[IC] The Yarniverse: Circ & Anshin

[Circ]

Of the eclectic coterie to disembark at La Cantina, only two elected for the safety of the spacecraft Tabris Ruzgar. No surprise there, as the parted ways drew from a logic rift between evolved and synthetic lifeforms; a wordless agreement to disagree, one group left behind on Eqiko-4’s spur-station and cantina roundwhich the galaxy unfamiliar morphed, the other secured in the presumed shelter of Eti’s transport. As for arcanely-animated Kukull, unburdened by motive, it sat rapt and rocky in celestial observation, quite forgotten in the hole it ate through the spaceport tarmac.

“Are you shh—errrrp, sure?” Eti slurred, not yet sober in the wake of his milk binge. He’d nearly fallen on his way to the helm, but the articulating aerogel interior squeezed comfortably around his brief frame, much like a big fluffy translucent white pillow.

“Quite sure,” intoned the Tabris Ruzgar’s artificial intelligence, optimistic and calm.

“How leaving Eqi—eqik—fraaaak. Cantina, but not in the right galaxy?” Eti pondered as he irresolutely struggled against the shuttle’s built-in safety systems. Perplexed, he raised a sharp black claw and supported the nub of his chin.

“Your thinking pose? Really? And we’re abandoning them, of course,” Tob Ydrian, aka ‘Boomslang’, grumbled, as he looked through the viewport at the spur-station, “Xo’pil and the others. Probably won’t miss Ulu’gol, bad luck, that unlucky sot. Kirri, either. Okay, most of the organics. Still, damn.”

“But what fate!” Eti exclaimed, his clenched paw vaulted forward in a dramatic pose, “Take us somewhere, Ruzgar. A galaxy far, far, faaaar away. Through a wooooormhole, maybe! The closest one!”

“Affirmative,” replied the Ruzgar. Then, as lithe as a cream and vermilion metal microraptor, it tucked its four wings and surged through the night sky, a faint prismatic coma emitted by its primary thruster.

“What, no! Belay that, Ruzgar!” Boomslang huffed, “We don’t know where a random wormhole might take us!”

Contrariwise, the Ruzgar implored, “Sorry, Captain Eti has given his order. Please sit back and relax for the duration of our flight! Entering spatial anomaly in 32 minutes and 67 seconds, approximately.”

Boomslang glanced across the cabin at Eti, but his travel companion was already slumped over and unconscious. He looked very much like a toy, a small soft stuffed animal, stitches and all, fashioned in the likeness of a red panda and anthropomorphized as a valiant gunslinger adorned in a red leather trenchcoat, bandoleers, and belts replete with flashy brass buckles and silk straps.

“Frick’n Cizrans, why’d they make us—and choose to make us ridiculous?” Boomslang muttered rhetorically to himself, crossed his arms, and settled in for the ride.

. . . . . . .
. . .

— 32 minutes and 66 seconds later:

Eti opened his eyes, fully sober and recharged. Boomslang snored across the cabin, self-propelled into an automated sleep to bypass the boredom of interstellar travel. Everything seemed normal.

Eti blinked.

Everything seemed abnormal. Once-smooth surfaces were overlain by a twine-like substance. Textures once unique all exhibited an odd sense of sameness. Boomslang was somehow even more adorable than before, like one of the cheap toys made for children of one of the Cizran’s biological slave species kept around—well, Eti wasn’t sure why.

“Ruzgar, status?” Eti inquired, momentarily disoriented.

“Well, I’m glad you asked!” the Ruzgar replied excitedly, “As requested, we’ve entered the nearest wormhole. I am attempting transit, but there’s been a probabilistic mishap. We are no longer in space nor time. What we see is neither real nor unreal, but it does appear to be yarn. A royal yarn wedding. A temporary pseudo-reality manifesting around us until we finish transit.”

“In that case I’m going to disembark and explore. Principles of Entanglement Cosmogony, once the probability field collapses, we’ll revert to our pre-pseudo environment states and relative locations.”

With that, Eti disembarked the spaceship.

[Divorarel]

Alice Ansegisel had been a hero, once upon a time, and not just any hero either. She’d been the greatest hero in the galaxy. She’d trained with the Count of Vermont, rescued the Princess of Storms, and outrun the Pale Rider. She’d vanquished foes all the way from Halptide to N’Arague and to list them all would be a feat unto itself, but more incredible than champions of darkness slain, she’d always shown mercy to those who sought it with sincerity in their hearts. But that had been long ago…

Before the formation of the Great Fault, before the fall of Celesin, before before had meant anything.

