To be announced

Title: A Real Wind
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: PG
Content: It's just a dream. Why let it guide you?
Disclaimer: This is fanfic. You should read the original books. They're good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

14.

A Real Wind

It took nearly two units to get out of Limbo. But that wasn't what I knew first.

First, I knew music.

It started like a wind and crackled all the hairs up my back, just this unified sound that made me think of the thickness of jade trees, so solid it was, and then it-split into a dozen ribbons, each carrying a tone, an undulating movement of sound and as they split I realized that this worldless glory came from human throats – the sound of people singing, No upper-tonal, no accompaniment, only the glorious inaccuracies of voices. The sun rose in my chest, or on it, a loving blade pierced me even as I tried to see myself, see the people who sang

but all there was around me was the light, and I reached even as I turned away and knew whose arms I fell into, knew the waves that my fingers wove through, and the oddly stretched and pocked skin across his cheek even as my lips brushed it and the voices rose, spiralling into mourning and exultation both...

Do you dream when you are dead?

For I had died, and I did dream. I think I was sick, and a woman, and bent over - what? plants, in the earth. I was pulling them up, pale yellow root and all, laying them in a basket. Brown skin stretched over bones in my hands, cords standing out, black lined fingernails. The skin was lined and creased and filthy.

A wild animal with goggling gray eyes bounded forward, tiptoed around me, sniffing - at the basket, probably. I said "Attlevey, dear monster," and gave it a root. The Gray-eyes nibbled it delicately as I sat down in the earth, and then lay back in a row between plants to soothe my aching spine.

I ached everywhere, in all the joints of my hands, my shoulders. But I wasn't moaning about how drumdik it all was. Instead I looked up at the dome of the sky and smiled. The real sky, I realized, riding behind my dream's perception. Not a dome. And then--

"Are you getting old, ooma?"

"Of course I am," I said, and sat up to smile at he who addressed me, he who made my heart - not leap, but glow with contentment, to look upon his face--

his face--

And then the light again, the expulsion of gel from my lungs and throat as I coughed and fought upward, to the light, the light...

Cold, gradually warming. I awoke; I resurrected.

The Limbo Tub.

“This has to stop, you know,” the Q-R said, even as I rose gasping from the gelled waters of the tub. “We simply can't go on with this sort of behaviour. It's dangerous—and in very poor taste,” and it made that last sound like the crime, and not the other.

The music—the singing—gone. A dream. Another dream.

“Mm,” I agreed, and flashed my response wires at him. “May I have my tablet now? I won't be a minute.”

“In a moment,” the Q-R replied. “We would like to know what would stop you from performing suicides in this fashion. Why do you do it?”

“I wanted a different body. Take a look at my records—I did request a body change, and was denied.”

“You'd only left Limbo three meals previous to your request!”

“And before that, I hadn't suicided—or even requested a body change-- in vreks,” I said. “But that didn't matter. You refused me anyway, and told me to wait thirty units. So I tried it your way, but I wanted to change and knew I couldn't, so I suicided because you have to give me a new body that way.”

“And what is your explanation for this episode?”

“I realized that I didn't actually want a female body after all,” I said. “I took up new activities as a male, activities suitable for the male form. It didn't occur to me that I would miss them as much as I did. But the restrictions--”

“Are there for a reason,” the Q-R interrupted. “and you're defying them to suit your own wants.”

“And why shouldn't I?” I shouted at the Q-R. “You can rattle and click all you want about how costly changing bodies is, the resources wasted, the effort that goes into sculpting my form into the design I want. But the committee mandate is that I can change my body every thirty units by request. I don't even have to pay! And you--”

“We judged those guidelines for efficiency--”

“Don't interrupt me, vixaxn you!” I roared, rising up from the gel tank. “You asked me why I've suicided three times in less than thirty units and you also asked me what would stop me from doing it, so if you want the answer, you will SHUT UP!”

The Q-R opened its mouth, closed it again.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now I haven't changed my body in vreks. Long enough that the way I see it, I have saved the cities energy and expense to the tune of forty mandated by right body changes that I wouldn't even have to pay for. We'll agree that before that, I overstepped my quota somewhat with suicide driven changes, but I would not have suicided if I could have just walked up to limbo and said, “Attlevey, my oomas. I fancy antennae this time,” and you would have jollied me along to a design cabinet and kindly slipped me a bill if it was between thirty unit periods. And you would do that, if you weren't all a passel of controlling promoks. So here it is.

“You owe me thirty bodies. Not negotiable!” I snapped, as the Q-R opened its mouth again. “If I walk in here with a whim to change the shape of my graks before thirty units from today, you will do the design without charge. If I want a change in thirty units or more, it doesn't subtract from the bodies you owe me. And this will continue until my thirty extra bodies are used up.

“After that, if I want a change between thirty unit periods, I will pay. Do that, and I won't have any reason to fling myself from high places. Extend that to some of the more notorious Jang, and they'll probably agree with only an ornament of complaint.

“Then you'll only be left with the problem of the abnormal and maladjusted.”

“Really,” the Q-R murmured, carefully blanking any trace of irony from its face. “And this body that you are about to receive?”

“Doesn't count toward my thirty,” I pointed out. “If this agreement was already in place, I would have just come in.”

.o.O.o.

Victory on all counts, save one—I had to agree to stay in Limbo overnight, and they'd already delayed re-activation to examine me. I wondered, uncomfortably, about my dreams—I dreamed in Limbo before, about a storm, and purple flowers, and--

I jolted upright from my gel couch, arms and legs a-gangle. The rapier fighter. I'd dreamed of him that first time, in the tub, before I'd ever seen the mini-holo at Junaya's party. It was him. It had been him. They had exiled him to the desert. That's where I had been, in the dream of my death, in the visions between.

(except, his face)

I had known him--The me that I was before, it had to be that – but Personality Dissolution, it's supposed to wipe out everything, I couldn't—shouldn't remember it, if I actually remembered it...

They'd exiled him to the desert. How could I remember him in the desert? He died out there alone... out there, where he could see the sky—no. It was just a dream.

But who dreams, in Limbo? Who dreams, in death?

I hugged myself, bent over my curled and clutching arms, and wished I was a woman, wished I could dash to someone with this sick trembling horror and have it accepted, to be embraced, to have the care shushed from my brow with soft lips and a tender hand.

Instead, I went to the medi-dispenser and drank a brimming, tiny glass of Ecstasy.

The glow was only beginning to melt my limbs when I punched the override for a second, and that glass fell among discarded leggings and meshweave tunic, perhaps rolled under sandals, forgotten as I flung myself on on of the couches (cream and silver, now, limned in cobalt) and fell into quite another dream, one that guided my hands and hips and made me imagine that Saz was there and watching, floating above me half glimpsed in delerium.

“I wish it was you,” I whispered to the vision. “I want it to be you, derisann ooma, but I don't know how--”

and the vision of Saz faded as I set my mind to imagining how—all of those things we Jang do on the marriage couch before getting to the business of having love, of course, and I imagined Saz's hands and mouth and tried to think of how it would feel on the male body under my hands, its pleasures unlike the woman that I usually was. I had to know, and i would. When he saw me, he would understand what I had done, and why, and then we would

.o.O.o.

I awoke in an exhausted heap, and limped into my bathing bubble. Really, I had to stop this. Ecstacy is of course perfectly safe, but there is such a thing as overdoing, and I was stiff, sore, achey, near trembling with hunger. I took a meal injection and first meal, selecting roasted rootplant and a nut-steak, which bore little resemblance to the toasted angel-food that served as the customary Jang first meal. Actually, I had no idea if it was time for first meal, or if I was right in step. Silver-water cordial helped to steady the pain in my head and calm me before I had any chance to be agitated, though the idea of going through any agitation seemed too, too exhausting. I flung one arm over my eyes while I sprawled on a gel-couch and listened to messages.

There were piles of them. Junaya, reporting that Fisk had gone into hysterics when she realized that I'd leapt from Blue Sky and smashed myself to bits, inconsolable even though I couldn't die, not really, not when Limbo was right there to scoop up my body and transfer the soul-spark that was me into a sculptable form. Fisk was currently in Sense Distortion, having a committee designated adjustment emergency. Oh, Fisk. It never occurred to me to think that she would be so upset. I stopped listening to my queue to send her a message right away, apologizing to her and inviting her to come to me right away if she wanted to talk about it.

Even Dammick, who popped into being long enough to say that he had indeed been involved with another circle, but had heard about the suicide from Blue Sky, and was shocked to discover that it had been me. “And so I'm afraid we'll have to cut ties, ooma. It's not like we hadn't seen it coming, anyway.”

Forgive me if I don't cry, Dammick. Really, what a thralldrap.

