a phrase the ryeh-b’t knew, since she would always head off to hunt when he said it. But she had a habit of running right back to him and begging more whenever it took her longer than thirty seconds to sniff out her prey.

I don’t have a future as an animal trainer, thought Alden, watching Stuart shoo her again. If the ryeh-b’t had made that sad little gurgling noise at him, he would have delivered her beetles to her on a platter.

[Do you ever take her with you to school?] he asked.

He couldn’t text in logograms yet, so Stuart would just have to rely on System translation.

He looked up in surprise. “I will when she’s fully trained. The jungle campus will be good for her, but she needs to learn that not all creatures wish to play with her. Are you able to focus on your class and speak to me at the same time?”

[Not really. But you’re educational, too, right?]

Stuart lifted a brow. “Do you want me to talk to you about <<polymers>>? I’ve been listening to your instructor. I don’t think I can improve on her lecture.”

[Not a chemistry expert?]

“I have basic knowledge. If she were lecturing you on how spells and elementally aligned ingredients can be used to transmogrify various materials, I would have much more to say.”

[You mean spells that turn one thing into another. Do you like that kind of magic?]

“I do,” said Stuart. “But I like most kinds of magic. The boy in front of you is trying to get your attention. I believe he wants his beverage now.”

Turning his thoughts away from the forest back toward the classroom was a jarring experience. The theater-style lecture hall full of creaking seats, clicking keyboards, and sighing students surrounded him. Finlay kept glancing hopefully over his shoulder.

“Sorry, man,” Alden whispered. “I zoned out. You could’ve texted.”

Finlay was an extreme fan of caffeination, and he’d brought two drinks to class again. So Alden had been holding onto a hot tea for him with one hand. He dropped his skill, and the smell of Earl Grey hit his nose. He passed it forward, and Finlay grinned at him.

It was so convenient not to have to move around to preserve things anymore.

“Do you…does your skill improve your life?” Stuart asked.

What a loaded question, thought Alden.

Doubly so, considering who was asking, and the future he had planned for himself.

[It’s an amazing skill,] Alden replied. [It helped me save someone I care about, and I enjoy it in a lot of ways. I was excited to be selected as an Avowed, but if I never had been, I would definitely have been safer. And possibly happier in the long run. Or maybe I’d just be different. It’s hard to know for sure.]

“You really answered,” said Stuart, an unreadable look on his face.

Alden leaned back until his seat creaked. [That’s a fraction of an answer for that question. I don’t think I even know the complete one yet. You should ask me again sometime when we’re face to face if you’re still curious.]

“You’ll still be my guest?”

[Sure. If you pick a good date for both—]

“December fifteenth,” Stuart said promptly. “It is your weekend. And I will not be in school either. I will persuade Evul to send you an invitation.”

Alden stared. So Stuart had totally already picked out the date and…yeah…that was soon. So soon.

Don’t get freaked out. He’s not summoning you to do anything dangerous. He wants to serve you beverages out of the pink quartz pitcher. And do…whatever it is Artonan knights-in-waiting do when they have friends over.

[The fifteenth is good for me. But if you wanted to wait another week, I’ll actually be out of school for eleven days starting on the twenty-third.]

“It needs to be sooner,” said Stuart quickly. “That is to say…I’ll be busy with something during that time. And I hope to see you before then. If you don’t mind. You don’t have to come if—”

[December 15th,] Alden texted. [Perfect date. I’m putting your name on my calendar.]

“Truly?” Stuart smiled.

Yes, truly. He couldn’t put things like “parkour club meet-up in Parc des Batteurs” on the calendar and leave off “go to another planet.”

******

Stuart usually got more relaxed the longer they talked, but even when he was relaxed there was a distance between them that no amount of forced casualness on Alden’s part would bridge. There were things the Artonan boy hinted at but never explained—the exact nature of his unhappiness with his schoolmates, why he was frustrated with his family, what was up with his many eccentricities…

He’d finally gotten the foot fully healed. He mentioned it to Alden in the middle of showing off his ryeh-b’t’s claws.

It was like, “You can stop worrying about me now. My contemplations on the nature of my ignorance and failures are complete, so I told a healer to fix the burning pains I’ve been enduring for more than eight months.”

No big revelations about what those contemplations were, and his tone didn’t invite questions.

Things like that made it so damn hard to get to know him.

If he were anyone else, if I were anyone else, I don’t think I’d be able to connect with him at all.

But what Alden did know about Stu-art’h was so significant that it largely made up for the gaps in his understanding. And it was obvious that the Primary’s son was trying hard all the time. Even when Alden couldn’t fathom what the other boy was thinking, he could see the vast amounts of effort he was putting in.

