ꙮ Some distance, but not a terrible distance - nothing’s a terrible distance from the Castle, not when there’s trains running on time to every corner of the Beast - there is a butterfly garden nestled in between two hills; for the Beast it’s a rare purely natural riot of color visible as you crest the hill and take the winding path down into the garden space. There’s a largeish, gnarly-looking tree along one side of said winding path; leaning rakishly against the tree is the Scorpion Queen, lacking any entourage, waiting patiently. (Not that anyone’s late to show up - but she snuck out a bit early, to appreciate the view of the garden.)
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was not walking slowly, but she picks up her pace as she sees the color in the distance. She almost doesn’t notice Jae she’s so intent on the garden, but the tree itself is a bit of a novelty, and, well, The Scorpion Queen is nothing if not noticeable. “Hey,” she says, with a wave that turns into a side-hug as she gets near.
grins as-rakishly and goes, “Hey”, and hugs Salme right back. “Wanted t’show you the butterfly garden, at least, before you all headed off for parts unknown.”
gives one last squeeze before she breaks the hug. “I’m really excited to see it. V and hers had done some impressive work on their valley. Seeing something green and growing here is—there’s something special about it.” She laughs a little. “Also, I’m guessing the Beast also has huge butterflies?”
: “Xilai actually wound up consulting on this garden, too, although it’s been around for way longer than he’s been here.” She starts, slowly, heading off down into the garden; it’s remarkably steep going, in a few places, preferring inclines just shallow enough to not be wholly precarious for most of the path down the hillside. “We’ve ALSO got perfectly normal butterflies, too. But you’ll probably see a fluturini or two, yeah.”
’s boots are soft leather and make navigating steep inclines easy. She keeps pace with Jae easily, sometimes hopping down onto a flat area rather than treading more carefully. Her skirts flare out behind her as she does, along with her hair. “Whose idea was it? To build this?” She stores ‘fluturini’ in her head to ask about later.
has extremely extra foot claws instead of boots and so the steep inclines don’t bother her much at all, either. “The butterflies’, mostly. For whatever reason there’s always a couple intersecting migratory patterns somewhere near the castle. Just a matter of figuring out where that is and planting pollinator plants and host plants there and waitin’.”
laughs. “Well, then you must listen to the butterflies.” She hops down again, in a billow of hair and fabric. “Is there … gnosis that pools in a specific way, or is just that there are always butterflies?”
: “Honestly,” -hop- “I’m not entirely,” -hop- “sure. Need to get your nerd friends from Samudra to come do nerd science on our butterflies and find out.” Hop. “Tasna said - and Xilai said it made sense to his own intuition - that living things have a natural tendency to follow the flow of gnosis, and vice versa. Like a feedback loop. And so you don’t even have to do any magic fucking-around to make a butterfly garden, you just… have to get your hands dirty.” She laughs, softly. “And then you have another good excuse to get a bunch of people together workin’ on a project instead of being simmeringly at each others’ throats, and then everyone wants to hang out in the garden they helped plant together, and also, then, you have butterflies. Oh, -hello-, beautiful.”
ꙮ A truly stupidly large purple butterfly with glassy wings has arrived and is idly flapflapping around Jae’s head.
stopped when Jae laughed, arrested, just watching, listening. When the purple butterfly comes to flap around Jae’s head, she grins. “There’s a lot that—“ she frowns, and then says, “gnosis-work is good and all, but I think there’s always value in getting your hands dirty. In touching something that isn’t just—power. In spinning them both together. Or working them into the dirt.” She starts moving again. “It’s actually been a bit of a paradigm shift, thinking about gnosis so … consciously. On Almachadta, it was so often just a way to augment small, everyday actions.”
nods, a bit. “Time and a place for it, yeah? And… I don’t know. Probably there are– a lot of people who’d call me incurious, or call the Beast incurious, and. I think we’ll probably need to look at things under a magnifyin’ glass at least a little more than is my style, probably. As far as I can figure, though, life follows gnosis and gnosis follows life, and that means you can work any problem you got from two ends.” She holds out her hand carefully and the butterfly lands, ponderously, on her fingertip. Surprisingly softly: “-This- is a fluturini, by the way.”
nods in agreement, almost absently, as she leans in to examine the fluturini. “She’s beautiful,” she says softly. “Or he? I guess it doesn’t really matter.” She examines the enormous, purple glassy wings. “You really like them, huh?”