Then Bel, flashing in to say that she'd once had a problem like mine (ha) and that she had found much more balance by going to see this glar who recommended an intensive of meditation, contemplation and yet more Sense Distortion, including a diet that avoided the usual Jang custom of gobbling down drug-laden sweets. “At the very least, here's a program of upper-tonal that we used for the meditation, ooma, that's the main part of the program. You're not the first to fling herself against the unlikely--and if you had gotten what you wanted, it might have been even worse, after.”

Well, well. I figured I had a very good idea what caused Bel to go join an older Person health cult, and she meant me to know, and—sympathised. Groshing of her. I kept the attached upper-tonal; it might help me kick the Ecstacy binge habit.

Then came a message from Argent, inviting me to stay with him and Junaya for a while if I didn't want to be alone, but even if I was all right would I please contact them so we could all share a meal together, and if I wanted we would all go air-skating together, since Junaya had learned about his windmilling beginner ploy and had been charmed instead of outraged.

I stopped the messages again and signalled Argent, guessing that he and Junaya were together. They were. “Attlevey,” I said gaily. “So! You're all worried about me.”

“Argent tells me that—well, ooma, it's not the first time someone decided they—oh, onk.”

“Have an unrequited swoon for Saz, I'm guessing. But they don't all shatter beyond recovery, do they?”

“Bel talked to you,” Argent guessed.

“Bel did,” I confirmed. “She was helpful. Gave me an upper-tonal tape and told me to quit drugs. Anyway, I just had an absolutely groaning meal, but I'll be glad to go air-skating so you can fuss over me and make sure I'm all right.” Oh, I was jolly, and I was, actually. I'd no idea that my circle would gather around me the way that they had. “Do you know when Fisk is out of Sense Distortion?”

“She's probably out in two or three units,” Junaya said. “She went quite zaradann, you know. She'd gotten up to follow you, since you'd left quite suddenly, and so she saw the whole thing.”

I sat, appalled. “Farathoom,” I whispered. “That's awful. I'm completely drumdik. What a miserable floopy thing for me to do.”

“Why did you, ooma?”

I shrugged. “No reason to stay female, since Saz turned me down. I've been having fun, male. I just never thought--”

“You never do, ooma. Come meet us.”

.o.O.o.

Another peculiarity of mine versus other Jang - I walk, most places. I have a bird-plane, but I generally leave it unless i'm going to have a lot of things to carry. I liked crowds, I like to watch the people milling about, and it never looks obvious when you take a detour if you're just wandering about--

Oh, stuff it. Saz wasn't at Ilex Park.

I had been weaving through a bunch of older people on their way to pointless busywork or familiar pleasure (close to the History Tower, how strange) when I'd heard tinkling laughter. Laughter I knew, laughter that drew my gaze behind me to look on a body I knew...

For it had been mine, twenty-nine units ago.

My body, now dressed in Kina's tics of gesture and her significant preference for paleness. My variation on the Astarte body type, released from rights of originality five units after I'd leapt from the Crystal Promenade.

I speak blithely of the fabulous gems I wear and of House as my own, but it's a polite fiction. I never stop paying for House, so I don't own it, and luxury is easily recycled as well as plentiful. The only thing that we can possess is the appearance of the body we inhabit - and after we give it up, either by changing or suiciding, the design goes to the Archives for anyone to adopt once the five units are up. Still, it's considered good form to deviate. Plenty of people do it. Most don't have the patience to design a good body.

That being said, Kina copying an old body of mine made her intentions screaming plain.


She threw her arms around me as I stared in nonplussed shock. "She tried to tell me you'd changed, just to make me tosky. The promok just can't leave anything alone... where are you going, ooma?"

Lie. "The Adventure Palace, or the Dream Rooms. I hadn't decided."

"Well, I haven't had first meal. You should take me, and then - you didn't have anything booked, did you? We could marry. Usually when we do it when we're the other way 'round--"

"No," I said.

"Well, I did say usually, ooma," Kina pouted, twirling one lilac mist lock around her finger. Her nails were enameled to match. "But it worked out all right the last time we--"

"No," I said again.

"Well, I was trying to be polite about it," she grouched, "but it's obvious to me that you're not over this male phase just yet, so I went ahead and switched. It'll be all right. We'll try it for a unit--"

"No," I repeated.

"Longer?"

"Quit being a promok," I said. "Kina. I don't want to marry you."

Rude, but effective. I left her gaping after me in the street, and barrelled on to the History Tower. Fisk, Kina'd been talking about Fisk. Not a word about the crisis that sent Fisk into Sense Distortion; either she didn't know, or didn't know why and just didn't care.

And Saz wasn't at the History Tower, either. Farathoom.

They said no more about Fisk, and for that I was grateful though it didn't soothe my embarrassment to nothing. I nibbled the burning fruit and salad-on-ice through Junaya and Argent's meal, which they took rather briskly since I was already fed, and we went on to air skating. But their togetherness and their consideration wore on me, so I pleaded fatigue and left them.

They did help, honestly. It was just that I had other things on my mind. Where had he gone?

.o.O.o.

Home had another unpleasant surprise. My Q-R guardian awaited me, its expression programmed into a grave sympathy.

"We have not had a talk, lately," it said.

"I've been busy," I said, and made for the indigo garden. It followed.

"You have. But you have also--your suiciding behaviour, it's a concern. You hadn't in so long, and suddenly you're jumping off of everything. It's time we had a session - past time. please sit down," my guardian asked.

There's nothing for it. You can't drive a Q-R guardian off if it really wants to talk to you. And mine did - back in my hypno school days my guardian spoke to me every unit, playing sixth dimensional puzzle cube games and asking questions while I was diverted. I realized vreks ago that it was analyzing me, monitoring my mental state.

I couldn't afford this. Not with Saz's secret on the line. "I was angry," I said. "You remember when I used to change a lot, I used to force changes because I wanted to try new designs? Vreks ago. I'd suicide and come back with a whole new body or just a variant on a body until I finally settled in to exactly what I wanted, when the art was complete." I shrugged. "I wanted a skin I was comfortable in."

"You're saying this rash of suicides has been in answer to an urge of artistic creativity?" My Q-R looked like it didn't quite know whether to buy this or not.

"Well, it's not like I have a lot of outlets for that sort of thing," I said. "Artistic jobs are for Older People. I'm Jang, and I have this desire in me that isn't recognized in my stage. One day, I might make picture-vision or create sculptures, but for now all I can do, all I can create is myself." I cast my lashes downward, opened my hands in a presenting gesture.

"I see," my guardian said. "Do you want a job, then?"

"What? No," I said. "That's for Older People. I'm Jang," I repeated. "I just want to make something from my imagination real."

"I'll talk to the committee," my guardian said. "There must be something you can do."

"Without putting an Older Person out of a job," I said. "I don't want to disrupt the fabric of society. I just want to make things. That's all."

My guardian smiled. "I'll let them know that's important to you."

I got the hell out of Home but fast.

Title: Clouds and Secrets, Part 1
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: PG
Content: no good idea goes unpunished, so imagine what happens when you go off on impulse...
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

13.

Clouds and Secrets, Part 1

"Enter previous design, change body type: Isis," I said, and examined the base design long and thoroughly, adapting and adjusting to just the right lengthening of the legs, a little more curve to the lips, and a touch more fierceness to the cheekbones. Groshing! I got into it right away and sang a little of a new Jang love-song while waiting for the flyer, experimenting with standing on one leg, then the other.

The right seemed a touch weak.

I got off at Jade Tower and spent a little more time picking out a set of ten rings, opting for thin bands of gold, and paid - oh, how I paid! Laughing, praising, clapping my hands and so forth, and I swayed my way towards Home.

"Attlevey," a handsome male said to me.

"Attlevey," I said, and sidestepped. It was nice to know that I'd designed another derisann body, even though I wasn't at all on the market...

"Messages for you," my Q-R guardian chirped, and I kicked off my sandals and sank into the white furred floor. I let them follow me around the house as I rifled through the wardrobe, looking for better clothes than Limbo's.

I discarded a soft rose satin of glass tunic as Junaya called to make sure I was all right. Then Fisk, as I discarded the sapphire, violet, and black smoke gowns - inviting me to go somewhere, the location more spectacular and expensive every time she called back. Oh, Fisk. My circle and Saz's looked to meld, but circles tend to not go much higher than a half-dozen or so, and there'd be Jang in tears sooner or later. She was scared of being cut out. Dammik would probably evaporate without even noticing - where was Dammik, anyway? Had he even been at Junaya's party?

I didn't have time to signal him, though, not with what I had planned for Saz...

A message from a strange female waited patiently for Fisk's exhortations to please call her back, while I tossed gowns on the floor. Not the scarlet. Bronze silk of air? No. Silver-water crochet? No. White cloud of gauze?

