(Sting and the Police:
The Best of Sting and the Police)
Fields of Gold
I walked the fields of gold.
Up to my ankles, what appeared to be
molten metal swirled and pooled and rippled, like water, yet I felt no heat as
I thought I would. Was not molten metal
so scaldingly hot that once one touched it, one would burst aflame? With some trepidation, I reached down and
cupped some of the liquid in my hands, and watched with childish wonder as it
slowly trickled over my fingers and down my gloves, streaks of rich honey, to
drip away at my elbows in miniature waterfalls.
It felt like water and not like
water – it did not burn, nor cool my skin. It did not wet, nor pull hair down in the direction of its flow, nor did
it slick hair down. It should not have
existed, yet it did.
The world was a smorgasbord of
color, coruscating, vivid, vibrant color. Trees that rose out of the gold were tinted in silver and blue, in sharp
contrast with the opulence of the ground, out of season flowers from all over
the world grew in haphazard beds, small, temperate blooms and garish tropical
ones, all contributing to the riot of hues.
And around all flowed the gold, what
looked like enough to ransom all the kings in the world and more, a wide field
of affluence.
Slowly, disbelievingly, I turned
around. It was the same in all
directions, a disorderly pasture of sunny color, changing and swirling. Occasionally islands rose out of this land,
and if I squinted I could see buildings of weird designs, some macabre, some
ludicrous, some a demented mix of both that was both pleasing and trying on the
eye.
I looked upwards.
The sky was basically blue; as most
skies were, but here and there were splotches of pink, bright pink, and
blotches of indigo, orange, violet and other unidentifiable colors. Clouds were fluffy white, but formed obvious
designs, even with blurred edges, that changed as soon as they formed. I even saw an amazingly rendered likeness of
myself before it blurred into a prancing unicorn, and thence on into a grinning
bear, before my eyes began to water and I had to look away.
What land was this?
I began to walk, but I found that if
I concentrated on reaching one location – like the tower shaped like a flamingo
– it always seemed further away as I started to it, or suddenly much closer
before jumping further away again. This
was madness! How had I come to be here? Where was I?
I caught a movement on the edge of
my eyes, the peripheral vision which assassins like I used frequently in our
line of work, and I whirled. My hands
went to my dagger and my sword, and gripped their reassuring hilts tightly.
It was a school of fish, swimming
several feet above the field, floating in the air. And as I stared it swam closer, a school of yellow goldfish,
their fins tipped in the colors of a rainbow, their fat bodies wriggling as
they swam, large, disproportionate tails fluttering coyly, like a courtesan's
fan.
They floated once in a slow circle
around me, then stopped before me. Then
the fish seemed to dive together, towards one another, and the central
collision point distorted and contorted, then a girl stood in its place.
I took a step back.
She wore odd clothing – a dull pink
baby doll dress, those sort with the puffy sleeves, with a flaring skirt that
ended too high up to be considered decent for a young girl like her. I guessed her age to be about sixteen or
so. She wore black fishnet stockings, a
bizarre accessory that clashed with the dress, and in one hand she held a large
lollipop with an uneven spiral of color like a wand.
Her short hair was bright orange,
and stuck out at defiant angles, yet seemed perfectly natural. An electric blue ribbon was tied into a
large bow over her left ear. As my bewildered
scrutiny passed to her face, I noticed that she had two eyes of different
color, which I could not place. One
seemed greenish, and the other bluish, but the colors themselves seemed to
change madly. She was freckled, and
this gave her face a rather comfortable appearance, neither dazzlingly
beautiful nor displeasingly ugly, but somewhere in between.
She smiled at me, lopsidedly, and
spoke, her voice one voice, but with an uneven pronunciation, tone, quality and
even timbre, as if many voices had been snipped up and pasted randomly to make
hers. And as I heard her voice I was
oddly put in mind of even more colors, cloudy ones.
"Oh hello. I don't get many visitors in this bit of my realm. Would you like some toffee? Or maybe tea?
Some people like tea, with lots and lots of sugar or with milk and did you know
how cheese is formed?"
I clutched at the only words that
appeared to make any sense in this disjointed dialogue. "Your realm?"
"I'm Delirium. You can call me Del. My eldest sister calls me that. Do you like butterflies or fishies? I turn
them, a small cloud of them, and fly and fly and fly..." She spread out her
hands and twirled around. With a sound
like a 'pop', the lollipop in her hand changed into a sunflower, each petal a
different color.