It was hard not to like someone when you could see them struggling to get it right.

But Stuart, dude, I wish you’d put just a little less effort into this, Alden thought as he sat in Engaging with the Unexpected and listened to the Artonan’s slightly too-shrill sounds of offense.

“Alden! Your classmates clearly need guidance. Look at them! Just look! They are biting at each other’s throats—and not in an enjoyable manner—and you are just sitting there quietly.”

[I’m not suggesting that Instructor Marion change the course format no matter how often you ask.]

“They are too young to engage in this type of debate. They are merely arguing with each other for fun at this point, not <<seeking accord!>>”

Too young? You fed yourself to an illegally summoned squid monster because you were trying so hard to make friends with the other baby wizards. Don’t think I’ll ever forget.

[You know, I’m pretty sure Artonans argue with each other like this, too,] Alden said.

Joe’s descriptions of the Grand Senate’s decision making processes were, unfortunately, unforgettable.

“Not in class,” Stuart said in an affronted tone. “Not unless we were nurtured by <<a species of loud, foul-smelling parrotlike creatures known for consuming their nestmates.>>”

Alden raised his hand.

Instructor Marion whistled to stop the verbal battle that had been going on for the past several minutes. It had started out as a relatively serious discussion about whether it was all right for a hero to disable a pursuing superchaser’s vehicle if they had reason to believe that the chaser was endangering themselves with reckless driving, but after that, it had somehow devolved into a fight about image rights and whether chasers who were known to deliberately cut and splice footage to make heroes look bad could be considered attackers when they showed up on the scene.

“I think we’ve gotten off topic again. We’re acting like a bunch of gokoratch,” said Alden.

Stuart’s eyes widened.

“Can’t we talk about the next case?” Alden continued. “It seems more serious to me anyway.”

The whole class and Instructor Marion were silent and staring, no doubt at the System’s translation for gokoratch. Finally, the boy who’d been the most pugnacious about the image rights fight said, “What, you just want to finish this case off really fast with your Rabbit powers?”

It was the guy who Alden had been privately thinking of as “three minute man,” from his first ever class—the one who’d assured everyone he could solve the domestic violence case in three minutes.

“I could finish this one in three minutes,” said Alden. “The first one is to ask myself why I’m loaded up with magic gear while I chase a soccer mom’s minivan down the freeway. Am I working for a city so desperate for dramatic battle footage that looking cool supersedes highway safety? The second minute is for me to think, ‘Oh, there are a bunch of superchasers following me. Now it’s even more of a disaster.’ And the third is for me to text the soccer mom and say, ‘Look, I like living on Anesidora just fine. The school system’s great for your kids. You don’t get to live a normal life ever again anyway, so maybe think about coming in on your own when you’re less panic-stricken.’

“Then I turn around and go about my day in the least sensational way possible.”

And…that was an unvarnished opinion. Now I sound judgmental and jaded.

“Your solution is to send the villain a text message then go home?”

“She’s a C-rank Brute who didn’t want to move to Point Nemo,” said Alden. “Not a terrorist. Why was a dramatic chase ever appropriate to start with? Instructor Klein—”

Wait, is it safe to invoke him of all people? It doesn’t feel safe. But I’ve started. I can’t just stop halfway.

Alden had been doing so well up until now carefully typing up his arguments for this class and editing them until they sounded better…and less annoyed.

Somehow, this is Stuart’s fault.

“Instructor Klein says we should be willing to finish the job ourselves,” he said. “But he also says it’s sometimes appropriate to let someone run if chasing them does more harm than good. So when an unexpected event occurs during the middle of what was already a questionable chase, I say quit.”

One of the third year girls turned around in her desk. “Who cares about that? Did you call us stinky cannibal parrots?”

“Technically he said ‘we’ so he was calling himself a stinky cannibal parrot, too.”

“Gokatch,” said Andrzej under his breath. “Gokovatch?”

“Instructor, does gokoratch fall under the ‘no disrespectful language’ rule? Because I think we should add it to the class vocabulary.”

“Is gokoratch the plural or the singular?”

“Alden,” Instructor Marion said in a tired voice.

“Sorry about that.”

“No alien species names. I have a hard enough time deciding where to draw the line with human insults.”

“Understood.”

“What if we just said ‘stinky cannibal parrot’ in English, Instructor?” someone asked. “Is that too disrespectful?”

A very long way away from their classroom, there was an alien boy covering his face with a hand.