I held it up to my bosom, studying it and the strange female. Wait... midnight sky hair, Opal dawn eyes... not a strange female, precisely. She was at Junaya's party and flitted from me to that floop Yana like one of the gem-wings that romped in the garden. Now on the prowl for me?

Too late, ooma, I thought, and then the graceful female started speaking.

I laughed aloud until I wiped my eyes. "Much too late."

I held the white cloud of gauze gown up again. It screamed my intentions, but...
The newly female Kina's message was coming to an end, and I caught a flash - Saz had also called, but he hadn't left a message.

Cloud of gauze it is, then. He'd know me. I'd designed the body that way on purpose - a feminine version of my last body, with slim curved strength. He'd be at Ilex Park. I would meet him there, and he would know me, and he would know why, and we would waste no time--

Wait should I bring a picnic? Or perhaps ask him to dine at Blue Sky - he might be hungry. Or he could decide to whet his appetite on me. A dozen layers of fabric scraped to a thin film floated to the floor, only the tips of amethyst enameled toes peeked out. Too dark? What if he hadn't got his rings? We could buy more.


I wittered until I'd taken a silver-water cordial, but it didn't settle my nerves. Walking helped, though, and so I eschewed the slidewalks and waterways in favour of the Jade-treed paths that wound all through Four-BEE, a web of paths that bound us all in useless leisure...

Yes, ooma. Resent them. It's as fine a distraction as any.

Males admired me as I practiced my gliding, string-of-pearls walk in towering golden sandals, letting the cloud of gauze gown flirt with the dome-generated breeze, heavy agate beads in my hair beating a tattoo against my thighs and calves. I swayed past their attleveys and antics, mysterious, distracted...

Followed.

I pretended delight at a flower-wing, and flung up a (bare-fingered) hand. The tiny android insect obediently lighted on my fingers. It was green as a new leaf on the underside, metal-blue sky on the other, shot with black stripes and lilac-violet spots like eyes on its three-tailed wings. Groshing tiny thing, made to decorate the world.

I swept a curtain of braids away from my left shoulder and snuck a glimpse behind me as I hefted it back into the air.

Five Jang males packed behind me in a flying wedges, the flanks trailing the most insumatt male. Honestly, he was derisann--tall, with the slightest pearled tinge to porcelain skin, slim and muscled--marvelous specimen. Violet-black hair, Lilac eyes, and girdled in an amethyst mesh kilt belted with ambers.

What a waste. Fisk should have been here to console his rejected heart. Or Kina - I grinned at that thought, shattering what mystique I'd been carrying.

An Older Person - quite soolka, really - looked at me, past me, and at me again, smiling indulgently. Probably thinking fondly of the old Jang days of courtship and chase. I smiled back, and this thread of the park-web anchored into the dueling greensward of Ilex Park. Stupid to call it a greensward when the grass was purple. The blades bent under my sandals, crushed stems releasing lemon perfume. My own (microscopic) garden smelled of violets and the blades were scarlet - not expansive enough to be called a greensward, whatever the colour--

Onk. I'm babbling to myself. Get a grip on your graks, you promok--whoops, don't have them any more, ha, ha...

And there was Saz, dueling.

My body pounded as if I had just fought, had leapt from Junaya's waterfall once more, from the ziggurat of the Zeefar Monument. Saz, ooma-kasma derisann Saz, twinned blades whirling as he grinned. His opponent moved fast enough with only one and a small shield, dancing as light footed as my mad fencing glare. I edged forward through the watching circle.

Saz's partner wore his hair short, exchanged glamorous height for speed and agility, steady-footed strength and nimble steps. He'd slitted eyes like a dragon's his skin bronze and dappled nearly like scales, his hair a shade lighter than that. He'd designed his nose to look broke, jutting like an arrogant cliff. Better than beautiful, he was interesting.

He led with his shield, I realized. The shorter male thrust it outward when he wanted to advance, but didn't carry his leg forward until after the shield was where he wanted his body. I would have exploited it already, and if I noticed, Saz was only politely ignoring it until he wanted to end the bout.

The pair in front of me parted; I stepped in the gap. A breeze caught my gown and lifted the hem in kissing fingers. That didn't distract Saz; he'd look at the flowing distraction when he had time for it.

And when he did, he recognized me.

He stared until his opponent managed to set off the array to his right arm, rendering it useless. The crowd gasped, and applauded this upset, glancing round to see what distracted him, found me. By the time they turned their stares back Saz had had enough. He stepped into that shield gap and knocked his good blade straight into his opponent's "heart."

Broken Nose's harness twitched his nerves and sent him to the lemon-scented grass, and only then did I remember - it was right here that someone died, rorls upon rorlsago.

The crowd roared for Saz. Saz stared at me until my smile wilted into discomfort. What was wrong?

But as soon as the win registered, Saz's arm sprang to life and he helped his foe up, clasping wrists with him before walking over to me.

The anxiety I had nursed on silver-water cordial woke up and wailed in my belly. I tried to read his emotions on half his face - the left half masked in gold today, the surface of it engraved in whorls.

He came to me and kept coming until I had to tilt my head back to see him. He said nothing, content to examine me.

What could I--

He settled his hands on my shoulders. I'd thought this body strong? Farathoom, what a fool.

"You got a new body."

"Hours old," I said, "but the right foot's unacceptably weak."

He threw back his head and laughed. Mirth melted the fear in my gut, and it growled.

We nearly bashed our heads together, glancing down. But then...

"Me too," he said.

More? Yes, ooma. Clouds and Secrets, Part 2

Title: Gemwings among Orchids, Part 1
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: PG
Content: Parties in books are never successful - anyone ever notice that?
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

12.

Gemwings among Orchids, Part 1

Junaya throws groshing parties. Actually they're so popular that she doesn't flash or announce them - she picks a partner to host a party with her and they each tell one person, and let the wandering tracks of rumour do it for them.

I hosted a party with her once, but I can't ever remember her doing it with someone she'd married. Obviously sharing ten rings with Argent was insumatt. There could be twelve people there, or thousands - it wouldn't do to underestimate.

So I spent between second and fourth meal stealing jewellery and ornaments-I managed to steal a filigreed groin-shield, and I'm afraid there was no stopping my larceny after that, and then I settled down to a five course feast in Blue Sky, since I'd missed so many meals - good solid nut steak and toasted potato root flavoured with some kind of green herb and spicy oil, and soufflé--light as clouds, lightly spiced, and oily with melted rella. I'd be dumping Joyousness on that by evening, so I ate generously, resting between courses to eat a little more. I practically waddled off the platform, and glided back to House.

I should have checked the recluse switch, but I really was too busy looking at all the changes to House - I wandered this way and that, eyeing every single shade of the colour change (I know the renovators use computers to make sure everything coordinates correctly, but I still have to judge it with my own flawed optics) and scuffing my bare feet through the new carpets when Fisk appeared, standing right in the middle of the bath-room where I had been drawing up a bath.

"Going somewhere tonight?" she asked, eyeing the heap of jewels on the counter. Really, what a question. Junaya's giving a party - of course I'm going somewhere tonight. But her image looked faintly disappointed, with that you're the sixth person I've tried expression.

"Of course I am, you promok," I said breezily, dropping my robe and getting in the bath. Fisk leered, but it was just for show. "Junaya's giving a party tonight."

Her image flinched. "No one told me."

"I just told you," I said, just a little exasperated. "I only found out this morning, myself."

"Who's helping her?"

I selected scents from the bathing array. Honey, and osmanthus, rose, and…too feminine. "Argent." I touched on vetiver smoke, considered patchouli.

"What? Farathoom, what a floop-show. She's hosting a party with someone out-circle?"

"Her husband," I pointed out, and let the bath massage my limbs with scented oil. "and that out-circle is looking to become in-circle."

"Yes, I know you've made friends with that half-masked male," Fisk grumbled. "And Kina came round blabbing about lightswords and the Adventure Palace. All so groshingly cozy."

"Have you met any of them yet?" I asked, as the bath wound heated linen over my oiled flesh.

"No."

"You'll like Bel, I think." Or hate her, since Bel had a nasty streak to match Fisk any unit of the vrek.

"How many Jang will be there?"

"Who knows? The only thing we know is that the Jang who weren't there will kick themselves for not being there when they hear about it in the morning." The bath smoothed massaging fingers over my brow, and Fisk was interfering with my calming vetiver treatment. "So put on your best jewels and I'll see you tonight."

I disengaged the call and ordered the recluse switch.

*

The first room I walked into at Junaya's house had a violet floor; I caught glimpses of it between the bodies. Nude, half dressed, re-dressed, writhing and rolling together in the center, not knowing who was touching who and not caring. on the edges, people rested in pairs and trios, smoking and watching the flesh before them.