"Delirium?" If what she claimed was
true, then this realm truly did suit its mistress.
"Do
call me Del," she insisted, and began to pluck the petals from the flower. Each time she would blow the petal into the
air from the palm of her hand, and it would change into a dragonfly, each
transparent wing a different tint. The
insects buzzed around then headed away in a random direction.
What magic was this?
"How did I come here?" I asked.
She picked the last petal, watched
the dragonfly buzz away, and the sunflower turned into a baton with ribbons
tied to the tip. "You must of done something," she said, rather
unhelpfully, then began to twirl the baton into the air, the ribbons forming
tight swirling lines of velvet around it. "Could be you hit your head, or you did a drug, or maybe you even baked
a cake and ate too much of it though I've never seen that happen before. Won't it be fun if it did? Maybe Black
Forest cake, though why it's called Black Forest I don't know..."
"Hit my head..." I repeated slowly,
and frowned. "No. And I do not take drugs."
"You done something, or someone
did," Delirium replied, then impulsively reached forward and took my hand. "Walk with me? We can go see the fountain if
it's still there, the fountain with the purple and yellow water. It tastes like peach and caramel, the
water. Or we can go fishies and swim
around, and around, and upwards and downwards and sideways and under..."
I did not pull away. Somehow it did not occur to me that it was
possible to do so. Hence I allowed her
to lead me, but I concentrated on remembering. Someone must have done something to me. The last I remembered was preparing for bed in the master chambers in
the Basadoni guild. I had blown the
candles and closed the windows, looking out over the city as the moon was
beginning to give to the dawn, and feeling satisfied about the professional job
I had done on the leader of the Remaili guild...
Then?
Climbing into the bed heated
beforehand by warm bricks, and idly contemplating the pleasure the sycophant
Sharlotta's death would bring me.
No, must have been something before
that. Something which could have been
drugged. I was sure enough of my
abilities to know that no one could have entered my chambers, even if I slept,
without my knowledge.
Closed the windows, and removed my
boots, drank the spiced wine, felt with a niggling sense of disgust the heavy
brocade of the veil of the four-poster bed, then sat down on the plush bed...
...drank
the spiced wine...
Oh gods.
Who had given me the wine?
...Sharlotta with a smile and a svelte voice, "You must be thirsty, my
pasha...are you sure that you wish not my company while you rest?"
Oh gods.
The girl tugged at my hand as
realization stopped me in my footsteps. "Can't you walk no more? And did you know your mind's all glass and
pointy edges and metal? You need more butterflies in it. And maybe feathers. Feathers are nice even if they fall apart
but it's not nice to pull them off birdies and do you like playing ball?"
I let her prattle on for a while,
then said, "I must go back." I felt
asinine after I voiced that.
"You can't go back unless you do,"
Delirium said, with warped logic, then continued, "Don't you want to see the
fountain? Or were we going to see Mister Fluffykins? He'd be happy to see us –
he's pink you know, and I love pink. It's candy-floss and dresses and baby's skin."
"Can you send me back?" I
asked. I was truly going to murder Sharlotta, very, very slowly.
"Don't you want to stay and play
with me?" she asked. Most children
would pout, or their lips would tremble, but this one smiled happily as if I'd
already agreed.
"Perhaps another day, but I believe
I may be busy in a moment," I said tactfully, "Can you send me back?"
"But...why? I don't think you'd like
going back, there are bad people doing bad things to you Outside of here, and
you don't like bad things do you? Here there's gold and...and clouds and nice
things, good things, and you can talk about watches to me. Don't you like hearing the sound of them
ticking? Like 'Tick...tock...tick...tock' though I know of a clock that goes
'Tick, click, bicky, tock, mock, sock, tick, click, bicky, tock...'" And on she
went, imitating a clock.
"Bad things to me?" I repeated, but
I had expected this, "All the more that I should go back, Lady Del...then I can
stop them from doing it."
Delirium glanced at me, then her
face scrunched up for a moment as if she was going to cry. "Oh, you mustn't! You can't anyway, you're
tied up Outside here, and they're really not doing nice things to you. You're
not really supposed to be here now, they're trying to wake you up, but you'd
stay here and talk about clocks to me, won't you?"
As if I had a choice to stay. "These bad things...you are speaking of
torture?" I asked calmly.