ꙮ It puts its wings together and wiggles its antennae fetchingly, like it knows Salme’s watching.
laughs. “Show-off!” Though it’s not clear if she means the butterfly, or your editorializing.
: “They’re just weird little guys. They’re just weird little guys slurping tasty plants. And they get to be this frickin’ pretty. It’s nice.”
: “You ever consider trying out being The Butterfly Queen instead of The Scorpion Queen?”
: “Wings would totally get in the way of my cool combat tricks.”
raises an eyebrow. “Sounds like a skill issue that the Angel of Hope could easily overcome.”
: “Yeah, you overcome the skill issue by being a cool badass scorpion instead and waving around your tail when you need to intimidate people.” She nods, definitively.
laughs. “Well. Scorpions are lovely too.” She doesn’t want to move and startle the fluturini away, but she does look longingly at the rest of the valley. “Out of curiosity—and you don’t have to answer this one but—is this the first time in this world you’ve met other … Angels? Sparks? Still not sure what the right term is.”
does, eventually, move on from that particular spot once the fluturini picks itself up and flapflaps away. Not too far away, there’s a big sturdy purple flower-spike with a thick stem it perches on for a meal. She glances at Salme as they walk, passing through a carefully-sculpred arch made of flowers that are a thoroughly unremarkable dusty grey but which smell incredible - before finally going, “Yep.”
nods. “I thought that’d—“ and then she stops as they get to the sculpted arch and laughs. “Light, how beautiful. They look so unassuming but smell so wonderful.”
grins. The arch is, probably very deliberately, tall enough to accommodate her. “Right? Lot of things on this world that’re like that. Or… I don’t know. Herbs that just look like Whatever, A Plant and then in the right person’s hands you get Spice Row.” She takes a deep breath of them, and a little swarm of much smaller butterflies goes darting past chasing, or being chased by, a wind current.
looks at her, thoughtfully, and then says, “you really do work hard to bring everyone together. To make this place … really special. Queenstown, Spice Row, this garden—even the trains that run across the Beast.” She swallows, a bit heavy, and then shakes her head. “Sorry, sorry. I’m trying not to—be melancholy. But fuck is it a battle.”
ꙮ A nondescript little white butterfly picks that moment to land, with delicate precision, on Salme’s head.
: “…I mean, it’s fine to be feelin’ melancholy. At leasr you’re melancholy and you have a cute butterfly on your head.”
laughs a little. “I’m also very happy.” She lifts her hand, held flat, up next to her head, inviting the butterfly she can feel standing on her head to step onto her hand. “I just. To keep doing, to keep building, again and again—well, I don’t know, maybe this is the first time Queenstown ever happened, but it doesn’t seem like it—you don’t have to answer that—it just. It means a lot. It means a lot to me.”
ꙮ It does not step onto her hand but it hops onto her hand, like Jae and Salme were hopping down the path into the garden, earlier. Hop!
brings her hand down to admire the butterfly with its delicate white wings.
just smiles, and looks satisfied. “Well, good. Means a lot to me, too.” She crosses two of her arms behind her head and looks up, passes by an intensely thorny-looking bush with big fluffy globes of little yellow flowers.
peeks at the globes of flowers and sniffs them too.
ꙮ These ones… well, they’re probably dramatically delicious to some particular kind of butterfly?
thinks that even very strange and specific things will find something that loves them, eventually.