Alice was neither the avatar of destruction nor pillar of justice that people imagined when they imagined legendary heroes, physically she had not aged a day since she was nine, mentally she was somewhere between several thousand years old and ‘its impolite to ask a woman about her age.’ After protecting the Dominion throughout the entirety of the cataclysm she’d watched That Man return to power and been left wondering if it had been worth all the effort. On that day Alice retired. Now she was an old woman, living in a homely little cottage deep in the woods of some small planet, with naught but few old pictures and trophies to celebrate a long life in service to others.

She’d taken up knitting as a hobby.

Sometimes, Alice still took up arms, when some cosmic tyrant or demonic lord threatened the realm. But only when she felt like it was absolutely necessary. Even stronger than her resolve to remain neutral in these dark times was Alice’s belief that the next generation of sorcerers and champions ought to be capable of solving problems on their own, without having to rely on tired old women, after all she had already failed to keep the Dominion from falling and being reborn as the Domination. She’d taken an apprentice since then, and she was a spirited one, but she’d already graduated to become a powerful hero all of her own and she was in the process of testing another’s resolve.

Knock-Knock-Knock

It was for that very reason that Alice sighed when setting the little brown dandy she’d been knitting off to the side, already aware that it was not her apprentice standing outside of her mushroom-shaped homestead in that way that all good witches were aware of all the things that went on in their territory even when outside of their immediate line of sight, climbed to her feet with a groan and made her way to the door where a nine-foot-tall grizzly bear with honey yellow fur and a tiny red fez stood waiting for her.

“Good afternoon, Poh, how has my apprentice managed to screw up today’s mission?”

“Afternoon, ma’am, an’ pardon me for speaking outta turn but I was under the impression that Sammie weren’t your apprentice yet.”

“Pish-posh, the title is just a formality, I don’t want her getting a big head is all.”

“Mighty wise of ya, don’t want her gettin’ ahead of herself now, don’t think the Thousand Acre Woods could survive another Synestra. Nope-nope. Sammie’s too cowardly for all that, anyhow—”

“…”

“You’ve got mail.”

The bear presented her with an envelope clutched between a pair of dexterous claws, pristine white, with a familiar return address and a richly golden wax seal with a florid exaggerated A in the center.

“Goodness, what could that man possibly want from me…”

==========

Dark brown smudges on the envelope smelled of semi-sweet cocoa, indicative of her Christmas gift's enjoyment.

Inside was, as expected of such an eccentric, nothing of obvious worth -- he never bothered to use his words. Instead of a letter, it contained cookie crumbs; small photo prints of the eponymous Mister A figure skating around Eternity, buck naked as usual; him, again, relaxed in a Uvaldian tangerine hot spring surrounded by a host of dead uniformed Ulvadian Popojijos; and him dressed rather professionally as he, as evidenced in the scene, arbitrated a dispute among ducks; and, finally, a card that, on one side, was a tarot of The Devil and on the other side a spell glyph of metamystical wayfinding complete with coordinates to some place or another.

==========

Alice had since taken the letter into her home, set aside the scalpel she used to undo the wax seal, grabbed her reading glasses and gave the whole thing a once over just to make sure there were any details about the letter that she had missed. There were not. For a long time after she sat there in silence until Mr Poh began to wonder if she’d fallen asleep without him noticing, almost reached out, only for her to begin speaking as soon as the impulse entered his mind.

“Winn, dear, tell Sammie that I’m going to be taking a trip.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Make sure that she does all of chores and doesn’t slack off.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Water the plants and make sure they get plenty of sun too.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And tell my husb—”

“Pardon me but I’m thinkin’ you oughta get goin’ before sundown if it’s that important.”

“Oh very well.”

She got cranky after sundown.

Alice, who had eluded the opportunity for a physical description outside of the vaguest terms so far, was just about four-feet-and-eight-inches tall with pink hair that fell down to her waist when it wasn’t tied up and a pair of bright pink eyes. Her skin was baby smooth and her face was acceptably cute. Alice could look like an adult any time she wanted, despite the not-aging thing, but that was not the shape of her soul so-to-speak and maintaining that form for any significant period of time became mentally taxing. Alice was not really a little girl or an old woman. Alice was some strange amalgamation of the two that bonded with an angel an unknown number of years ago and when the magical disguise dropped she looked more like a statue with ball-joints rather than a real human. Alice dressed like a grandma ought to. With a long modest dress that fell below the ankles and a blanket that hung over her arms at all times and a shoes that made the little clickety-clack sound when she walked across the wooden floor. Alice lived in a giant mushroom in the middle of a magical forest on some unimportant planet in what had once been the Mystic Dominion and was now something much more dangerous that wore it like a skinsuit, Alice had tamed the local bandit king, a vicious honey yellow Gau named Winn Poh, and now he was her personal errand boy. Alice sent everyone she knew a basket of cookies every Christmas and had been estranged from her husband for the last century or so, he knew what he did, but did not seem overly concerned about the delayed date of his return.