"Bad
things!" she cried, a child's appalled cry, and then she smiled again,
exuberantly, "Have you climbed a tree before? I catch my dress but then there's
apples and peaches and pears and bananas, and everything's juicy and colorful
and pretty, and there's sometimes antelope up the trees too, and they talk to
me! Want to meet some?" She tugged hopefully on my hand, but I stood fast.
"Can you see me on the...Outside?" I
persisted.
"I don't want to," She said, biting
her lip, "Don't want to, don't want to,
don't want to. Very bad, bad. Come on, come with me...we can go flying if you like. Please? Don't you like to fly?"
"Lady Del," I said firmly, "Listen
to me. Can you describe these...people
that are hurting me?" I'd need faces and names.
Her eyes changed color, then changed
back. "One...one of them's a woman you
know. Or your mind says you know. Can we talk about..."
"Her name is Sharlotta?" I
interrupted.
"Yes, yes. Sounds like Lotte, which may or may not be a brand of
chocolate. Do you like chocolate?
Creamy, milk chocolate, not the white ones or the black ones or the ones with
weird cream in it?" Delirium held out her hand, and over the slender wrists
three bangles of chocolate formed, one white, one brown, one black. She peered at it as if their appearance
surprised her, then she laughed out loud.
"And the others?" I said
impatiently.
"Dirty, dirty minds," Delirium said,
rubbing the hand that held mine with her other, as if trying to rub off
filth. "Don't want to touch them! Come
with me, come on now. Now, now, brown
cow, hey, that's cool. Brown cow with
brown eyes and a black tail..."
The gold around our feet swirled up,
like a slow-motion geyser, and then formed into a cow shape, which shimmered
until it changed into a small brown cow that contentedly munched on some grass,
which was a bright cyan in color, and flicked its black tail about its flanks.
"Lift me up," Delirium said, and
without thinking I did, seating her gently on the back of the cow.
"How long will I stay here?" I
asked, trotting by the side of the creature as it began to lumber away.
"Don't know," Delirium said
cheerfully, "I have to show you some more of my realm first before you go...do
you like bubbles? We could see the bubble field...if it's still here of
course."
Something happened to mind. "What if my...body dies?"
"Then my sis comes over here to take
you to her realm," Delirium said promptly, as if she'd seen it happen before.
"Your sister being?"
"Death," Delirium said nonchalantly,
"She's very, very nice. Not like
Desire, who's rather mean. I think I
will show you the bubble fields after all! It's more colorful than this one."
I gave up, and walked with her
through the fields of gold.
**
I was aware, sluggishly, of
sensations, as I gradually awoke from what must have been a stupor. My body ached, dully at parts, and fiercely
at others, as if I was a single injury, but nothing seemed very serious, or
everything seemed to be healing at a magical rate. Softness under my head and body, and sheets over light robes – I
had been sleeping. My closed eyes saw a
dingy redness – there was light somewhere.
...a
stupor...
...bad
things...
With effort I managed to lift my
eyelids, and vision was indistinct and bleary, but it quickly focused. Stone ceiling and a stone wall, with a very
familiar smell or texture to the air, which I could not place.
Then I did.
It had the stillness that I would
characterize as an Underdark atmosphere.
Oh gods.
I tried to push myself into an
upright position and roll off the bed, but I only managed to roll onto my side,
then had to acknowledge the fiery aching complaints of my body by gasping with
effort, in pain, like a fish out of water.
When the dancing black spots
dissolved, I took stock of my position – bed against the wall, facing a door at
the other end of the room. Carved dark
metal. Make that very well carved, and slightly low for a human, but not too low to
be dwarfishly so.
Elf.
Underdark.
Drow.
"Before you panic further and fall
out of the bed, by which time I would have to lift you back on, I suggest you
take a deep breath. Perhaps several of them."
A dry, sardonic voice, but with
gentle overtones, and feminine. Musical, elven female, speaking perfect common. I turned my heard sharply to see the other
occupant of the room.
She lounged on a cushioned stone
chair next to a stone table set into the wall beside the foot of the bed, long
legs crossed. On the table was a sword,
a long sword with a blade of blue crystal, the hilt hidden by the bulk of her
body. She was drow, a drow female, yet
wearing uncharacteristic baby blue robes, cut well, to be provocatively demure,
her slender hands in her lap, holding a thick book. She was beautiful more than most drow were, and although her face
was unfamiliar and her voice as well, something, some figment of memory, seemed
to surface within me.