: “How are you doing, by the way, Jae? I can’t figure out if you’ve recovered from the interview with my clan or if you’re just playing Ms. Hero.” She says it like she’s asking the flower-globe, but she knows Jae will hear her.
throws her voice so it sounds like the globe of flowers is responding, for absolutely no reason. “Psh, got more banged up than that crossing swords with Lucxja beforehand.” A pause, then: “‘sides, it’s not like I have been able to solve this shit on my own.”
whispers, conspiratorially, to the flowers, “though you and I, at least, both know that the wounds you receive in the Rite and the kind of wound you receive from words are often very different things.” She goes back over to Jae. “Sure. I wasn’t asking who you thought had a fair point. I was asking how you felt because I—well, because I can.” She takes a step forward to kneel near some squat cacti with almost lurid magenta blooms, with equally lurid butterflies flocking around them.
looks thoughtful for a few moments, and then is distracted by the flowering cactus and its associates, which in this moment includes Salme, and then laughs. “I respect the chutzpah, I guess? Been a minute since someone had me dead to rights. Can’t want to fight unless I can take a hit. Still kinda want to challenge Aurelius to a Rite on principle but it wouldn’t be any fun, he’d just be cranky the whole time.” She straightens out. “But, naw, to me, it matters that they had a fair point. Can’t actually… stay mad, wouldn’t be fair, and there’s enough unfairness goin’ around that I don’t need to add more to the pile.”
laughs, though it’s a little rueful. “Oh. Well. I can certainly stay mad when it’s unfair, but I guess that’s a particular skill of mine.” She reaches out and brushes a finger over a petal of a magenta flower that is unoccupied at this time, careful to avoid the spikes of the cactus. “But, worse than that, Aurelius would probably just forfeit. He enjoys the Rite but he’s … odd about when he finds it worthwhile to engage.” She smiles to herself at ‘odd,’ a fond, almost indulgent smile.
: “Goddess, I wonder how many times I could challenge and he’d forfeit and we’d just keep chasing each other around like the world’s biggest idiots until one of us got bored and THAT’D determine who won.”
: “You know, I idly wondered that as well. Though. I think he’d win that one. It sounds like you get bored easily and he—“ she frowns a little. “He’s not precisely stubborn—he’s actually very thoughtful and adaptable when you bring a request to him, or ask him to modify his behavior—but he’s. Not going to budge on this particular thing, I don’t think.”
straightens, and walks over to a sharp-leaved plant with huge central flower-spike that towers over even Jae. She runs her fingers along the stem.
follows Salme over to that plant, cranes her head up to look at it, which is an unusual feeling for her. “Yeah, but you haven’t seen me when I’m absolutely full-on committing to a bit in the stupidest way possible. Maybe we could just put off catastrophe indefinitely that way. Be so dumb even the world got bored of us.” She laughs, and shakes her head. “Nah. I’m not going to call it being willing to concede this one. But for the first time in a long assed time I’m curious about what happens next. So. Bless all six of you for that. And Tasna and her friends, for that matter.”
: “Well. You did tell me about the carving-your-name-on-the-moon with a laser thing. And also … the Name-Eater? That one was fucked up. Also did Tasna and her cohort say something to you?”
: “Listen, sometimes you just really have to prove a point. Also I was young and stupid. Also naw, they didn’t say anything, particularly. Just, haven’t ever had visitors before. Was my first clue that I’d better pay attention. Also, they’re fun.” She glances off towards a lot of fairly clear space, off to one side of the garden. “Could probably put a decent-sized greenhouse right there, honestly.”
looks at the space, then back (up) at Jae, and slowly grins. “Yeah. We probably could.”
walks towards the clear space and kneels down. She peels off one of her gauntleted, fingerless gloves and digs her hand into the dirt. It’s probably sandy, gritty. Drains well, nutrient poor. She’s no farmer, but she worked with a florist one-and-off, and she’s got a pretty good feel for dirt.