Alice had once, in her youth, kicked her way through no less than three Antaran Precusor Flagships. Alice was not the biggest deal that the multiverse had ever seen, but children had slept easy in their beds at night knowing that she was there to protect them from the things that went bump in the night, but her brand had fallen out of favor since she refused to fall in line with the King of the Night and now she like a moth eaten Raggedy Anne doll was just a relic of a distant past.

She had been a hero once, and with a sigh, and a moment to arrange herself inside her favorite chair, she supposed that she still would be—because Autun had been a very pleasant fellow that one time.

==========

One act of interdimensional astral projection later and Alice found herself waking up in some distant universe with fluttered eyelashes, and something felt horribly off, naturally she could had not brought the entirety of her Everstone exoskeleton with her on the trip but she ought to have a greater range of motion and perception inside her spiritual body. This felt like she was occupying a vessel. One that felt terribly heavy beneath the weight of whatever that sticky pink something oozing off of her body was…

“Looks like we’ve got a gate hopper, Tom.”

“I can see that, Jerry, little old thing must have gotten lost.”

“We ought to show her the way back, Tom.”

Before the mystery could solve itself Alice was accosted and when she turned to look at who was speaking to her in this dimly lit alleyway she’d found herself in, her head spun too fast, so fast that she was staring directly behind herself at a pair of horrified little yarn men stubby little woolen limbs and wide black button eyes and a pair of extra long needles like swords. Their rich red-black uniforms were made of a fine felt that someone must have put a lot of love into sowing before assigning them the brutish little personalities they had.

“Gentleman, there appears to be a misun—”

“AIEEE!!!”

In his panic the first one thrust his needle forward and the second followed suit because if they were going to make a bad decision why not do it together, and Alice much to her eternal disgrace, was so unused to having a body that did not have any bones that she failed to dodge before the two razor tips punched through her gooey abdomen. Piercing her grandmother dress at the breast with what would have been a very precise attack on her heart if they had not been stabbing a woman made out of goo—so that’s what the pink stuff was!

“Excuse you, a man does not stab a lady without permission!”

With permission still seemed dubious but just as the impulse entered her head her hands extended into two gushing torrents of pink slime, slamming into the little woolen men, violently glueing them the nearest wall and oozing into the gaps in their knitted little bodies until she realized what was happening and at once the amorphous mass broke off from her wrists. Leaving her hands dripping. Only then did the rest of her body orient itself. Turning a full one-eight-degrees one joint at a time until she was facing her attackers, slightly dizzy, and wearing her best stern face.

“Gentlemen, have you learned your lesson?”

“Yes ma’am,” They responded in a submissive monotone. Their gaps oozing a constant pink that called out to her for instruction with a voice in the back of her mind what sounded like popping bubbles, and against her better judgment she did. “Now, will one of you tell me where I am?”

And so they did.

“Aye ma’am, you’re in Cookieham Palace at the coronation of the one and only King Yarnles III.”

“Party crashing I do believe.”

“Yes, that’s right."

Outside, that is to say beyond the alley, she could see a palace made entirely of cookies and candy. With towers made out of gingerbread and capped by upside down ice cream cones. Visibly oozing vanilla beneath the crinkled construction paper sun that hung high above a painted blue sky with clouds of cotton moving in predetermined patterns. And somewhere within an ominous presence. And Alice, Alice gasped: "Autun, you fool, what did you do. It was just an arts and crafts starter kit."

Alice is now embodying Glittering Love (D-03-109), an abnormality that made entirely of glitter glue. It takes the form of a pretty young woman and charms unsuspecting victims into accepting its blessing. The blessed feel stronger and more energetic than ever as long as they do her bidding. They actively spread their blessing to anyone they come in contact with so long as they maintain a pleasant demeanor, but if Glittering Love loses her temper, they explode and transform into smaller variants of glue monstrosity designated D-03-109-2 and rampage until Glittering Love is appeased or subdued at which point they die off.