She smiled a kindly smile, a
peculiar expression for drow. "I
thought that narcotic would take forever to wear off by itself. Thank Morikan you survived – the twins were
in the better half of hysterical when they brought you here. They had to go after that – came here
without Rael's permission. I doubt he'd
be very happy with them."
"Twins? And where in the Underdark
am I?" I dreaded the answers.
"You don't remember?" she frowned, a
comely expression on her face, then comprehension shone. "Ah yes, the mind wipe. And as to where you are...I believe you've
guessed it. You are in
Menzoberranzan...one of Bregan D'aerthe's little strongholds."
The realization still hit hard, even
though I had expected it. "Menzo...berranzan..." I whispered. "Why?"
"I have no idea why you turned into such a battered bloody mess, and in such
apparent mortal peril that the twins had to disobey direct orders and save you,
or any idea why they did so in the
first place. Maybe they truly are affectionate
towards their playmates. But as to why you are here...I happen to be on the
best of terms with them, and they came to me first." The side of her mouth
quirked with amusement. "Jarlaxle was
not very happy."
She did not say whether Jarlaxle was
not happy about my being in a 'battered bloody mess', or whether Jarlaxle was
not happy about the 'twins' bringing me here, but I decided to pass. "And who are these...twins?"
"Veldrin and Ssussun? You do not
recall?" She smiled. "DarkMage
mindwipes must be more potent than I thought. No matter." She raised one
slender hand, and the mage light illuminating the room swooped over to position
itself over her head, apparently to light up her book.
Exhausted by speaking, I breathed
heavily and stared at the ground while I assimilated this information. I still had no idea who these twins were,
but some part of me instinctively put them under 'friends', so I stayed with
that judgment. For now. And as to the sound of 'mindwipe'...
"Really sorry that you're still in
such a state," the female continued mildly as she turned her eyes back to the
book, "But Rai'gy and I did our best. You'd have to heal the rest until we next try again. You were hurt all over. Even in the strangest places." Her nose curled at the memory, but at
disgust, mirth or something else I could not ascertain.
I decided I did not really want to
know. "Do you know what happened to
my...captors?"
"Oh, them," the female looked up and
covered her mouth with her hand, a gesture of thinking, "The twins killed
them. Rather violently."
"All of them?" I said savagely,
feeling disappointed. No one for my
vengeance, and no one to question.
"And burned down the building, which
was apparently not your guild," she smiled suddenly, "I think some of
Calimport's still burning."
I continued to watch her
warily. Drow female, after all. And she was pleasing to look at. "These twins have great power?"
"I should think so," she
nodded. "They are part balor and angel, after all."
I blinked. "I do not know them."
"Yes you do. You just don't remember, Entreri." she said
with saucy ease.
"You have the advantage of me,
Lady...?" I had found, among other realizations, that women enjoyed being
called 'Lady'.
"You may call me Winter," she said,
and turned back to her book. "Now you
rest a little more, then when you are cured, Kimmuriel will send you back to
Calimport. We have your equipment."
The door clicked open, and without
even looking up Winter said, "Greetings, Jarlaxle. I thought you were supposed to be briefing your captains on your
latest conquest?"
I looked up to see one of the beings
on this earth whom I both disliked intensely and also respected just as
intensely. Jarlaxle walked as softly as
a cat, none of his jewelry or boots making a sound. He closed the door, and ignoring my presence, shot Winter an
irritated glance. "Winter, I believe I
told you to..."
Oddly, he was speaking in common as
well.
"I am not obliged to listen to you,"
she said with infuriating equanimity.
Jarlaxle did not react with fury as
I had expected, but rather with wry sufferance, as if he had been expecting
such an answer. I wondered who this
'Winter' was to him. Certainly not
insubordinate. Then she was not of
Bregan D'aerthe? Strange. "Then I would
not be 'obliged' to listen to you the
next time something like this happens. If I recall, you were the one who accepted the twins'..."
"Even if I had not, you would have
allowed him to be healed," Winter interrupted, "You want him alive, and the
both of us know it."
Jarlaxle shook his head and sighed,
then finally glanced at me. "Were you
getting careless, Entreri?"
I shrugged the best I could in this
position at him, not wanting to give him the pleasure of gloating.
