Disclaimer: See part 1
Note: Beta by nycsnowbird
Yahtzee
When I enter the queen's summer home, she already has the dice out like she knows I've come for a divination.
"Our fourth has arrived!" My queen doesn't waste any time telling me that I am here on her terms. I may be a sheriff and twice her age anywhere else, but here I am the fourth and I am expected.
I sit down at the empty space at the table, at her feet, she is the queen after all, and this is how she holds court. "You know the rules, I'm sure," The queen says and rattles the dice in the cup. Once they would have been the bones and innards of a sacrificial bird.
"Another one!" says the pet with the blonde braids, and she's doing a well rehearsed rendition of wide-eyed wonder.
The queen is right. I do know the game. I've known it in many variations but the basic principle is always the same: roll the dice, if the outcome is not ideal, get rid of the parts you don't like and try again. I glance at the score sheet and see my name in the fourth column at the end of a list of penitents.
"We'll play to five million," the queen says, and her pet sullenly tells me she's way ahead. In case I've failed to notice.
The light in the room is disorienting. There is a thinness to artificial light like there is to mountain air. It presses uniformly into the corners of a room, trying to distract the senses, trying to fool them into believing it was born of clear skies and window panes. The queen's sense of irony is refined. The humans who attend us decorate themselves with skulls, they paint themselves up in the postures of death. She is their perfect reflection, dressed up in false silver and sunlight.
I look again at her human pet and feel something that is a step removed from pity. There is something broken in this one. She lives in a world that is governed by Sophie-Anne LeClerq's rules. She's burning on the fuel of blood lust. She is someone who's dedicated herself to burning out long before the consequences set in. And that's why she thrives. There's an end in sight and she's never expected to win. We play to five million and she's way ahead.
Poor child. Though it might be worse for her if she understood, the queen is from the Old World, from a time before accessible millions. Her rules reign here and here 'million' is still another word for infinite.
Pity is a step removed from sympathy.
Then the time is fortuitous and the oracle speaks: "Yahtzee is the most egalitarian game in the world! You could be my social, physical, or intellectual inferior, but your chances are equal to mine. It's the antidote for this world, where things such as superiority and inferiority do matter."
The trick is to listen to what the oracle says instead of what you'd like her to say.
"Speaking of which ...." She segues into a flippant remark about Godric but I listened to her words and how she turned them. Speaking of which. Godric was her superior in every way. I already knew this but her acknowledgment of the fact is fitting. Maybe even kind.
"Thank you," I reply even as she shouts, "Yahtzee!" because the oracle is not bound by time and we're already on to something else.
"It is a magic!" The human male declares. Here is an interesting specimen, a perfect example of what the human race might have become if consciousness hadn't hit evolution like a midlife crisis: strong, beautiful, and stupid. And yet, it often happens that only fools are granted leeway to speak the truth.
The leeway is small though. "I do not cheat!" the queen declares, and the boy backs away. His preservation instinct is intact at least. He's dared to threaten the validity of her world. But in her world she is sane, in any other world she is dangerous. In her world, it is perfectly acceptable that she should roll six perfect Yahtzees.
When the Queen gets around to the maenad, I know why she's given me an audience. She knows something I don't about Sookie Stackhouse. She wants to see how far the contamination's spread. She accuses me of loving the human, the human who accused me of loving Godric. Sookie knew nothing and yet ....
I look up at a window, at the sun that the queen has had painted on the sky and for an instant I let myself see my maker at dawn, see the fire burning him from the inside out. Maybe that's the solution to the problem of Sookie Stackhouse. Maybe she can answer the question of her existence. Maybe it's there inside her and the only thing to do is burn her up and divine meaning from the entrails.
But the queen dislodges my contemplation, asking about vampire blood. I toyed with Bill on the bridge because I was holding all the cards and he was still making threats. But here the cards don't mean a thing. We're playing dice and she heard it all.
The queen leaps through a crack in her own composure, and then my back is on the tile floor.
For five hundred years, time has smashed upon the queen like a breaking wave, taking pieces of her away with it on the tide. Godric's solution was death, the one thing he'd evolved beyond. Sophie-Anne's is insanity. It is the only thing that keeps her sane.
But then there was Bill-fucking-Compton knowing something she didn't tell him and telling her about it.
The queen doesn't like to be reminded that her sphere of absolute influence only goes as far as the front door. "I could own your fangs as earrings," she says, and I know it's true. Here she owns the ocean and the sun and the sky.
But I am distracted. There is blood in my mouth. The queen really does knows something I don't. I raise my head, seeking her lips but she pulls away. Maybe she's noticed how fixedly I'm looking into her eyes, how deliberately I'm not looking at her pet who looks and smells so much like Sookie, her pet that was so interested in Sookie's love life. I don't let realization reach my eyes where she might see it. But I know now that the queen warns from experience. Don't taste her. Ever.
She takes her seat, satisfied that I fear her and I want her. I've passed her test. Bill Compton wouldn't have kissed her back. He is in love and monogamous with his human.
I can still taste the pet's blood on the backs of my lips. The oracle has answered a question I didn't know I was asking and the path is clearer now. But it will all be for nothing if Sookie Stackhouse dies at the hand of the maenad.
I roll the dice again and plan my words.
She reads the dice quickly. Dice are absolute. There's none of the guesswork that goes along with entrails. "You suck at this!" Here she makes the rules. Here she assures herself that they are hers by breaking them.
"Your Majesty—"
"We'd like you to stay to break the first million. Then we'll celebrate." Stay for a single eternity and then we'll celebrate. This is the sacrifice she requires for answering my question—now I know Sookie Stackhouse is worth my efforts and now I am not allowed to save her life.
Just before dawn, the queen releases me. I walk out of her dayroom and fly into a world in the last throes of night. Ahead of me is Bon Temps and Sookie Stackhouse. Soon I will be close enough to know whether or not she lives, whether or not the price was too high.
Behind me is my queen and my name is at the bottom of a list of penitents. I walk away but I can still see the sun painted on the sky. I can still see Godric burning. I am still trapped in her perfect world. And as the oracle prophesied, I suck at playing by someone else's rules.