One of them looked at me.

"Junaya and her friends are downstairs, dear," the male said.

"Onk, silly me." I backed out of the threshold, pressing cool hands to my face. Junaya's makers were giving a party too, apparently, an orgy that was the core of the private celebrations of Older People. All that crawling around on the floor and all of them unmarried... it was more than a little kinky to me. Did all Older People do that? Better to stay Jang.

I padded down the stairway to the lower floor, and got halfway down before upper-tonal drilled between my ears. I giggled and bent over the railing, peering at the crowd of groshing Jang, enamelled and bejewelled in their finest, swaying to music and laughter, drinks clasped in their pretty paws, some of them apologetically licking spilled droplets off a handsome or beautiful shoulder.

The ecstasy, apparently, had been layered pretty thick in the wine. I burbled with mirth as I slid down the railing, caught up a goblet brimmed with sapphire wine and quaffed half of it at a go before raising it in salute to the crowd. Many of the females recognized me and raised theirs back. Most of the males I saw were lightsword fighters, and shunned or nodded, depending on their affiliation.

I crossed through that room and went out into the garden dome, relieved of the pressure of upper-ear hilarity. Junaya and Argent were holding court, seated on a garden bench within the halo of gemwings, painted to glow blue or green or golden, chasing each other in puzzlement and attraction. I gasped like a child to see them rioting among the orchid-trees, lighting occasionally on someone's hair - the Jang had made a game of it, and the one who had a gemwing land was usually promptly kissed by a nearby observer, to gather up some of their luck.

A Jang girl in cloud-pink and sunrise bronze offered me a tray of sweets, and I took it from her. She selected a few niceties and walked away, leaving me with the burden. No Q-R servants, then? I moved through the crowd, hoping to catch someone's eye so they could take the tray and I could pick some of that Toasted Angelfood, and then keep my eyes down until I felt like being of service.

Fisk caught my eye, and I smiled extra-widely as I moved toward her, giving her the tray and a kiss on the cheek. "You came after all."

"I did. There's quite a crowd here, wouldn't you say? I don't know a tenth of them. Word must have really gotten around."

Farathoom, not this again. "It seems. Obviously we've got to come out of hiding more often, or else we'll miss all the news."

"I'm not glamorous enough to hide and have people wonder after me," she said, and thankfully I'd just stuffed a pine-apple cactus tart into my mouth so I didn't have to answer, just waggle my eyebrows in frowning disapproval. She waited until I'd gulped it down, and while I sipped more wine.

"There's a male over there with cinnamon hair," I murmured low, "and he's eyeing you."

"Probably he'd like something to eat," she gruffed, but turned to search for whoever it was. Really, if Fisk had been acting like this it's no wonder no one had told her about the party. Nobody likes a thralldrap.

Maybe I shouldn't have told her, either...

But I couldn't betray a circle mate like that.

I turned around, surveying the crowd for a familiar face, but this was one of those parties where every Jang in Four-BEE managed to hear about it. I made my way across the garden, dodging a gang of males who were enthusiastically shoving everyone into the serpent pool, and Jang were shrieking with glee as the current carried them to a water-fall to land in a deeper pool made up to be like a lagoon. I followed the switching pathway, inhaling the orchid-trees, mixed with the diabolical smoke scent of my bath.

"Attlevey," came a feminine voice from beneath the trees.

"Er, Attlevey," I said, and watched a moonlight pale girl slide out from the shadows. Was her hair blue? It shone blue, under the floating lights. She smiled at me and took my arm, since of course I would escort her down the path, and of course be absolutely gallant to her. Really, the fashionable mannerisms give females all sorts of advantage - they can act like they're spun of ice of crystal one second, and trounce you around the ears the next.

I certainly had taken advantage of it in the past.

I covered her hand with mine and slowed my pace to one she could navigate in a glittering sheath and gemmed sandals, the heels raised on a slender spire. The very edge of fashion, that--and her body was just groshing. She'd opted, I could see, for eyes in Opal Dawn - I approved that choice, but who could resist those eyes once they saw them in the design catalogue?

A small buffet spread on the clearing below us, and mellower Jang lounged and smoked, their clothes drying under puffs of warm air. Yana swivelled his head around, looked at me, looked at her.

"I see they got you moving again," he greeted, all bluff and hearty.

"I see your arm's working fine," I returned, smiling only slightly.

"Who's your derisann friend?" he asked, ogling her openly now.

"I met her on the path," I said.

"He was kind enough to help me get down," she said, and swayed ever so gently away from me. I slipped back as they started a circling dance of flirtation, and wound my way further down the path, away from that crowd to another, gathered around something that filled them with fascination.

"It's drumdik," one of them declared. "That you can stand around and watch that--you're zaradann, all of you. Gone completely round the point."

"It's History," one of them protested. "This really happened."

"That's what makes it so awful," the first one said.

I stepped right in the middle of this dalika and asked, "What is?"

"Here." A portable picture-vision was thrust in my hands, torpid and silver. I touched a button, and the scene sprang up and played.

Purple grass, and jade trees - Ilex park? And a duel, surrounded by a ring of watching Jang - look at their clothes, the cut, the flares around the ankles on the trousers of the males, the long nails and spangled tunics of the females - this was rorls out of date.

But I knew those trees. And I knew that circling dance.

The matchup was completely unfair. One of the males was completely enormous, wielding a gigantic axe. His opponent was slight, pale, with curling black hair, and dressed so outlandishly - so covered - that I couldn't believe it. He was a misfit, all right, first class abnormal. His weapon was a slender, light blade.

Power-Axe struck, and a line of red blossomed across Rapier's chest. I blinked. Harnesses didn't do that. But the rapier fighter took on an expression of such rage and ferocity that my hands tightened on the display table in the instant that I realized--

The rapier struck, and entered the muscular giant's body. The rapier fighter stepped back, and red dripped from his blade--

Those weapons. Were real.

I'd just watched a man killed by another. Killed by violence.

The display froze on the final tableaux - the rapier fighter, frozen in berserker's fury, the crowd, surging forward in a lust of victory, his victim, staring at his hand and the blood there as if he couldn't quite make sense of it.

"What is this?" I asked.

"That is the origin of lightsword-duels," The angry male said, "And Four-BEE's only killing, recorded by the Flash center. The winner was exiled. The loser was the star witness in his trial."

"Of course, because no one actually dies--"

But this jade-haired male would brook no interruption from a gang of apologists. "The Jang demanded that they be allowed to duel, after that, to make it legal. Nobody could really die, after all." His tone soured the first rationalization our minds had grasped, once we had seen the blood, that blade stabbed into flesh. "The Committee chose the path of lesser hypocrisy and invented the lightswords as a substitute, so you apes can jolly about pretending to kill each other. But that's the truth of the game. Blood," he said, stabbing the display to run the sequence again, "and exile."

I watched it again. The fight was over in just a few seconds. The smaller one, the one with the rapier - he knew what he was doing. The hulking axe-fighter didn't have a chance, really.

I gave the display back and walked away, taking the first path I could find.

Dive in. Gemwings among Orchids, Part 2.

Title: Maze and Guard
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: M
Content: Jealousy.
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

10.

Maze and Guard

So then it was Kina's turn to reset the sensor array on my lightsword armour, and help me to my feet.

"You turned your back on him, you promok," he said, dusting bits of purple grass out of my attire. "You fought him like he was a little hypno-school child and then what do you do? You wander off."

"I know, I know," I muttered, edging past a throng of Jang girls ready to offer their commiserations. I bowed to them, but kept walking even when Kina wanted to stop. Scowling, he kept up with me.

"Completely selt, old ooma. You saw enough of what he'd done to me to know that he wouldn't fight with honour, and that's the only reason why he beat you."

"I know! You're right, I turned my back on him. I'm an utter thralldrap for it. I don't know what I was thinking."

"You were thinking that the fight was over," Saz said.

I spun on the ball of one foot, the other sliding back to take my balance. "Where have you been, you zaradann old thralldrap?" but I grinned to show him that I wasn't really angry, and we clasped hands in greeting, clapping each other's shoulders. "Did you see that floop-show back there? Oh. Meet Kina. Kina, Saz."

"Attlevey," they said together, and then Saz said, "Your riposte is much smoother. Obviously you've been practicing."

"Too bad his other blade got jammed," Kina agreed. "He would have taken a head shot on the first engagement."

"He could have done it just with the left hand blade," Saz said, "If it had ever occurred to practice one blade technique--"

"Attlevey, gentlemen, I'm over here," I said, and they both grinned.

"Tosky, isn't he?" Kina asked, and Saz nodded. Saz had barely said more than the politenesses to Junaya, but here he and Kina were comradeing around like they'd been to hypno-school together. I was tosky, all right.

I was jealous.