******

“My roommate will be in the next class,” Alden said, heading back toward the Forthright building behind a group of chattering students. A cold raindrop splashed against his forehead, and he looked up at the dark clouds. “I’m going to tell him you’re listening in.”

Stuart was back in his room, working on metal for another spell ring. It was a chore he’d assigned himself so that he wouldn’t “get too impassioned and prompt you to insult fellow students.”

“Lute’s a Chainer, so we’re practicing the hand signs for a wordchain together while I correct his Artonan language.”

As soon as he said it, he realized that Lute might not be supposed to teach him anything until that conversation with his boss happened. Alden didn’t know if there was some rule about what amount of instruction was allowed.

“He’s setting up a meeting with the wizard he works for to let him know,” he added quickly.

“Yes…” Stuart looked up from his metal block. His expression was carefully guarded. “I was trying to understand the nature of your relationship with him after I heard his class.”

“The nature of our relationship?” Alden asked. “We’re getting to know each other. We’re roommates. He was fun to spend time with the other day, and he’s a good tutor. I think we’ll be friends. Why would his class matter?”

Stuart still looked cautious. “You did say you were suffering from ‘the bad half’ of a wordchain last night. I assumed it was your own, but then…”

“Lute gave me the good half earlier in the day. I can’t cast it myself yet.”

“So he was doing you a favor!” Stuart said in a relieved tone. “You don’t <<prostrate yourself>> beneath his feet after the <<feast>>.”

Alden stopped walking. Another raindrop hit his nose.

“I don’t what now?” he said.

Completely in English. He’d been speaking Artonan with just a few words peppered in to cover vocab failings, but there were some levels of confusion so great that they could only be conveyed in your native tongue.

“I don’t what?” he said again.

“I’m so relieved,” said Stuart. “I didn’t think that particular subculture had made it to Earth yet. There’s very little <<overlap>> between them and the majority of wizards. But you spent a long time on Thegund, so you might have encountered their ideas and found them persuasive. It would have been fine if you had. They serve the Triplanets, too, in their own way. Many refuse to acknowledge their place in our society, but their cultural and practical value has been affirmed by the Grand Senate. Some of our most powerful wordchains wouldn’t even exist without their <<zealous perseverance.>> And considering my family’s relationship with them, it would be extremely improper for me to judge you for finding <<spiritual meaning>> where you wished.”

Rain had started to fall in earnest, and Alden sprinted for Forthright. Stuart’s wildly indecipherable rapid-fire reassurances that he would absolutely still respect Alden if Alden wanted to be someone who derived spiritual meaning from Lute Velra rang in his ears.

What the heckity heck? he thought as he hustled.

He’d heard that wordchains had religious significance to Artonans. The teacher with the lasered hairline had insisted on it, actually. But he’d yet to find evidence. Kibby had appreciated them more as aesthetic and ritualistic objects; she thought they sounded pretty and felt magicky. On the Artonan soaps and sitcoms he’d seen, nobody who did wordchains acted differently than Alden would have expected.

Now Stuart was throwing around all kinds of interesting words.

“I’m really glad you respect…my freedom of religion?” said Alden as he dashed into the building. “But I have no idea what you’re say—”

He suddenly spied a blond head beelining for the stairs. A very short blond head. “Lute!”

Lute spun around.

“Oh. Hey, Alden. You left in a hurry this morning.”

[That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,] Alden texted, swiping beads of rain off his messenger bag. It was waterproof. Good to know. [I didn’t want to surprise you guys first thing. I’m talking to my Artonan friend today. We’re on a video call right now, and he can see my surroundings. So maybe you don’t want to go so hard on the colorful language in class?]

Lute pointed at him. “You and Haoyu went to your fancy gym and absorbed potions together last night. I wondered when I smelled the watermelon. Lexi looked like he crawled from his own grave this morning, and you two are all springy.”

Alden blinked. “We did our homework in the recovery sauna.”

Lute didn’t even bat an eye at the news that Alden was mid-call with an alien? He must have been even more used to Artonans that Alden had realized.

“Ha! Next time Lexi makes fun of me for eating sandwiches in the tub, I’ll just remind him he’s the only one in the room practicing asceticism. By the way, your dishwashing session last night was legendary. The forks!”

Lute dramatically stumbled and flung his hand out.

Stuart had a very interested expression on his face. He’d completely stopped playing around with his spellring metal.

Alden winced.

“What happened to the eating utensils?” Stuart asked.

“I dropped them.”