: “Most of the flowers from Almachadta will want more moisture than the Beast has. Catching it with glass would do a lot, though I’m not sure about light requirements. Flowers tend to like a lot of Centrelight, and …” she looks up at the Beast’s moons. “I’m not sure how they’d react, but …”
glances at Jae. “I mean. I don’t have to bring flowers from Almachadta, but. You said you missed flowers.”
: “If Samudra got to have flowers from your world, I get to have them too.”
grins at her.
frowns, then, still kneeling, and … thinks. [Libra] said that flowers bloom in her footsteps, even if one can’t see them. She wonders, maybe, if she might—make them visible, just a little. Hardy irises, with their indefatigable rhizomes and tolerance for the heat and dry. She closes her eyes and unfurls a root-thread of gnosis and … asks.
ꙮ …well. It wouldn’t be hard to create a seeming, an illusion, of flowers with which you’re familiar, I don’t think, if that’s what you mean? And so the air ripples like a mirage, and resolves into vivid irises against and out of the sandy soil of the Beast.
was sort of hoping for something that would grow, and live, and thrive, but if a seeming is what she’s capable of then a seeming is what she’ll take.
stands and laughs a bit wryly. “Well, I guess I can’t spontaneously create flowers at will, but. It’s something.”
: “You can’t spontaneously create flowers at will… yet.” She ambles over, kneels down, also runs her claw-fingers through the dirt, admires the mirage-irises.
: “There is a beauty to just getting your hands dirty, to growing things from seed or cuttings or what have you. I think it’d feel too much like cheating, to just generate a garden from gnosis, but I had hoped for a single plant.” She shrugs.
: “I did have a question for you that, again, you can choose not to answer, but I was wondering—if our worlds weren’t cycling, if you got more time than 1,300, 1,400 years, what would you like to build?”
: “It’s true, you DID say earlier on that it was sometimes better to do things the hard and slow way.” She grins, amiably. “Don’t worry, we’ll build a greenhouse yet.” She tilts her head, at that, and thinks, for a while, before responding.
: “….everything I can think of is something the me that existed… a long, long time ago would say, I think. I don’t know. I don’t… know?” She half-turns, to look back at the castle, with its clock taking up one entire face of the structure. “I think maybe I’d just build Queenstown, Salme.”
reaches out and takes her hand and squeezes it. “Yeah? Is that Queenstown the same Queenstown that we’re looking at right now?”
laughs, delightedly, and holds her hand. “I’ve no fucking idea. I’d like to see what it became, you know?”
: “Yeah. Absolutely.” She squeezes her hand. “You should think about it a little. Dream. It’s—weird and strange, imagining a future that you thought was impossible, but. It’s good. It’s really, really good.”
: “And then you start wanting so much and you get really, absurdly greedy and start having delusions of living forever and getting to watch it all play out, this future-without-end, but that’s not so bad either.”
: “Mmmm. No, it’s not. And it wouldn’t… I mean, it wouldn’t be up to me? That’s the thing, that’s part of the thing. Like… people always surprise me. One time, this one time, the Beast kept an absurd fashion for elaborate feathered boas that just… randomly started early in and caught like fire and didn’t stop. Keep thinking about starting a trend just for old time’s sake, but every time’s a surprise, and that’s…” She trails off, squeezes Salme’s hand, unable to find one single word that conveys all of the things she’d like to finish that sentence with. Shakes her head. “Not to disagree at -all- with what you were saying.”
laughs at that, then imagines Luĉja in a feathered boa and laughs harder, and then realizes she has never seen a feathered boa in her life, or even heard the term, and frowns a moment, but shakes the thought away. “Well, a lot of it wouldn’t be up to you, of course, because a city—a plane—is made up of all the people there, but what you’d like to build—that’s what a ruler does, to some extent, right? Flying railcars, a vigorous educational system, greenhouses dotted throughout the city—that kind of thing? But also I am decidedly not someone who should or wants to be wielding that kind of power. As evidenced by my brainstorming just now.”