"Don't tease him, Jarlaxle," Winter chided
him, with a benevolent smile. "He's
gone through enough already."
"Why are you here?" Jarlaxle asked
her curiously. And I wondered if this
was some sort of act put up for my benefit, or simply for their amusement? They could have easily spoken in the drow
tongue. But then, I had never been able
to understand drow elves very well.
"Because a lot of your soldiers do
not like humans," Winter replied mildly. "I did not help to save his life just to let your mercenaries take it."
"They would have left him alone,"
Jarlaxle disagreed, "And you know it." The rest was spoken in drow so quick that I could not catch the words,
but whatever it was, Winter apparently denied it, then began to chuckle,
undercutting her own words. Jarlaxle
turned his back on her in mock disgust.
"As to you..." he began, then
stopped when Winter sidled over and pressed against his back, murmuring in
drow, her hands sliding, a sly caress, over his bared stomach, and hooked her
thumbs in his belt. He replied half-heartedly
and tried to disengage, then apparently gave in to whatever she had
wanted. The crystal – Crenshinibon - at
his belt burned once, fitfully.
Winter winked at me, some sort of
message, as if she had skillfully managed to prevent Jarlaxle from doing something,
and was silently applauding herself, and also sharing her conspiracy with
me. Whatever it was. "My sword will
watch you. Mind – do not touch it, or
it may get angry." Then she let go, and
the both of them stepped forward and vanished, as if into some door.
Drow and their magic.
I glanced at her sword, and it began
to glow on the table.
"She means it," A multi-harmony
voice emanated from the blade, full of warning.
A sentient blade.
Drow elves, Bregan D'aerthe, and
Jarlaxle...
I wondered if leaving Delirium made
any difference.
"Thou art supposed to rest," the
sword suggested hopefully. A sleeping
assassin would be easier to watch than one who was awake, I knew, but I decided
not to humor it. The sword muttered
something, glowing in short, unrhythmic bursts, then fell silent and still.
Should I rest, or should I...
Although I knew deep down that doing
so was idiotic, I pulled myself to the edge of the bed, meaning to try and get
up to walk, even though my body screamed protest in every muscle and nerve.
What happened when I did try was
ignominious – I fell off the bed as Winter had predicted earlier, landing hard
on the ground in a swath of blankets. I
bit out the first curse words I had used in two days. The last time being when I had soiled my cloak due to chasing
Jale down the...but that did not matter now.
"I knew that would happen," the
sword woke up smugly.
I had managed, after a few more
false starts, to half-pull myself up by grasping the edge of the bed and
supporting myself on the wall, before two elven females stepped out of nothing
in front of me. The surprise was such
that I lost purchase on the wall and fell down on my rump, and nearly twisted
my other arm.
Why can these people not learn how
to use doors?
Very strange colored females, as
well - one with silvery-gold hair and bronzed skin, the other with dark onyx
hair and deep chocolate colored skin. Both had identical, impossibly beautiful faces. Greenish-red eyes, two pairs of them,
crinkled with amusement at the edges when they rested on me.
Their identically cut robes swirled
around them and clung to them at places as they approached, scarlet and black
with iridescent shades around the silver haired one, and a stark white for the
black haired one. Irony indeed – if
these were the twins that Winter had spoken of, then the one most resembling an
angel in features wore robes most suited to a balor, and the one resembling a
balor wore robes fitted for an angel.
The black haired one sat down
gracefully next to me, and the other sat on the edge of the bed, also too close
for my comfort. A part of my mind
registered astonishment that I had backed into the corner of of the bed and the
wall.
"Veldrin and Ssussun," the sword
apparently took pity on me, "He is supposed to be resting."
The black haired one pouted. "But he's not sleeping."
"He is supposed to be trying to,"
the sword replied. "Thou had to choose
the exact moment when Winter would be away?"
"We just managed to persuade Rael to
let us visit," the silver haired one said defensively.
"Thou didst not sneak away again?"
the sword sounded archly surprised.
"We didn't." The black haired one
said quickly, then pressed against me. "Don't think you remember the two of us?"
I shook my head, and felt like a
trapped animal, for some reason.
"Oh, not like that," the silver
haired one said, as if having read my mind. "We used to have lots of fun. My
name's Ssussun...my sister's Veldrin. We're who Winter calls the Terrible Twins." This last was chorused, and then they both giggled.