"As for where I've been," Saz, finally addressing me, "I just needed some time to myself. To--"

"Contemplate?"

His mask shifted over his smile. "Right. What were you going to do?"

"We hadn't decided," I said.

"We were just getting out of there. What were you going to do?"

"I was going to trounce some promok strutting around Ilex Park," Saz said. "But instead, let's go melee at the Adventure Palace. You both need the practice."



We decided to wait until we could get an adventure suite for the three of us alone, and supped on fire-beer and sugared ice shards to cool our mouths while Saz and Kina joked and bragged at each other.

I mostly stayed sulkily silent, but perversely egged Kina into telling some of his most notorious stories, including the time he stunted a tight, hard spiral around the Committee Spire on a dare and ended up crashing spectacularly when his antics annoyed a crystal dragon so much that it took to the air to chase him. Kina retaliated by making me tell about the time that I stole control of the scoreboard at a star-ball tournament and used it to flash a rude message about the current favourite, which enraged him so much he lost the match.

Then we lapsed comfortably into talk of lightsword fencing, and Kina confessed that he started doing it because he knew I was. Saz didn't offer to tutor him, nor did he advise him to practice in the History Tower instead of at the Adventure Palace. I was privately gratified by that preservation of me-and-Saz, at least.
But at last our suite was ready, and we followed single file into the anteroom to find out what our adventure would be. After we'd paid in advance (mandatory for a private reservation) the portal slid open and a mechanical voice announced, "One at a time, please."

So it was to be a union mission. I liked those; I liked to pit my wits and skill against the scenario alone for a while. Kina went in first. Then Saz, then I stepped into the darkness and braced against the whirling disorientation while the suite dropped me into my place in the suite.


My vantage was atop a gentle hill, and below me was a nearly ruined maze that stretched beyond the horizon. I groaned as I studied it - large as a city, the crumbling walls nearly as tall as trees that had sprouted in its paths and outgrew them, reaching for the sun that dazzled ahead.

Mazes. I'm terrible at mazes - never mind keep your hand on one wall and eventually you make it out. They're as whirling as the boutiques, and if it weren't for my Bee I'd have trouble finding my own way home.

And somehow I'd have to find Saz and Kina in that mess before we could complete our quest. We probably wouldn't even be able to complete it in one session. Would we come back to finish the job? Who knew? I shrugged and started down the hill, angling toward a break in the wall.

Halfway there, I changed my course to one of the trees that grew beside it, and stepped into the crotch of its first branching, climbing it nearly as easily as a ladder before dangling by my hands to land atop a wall. Clever, clever me - from here I could see the twists ahead, plot my course. Perhaps I'd be able to find them faster.

I shouted, and my own voice echoed back to me. I listened, but no call answered. Which way? To the centre, promok. Bravely, I set off...

And realized that mazes are only slightly less confusing when you're standing on top of the walls instead of herding yourself in the corridors below. I, who could contemplate six dimensions with the best of them, couldn't tell exactly how to plot my path.

So I kept yelling. "Attlevey! Hi! Saz, Kina!"

"Here--"

I couldn't tell whose voice, but I could tell from where, and a great farathooming time I had of navigating the walls to get there, but there was Saz, dazzlingly in battle with a horde of skeleton warriors, blades whirling in his double sword style, slashing and wheeling and driving them back. Oh, he was derisann, but I leapt from the walls with a high ululating cry and landed in their midst, dealing death to their unquiet half-lives. By the time it thinned out to a half dozen I even turned a somersault in the air before dealing a fatal blow.

"What're we supposed to do?" I asked, once we were finishing the last.

"Haven't you read the walls?"

"I climbed up them."

"Such initiative. We're to retrieve the Egg of the Land from the centre."

"Well, of course we have to go to the centre, it's a labyrinth." I blew out an exerted breath, shook my jewelled braids. "Then what?"

"That's it--I expect they'll put out a sequel adventure if it's popular enough."

"Sagas," I said, shaking my head. "These walls say anything about the Egg of the Land itself?"

"You mean other than retrieving the Egg will save the land from subjugation, as portended in ancient prophecy?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Onk," said I, and started looking for another tree to climb, as I was completely lost scrabbling between the walls.


We found Kina not long after that, and had a groshing time pitting our skills against skeleton warriors, bands of goblin raiders, and cryptic messages from beautiful ghosts. We chummed our way out of the adventure palace, and Kina loped off to go to a lightdance and meet girls. I walked awkwardly by Saz's side, as we crossed Peridot Waterway and skirted the hypno-school aged kids screeching their way to the playground side of Ilex Park.

I didn't know what to say, so I asked, "What did you think of it?"

"The labyrinth? It was all right. But not enough... going to the center, battling monsters and getting the egg, sure. But there should have been something before that."

"Like why we were doing it at all?"

"Precisely, old ooma. I thought you'd understand."

"To make it more like a real story," I said.

"But if they did, they'd have scads of complaining Jang on their hands hollering about the boring old standing around and yakking when they could be lopping off skeleton heads."

"They would," I agreed glumly. "And really, just we two could have beaten the level - though I suppose we're a little over-trained for that sort of thing--"

"I would have rathered it was just us, too. So!" Saz said, bluff and jolly. "You married while I was off contemplating."

"I did," I said carefully.

"So did I," Saz said. "Still am, actually. I have to go see her. History Tower, tomorrow?"

Next! Swimming in Ecstasy.

Title: Celibate Male
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Content: fairy-clouds, air-skating, malicious gossip.
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

8.

A Celibate Male

Home. Home is where you hide when you've behaved like an utter thralldrap.

I kept my screens off, my flash off, I refused messages. I stayed in and ate angel-food from the syntho machine and damn near swam in Joyousness, but all I did was contemplate and stare. I swallowed oxygen pills and swam through the water maze until I remembered the dream rooms, and then I practiced standing on my right foot while I watched Picture-Vision and I was so droad that my Q-R guardian started to hover in a most annoying fashion, and I couldn't order it away, because... well, you can order any Q-R to take itself off except the Committee, and guardian-programmed Q-Rs.

So it came to the time that I had to come out of my hole.

"I should marry," I thought to myself. "Even just for an afternoon. That's what's wrong with me. I haven't had love yet."

It was reasonable and the girls were there, Jang girls with curled hair and antennae (I'd always thought that strange) and long diamond eyes and they were lovely, of course, but it was hard muscles and planes that caught my eye. That's the last time I let the design lead me. This was going to be the most frustrating--

"Ooma!" Junaya caught up with me, hung on my arm. "Where have you been? I haven't seen you in units."

"Contemplating," I replied, and slung one arm around her shoulders much as Saz did to me. "I got lost in the new internal seven dimension polycube, and the joyousness was rather too close to my hand."

"I'd thought you'd thinned out," she fussed. "Come and get something to eat, I was going to the lagoon. Unless you'd rather the Fire-Palace," she said, but Junaya was in pink today, right down to the petal-tint of her hair, and I'd be tosky with any male who took me someplace that clashed that badly with... well, me.

"What about Blue Sky?" I asked, then wished I hadn't, but she lit up.

"Oh Ooma, rather too groshing," she cooed, and took my arm.



Junaya tapped gem-crusted fingernails on her menu choices, and a dish of toasted honey-nuts arrived with a spicy pitcher of warm wine that did, by the fuzzy sensation of pleasure melting my joints, contain ecstacy. We leaned against each other for support as we shovelled nuts, and then a creamy thing called fairy-clouds into our mouths. I was bursting by the time we got to the nut-steak.

It was just arriving and merrily aflame when two Jang arrived in clouds of violet smoke. I recognized them both, and they me--and we stared at each other in mirrored frowns, wondering if we should acknowledge each other.

Junaya attempted to divert me just as I decided to greet them and so her, "Will you carve?" came out just as I was saying, "Attlevey! Bel, isn't it? And Argent?"

Bel at least caught Junaya's desire to be alone with me, and a wicked gleam sparkled in Inky Night eyes as she sauntered over to sit at our table. "Serve the nut-steak, and I come. How are you?"

"Groshing," I chortled. "The fairy-clouds are full of ecstacy."

"And you unmarried," she drawled, grinning at my naked hands. "Still, there's hope, hmm? Who's this?"

"I would ask the same thing," Junaya said.

"Right. Junaya, Bel, Argent," I said, waving one hand.

"Attlevey," Argent said. "Your water-dress is insumatt."

Junaya was slightly mollified by this, and patted the spot next to her in invitation. "Are you one of the duellists?" she asked; ready to hang on his every word.

"Not me," he said. "I'm more for Star-Ball."

"Saz didn't mention that you were meeting us," Bel said.

"I wasn't," I replied. "Junaya and I met by chance and decided to have fourth meal together. Nut-Steak?"

