milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

duster,
fairy fixit

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Something curious for the careful observer of bar patrons:

On top of a table in the dining area there are three things that are about the shame height. There is a fairy, a Zanaris fairy specifically, reading through some notes. She is approximately a tiny human with wings, but not. Her head and eyes don't have quite the right proportions for human. Her wings are much like the forewings of a common moth, but she lacks the hindwings. she left her hat upstairs today, so her feathery antennae are are free to bob about above her blonde hair. Other than that, she wears some odd looking overalls and of to one side is an array various carving tools made for people her size by people her size.

Looking up from her notes, she eyeballs the ivory monster taking shape from the tusk that is nearly as tall as she is. She picks up a tool from the table and makes a refinement to some detail on the monster, then goes back to studying her notes.

Opposite the monster is a tall milkshake glass, containing what appear to be a chocolate milkshake, topped off with whipped cream. Those close enough might smell the whiskey in it.

Come say hi. Or, you may gawk.

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Sitting on another table is a man reading a newspaper, paying more attention to what's written on the page than the soup in front of him. He absentmindedly plays in the spoon in his hand until he drops it onto the floor, making a loud metallic clatter.

As he picks it up, he notices the piece of ivory on another table. Since when did someone leave such a valuable thing unattended? At least, that's what he thinks after seeing the milkshake glass beside it. If someone thought to steal it, the other patrons might not be paying attention. That's why Duster decides to walk over there and inspect the ivory: he can have a better look at it and watch over it while its owner gets back.

Leaving the paper and soup behind him, he rhythmically limps over, realizing that the bit of ivory is actually a statue in the process of being completed. Walking up to it, he finally notices a tiny...moth?...sitting next to it. His first instinct would be to leave it alone, but then he notices it using the tools.

"Oh! Sorry." Does he look strange talking to a moth? "Is this all yours?"

Tiny human, huge moth. Eh.

She looks up at the human. "Yes, it's mine. I am carving out a statue of a muspah from a muspah tooth. I hope it looks right, the description I got isn't very specific, but then again, making detailed observations of such creatures isn't easy, I imagine."

It certainly is a fearsome creature that is emerging from the tusk. It is some sort of armored, tusked, and horned serpent with four limbs which are obviously not for locomotion. They are more like a praying mantis's forelimbs than anything else.

"I am Fairy Fixit by the way." She takes a sip of the milkshake from the bent straw in it. "How does it look to you?"

Duster has no idea was a muspah is, but he gets a good idea from the carving. "It looks like some soft of chimera, actually. Did they also make them in your world?" He asks without taking his eyes off of the statue. It's very tempting to just pick it up and observe it in a different light, but he'd rather not incur the wrath of a creature he knows nothing about.

He finally looks up when Fairy Fixit introduces herself. "I'm Duster." Is he mistaken, or is there a faint smell of alcohol coming from the milkshake? Why would you combine the two?

He takes a moment to observe the carving again. "You're a really good artist, if you made it all by yourself. Where did you even get material like this?"

"Oh, thank you!" She says with a smile. "I don't have much time for art at home, but here I have all the time in the world."

"Chimera isn't a world I have heard for a long time, but I do suppose they are made. They are nightmares reportedly, dreamed by an elder god while she was asleep." She shudders in disgust. "No one should have that kind of power. Ugh."

She sips at the milkshake again. "Someone I know has been traveling to the world were these things keep popping into existence. They where nice enough to ask if I could use a teeth from one of these creatures. I wasn't sure at first, but since they are physical nightmares, maybe the teeth were special so I decided to ask for one so I could examine it. I could have been more scientific about carving up this tooth but this is more fun."

She points out one of the tusks coming out out the statue's very odd mouth. "The tooth I am working on is actually one of these big tusks."

Yeah, that's definitely alcohol in that milkshake.

"I thought chimeras were manmade? The Pigmask army puts together an animal with another animal or weapon in the lab, and then they release it into the wild." Imagine how difficult life would have been if Porky could just wish those creatures in existence.

He leaned closer to the carving, and now he could see that Fairy Fixit looked less like a moth and more like a tiny human with moth wings and antennae. And really huge eyes.