“You dropped them more than anyone has ever dropped them!” Lute said gleefully. He led the way toward the stairs. “Hey, do you think it would be a crime to put a mousetrap in my shoes?”

“A mousetrap?” Alden asked.

“I assume Shoe Pisser is using magic to target them because otherwise the hall cameras would record their nasty deed, right? But just in case they’re doing it old school, a mousetrap might work. A lot of stars would have to align, but if they did…”

Lute’s laugh was close to a nefarious cackle. It echoed off the walls in the stairwell.

Stuart’s head tilted so far sideways it looked like it was in danger of falling off his neck. “I do not think his words are being properly translated. What is shoe pisser?”

[Dude, I am impressed by your ability to be yourself in front of anyone. But do you really want me to have to define and try to explain Shoe Pisser to my friend? I don’t want him to think humans are gross.]

“How disturbing,” said Stuart. “I guess it was being translated correctly.”

Alden almost tripped up the stairs.

“Lute, have you been getting my texts?” he asked.

“Recently? No.”

“Stuart,” Alden hissed under his breath. “You—”

Stuart looked down at his metal cube and started wiggling his fingers over it like it was a fascinating business. “It was only two messages,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure it was an accident at fi—”

[Yes, you were! You’re still a terrible liar! Your face is turning purple!]

Alden focused more carefully. Apparently, he could make mental texting mistakes when he was trying to do it with multiple people in multiple languages, and he’d let himself get too relaxed.

[Lute, hi. I was trying to tell you earlier. I’m on a video call with my Artonan friend right now. We’re hanging out together today. He can hear what you’re saying.]

“My nosy friend,” he added aloud for both of their benefits.

Stuart made a sound of protest.

Lute had stopped under the sign for the sixth floor. The look that crossed his face was hard to read—somewhere between confused and amused, like Alden had told a joke he didn’t quite get.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes?” said Alden.

“…uh…I see. Let me…”

His fingers tapped through the air, and a second later, Alden received a message from him.

[Is this person actually your friend? Like a person you gossip about teachers and girls with because it’s more interesting than focusing on class? Or is he a friend in some more complicated ‘he’s nice but also he’s paying me to give him a tour’ way?]

“I meant it the first way,” said Alden.

The door beside Lute creaked open and a gaggle of science track students poured onto the stairs. Some of them went up, others down, their feet pounding and their shoes squeaking on the damp steps.

“Right,” said Lute. “Um…hello, Alden’s friend.”

Stuart looked up. “Tell him I greet him,” he said. “I would add him to our call, but I would have to have Evul change the settings and I can’t interrupt her practice right now.”

[He says hi,] Alden texted Lute. [He’s sorry he can’t add you into the call. His sister set it up for him. He can’t actually call Avowed on his own yet.]

Lute looked surprised. “He’s a kid?”

“Yes.”

“I am not!” Stuart protested. “I’m nearly an adult.”

“He’s around our age,” Alden clarified.

“I’m older than you!”

“I think he’s actually younger in terms of maturity level.”

Stuart stared at him in such perfect and profound shock that it more than made up for the text messaging mishap.

*******

Artonan Conversation class had never before involved such an impossible amount of mental juggling.

Stuart was busy being outraged by literally everything going on in the classroom, but that didn’t stop him from wanting Alden to convey messages to Lute. And Lute seemed to have developed a split personality of his own. He was a little nervous that an Artonan was watching him teach Alden a wordchain, but he was also enthusiastic about having someone answer the burning questions Alden and the System were unable to.

“How do I say ‘dickwad’?” Lute whispered, his eye fixed on Alden’s forehead. That seemed to be where he looked when he was actually talking to Stuart.

“Really?” Alden asked.

“Tell him I will attempt to come up with a translation in a moment…look. Just look! That learning cushion has a stain.”

“Really?” Alden asked again.

“Well I suppose it hardly matters,” said Stuart, his voice rising an octave. “They’ve put you in an instructional environment so far below your level, I’m surprised you do not rise from that <<ass-abused>> cushion and make <<a righteous scholarly exit>>!”

[You know,] Alden texted him, [I’m starting to think you want me to be expelled.]

“There has to be a better school!”

[This is literally one of the best schools on the island. It’s so much better than my old one. Human school is just more relaxed about a few things. People are allowed to eat in classes here, so sometimes stuff gets stained. It will probably be cleaned or replaced at the end of the term.]

It totally wouldn’t. The stain he was upset about was really small.

While Stuart freaked out over Instructor Rao’s bizarrely disinterested teaching style for the eleventh time, Alden let Lute correct one of his handsigns and informed him that there was an Artonan vulgarity for things that had been sat on with butt cheeks when they shouldn’t have been.