: “Mmmmmm. I mean, you’re not wrong? But I think I think of this as…” She frowns. “You don’t, ever, actually make fire. Right? You build a pit, you line it with stones, you put the logs in, you cause the conditions under which the fire can flourish and be of use to you rather than of harm. But you didn’t actually make the fire.” She looks back, at Queenstown, fondly. “It’s still -my- fire, though, and I love it.”
nods, and just watches her, the fondness in her gaze, the clear care, and the love it must take to build it again and again and again. “That’s—that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for explaining.”
: “And thank you for letting me understand that part of you too, Jae.”
grins out of the side of her mouth. “Pleasure’s been mine. Been a lot I haven’t felt like I could say out loud to someone for a while.”
: “I’m—‘grateful’ isn’t really strong enough of a word,” she says. “Mostly because it’s a lot of shit I needed to hear too. Needed to be able to talk about.”
looks up at her. What do her eyes look like here? Are they as vivid and alive as they were in the library?
ꙮ They’re always ice-blue; she’s taken her shades off around Salme basically every time they’ve hung out together now. Definitely don’t have that specific bright vividness they had in the Library, but not particularly… dead, either. And she seems pretty happy, right now.
nods and says, “Did you know that your eyes were different in the library? Brighter, more vivid. Not that they aren’t vivid here, but …” She shakes her head, pulls the tablet out of the bag she’s taken to carrying over her shoulder since she chose an outfit with almost no pockets and brandishes the tablet at her. “I have a couple things I’d like to say, and I’d like to say them in the library, if you’d humor me.”
tilts her head to the side, but reaches out to enter the library without any question.
ꙮ That familiar fwooshing noise and sensation, as you’re pulled in.
steps in, confidently, more confidently each time. This is her domain—not just hers, of course, but hers.
rolls her head from shoulder to shoulder, and her spine does something a little funny, and she swears, softly, and laughs. And her eyes are so bright.
stares at her, and then smiles, and says, “it has to be a true form, you know.”
she gestures to one of the couches. “Sit with me for a moment?”
doesn’t seem particularly surprised by that comment, and joins Salme on the couch.
: “I have something I want to ask of you.” She turns in her direction, but doesn’t meet her gaze, not yet. She looks at her hands—two of them, human—but doesn’t hold them.
lets one of her eyebrows Do a Thing; perhaps couldn’t stop it from Doing the Thing in this particular form. “Okay, I’m listening.”
takes a deep breath. “You are the Scorpion Queen of the Beast, the Angel Stings-and-Kills, whose heart is a sword named Hope, True Hero, vast and infinite and stranger and older and, yes, even wiser, than I could possibly fathom.” ⁂
takes her hands now and squeezes them. “But you’re also Jae Carver. You’re also just a person, just one person. And—I know you’re good at dealing with your shit, I know you’re strong as hell, I know you do love and care for yourself but—I want you to remember that you’re Jae Carver, and that sometimes … ‘You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.’ While we wait, while we strive, while we struggle to see if we can change things … please don’t forget that.”
leans in and brushes a soft kiss against her forehead. 🙧
smiles, a soft smile that the Scorpion Queen would never smile, and leans forward very slightly afterwards to bonk/nuzzle Salme’s face with her forehead. “I am, as it transpires, incredibly fucking good at that. And also, as it transpires, I very much appreciate the reminder. Thank you, my friend.”
laughs a little. “Always.” She squeezes her hands again before dropping them. “Messy bitches gotta remind each other to be kind to ourselves now and then.”
: “That’s all I really had. Be kind to yourself. Love as fiercely as you can. Keep answering my messages because honestly sometimes I’m scared as fuck and it’s … nice to be able to talk about that frankly. Though I probably am going to try to … open up about that a bit more anyway.”
: “Strongly recommend, as someone who’s been recently successfully convinced to open up a bit.”
looks up at the stars, positively beaming. “Oh? Who convinced you? They sound pretty neat.”
grins at Salme. “Yeahhhhh, I’d say so.” And she lets herself relax, a bit, leaning back into the couch, under the light of a baffling and bright and loving sun.