Alice currently does not have access to her all of her old powers, as she is inhabiting a new vessel, but will surely gain more over time as she becomes more familiar with her temporary body!

A/N: Autun's letter was written by Circ)

[Circ]

He fell, fell, fell through the warm, near air; comfortably warm, comfortably near. A linen veil, it struck as a caress, like the breath of a lover adrift in dreams on the nape of his neck. An easy descent that lilted, lazed. The world tug languid, relaxed. Unfamiliar. Alike neither Ganaxavori’s onerous ferocity nor Eqiko-4’s utter absence. More akin, he felt, to a minor moon — yet one possessed of an irreconcilably vast planetary rondure.

“Po~ossessed,” Eti stretched, his tiny mouth filled with fuzzy, wet clots of cloud, “what a peculiar word!”

Perchance a hollow planet, a veritable Pellucidar!

Arms outflung, his red duster flapped gayly and with purpose rekindled in its current close kinship with wings. It was odd, the way the world below whirled and whorled. He’d thrown himself from starry heights before, but this felt different. Safer. Much safer. The cyclonic blur obscured occasionally by thick threads of cloudy lace struck him as particularly whimsical. Hardly off-putting, quite the contrary. Eti relished the moment, the strange, safe, tranquil dive, eyes shut, ears perked, his happy howl harmonized with the onrush of wind.

To him, the air tasted of freedom.

Freedom and cotton candy.

Tout de suite! Eti felt eerily observed, a predatory momentary pique of intense interest. Head rightward rotated, his eyes opened and his gaze locked with the flat black eyes of a large, white, long-neck bird. A sensation seized them, alien, ineffable. Them? Yes, them. It lingered. It was, to Eti, as though he gazed upon himself, unnatural in this environment. Ridiculous, yet adorable. Happy, but confused. Whiskers forced flush against his furry red and white cheeks. Then he plummeted through a cloud that obstructed his view of the bird and, oddly, of himself.

Weird. Oh well! I left my hat behind!

<< Ruzgar, find an appropriate local song and blast it from my buttons! >>

<< Will do ... searching ... candidate found on KOST 103.5: Nothing Else Matters. >>

The last faint blanket of clouds fled behind him with a final wisp of a kiss against his whiskered cheeks. He readied his mind. Below neared the foundation of this strange domain. Or, perhaps, merely its solid exterior. Still at elevation, he observed muddled heather gray blotched in hunter green slashed by ultramarine. Terrain, one that exhibited signs of life — such the Tabris Ruzgar informed him through their enmeshed neural web. Information Eti promptly ignored. Muddled blotches neared and refined to a colossal city and a reed-rich swamp, both intermingled and sprawled among tired domesticated hillocks. Through this, a serpentine river wended, a deep uninterrupted blue contrasted with the roundabout chaos.

Literally roundabouts and traffic circles in deranged prolific preponderance such as to crush the minds of Su-lahn’s corps of civil engineer servitors.

Eti blinked, and when he opened his eyes he knelt atop a one of several spires affixed to an expansive Neo-Gothic stone structure, perhaps a religious shrine. It was very contoured, with ridges that jutted around deep tall window wells and cut vertically along the building’s multitudinous towers. It, the entirety of the thing, loomed over a courtyard with a verdant lawn, an unmistakable bright green patch that went somehow unseen throughout his fall. As far as Eti could tell, this was the highest vantage point around, save one, a lone clock tower that dominated the skyline. Inexplicably, he, from a distance, likewise looked down on himself, a tiny pure red patch in a milieu of dust and haze.

On closer inspection, stone was not the right word.

He inclined his snout toward the spire’s ostensibly tile surface, sniffed, and tapped it with the nib of his claw. Soft to the touch, with a scent that intermingled artifice and organic. Eti then remembered Ruzgar’s status report:

Yarn.

He looked at his hand.

Yarn!

He looked at the people who milled around on the road below, dressed for, it seemed, a momentous occasion. They peered up at him, at first perplexed, then delighted, and then inexplicably disgruntled. He locked eyes with a horse, and again fleeted that sensation, that impression that he, somehow, gazed upon himself perched atop the spire. Then it, that noble, chocolate-maned, white-socked, dappled Clydesdale, averted its gaze, but Eti still saw the city from high above, from the rooftop, and from the middle of a road confined by a procession of people ornamented and adorned for a royal cavalcade.

... Ϟ OPEN MIND FOR A DIFFERENT VIEW ...
... Ϟ AND NOTHING ELSE MATTERS ...

Also yarn!