Stuart fretted and Lute practiced the word for “ass-abused,” and Alden decided he’d juggled the two them for long enough. It was time for him to get his own burning question answered.

[All right, this is more of a text message only conversation,] he sent to Lute while the Chainer nudged his left elbow inwards to correct his signing form. [My friend seemed concerned I might be someone who prostrated myself before you at a feast. Or a fancy dinner? Do you know what that’s about? I know it sounds cra—]

Lute made such a high pitched yelp of alarm it would have done an Artonan proud.

Several people turned to look at them.

Stuart paused his rant. “Oh dear. Is he very upset? Does he need comforting?”

“I’m fine!” Lute said to their classmates. “I…uh…pulled a muscle.”

“Sitting down?” a girl said.

“I’m fucking talented, okay?” said Lute.

“Artonan only in class, everyone!” called Instructor Rao.

Lute was looking at Alden in utter horror.

Alden smiled apologetically. [Sorry if it’s a weird or sensitive subject—]

“It’s both!” Lute fixed his eye on Alden’s forehead again, pointed, and said. “No.”

“Is he talking to me?” Stuart asked.

Lute started typing furiously. [I don’t want you to hear about my job from someone who’s going to make it sound like that!]

[So people don’t prostrate themselves before you?]

Lute’s expression was mortified.

[Relax,] said Alden. [I’m teasing. I know Artonans can get hyperpoetic about the simplest things.]

[I was planning to let my boss tell you stuff, since I can’t. But I wanted to hear what he said as he said it and tone it down! And I was sure he wouldn’t talk about that at all, since…for reasons.]

[It’s fine. I’ll tell my friend to leave it alone.]

He focused on Stuart. [Lute’s embarrassed about his job a little, and he wants to control the way it’s presented to me.]

Stuart looked surprised. He picked Evul’s tablet up from the stand where it had been propped and squinted at it as if trying to get a better look at Lute. “Is he not pleased with his work for the <<Palace of Unbreaking>>?” He sounded very concerned. “That’s…well, I suppose I should respect his wishes and allow him to tell you about it?”

[It’s fine, Lute,] Alden texted. [He says he respects your wishes.]

“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?” Lute asked suspiciously.

“I never imagined an Avowed assigned to that service would be embarrassed about it,” Stuart mused. “The work should be easy, but those people can be very odd.”

******

Alden spent lunchtime eating cafeteria food out of a to-go container in the dorm. All of his roommates were out, so there was no need for warnings or three-way conversational confusion.

“Hey, what should I wear when I come to your house?” Alden asked, propping his feet up on the ottoman.

Stuart was still enchanting his metal block. Either the task wasn’t going well with all the distractions, or it just took forever. “Something cleaner than last time.”

“Are you being funny?”

“Maybe.”

Alden smiled. “Well, I was being serious. If I’m showing up at your house as your guest, I don’t want to make you look bad or make your family uncomfortable. If there are rules or customs I should follow, you need to tell me so I can get it right.”

The more he thought about it, the more he hoped Stuart would send him a manual for how to get along with people in the Knights’ private forest. Maybe how to get along with the plant life, too, for that matter. A bunch of roots had responded to his request for freedom last time he was there, and his leaf bookmark still seemed to be alive, so yeah. He didn’t want to offend the trees.

“Alden, I’ve been wondering for a while, but we’ve never talked about it…what do you actually know about my family?”

Alden thought of bodies falling in the snow.

“The first time I ever heard of a Knight of the Mother Planet was when you were declaring your intention to become one by the pond,” he said. “The one with the mishnen in it.”

Stuart sighed. “I knew which pond you meant.”

“I had no idea what you were talking about. But Joe said you probably had enhanced bones and you’d been modified so that you couldn’t fall unconscious unless you wanted to, so I figured a Knight was someone who fought something. By the way, the word doesn’t translate all that well into my language. It seems to have a lot of subtle shades of meaning that aren’t captured, and Earth actually translates it differently than Artona I and III did.”

The list of alternate translations he’d requested after waking up in Knight Rapport 1 had given the impression that the word was more like Honored Oathbound Guardservant. So he guessed the word “knight” was just doing its best.

“Superior Professor Ro-den shouldn’t say things about me when he doesn’t know,” Stuart said.

He sounds peeved.

Alden was surprised. “Was he wrong?”

Stuart frowned. “Even though my body has been enhanced, it’s still rude of him to guess at it and tell people. And I don’t have any unnatural methods of preventing a loss of consciousness. I was bending nearly my whole mind toward not panicking or fainting. It was effort, not magical modification.”