"Perhaps some of those fairy-clouds," she said, and signalled for a menu. "You won't mind if we lag behind a touch, do you?"

Junaya's pleased squeal at something Argent said made me smile as I said, "Not a bit of it. But if you were to meet with Saz--"

"And go to the Adventure Palace," she nodded. "It won't be a problem. Perhaps you and your friend would like to come along?"

"Oh yes," Argent said. "Groshing idea. You can watch me play star-ball, and then we can air-skate," he said to Junaya. "Though I'm not very good."

"I can help you," Junaya said. Well. Argent was handsome, and it solved part of my problem neatly. However--

"Do you air-skate?" Bel asked, when Saz strode to our table and joined us.

"Attlevey, oomas. Nice to see you," he said, with a nod to me. Oh. Clad not in his duellists' gem-armour, but instead in naught but a groin shield and soft boots for star-ball, the crossed straps of wrist guards over oak-branch arms. His half mask was liquid of sliver, and reflected Junaya's petal-pink and my peacock robes in a swirl of oil paint on water.

"Attlevey," I managed to reply. "Yes, Bel, I air-skate."

"Then you should come with us," Bel declared, and flirted just enough to keep Junaya toskily attentive of Argent through the rest of the meal.



"Where've you been?" Saz asked me as we milled around the entrance to the Adventure Palace.

"I just needed time to myself," I said, and it sounded tosky. I winced and said, "and I thought that you'd think--"

"Exactly the same thing as you?" Saz asked, but I didn't sag in relief. Instead, I glanced around to check for nearby Q-Rs. "It was brave. I wouldn't have said it aloud," he continued, and like that we were through and in a dressing chamber, even though Saz was already dressed for a game. Argent had gone through to save a chamber for us, but Saz remained as I stripped off my smoke-robe and my sandals. He wore star-ball boots, but I preferred bare feet.

"I'm not sure why I said it," I confessed, and set to unwinding some of the more delicate jewels from my hair. "I thought I was the only one."

"I did too. Perhaps we're the only two," he said, started winding my braids into one long one, a wide flat ribbon of five strands. "You haven't been to the History Tower, either."

I slid back into ready stance. "Checking up on me?"

"Yes," he laughed, and threw an arm around my neck as he dragged me off to the chamber.
Argent and Bel won the game, but Saz and I gave them a hard fight. Junaya chose to applaud us from the observer's chamber, gallantly dispensing equal praise and encouragement on all players, but slightly favouring Bel, of all choices. Star-Ball is a rough game, and not many females play it. Bel, however wasn't shy about a well delivered elbow or two and I suspect she played the game a lot whenever she decided to switch.

Junaya is an insumatt air-skater, though, and dazzled Argent with the speed and grace she could display on repulsion boots. Saz, Bel and I contented ourselves with just milling around the rink in circles with the crowd, but Junaya often broke into the middle to spin and leap, darting back to where Argent windmilled his arms in an effort to keep balanced when she wasn't holding his hand. Clever, clever Argent. He only fumbled around when she wasn't looking.

"There'll be rings on their fingers by next unit," Bel declared, watching them skate in each other's arms. "Are you just as much as a celibate male as Saz, ooma?"

"Hmm?" I asked, weaving between them both to take Bel's hands and skate backwards. "Celibate male?" I glanced at Saz, who smiled and looked down.

"Oh, he's notorious," Bel declared. "Never marries for more than an afternoon, male, and when female she's got a trail of males after her. And a waste, too, because he always designs such groshing male bodies." She sighed dramatically, enjoying the discomfort she was causing in Saz. "And he's been male for vreks--"

"Bel--"

"But he never stays female for more than thirty units--"

"Bel!"

"Well, you have to admit it's a bit zaradann, Saz," Bel said, that malicious gleam back in her eyes, for all her tone was innocent. "I simply don't understand--"

Saz broke away from us, dodging other skaters to get off the rink.

Bel sighed. "Really, he doesn't have to be such a promok about it. But," she said just as I was ready to tell the floop off, "maybe you better go after him, ooma. He's heard quite enough from me." And with that she veered off to join Argent and Junaya.

I did follow after him, but he was gone, and he'd set his code to non-responsive by the time I got home. I left him a message, though, and set his code to go through in case he called back.

He didn't.


There is more - Delight & Defeat.

Title: Salute and Parry (chapter 6)
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: PG-13
Content: Fencing.
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.



6.

Salute and Parry

Home. Home is where you tiptoe past your Q-R Guardian.

"Messages for you," it chirped. Well, Home is where you try to tiptoe past your Q-R Guardian.

I sighed and let my Bee unfold, and garments didn't have a chance to hit the floor before robot servants whisked them away to my wardrobe.

I settled back in the embrace of a gel-couch, which took some time to conform to my new male body, and watched message flashes while it breathed beneath me. Junaya, still well annoyed at Fisk, asking if I was all right if I wanted her to bring me anything (Junaya gets makerish around those she wants to marry, and then turns shrewish when people expect her to be makerish. It never ceases to amuse me.)

A male stranger, inviting me to come out to lightsword drills. I replayed that one again until I realized that he was one of Saz's circle who invaded our meal at Blue Sky. Strange; usually circles are so cliqueish. Saz must really have power if they're jumping to please his whims.

And then Saz himself.

"Surprised you don't have call filters," he said, and the swirling silk-of-steel mask on half his face moved over his smile. "I've got you in mine, so you can call back. Somebody might ask you to joust. Don't do it. It's their usual game to invite a new fencer and then trounce him so soundly he goes away. They hate competition."

Ah. And one could ask why he was giving me such advice, but it wouldn't be me. Though it should. The sight of him on flash rippled over my skin in ways it really shouldn't--not until I could change. Not until I could change. Not until--

"Onk," I said, and replayed his message again. I shut my eyes and listened.

"--Me at the History Tower at the simulators again, and you can learn that way. If you like," he added, with the quickness of--embarrassment? "Just code through to me and let me know."

I stabbed down the reply code so fast my finger bruised. I hadn't even the chance to wonder if every plait was in place, and barely enough time to think that it didn't matter before an image of Saz beamed into the room, completely still and listening.

"Er, attlevey," I said, and gave a little wave. "I can meet you at the History Tower. If it's all right to eat first, I'd say we should go for first meal at the Fire Lounge, and I wonder what your opinion of the simulators is at the Adventure Palace? I'm off to fix a nut-steak, I'm zaradann with hunger."

His image moved, and only then did I realize that he had answered. I'd been babbling like it was an avatar.

"You didn't get a chance to eat at Blue Sky," he said.

"No, I did not."

"I can meet you at the Fire Lounge. The simulators at the Adventure Palace aren't a good place to start. They're supposed to be teaching aids, but they teach the wrong things."

"Everyone uses them," I pointed out.

Saz grinned. "They do. And they keep losing. To me."

"Then why give up your secrets to me?" I asked.

"You had the wit to go to the History Tower," he said. "Most Jang don't do that. You'll learn at the knee of the ancient glars on holo--the true sport."

"I could look at the history, too. It's an old sport. Who made it popular now?"

Saz turned his head so slightly, glanced behind him. "Who knows?" he asked, heartily. "But it's fun. I'll see you tomorrow."

He cut the connection and his image popped like a soap bubble, leaving only the memory of his warning frown. What was he warning me against?


The Fire Lounge isn't where one goes for breakfast, which was why I suggested it. Since I'm not a vain person, I didn't mind that the not-burning flames everywhere clashed horribly with the deep jewel blue that made up my fencer's gem-armour, or that the firelight caught and held the flashes of amber and scarlet in my Opal Dawn eyes. It never occurred to me. Besides, the contrast was simply striking.

Saz was already there, half-masked in copper and bronze, fitted in inky black silk-of-steel and garnet gem-armour. I surveyed the platter of breakfast--honeyed grains and glasses of syntho-fruit juice, tall and elegant as lilies. No joyousness, toasted angel-food, or wine of kaf. Saz himself patted a cushion near him.

"It doesn't do to fill up before working," he said. "And that will not do. Turn your back to me."

I obeyed silently, and signalled a Q-R servant for hot bittered wine. It arrived steaming, sweet and laced with cloud-cream. I took a first sip, and nearly spat the liquid all over myself at his fingertips brushing the nape of my neck, gathering all the roped braids.

"Hair flying around like this will get in your way," he explained. I strained to feel his hands again, rewarded in brushing accidents, the sweep of his knuckles as he plaited my hair.

"I could cut it and have it regrown later," I offered.