He noticed a peculiar little woman, her antics out of place. Magic gushed from her limbs and ensnared two denizens of this world to a wall. They didn’t seem hurt; rather, they were quite contrite.

Also ... err, slime? No way is something that drips and flows in so slippery a manner made merely of yarn!

[Divorarel]

Alice made her way down the alley one shaky wobble at a time, as it turns out, bipedal locomotion was a tad more difficult than she was used to without any bones to keep you upright against gravity. So imagine her surprise when, just as the though passed through her head, the entirety of her lower body fused into a single amorphous mass of glitter that oozed out from the bottom of her dress and left a slinky pink trail behind her as she moved—or rather oozed—across the woolen floor.

“That’s not quite as subtle as I was hoping, I don’t suppose glitter monsters are commonplace?”

“Not in the Youknitted Kingdom they ain’t, ma’am.”

It would just have to do, so on Alice roved, diving into the waiting sea of partygoers with her guards, leaving behind a pair of half-melted plastic heels bubbling and hissing in the alley where she’d come. Ten thousand years of navigating political parties just like this one had taught her a great deal about the art of ducking, dodging, diving, and weaving around unwanted conversation. that no matter how diligent you were someone was always going to get the drop on you and drag you into at least one.

==========

“Goodness, I don’t remember any monsters being on the guest list.” The little man gasped.

“Well I never—” Alice was just about tired of all these comments and ready to snap back when one of the guardsmen she’d commandeered earlier spoke up to say something clever on her behalf. “Would watch your mouth if I was you, sir. That’s the Duchess of Gluesington you’re speaking too.” Traveled a long way to get here just for you to insult her, did she?”

“You’re lucky she’s so forgiving.” The other chimed in.

“Otherwise you might find yourself stuck to a wall somewhere.”

Flabbergasted beyond words the snooty little woolen man wandered away and the last of Alice’s anger dispersed like carbonated bubbles across the surface of her sticky pink flesh, then it was gone, she adjusted her skirts which were themselves made of a nice sturdy fabric that didn’t cling overmuch to her new body type. She was getting more and more used to this.

“Thank you for standing up for me gentlemen.”

“Think nothin’ of it, Miss Ansegisel.”

“You’re our boss now.”

“And I’ve wanted an excuse to threaten someone at one of these parties for a while now anyways.”

“That’s a very bad habit,” She chastised. “But I will forgive it for the time being. That said, I did not come here to mingle, I am here on a mission--”

“To spread your love to the whole Yarniverse.”

“To bind everyone together for eternity.”

“No.” She said sharply, decisively, and they seemed crestfallen at the finality of it. “I’m here at the request of a friend but he is—how do I say this in the politest way possible—very obtuse I’m afraid. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. Nor am I familiar with your dimension. If you boys could spread out and begin scanning the crowd for anything out of place, then I would be most thankful.”

One raised his stubby doll arm.

“I found somethin’.”

“Is it me?”

“It’s you.”

“Something other than me.”

The other raised his arm.

“I also found something.”

“Is it also me?”

“No ma’am.”

“Well out with it then.”

“Would you consider a red panda on the roof of the palace to be strange?”

“I suppose it depends on where you are, Red Pandas are fairly common in some zoos, are they here?” Alice adjusted her glasses and recalling her time on Earth-T0R3 deduced that Cookieham Palace was a very unclever attempt at naming the life-sized recreation of Buckingham Palace which loomed over all of them. Sweeping past wafer walls and ice cream cone ballistae she spotted a very fuzzy little red man on the periphery of her vision peering down at them all from above, dressed in a manner almost as out of place as her own though tragically without the cozy comfort of a blanket to protect him from the cold breeze all around them.

“No ma’am, I do believe this is the first one I’ve ever seen in person.”

“Then I suppose that wouldn’t be a bad place to start…”

[Circ]

Music too loud, eyes too numerous, negative emotions too direct and focused, all before Eti could — could what? He blinked, discovering his claws pierced through the soft mottled gray shingles that cascaded in a golden spiral down around the spire’s needle-point nib. It wasn’t like he cared, not in this consequence free and illusory world formed of the chaotic collisions of force-folded spacetime. Still, something primal intertwined with him reacted,

<< Too much attention, too much! >>

Weird.

Latent paranoia from my assassin programming?

Why the paracusis?

Through his comm-link with the Ruzgar ascended worry palpable in the rate of his synthetic cognito-emotive wave velocity. Perturbed, he lowered the music volume that emanated from his brass buttons. Low enough to be dissipated by a gentle breeze, the next line wisped away before it reached the streets. Loud enough that it reverberated along his synthetic eardrums in tandem with his synthesized heartbeat.