“It was an impressive effort,” Alden said. “I was very confused by you. But undeniably impressed.”

“I bet Ro-den has tricks and toys to adjust his consciousness.”

And now Joe’s been downgraded all the way to Ro-den. “He probably does.”

The Primary’s son still looked miffed.

“Anyway…” said Alden. “I guessed then that Knights did some kind of battle. And then your aunt was there de-corrupting Moon Thegund by throwing around all the dirt—”

“It’s much more complicated than that.”

“So naturally I am aware that Knights are the wizards who are at the forefront of the fight against chaos. And I’ve caught on to the clothing difference—”

Stuart looked startled. “Isn’t that common knowledge?”

“Not common enough to filter down to a regular teenager on Earth. Some Avowed are obviously more up to date.”

Neha had called them “extra special warriors against chaos,” and she at least suspected they had talents like Avowed in addition to their wizardry. Which was actually a piece of knowledge Kibby didn’t possess even with Joe’s tendency to share important top secret Knight news with the assistants.

For some reason, the wizard class didn’t make a lot of noise about how knighthood worked for even the nonwizard Artonans to pick up on.

“I caught onto the shorter sleeves and the metal decorations, so I can find knights in a crowd. Because of that, I realize your family seems to have a mix of knights and wizards. Obviously I see Evul-art’h’s title when she calls, so I know she’s one.

“And…” he hesitated. “I’m sure having a position like that involves a lot of difficulty and sacrifice.”

That was all he felt like saying over the phone.

“It does,” Stuart said softly. Then he cleared his throat. “All right. You understand well enough. Our household can be formal on certain dates and occasions, but I’m not inviting you to visit on one of those. The only custom you need to follow on a normal day is addressing all of the knights by their title when you first meet them. They’ll immediately give you permission to stop because my family doesn’t use titles at home except to acknowledge important life events.”

Straight to business then. “I can do that.”

“You can wear whatever human clothes you want, or if you want to be <<fashionable>> I can send you images of what is currently popular for nonprofessional clothing here on the Mother Planet.”

“I kind of want to see what that looks like regardless of whether I wear it or not.”

“If you do not mind…it’s my personal opinion that you should not wear clothing with writing on it unless the writing is meaningful to you.”

Alden sat up in surprise. “Writing?”

Stuart let his hands snap up briefly in the same gesture Kibby had usually used for a shrug. Artonans did shoulder shrugs, too. Alden was going to have to check and see which one was more shruggy.

“I do understand that dress customs are not the same on Earth. But we’re used to reading the markings on clothing to learn important information about the wearer. Humans in images are often wearing words that I think mean nothing to them. Or the names of other people? Or cultural references that are hard to grasp even if I research. And it’s difficult to determine whether a human wants me to care about the meaning of the words or if they’re just decorating themselves with the shapes…”

“Oh!” said Alden. “It reminds you of the symbols on knight and wizard outfits, so it feels like you have to pay attention to it. It’s usually just advertising…but it’s not always advertising. Sometimes it’s a saying the person likes or a uniform for their workplace. I see how that could be confusing.”

“Yes,” said Stuart. “It will be overlooked as a species preference if you like to adorn yourself in that way, but you asked about making people comfortable. Most would find it <<dissonant>> for you to wear your commendation alongside something meaningless.”

Alden tried to picture himself having the special symbol that went with Alis-art’h’s commendation embroidered on a t-shirt for a pizza joint.

“I wouldn’t do that anyway. Um…am I supposed to wear the commendation?”

“Do you not want to?”

Alden wished Stuart would be a little more expressive right now. He couldn’t tell from the Artonan boy’s face if he cared about the answer or not.

“I want to do whatever’s respectful and appropriate,” Alden said carefully. “I don’t understand the etiquette.”

“That’s not good. There’s a lot of etiquette.”

Alden grimaced. Coming from someone he’d once seen count out the individual grains of a particular spice before he dropped them in the wevvi kettle, that didn’t bode well.

“It’s really a lot,” said Stuart.

******

They spent the whole afternoon together, except for a few breaks when Stuart left the tablet behind for a couple of minutes.

During Intro to Other Worlds, Alden received a lesson on the etiquette of when and how he should wear the embroidery when he was on the Triplanets. He wished he could have remained blissfully ignorant. It was so complicated there was no way he was going to get through without embarrassing himself at some point. And that might be the same as embarrassing the Quaternary?