"No, this will do. A light-sword fencer needs a bit of style--and defending this mass against all comers will make you quick." It was a heavy rope, resting at my neck--wide as my wrist, even with the bracer on. His hands radiated to my skin, insistent as the light of the artificial sun in Four-BEE, warmer than the illusion fires that raged around us. Twenty-seven more units, I murmured inside my mind. Twenty-seven more units, and ten rings, and Saz, insumatt, derisann Saz. We'd marry for mid-vrek and have love and have love and have love--

Throbbing brought me back to myself, and I nearly spilled hot bittered wine on my clothes. Then I realized I should have, so I could escape without him seeing--I hadn't been male in so long, precisely because of this. Kina would laugh and--

"You haven't married yet."

A blush does not show in skin tinted Parvati, but I was doing it anyway. "No."

"The first few units are like that. You didn't change to marry?"

"No, no," I said. "It just...seemed like a good idea at the time. What fit the design."

"You are a good designer," he said. "I'll bet once the release runs out on your variant there will be adopters. How much longer will you be original?"

"Twenty-seven more units," I said. The first few units are like that, he said. Are they? I'd never changed unless there was a reason, and so it never--I mean when it--well, I'd have a use for it, is all. I've got a strong female preference. The Committee said so, but it's fun to be male, and healthy to make the switch...

Saz was talking. I was maundering. "I'm sorry?" I said.

"I said, 'that will give me plenty of time to recognize how you move.' And speaking of moving, eat a handful, and let's go."



"Not bad," he said. "Almost two splits. Switch feet."

I dropped my right foot down and stood on it, lifting my left heel to my buttock. I grasped the foot and stood, but my foot started shifting from big toe to little to keep balanced almost immediately, and he stopped timing.

"Right foot's unacceptably weak. Funny, isn't it? Your body, only three days old, and I'll bet that it's the same habit you had from standing in all the bodies before this, favouring your left leg. Take the ready stance."

This is all we'd done so far. Take the ready stance, and then correcting the tiniest derangements of my position, and then something else stupid, and then take the ready stance. I was feeling pretty tosky with it all--when do we fight? Why all this standing, standing, correction of the tiniest details?

I asked him why, as he was walking around to inspect me, and in reply he gave me a shove and I stumbled one step before correcting.

"If your ready stance is perfect, you would have kept your feet in place. Again. Ready stance."

Relentless, miserable thralldrap. No. He's doing it right, from the basics up. They don't teach you to stand in the Adventure Palace. He is the best fighter in Ilex Park. He knows what he is doing. I settled into the ready stance, my right leg behind me and left leg leading, slightly bent, body suspended perfectly between my feet. Right arm raised so the beam of my lightsword would sight along my eye, my left arm out before me so the beam of that sword would lay perfectly level across my body. If they were on, which they were not.

Saz shoved me again, and I only bent.

"Groshing. Now keep me in sight," he said, and started circling me. As soon as I crossed my left foot over my right to follow him, he shoved me again.

"Never cross," he said. "Ready stance."

I glared pure murder at him but settled again.

"Fighting is about space," he said, moving to my right, and I shuffled along with him. "If you control the space between you and your opponent, you are the winner. If they can never move a hair toward or away from where you want them, you are the winner. But it's not usually that easy."

"But it's important."

"Fighting is about control," he continued. "But control is not a rigid grasp. Control is an understanding that requires the fighter to be thoughtless. Do you understand?"

"No," I said. "You're zaradann. How can I not think?"

"Thinking interferes with being," he went on in his crazy glar lecture. "Thinking takes too much time. There is only time for knowing and acting."

"You are zaradann," I said.

He lunged for me, fingers poised hard as daggers for my throat. I swept backwards, shuffled forward as he danced back, halted as he halted.

"There. How did you do that?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I was following you."

"Did you think about it?"

"There wasn't time," I said, and our laughter rang against the roof of the History Tower.


More? Non Serviam. except when it comes to providing more story.

Title: Blue Sky, Dream Sea (chapter 4)
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Biting the Sun, by Tanith Lee
Rating: Mature (mild sexual situations)
Content: Dreams don't mean anything. they're jumbled reshufflings of the events of the day sorted around while you rest your brain.
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.


4.

Blue Sky, Dream Sea

Blue Sky is almost Jang Only. They play upper-tonal that gets you both relaxed and garrulous; you have to make a real effort not to get a jug of Joyousness at your table, but that's all because there's no way to get to Blue Sky except through the wind tube, and then when you leave, you jump (buoyantly supported by a cape of float foam, but still, Older People don't like it.)

And so I lay on my stomach and looked through the floor at Four-BEE, imagining that I could see the movements of the people far below, and then rolled on my back and looked at the perfect blue sky above me. It may not have been perfect, beyond the dome--I'd never know. It's always perfect inside.

And my companion stared too--stared with such intense concentration that I blurted, "What are you looking at?"

And he said, "Not what I want to see." And then, abruptly, "Have you ever been to the other cities?"

"No." For some reason, I couldn't get a travel pass to see the other cities. Not a lot of Jang could, but...

"I haven't either. Do you wonder what it's like out there?"

"Sometimes."

"I think I dream about it," he said, and then he turned to me, his face--half of flesh and half silver silk-of-steel. "I never told you. I'm Saz."

"And you are one of the finest lightsword fighters of Ilex Park."

He didn't modestly deny it. "Why hadn't I seen you before?"

"I just got this body," I said. "My last one was female."

He nodded and chose fire-and-ice with cloud cream when the waiter Q-R arrived. I asked for spiced nut beer, and some of Saz's circle arrived just as we were served. They greeted me vaguely. One female actually cut a slab off our nut-steak--"you don't mind, do you?"

"Be my guest," I said, but she was already chewing, the thralldrap. One passed a box of rose cigars, and we watched violet smoke drift up to the dome. Not that I assumed any kind of exclusive hold on Saz (liar) but this was really too much.

"I must go, oomas."

A few ringed hands fluttered in my direction, their talk of star-ball not even nudged. Well, really. I gathered up a float cloak and dived off the platform.



Once home, I made use of the syntho food dispenser, lazed about and got so droad I signalled Kina.

"Look here, old ooma, I had no idea of your intentions. It's all rather a mess," I said. "Sorry I dashed your plans."

"I felt like a promok."

"You should have told me."

"And you wouldn't have done it?"

"It was a mad impulse. I regret it already." The truth worked admirably. "In twenty eight units I'm changing back."

"Well then," Kina sounded heartier at the news. "How about the Dream Rooms?"


The Dream Rooms are considered un-Jang, so naturally we flock there--a giggling mob of gemflower bedecked lunatics, clamouring to dream ourselves as pulsing motes of light.

Though we talked about it once, and Kina told me he dreams of being a kind of fish-man. I didn't have any better ideas, so I used his. I gave the computer reams of instructions, remembering details out of order at the last second. Finally I lay back and waited only a moment before I was there--

Gliding through violet waters with a dome city beneath me, the sprawling capital of the Oceanic Empire. Ours was a cruel and martial society, and I, one of the Hundred Companions, was a Wizard-Warrior of astonishing brutality and ability. I searched valiantly for traces of my quarry--a member of a rebellion, bent on sowing discord and defiance to our might.

There! A sign of his passing! I followed it, and strange creatures swam by my side, playing though platinum milk hair and the wake of my Opal Dawn scaled tail. My opponent laid a trap--his trail led to a cave and a rock blocked the passage when I ventured inside. I cried a word of eldritch power and the boulder became a lace of coral, which shattered under my fist.

Then I met a horrible creature with writhing arms like serpents. The monster tangled me in its limbs, but I managed to stab it with my spear, offending it into quitting my presence. I swam on, relentlessly in pursuit until my head broke the surface to the Kingdom of Air. I gasped the words of the charm that would let me survive the ghastly stuff, and a terrible pain shot down my tail. Stunned by this agony, I was flung unresisting to the awful shore.

Where my quarry--my nemesis--awaited me.

Bravely, I choked out the last embrace of the sea, and staggered to my feet--appalling! And what agony it was, to stand on the stumpy things! The kingdom of Air weighed heavily, my hair near threatened to topple my head off my neck, and the first shambling step shot up my legs (hideous!) like knives...

Toward my quarry, who waited arrogantly for me, his sword gleaming at this hip, matching the half mask he wore to cover the left side of his face--standing with ease on the horrid split things, awaiting me.

"You've come to capture me?"

"I mean to destroy you," I declared, and startled at the hoarseness of my voice, seared by the desert air. I rasped an unutterable Word, and the moisture clinging to my skin seeped inside, comforting me with a trickle of strength. I raised my spear, and advanced on steps of anguish.

Laughable effort. He struck the spear from me easily, leaving me helpless, transformed into naked vulnerability. I attempted a word to draw the water from him, but he flashed a sign with his hands, and the power burst between us like bubbling laughter--no one laughs, in the majesty of the kingdom of Water. Such an action hurts.