"You really don't remember us? Not
even a little?" Veldrin pouted.
I shook my head. Did I?
"Well, we can change that," Ssussun
smiled slowly, and put a hand on my leg. I froze.
"Veldrin? Ssussun?" the sword said
significantly.
"Oh, all right," Ssussun pouted,
getting off the bed and walking around me. Between the both of them they lifted me back onto the bed, then sat on
either side of me – Veldrin on the edge, Ssussun against the wall.
Feeling helpless – a very uncommon
sensation – I glanced at the sword.
"I should tell...bah, she would not
be listening at this point of time," the sword muttered unhelpfully, and then
was still again.
"No, Winter's having a lot of fun
with Jarlaxle now," Veldrin grinned. "Tell you what, Artemis, we'd leave you alone for a while until you get
a bit better." For some reason I could
not bring myself to protest against the use of my first name.
I also found out very soon what
their idea of 'leaving you alone' meant. It was a while before they did
let me sleep.
**
Once I had closed my eyes, it
seemed, I was back in the realm of Delirium.
Delirium sat on the brown cow, which
somehow managed to pull grass out of the honey-colored ground, and clapped her
hands when she saw me. "Oh, you're here
again! That's nice. Everything ended
nice too. Your friends saved you."
"I do not have friends," I said
mildly, then corrected myself. "Except
these." I patted the hilt of my sword.
"You have them, you just don't
know. You should have more friends!
Friends are like...scrumptious things, like the smell of pie and frying onions
and, and pink. Pink is scrumptious, especially the color of
pink that the sky paints in the evening when the moon's coming. I tried to paint before, and can you play
the guitar? I can." She rattled on,
and around her head formed a headband of transparent bubbles.
Forms sprang out of the gold, of
strange shapes, some beautiful, some ugly, all bizarre. The sky was no longer pink, but green, a
yellowed green, the sort you find only on artist palettes and not in
nature. It was now splotched in dark
blue and magenta.
The wind whispered in my ear, and
instead of the sibilant howling of a natural wind, this one spoke like
Delirium, a series of phrases like the babbling of a madman, or the prophecies
of a seer, snips of rhymes, poems, and a song.
"See the children run,
As the sun goes down,
Upon the fields of gold…"
I thought of the twins, and
unwillingly, smiled. I liked them,
despite everything. And I did look
forward to their promise to 'visit' a few more times...however they did not
tell me what had happened to me, saying that it was better if I did not
know. What did Winter mean to Jarlaxle?
When would I be taken back to Calimport? And had anything happened to the
Basadoni guild in my absense?
This place…why was I here again? So
many questions, in such an unstable,
riotous realm, and yet, conversely, for one of the few times in my life, I felt
peace.
"When we walked in fields of gold…"
Perhaps it was simply because this
place was unreal, and not under control of natural forces. I had lived many years, and had many
illusions broken painfully in front of me. Places of calm or memories of such were often tainted in violence or
tragedy; such pain has etched its way through my life. Even that Drizzt – did he truly think that I
had chosen from the start to keep
such a life, of killing? There were circumstances, always there were. But it did not matter any longer.
"When we walked in fields of gold…"
Delirium smiled, as if she understood
the uncommon feeling now radiating calm from my heart, and mouthed the words of
the song along with the wind, for remembrance, a souvenir to act as a retreat
of soothing calm in days to come.
"When we walked in fields of gold…"
Afterword
"Bregan D'aerthe again?" Zaknafein sighed.
"What don't you like about them?" the author said mildly.
"Jarlaxle annoys me," Zaknafein said bluntly.
"Lots of things annoy you, Zak," the author pointed out, "People stupider than you, people a lot smarter than you, yourself, people who talk too much…"
"And being called 'Zak'," Zaknafein added, meaningfully.
"Really? Well sorry, Zak," the author said sweetly.
"Do you like Entreri now too?" Zaknafein changed the subject smoothly. Actually, the author noticed. She just decided not to make an issue of it.
"No, I still think he's annoying in the books," the author said firmly. "He is more interesting when I write him."
"Because you twist his character."
"Well…" the author hedged.
"Well?" Zaknafein lounged elegantly against the computer table.
"Okay, so I do. But that's not necessarily bad. And anyway, I enjoy writing him like this, so there." The author said defensively.