Actually Stuart kept using the English words “tarnish” and “honor” which he had learned especially for that long-ago apology he’d delivered in front of all the other teens at LeafSong.

Alden still wasn’t sure exactly how they’d both gotten tarnished back then.

He didn’t want to freak out his roommates…anymore than he already had. So he spent the late afternoon and early evening away from campus. Stuart wanted to see “things you find beautiful about your world.” It was a tall order. The temperature had dropped, and the rain had turned into a real storm.

It was forty degrees Fahrenheit and howling outside.

They rode a lot of public transportation and did some people watching. Alden had gotten a woman on the bus to entrust him with one of his own plastic ponchos, so when he did step out into the weather it was surprisingly tolerable.

After a couple of tries he’d mastered the poncho shield. The ideal thing was to ignore the sleeve holes and stick his arms inside. Then he could either jump to make the whole oversized covering balloon out prior to preserving it, or he could flap around inside it until he’d gotten a similar shape.

Roominess between his body and the shielded plastic made walking around possible, and bonus—he now looked even cooler than people normally did while wearing what was effectively a garbage bag with a hood.

“This is the traditional garb of my people,” he told Stuart as he walked through the open air market where he’d met Dave Banyu, the Longsight, for a chat about B-rank superheroing. “We all dress like this when Artonans aren’t looking.”

“Do you?” Stuart said in an amused voice.

He was sitting on the floor beside his bednook, and Other Alden was using him as a climbing frame.

“Yes. This is true human beauty.”

Most of the places in the market were still open. Anesidorans weren’t strangers to bad weather, and wind shielding and deeply recessed stalls made shopping manageable. But not far from the end of the market, down by the water, was an area without any roofing or shields. There, the waves were crashing into the seawall and sending up clouds of spray.

Alden went to watch it. His shoes were soaked and his feet were freezing, but he’d had the sense to roll up his pants at least. The shielded poncho was keeping the rest of him warm enough, and there were some other positives he hadn’t realized would be so nice. The wind that whipped his ankles and stung his face when he turned his head in the wrong direction wasn’t touching the rest of him except as an occasional swirl of air that found its way in from the bottom. And the raindrops that should have been loud against the plastic were soundless.

He could still hear sounds coming in from the open front of the hood, but the muffling was nice.

The constant pressure on his skill from the wind and rain was an interesting feeling, too. He couldn’t pick out the impact of individual raindrops…it was far too many little things hitting him all at once. But it occurred to him that if he wanted to refine his sensitivity in that area, standing out in the rain wasn’t a bad plan.

Or under a shower, but that didn’t have the same drama.

A large wave burst against magic and concrete, and Alden stood in the spray, licking salt off his lips.

“Do you like that spot?” Stuart asked.

“I think I really do.”

He was very nearly alone out here. Godspeed to any drone smaller than a helicopter trying to fly in this weather. And good luck to anyone not packing magic that would protect them from a gale. Probably there were other oddballs having fun somewhere else. He could definitely imagine Vandy trying to Sky Shape in this; he’s seen her outside the girl’s dorm this morning trying to trust fall into a cushion of her own breeze.

She’d hit the ground. Apparently she hadn’t gotten the hang of shaping while she was falling backwards.

But here, now, this little patch of Earth felt like Alden’s own.

“Thegund fucking sucked!” he told Stuart and the storm. “Even before the Contract failed, it sucked. It was still all the time. No wind. And there was almost no sound. That place felt like death even before it turned into death.”

“Would you like me to have Aunt Alis dig an ocean there?”

“YES!”

Stuart rubbed his ryeh-b’t’s scaled snout. “You do know that was a joke?”

“As far as I’m concerned, it was a promise.”

Another wave smashed itself against the island. Alden spun around and let the back of the poncho take it.

“Alden,” Stuart said hesitantly, “I have a question that I don’t mean in an offensive way, but I am curious…”

He turned back around. “Just ask.”

“You are attending your school because you wish to challenge yourself and busy yourself to overcome your fears.”

I did tell him about that weeks ago. And afterward, he told me he wished I could go to LeafSong with him.

This was the point where they connected, despite all the distance both of them created with their secrets, half-truths, and misunderstandings. On Alden’s part the link was made mostly of respect, for what Stuart had been through and what he planned to go through in the future. On Stuart’s…

Alden wasn’t sure, but he hoped it was a similar emotion.

Stuart took things so seriously. It was a quality that caused a lot of headaches, but it shone when it was actually time to discuss serious matters.

“The graduates of your school become superheroes.”

That word sounds weird coming out of his mouth.