"See, the tusks are maybe from a hippo, while the body's from a snake. Those legs look like a mantis' though, but I guess it's possible to have used three animals." And to be honest, it's deeply unsettling how someone could have sewn this creature together.

"Manmade?" she asks, then thinks. "Oh! That reminds me of a story my friend told me about a tower down on his planet. Some alchemists were putting together animals there until my friend chased them off. There where odd things like spider -sardines crawling about the place."

Spider-fish, spider-fish, does whatever a spider-fish does.

"I suppose muspahs could have been made that way, though the animals would have to be native to that planet. My friend said it was pretty barren, but then exploring the whole planet would be dangerous. Just exploring the little bit where the muspah and nihil were sounded dangerous enough."

She stops for a bit, but then says, "The nihils probably fit the definition of a chimera! They are not man-made, though," she has been around humans long enough to know that they substitute man for human often, "and they are made of four creatures: Avainsie, Vampire, Icyene, and Demon."

Made by another stinking god. But this one was awake and had to go through a tremendous effort to do what he did. That still doesn't make what he did good.

Alchemists? Are those what they call the scientists that created the chimeras?

"Maybe the alchemists in that world made so many chimeras, they used up all of the animals. That might be why it was so barren by the time your friend got there.

"Natural chimeras? How were they put together, then? ...And what's an avansie and icyene?"

"No, not natural, it was another god," she says, annoyed. "They have their ways of doing such things. It isn't natural at all though."

The subject of gods and whether what they do is natural is a sore one.

But, aviansie and icyene aren't created. They are a happier subject, at least. "Well, we call the aviansie that because the are basically birds with arms," and to demonstrate she flails her own arms about. "Icyene look like really tall humans with bird wings. They are migratory too. I have heard some people call them angels before."

"But don't gods just exist in the past? Or just wait until we need them again?" Or maybe...

"Did that god wake up for a while and create those things? Because combining four different creatures sounds really complicated especially if they're something like vampires. You have real vampires where you're from?"

She sighs, especially at the ideas of gods helping. "I'll have to explain about my world."

"I and others of my kind live on a moon, Zanaris, which orbits a planet called Gielinor. Very long ago, there were many gods who had come to Gielinor for some reason or another, and they warred with each other and made their worshipers fight each other. Well, except one, who had befriended us fairies as even further back in time and brought humans and dwarves and gnomes and elves to Gielinor. He didn't want to be worshiped, he didn't want to be a god, but he saw that some of us and some of those creatures he had brought to Gielinor did treat him as a god and not as a friend, and he blamed himself. He resolved to sleep and hide himself away from the world and he asked his lover, Seren, to do the same so that she would be forgotten to an not worshipped as a goddess. But Seren, who had convinced the elves to follow Guthix to Gielinor, loved her elves too much and the elves loved her too much. She refused to leave them."

"Guthix slept and stayed hidden, even after Seren's brother found Gielinor and waged war, conquering most of the main continent. Even after he was overthown, and lesser gods fought over the lands he had conquered. Even while those who refused to forget Guthix as a god, or even as a friend, begged him to wake up. It wasn't until one god, fearing for his life, destroyed a large portion of the main continent that Guthix woke up. He banished the other gods from both Gielinor and Zanaris and again asked the inhabitants of Gielinor and Zanaris, even those brought there by the other gods, among which were the vampires, icyene, demons, and aviasie, to forget him and the others. But he wasn't powerful enough to banish himself, or Seren, or her brother, should he ever come back. Again he asked her to hide and be forgotten. She couldn't, but she knew some of what he said about how harmful the presence of gods was to mortals was right. She shattered herself to pieces so that she could be with her elves but not as their goddess. Guthix hid himself from the world again, weeping, and left in place the barrier he had erected against the gods."

"He still wasn't forgotten. And he thought himself a hypocrite. He let himself be killed by zealots wishing to bring their own gods back. The barrier fell, and the gods came back. They have already started warring with each other again."

She turns to the milkshake and drains a substantial bit of it.

"The nihils were created by a god," she continues. "Seren's brother, after he was starting to grow weary of being worshiped too. Maybe he was trying to make up for all that he had done by trying to save one species from becoming extinct after he had promised to help them if they fought for him. But he only created another warmachine."