Far above, a vantage point gyred and glared. Wings thrumped against the dense air. From it, Eti observed the cobbles and procession, the brick and stone ancient lane tinged with soot and scorch marks from when its border buildings blazed, were rebuilt, and burned again in a riotous cycle of neglect and want. He saw, like insects, flecks of vermilion and black — figures upright and proud with their argent bayonet-plugged instruments of noise and destruction.

I’ve been made, he ascertained as eyes below glinted curiously up at him, time to move.

Claws out and shingles split, he burrowed.

Fallen through the rend in the roof, Eti’s paw pads buffed the floor of an octagonal chamber. Iron torches held aloft a blazing parody of fire constrained by glass caskets. A large globe was split, halfwise hung, and in its core decanter and cups. The floor resembled spalted wide-plank wood, but its texture belied tightly-woven yarn. Of course there were burgundy and gold runners as well, opulent additions that made the room feel full in the sense of a den, or a library, or a powder room in Versailles. All heavily-trafficked, preferred to the relatively pristine wood planks. Before he fully appreciated the deception, a party hat atop an agape rococo secretary beneath an ornate stain glass window that depicted a beheaded Saint Denis leaned back and welcomed him with the emphatic brreeeeeaaauuh characteristic of an uncoiled party horn. His attention secured, a book nextwise to the party hat flapped and opened. Forthwith, an unfamiliar disembodied voice all too jovially narrated the words scrawled therein with a rainbow of crayons.

Behold and welcome, for it is I, Mister A!

Soon, as I, shall your bourn be in and with the Cackling Thoughtform, the Dream Spark, the Burning Hyena-Dragon in and out of time!

Keep that to yourself!

Take this button. Give it a push. No regrets!

Don’t worry, Alice, too was one given!

Too~da~loo!

A page flip accompanied each excited sentence. Cautious yet curious, Eti approached. All the pages struck him as ancient, oxidized, and sketched colorfully and crudely, yet the crayon smears were exceptionally vibrant and peculiarly prideful of that fact, an odd quality for inexpert scribbles. It began with a variegated ‘A’ that sprouted wings angelic and demonic, or maybe alien, crazy and composed of spirals and unnatural eyes; next slavered a hyena with red horns, fiery breath, and little red and black fleshen wings; lastly, a big red button held by a female mannequin of sorts belowwhich loomed large an arrow that pointed off page and indicated an actual big red button on the table beside.

He lept to the window, flung open the leadened and limmed portrait of Saint Dennis, and glanced down.

Even before he saw her, he saw her; near, through big dopey chocolate eyes, and far, through flecks of unblinking jet. Eyes not native to this world darted up at him, met his own that gleamed inquisitive through the diffused glow of this marvelous overcast city so full of pomp and circumstance, so light and airy, so incongruous with the experiences of his former life. She stood out as distinct among the creatures in the alley, perhaps due to her grandmotherly charm or, more likely, her viscous wake.

“Alice, is it? I’m gon’a push Mister A’s button!” he bellowed down below, his voice propelled through the stiff breeze that flung back his duster and exposed his belts and bandolier.

Imagined or shouted back, “What button? No, it’s a trap!” — likely another phantom voice yeeted into his mind. No matter, he lifted the artifact, which he had glommed from the table, red, bold, and fringed with filigree, and with authority bapped it in view for all to see.

The party horn blared, the horse reared, and the swan dove with a skin-curdling honk. Eti’s vision blurred, his grand perspicuousness reduced to the intake of his two machine lenses. It felt like no time passed, but the scene below was abruptly changed — a storm of confetti, glitter, and glue erupted in place of the two anticipated, yet absent, animals. Eti felt their loss deeply, strangely. It juxtaposed the gaiety of the rainbow sticky tape clung to, among other things, the pavers that fringed the lot of Dean’s Yard and proclaimed,

“Welcome Alice and Eti to the Yarni-Earth!”

Bystanders were slack-jawed in amazement, as this was meant to be a celebratory occasion. They gaped at the confetti, the glue, the glitz, they gaped at Alice, and they gaped at Eti. He locked eyes with a pair, a coachman and valet, and that same peculiar sensation as when, with the horse and bird, subsumed him. A larger view, a sense of phantom limbs, voices in his mind that did not belong, and animus toward these two strange interlopers who obscenely interfered with a royal event.