“I’m still trying to fully understand the idea,” said Stuart.

“I’ve been told it’s a very human idea.”

“Yes. It must be. It is battle against those who would harm others and it is also battle for the sake of entertainment?”

Battle theater, Max called it. Alden wondered why he’d bothered arguing if even Stuart got that impression.

“It is. A lot of the time. There are superheroes who don’t entertain people at all, though. I have an instructor who only helps with disasters. And the Anesidora battlegroups have entertaining heroes on them, but they don’t do entertainment when they’re called in as a team to deal with real problems.”

“It’s also the job of superheroes to capture other Avowed and force them to live on Anesidora with you,” said Stuart. “Even ones who don’t do harm?”

Alden could tell from his tone that this was the thing he worried was potentially offensive.

“I understand it’s illegal on your world for Avowed to live among average humans.”

“It is,” said Alden. “And, yes, that’s part of the job for many superheroes. Most, I assume. Though I guess whether it’s something ugly and dramatic like that case we were talking about in class today or something more reasonable must depend on the people issuing orders to the Avowed.…what exactly did you want to know?”

“Will you do that one day?” Stuart asked.

“I won’t.”

He hadn’t thought about it when he was younger—superheroes picking up completely harmless unregistereds. Everyone knew they were criminals, too. And he’d taken it for granted that a criminal Avowed was dangerous and probably should be caught, before Gorgon and Boe both pointed out that not registering was just a lifestyle many people preferred and not necessarily step one on the path to supervillainy.

Thoughtless of me. Childish. At least there are some parts of the old Alden I’m glad to have left behind.

Icy water spattered around his feet again.

“I won’t do it,” he repeated. “Maybe I’m just as bad as those idiots in Engaging with the Unexpected who are always trying to make the law for Avowed be whatever they want it to be. But I’m not ever going to use my magic that way. The thought of overpowering a frightened person and dragging them away from their home because it would make the rest of humanity feel better completely disgusts me.”

“I see,” said Stuart.

Alden had no idea what he thought.

“What do you intend to use your magic for then?” Stuart asked. “What will you do with it?”

“Are you asking me what my purpose is?”

“Yes.”

As if that was just a thing people regularly asked each other.

“You know, the last person who asked me that was your father.”

The Artonan boy looked away from the tablet. “Was it?”

“We were holding hands.”

Stuart’s lips pursed and then, unexpectedly, he started to giggle. “He couldn’t do it without holding your hands? If anyone knew…”

“Your aunt was there. It was her idea.”

“She doesn’t count. They shared a womb.”

“They’re twins?”

“No. Two of a triplet set. Their third is no longer with them.” He regained his composure and looked back at Alden expectantly.

“Is asking people their purpose the family question or something?”

“I fear it might be,” said Stuart, giving a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I thought it was a universal quest, but I have been disappointed to find it otherwise over the past several months.”

Well, that explained at least some of his problem connecting to the other people his age at LeafSong. If he expected them to be questing after life purposes instead of getting wasted and shoving gum in human pockets to see what happened…

“Hey, I worry too much about this kind of thing as well,” said Alden. “My friend yelled at me for it recently.”

“I do not believe I worry about it too much at all. How could it be possible to do that?”

“You want to be perfectly noble and honorable and self-sacrificing all the time, right? And you torture yourself when you’re not living up to it. I’m pretty sure it’s a character flaw.”

“It’s not.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s both of us. We need to work on that.”

“What in the name of the Mother are you talking about?”

Stuart looked delightfully flummoxed.

Alden smiled into the next wave. “I want to use my magic to protect myself and stay alive. And I want it to be a life that’s worth living. How does that sound?”

“What does ‘worth living’ mean?” Stuart asked solemnly.

“Not endlessly shitty and full of horror,” said Alden. “Joyful. A lot of the time. I really need it to be that, or I’m not going to be strong enough to do anything at all.”

Thunder growled over the water.

“And when I die,” he added, “I want to do it feeling sure that other people are better off because I lived.”

He didn’t have to be perfect. He didn’t have to give every single part of himself away if he didn’t want to. And the more okay he felt about that, the more he felt like he could actually breathe again and act again.

“Yeah, I think that’s my purpose,” he said. “It’s kind of simple. It’s not like I have a detailed plan anymore. And it’s a little more selfish than the old me would have wanted. But he didn’t know himself as well as he thought.”

After he’d finished speaking, Stuart watched him for a long time without saying anything at all.

When Alden started to shiver, he turned away from the water.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find someplace dry. Before you leave, I’m going to show you how to fold a paper airplane.”