"Sir." I spread open hands. "It appears you have me at your advantage." I looked at him, standing eye level to eye, and wondered if the sand I stood on was higher even as the realization of his beauty struck me.

"So it appears," my enemy (gorgeous and terrible, a worthy opponent, and not the rabble that I had mistook him for in arrogance) my enemy looked upon me with admiration. "But did you not know that you could not best me?"

"I believed that I could," I blurted, and blushing, dropped my gaze--

To perceive a hard, powerful chest, contoured by muscle and rib, the faintest dusting of platinum milk hairs, an arrow point at my navel, widening down to--

What?

To a stirring shaft, rising unmistakably from the apex of my legs--

But I was supposed to--

Horror. I looked back at him; helpless--oh, shame! His eyes lingered below to my stirring for him, just as I told the Dream, but my transformation--truant! I spun on the daggerpoint of my toes and fled, back to the sea, don't see me like this, don't--

He caught me. Whirled me by the grip on my arms, fingers curling into the powerful curves, and stared at the full length of my betraying (wrong! Oh, wrong!) body, drawing my gaze down

To where his own arousal stood--

Shocked, I raised my head to look at him, beautiful half-face, half hidden, twice gorgeous, lowering his lips toward mine. The barest silken touch brushed my lips to his, but I woke in the Dream Chamber and it burned, burned as if I'd bitten a flame.



the next chapter is A Fabulist Prince.

Title: To See Just Half Your Face (chapter 2)
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Biting the Sun, by Tanith Lee
Rating: PG-13
Content: body design!
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

2.

To See Just Half Your Face

The ground was a carpet of flowers, and the sky above me was empty, empty. A real wind whipped my clothes against my body, and when I looked down, I stared at my clothes in horror - the plainest, scratchiest stuff - no holosparkle or see-through or gem armour at all, just plain and solid and the colour of sand.

No. That was wrong. The sands were there, in the distance beyond the flowers, and a tree hung heavy with purple blossoms that swirled, petal by petal, grabbed by the wind.

The wind mattered. There was danger, and the pile of the same plain not-sand cloth tumbled at my feet. I was supposed to stretch it out. Over the flowers. The poor tree--

"Hurry!"

Shouting. At me. A man just stood up, and a gray square blotted out the blossoms. "Hurry!" He ran at me, and he grew bigger, and then I saw his face--

his face

Screaming, I awoke in the Limbo Tub.

"It's all right now, you're safe, you're safe," the Q-R attendant soothed at me. "We found you, it's all right."

Sobbing, I nearly threw myself out of the tub and bawled all over the silly--familiar, usual--thing, but remembered myself (deviant) just in time.

"It's all right," The Q-R burbled again.

"What happened?" I asked, and then remembered. It had hurt. But that body, not this one. I didn't look at the unfinished limbs, like anonymous rolls of dough. I looked at the Q-R, who smiled down at the good little Jang in the tank. I'd tossed myself off a bridge. How drumdik.

"There, there," the Q-R soothed. "Do you want your design tablet?"

"Please," I murmured sweetly. It set the console down and went away, just like I'd hoped. I looked at the controls and set to designing the most insumatt body ever. Really, I could have just gone for a change, I hadn't had one in two vreks. I didn't have to jump.

Why did I jump? "Set eye colour to Opal Dawn; keep."

Kina was right - the colour was just groshing: A kind of silvery gray, with depths of rose, green, amber, blue, violet--There silver, and there gold--perfect! I would design the whole body around them, marvellous, derisann eyes.

Was it fear? "Body type Artemis, taller, taller...stop. Complexion type burnished gold; try a bit of rose undertones--no, too chalky, lighter...no, try a yellow-orange...browner, more gold...stop." The body lengthened and coloured in, only those ghost-kissed eyes filled in. "More brown on the skin. Try type Parvati, fade down towards burnished gold--slower! Start again...stop! Groshing."

I tinkered with it some more, trying out different hair, facial structures, types--nothing suited. My Q-R came in with a meal injection, which was all I could stop for. I wasn't getting the design right, but I wanted those eyes.

I finally figured out what was wrong, and laughed at the simplicity of it--and walked out later in my new body: Skin of golden Parvati, Opal Dawn eyes, milk platinum hair to my waist.

Kina was waiting at the landing from limbo for me. His eyes slid past, and then back again in stunned disbelief...and then frustrated anger.

"Oh, you promok! You ridiculous, contrary, zaradann thralldrap! How could you?"

"Nice to see you too, Kina," I said, and oh, my voice was like Joyousness poured over a brass bell. I spoke again, just to hear it. "You were right about the eye colour. D'you think the hair is a little too much?"

"Farathoom!" yelled Kina, and cast his offering at my feet, clinking and rolling at my toes. He whirled and got into his bird-plane, stranding me.

I watched him take off in his crystal dove before looking down at the ten rings scattered around my feet. Poor Kina--he knew, of course, that the body I designed would be groshing, and so wanted to marry for a few units.

I'm not sure why he never imagined that I would come back male. I scooped the ten rings up and walked to the flyers. I'd apologize to him, once he wasn't so embarrassed.


"Attlevey," the fourth girl of the afternoon said to me, sweeping lashes long as fingertips over blushing cheeks, their movements more liquid and rounded, sure to catch the eye. It was a good body, superlative even in a crowd of insumatt beauty.

"Attlevey," I replied, correctly polite and no more. I didn't know what was happening. Usually after a change I'm raring to have love, but I was dissatisfied and tosky. Perhaps I needed some ecstasy, or the Adventure Palace, or perhaps I just needed to go home--

I jumped back as a circle of young men careened into the path from Ilex Park, playing at lightswords, their blades crackling with sparks each time they met in parry and slash. I moved into the circle, meant to protect passers-by from their antics. One had red lights down his arm, and the harness made it hang limp, because it had been "hit." But the crowd was cheering him, and his opponent looked worried, shuffling backwards against a relentless attack. I watched the sure step of his back and the strength rippling across his shoulders. I'd designed similar for myself.

I blinked, and in that space it was over. I cheered with the rest of the circle, rushed forward to congratulate the winner, and he turned to laugh with someone next to me--

his face

Half-covered by silver paint and geometric spirals, the other half unadorned--masculine, with high cheekbones and enough corner on the jaw, and beautiful, so derisann my knees went liquid and I laughed.

What imp of perversity had made me design a male body?



Want more? the next chapter is Toasted Angelfood.

Translator's note: Though the excerpts are written in equivalent modern English, there are some Jang terms of slang that pale in translation. This is a glossary:

attlevey: Hello.

dalika: Violent argument.

derisann: Lovely, beautiful.

droad: incredibly boring, a mindless waste of time.

drumdik: Utterly horrible, the most ghastly thing.

farathoom: Bloody, fucking hell.

floop: Jerk. See also thralldrap.

graks: Balls.

groshing: Fabulous, marvellous.

insumatt: Unsurpassable.

onk: Mild ejaculation, e.g. bother.

ooma: Endearment, like honey or darling.

ooma-kasma: Extreme term of affection, e.g. "Love of my life." Not generally used.

promok: Moron.

selt: slow on the uptake. 'Con'-able.

soolka: Well-groomed. Applied by Jang only to non-Jang.

thralldrap: see floop.

tosky: Neurotic, irritable.

Vixaxn: a word so bad that it is often not written in full.

zaradann: Insane, nuts.

General Terms

Glar: Early Four BEE title, similar to professor. The term hung on as a polite name for Q-R teachers at the hypno-schools, but otherwise was extinct by this time.

hypno-school: children of the fours attend six hours of hypno-school each day, where they learn incredibly complex mathematics and arcane subjects of theoretical knowledge through trance-induction. it should be noted that this education does not include knowledge of many practical or survival activities, as everything is provided to citizens of the fours through a legion of Quasi-Robots doing all the real work.

Jang: the middle stage of human life, an extended adolesence that lasts until the Jang grows bored of the structureless fun that is expected of his age-group and applies to become an Older Person, adopting the customs and behaviour of that group. the Jang stage usually lasts two rorls, but some stay in this stage for far langer than that.

mid-vrek: Middle period of any vrek, lasting forty units.

Older Person: the final "Adult" stage of human life. Older People have jobs and become Makers with another Older Person to supply the other half of material required to create a child, a process done entirely through creche incubation. All people of the Fours regularly ingest contraceptives, so childbirth in the older sense is unheard of in Four society.

PD: Personality Dissolution. Since the people of the Fours enjoy a form of immortality where their soul-essences can be retrieved and placed into new bodies, Older People who grow tired of their lives can opt to "die" by having their personality erased and start over from infancy, but with a Q-R Guardian instead of Makers.

rorl: Four BEE equivalent of a century.

split: Four BEE minute.

unit: Four BEE day.

vrek: Period of one hundred units.