"Do not tell me, tell your readers," Zaknafein said, then let out a soft exclamation when the author poked him in the side. "Ouch. That hurt."
"Good, because I know your next comment would be something snide about whether I have readers," the author told him with aplomb.
"You did?" Zaknafein attempted to look as harmless as possible. Obviously he failed in this category miserably. There is something about swords, chain mail, and muscles that tends to…
"Yes." The author said firmly, "Now. About the story."
"You are supposed to study for…Geography paper one." Zaknafein had managed to locate the white booklet mentioned before, which contained all the examination dates.
"Bah. That paper's easy. Don't even need to study. Even you can…wait, you can't." The author paused. "Because you live underground. Or lived underground."
"Pride comes before…"
"I know, I know." The author snapped. "And where did you learn that from?"
Zaknafein pretended not to listen.
"Well, whatever it is, the idea of an educated Zaknafein is frightening." The author said snidely. "Not to mention I cannot seem to grasp that idea in the first place."
Zaknafein raised an eyebrow.
"Before you say something depressing about my story, okay, we are on even footing now get on with it." The author said hurriedly. "God. You'd make a great lawyer. You'd just need to stare balefully at your opponent and he'd break down and say whatever you want to hear."
"Now that we understand each other," Zaknafein said graciously, "Very well. Your next story will obviously be the Despair one."
"Uh-huh. Unfortunately, I still cannot think of a plot that does not involve Wulfgar, so there'd be a bit of a delay for a while," the author pondered this, then brightened. "I can always kill him anyway, I suppose. Mitigating circumstances."
A loud rattling of the door on its hinges, and the author whirled on her revolving chair, nearly falling off it. "Yes?"
"Look! My toes are laughing again!" Her brother shouted from behind it, then burst into maniacal laughter.
"By Lloth," Zaknafein said slowly, "I think I may just kill that boy...to end his misery."
"Oh, will you?" the author said, with nearly frightening eagerness. Fortunately for her brother he moved away to destroy ants with a magnifying glass.
"Fratricide, my dear?"
"Hey, you know what 'fratricide' means…" the author looked amazed.
"There are several different words for different aspects of it in the drow tongue," Zaknafein explained, "Since it happens so often. We also have a word for death by mother, death by father, death by son, death by daughter…"
"Morbid, okay already," the author shuddered. "Don't suppose you have a word for chocolate."
"No," Zaknafein thought a little.
"Priorities," the author said with magnificent disdain. "Right. Back to the story, and stop backtracking."
"Fields of gold?" Zaknafein asked obligingly.
"Slow song from Sting and the Police. Nice song, even if I thought their best song is 'Every Breath you Take', but that is a stupid title for a story like this." The author said. "I'm not really sure if the lyrics are correct, but since Sting can't pronounce his words properly in the MP3 I'm not responsible." The author twiddled her thumbs and attempted to look so.
Zaknafein refrained from comment, since the author's revolving chair wheel was too close to his foot. "Very well. And is this the last we will see of the Jarlaxle-Winter tangent?"
"You are positively scintillating conversation today," the author said with exaggerated formality, "It could be. I am already getting bored with this Endless crossover anyway. The next story arc – not the Despair story - would have Nalfein as a main dark elf character, I think. Unless I come up with a story that's even more fun to write than my new idea."
"No more previews?"
"Are you Zaknafein? You don't talk like him," the author asked suspiciously, "By now Zaknafein should be asking for a drink. But no more previews…except that this could be the crossover with Buffy that I had spoken about."
"I am Zaknafein," Zaknafein said mildly.
"Right then – what did you do before you came up here? I seem to remember you being late," the author said skeptically. She leant forward. "Have you been taking drugs? Hit your head somewhere?"
"I did not do anything," Zaknafein said convincingly.
"Yeah, right." The author said, and poked him again. "Talk, you."
"I took the drink before I came up," Zaknafein refrained from pointing out that his swords were in reaching distance, as the author appeared to control most of the reality in her room except the part that got real work done.
"God. And how much did you take?" The author considered this. "Don't reply. I really don't want to know. Obviously enough to make you talk more. Later I'd tell myself this is good, but right now I'd just try not to give in to the impulse to roll over your foot."
"Thank you," Zaknafein said with dignity, and prudently removed said appendage from rolling range.
The
author muttered something about maybe bribing Winter to come over wasn't such a
bad idea after all.