"Gods don't help. They hurt. I don't even know if I hate Guthix because it was his dying wish or if... No one should have that much power," she adds, full of melancholy.

Duster is quiet listening to the story, and doesn't say anything when the fairy is finished. He pulls a chair over and sits on the side Fairy Fixit is working on and says nothing.

Did Tazmily have any creation stories? No, nothing as detailed as this. And usually, it was humans that did all of the world destruction, and even if it was the Dark Dragon, it was because a human made it do so.

His voice breaks the silence. "It sounds like the gods in your world are a lot more like humans than powerful forces. They go to war with each other, they ruin the world for their own reasons." He remembers Porky. "Or no reason at all."

He pokes at one of the tools on the table. "Back in Tazmily, we didn't have any legends like that, like when the Dark Dragon and the Bird of Light created the world, or whatever. All we knew was that these two figures were important, that's all. Later, we learned that the Dark Dragon was real, but asleep thanks to the guardians of the islands.

"Depending on who pulled the seven Needles restraining it, the Dragon could destroy the world or fix it. That's what Lucas did back home. And-"

He stops himself, only because this thoughts overwhelm his speech. To think that an engraving that he overlooked in the sanctuary would become the ominous goal looming over his and his friends' adventures.

"Well, a lot of the gods were mortal once; a lot still care about the same things and think the same ways as they used to. But even those who weren't - things can happen, mistakes can be made, plans go wrong. And what happens when a perfect god stops being perfect? What happens while an imperfect god learns to be perfect and fails over and over again?"

"What happens if someone bad awakens that Dark Dragon?" She shakes her head. "It's not good."

The only problem with her line of thought she can see is that line between too powerful and not. Who gets to draw it?

"The heart of the person who pulls the Needles gets passed onto the Dark Dragon," Duster recites from memory. "Lucas and...one other person did so. I know Lucas is a good kid, and he only wanted to pull the needles so that the Pigmask Army wouldn't get the majority of them.

"The other person who could pull the needles didn't really have a heart, kind of. He was a puppet controlled by King P, and I think that meant that he passed down nothingness to the Dragon. The last time I saw my world, it was being destroyed by the Dark Dragon, but Lucas says that because of his influence, the world might be reborn."

It takes effort for Duster to say all this, the uncertainty of the last sentence clear in his voice.

"Who knows if the Dragon was someone else in the past? I never asked."

"Oh, that Dark Dragon."

A really guilty look crosses her face.

"I wish you hadn't told me that. Lucas does seem like a good kid. And treating him and the Dark Dragon as normal people really seemed to help him out. He told me everyone else here who found out about the Dark Dragon was really scared and concerned for him. But... I don't know, however good he is... I don't know if I can treat Lucas as a world-ending accident waiting to happen now. But becoming just another person who avoids him might be the wrong thing to do, too."

She crosses her arms and looks down at the table, frowning. She hates not knowing what to do.

"You knew about that?"

Did Lucas really tell so many people about what happened? Or is it just public knowledge that the Dark Dragon can talk with Lucas and other psychic people?

"I believe in Lucas, I honestly do! And it would hurt him even more if you avoided him. He said that he and the Dragon are working on creating a new world while they're here. And it's not his fault that the Dragon destroyed the world first! I think it's because of this brother's heart, really."

Wait.

Did he just say all that?

"Well, it seemed that the Dark Dragon was still learning to not spook people. But the other person was Lucas's brother?" she asks, concerned.

Now she really feels guilty.

"Yeah, it scared me a bit when it talked into my head at first, but I guess that's what happens when a powerful being talks to us."

Guilt spreads across Duster's face as well. "Sort of. He-he wasn't himself, though. He was being controlled by the Pigmask army to pulls the Needles, since he and Lucas were the only ones with the ability. But it wasn't really him, if you understand. He didn't have any thoughts or desires of his own, as a robot.

"That's why they said that his heart only passed down nothingness."

"Ah, yes, I understand. What an unfortunate pair of worlds we come from, right?" she says with a half-hearted chuckle.

Duster shrugs.

"My world was okay, before the Pigmasks came, anyway. But then we learned that everyone in Tazmily escaped from a world they and other humans destroyed, so I guess it was doomed anyway."

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