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Bella moves. It's uneventful. She's not thrilled with the rain.
New kid shows up at the high school the next day. Hello, the high school. Hello, the students in the high school.
Hello, Jessica.
Jessica's very talkative. It's almost hypnotic.
"So what's Arizona like?"
"Well, sunnier."
"I bet! Wow, have you ever seen snow before?"
"On TV."
"Ha ha ha! Oh man is everybody really tan? Do you hang out at the pool all year round ogling boys?"
"I'm a little too gay to ogle boys."
"Oh! Oh wow. Okay. So um, I know this is a really small town, but guess what?" says Jessica.
"What?" asks Bella.
"We actually have a lesbian here! HEY SOLVEI!" Jessica hollers across the entire cafeteria.
onceandforall
gloriousdawn
That's okay. Solvei knows exactly where she wants to go.
Where she wants to go is, apparently, to a specific page on the website of a small museum in Thule dedicated to the history of the Thulian aristocracy.
The page shows a portrait. The caption on the picture reads, in both English and Thulic (although Bella's browser displays the Thulic alphabet as a bunch of character-not-supported squares):
Anastasia Koskin; her husband Claude; their daughter Solvei — 1815
Anastasia is a strong-jawed white woman with long black hair and piercing grey eyes. Claude is a black man with short hair and a gentle smile. Solvei... is Solvei. The person in this portrait painted in 1815 and the person sitting next to Bella are the same person. They're even almost the same age - the Solvei in the picture is maybe just a little younger.
Where she wants to go is, apparently, to a specific page on the website of a small museum in Thule dedicated to the history of the Thulian aristocracy.
The page shows a portrait. The caption on the picture reads, in both English and Thulic (although Bella's browser displays the Thulic alphabet as a bunch of character-not-supported squares):
Anastasia Koskin; her husband Claude; their daughter Solvei — 1815
Anastasia is a strong-jawed white woman with long black hair and piercing grey eyes. Claude is a black man with short hair and a gentle smile. Solvei... is Solvei. The person in this portrait painted in 1815 and the person sitting next to Bella are the same person. They're even almost the same age - the Solvei in the picture is maybe just a little younger.
onceandforall
"Okay. Keanu Reeves also has weird historical doppelgangers but they aren't named Keanu. Are you a vampire? With presumably magical healing powers."
thisbrokenworld
"I'm not," she says, shifting uncomfortably. "I'm not even Solvei Koskin... exactly."
Her body language is all different now. Movements more precise, expression less - charismatic. It would be reasonable for Solvei to look uncomfortable and withdrawn right now but she would look it in a more Solvei sort of way, and she isn't.
But then, apparently she's a very good mimic.
"The museum webpage doesn't get into it - I looked for one that did, couldn't find anything - but when Stasya Koskin was a teenager she had this scandalous semi-secret affair with Ghyslaine Royer, who was also a jarl's daughter so at least they didn't have class coming between them but they were both jarls' daughters, and this was the seventeen-somethings, so it still didn't go over well. And - well - a lot of things happened, but particularly, the Koskins all died in an assassinatory fire when I—when Solvei was sixteen. And Ghys was really broken up about it. And Ghys is immortal and has magic, and it was fairly recently that the idea of cloning became part of the public consciousness, and when it did she cloned Solvei Koskin. And got me."
Her body language is all different now. Movements more precise, expression less - charismatic. It would be reasonable for Solvei to look uncomfortable and withdrawn right now but she would look it in a more Solvei sort of way, and she isn't.
But then, apparently she's a very good mimic.
"The museum webpage doesn't get into it - I looked for one that did, couldn't find anything - but when Stasya Koskin was a teenager she had this scandalous semi-secret affair with Ghyslaine Royer, who was also a jarl's daughter so at least they didn't have class coming between them but they were both jarls' daughters, and this was the seventeen-somethings, so it still didn't go over well. And - well - a lot of things happened, but particularly, the Koskins all died in an assassinatory fire when I—when Solvei was sixteen. And Ghys was really broken up about it. And Ghys is immortal and has magic, and it was fairly recently that the idea of cloning became part of the public consciousness, and when it did she cloned Solvei Koskin. And got me."
thisbrokenworld
"You shouldn't ask Ghys about any of this," she goes on more quietly. "I - there's some things that - I want to ask you to promise not to tell your dad, before I say them."
onceandforall
"He already knows I was miraculously healed and he's not stupid. He might put other clues together if there are any."
thisbrokenworld
"He's not going to put the clues together on this one even if he reads all the right history books."
onceandforall
"I won't tell him unless he guesses, he's about to dangerously act on false information and I can't otherwise stop him, or you tell me I may."
thisbrokenworld
"Okay," she says.
She is quiet for a moment, and very still, perhaps gathering courage.
"Ghyslaine Royer was - violently in love with Stasya Koskin. These days the phrase would be 'stalker ex'. That much you can get from a close reading of the history books. The part that's not in the books is, when Stasya had a kid, and the kid grew up... Ghys fell for her a little too. And. She had to settle for cloning me—cloning Solvei, there wasn't enough left of Stasya to get a clean gene sample. But. I'm a very good mimic. I don't just - when I'm being Solvei I'm being Solvei, it's not just acting, or it's acting with my brain as well as my body - she needed me to get it perfect - but a properly perfect Solvei would've hated her - that's where my ignore function comes from, I have to be very very good at editing my Solvei's reality, because what Ghyslaine really wants is a Solvei who will be her niece in public and her - her lover in private, and who she can hurt when she feels like it and not have to deal with her being inconveniently traumatized afterward."
She is quiet for a moment, and very still, perhaps gathering courage.
"Ghyslaine Royer was - violently in love with Stasya Koskin. These days the phrase would be 'stalker ex'. That much you can get from a close reading of the history books. The part that's not in the books is, when Stasya had a kid, and the kid grew up... Ghys fell for her a little too. And. She had to settle for cloning me—cloning Solvei, there wasn't enough left of Stasya to get a clean gene sample. But. I'm a very good mimic. I don't just - when I'm being Solvei I'm being Solvei, it's not just acting, or it's acting with my brain as well as my body - she needed me to get it perfect - but a properly perfect Solvei would've hated her - that's where my ignore function comes from, I have to be very very good at editing my Solvei's reality, because what Ghyslaine really wants is a Solvei who will be her niece in public and her - her lover in private, and who she can hurt when she feels like it and not have to deal with her being inconveniently traumatized afterward."
thisbrokenworld
"Make her young and beautiful forever. And heal people. I - there's a reason I knew she had healing powers. She can do other things but I don't know what they all are. There's a kind of... theme to it. Chains. Magic chains."
thisbrokenworld
"She gets all her magic from this - jewel egg thing, but she wears it literally all of the time, even if somebody tried to steal it in her sleep she'd just wake up and kill them. If they were lucky."
onceandforall
"Damn. Okay. And she doesn't melt in water or she wouldn't fucking live here. Prophecy of doom? Nemesis with a magic sword? I'm not actually being helpful and should just hug you or something?"
thisbrokenworld
"I mean if you come up with a brilliant plan to kill Ghys that actually succeeds, I will—be very grateful, but hugs are likely to be of more practical benefit in the short term," she says.
thisbrokenworld
She has another of her very-still-and-quiet moments upon hug, but then relaxes and leans into it a little.
"Ghys does have magic enemies but they actually manage to be even worse than she is," she murmurs. "Sort of - floating pocket dimensions of evil that make the people around them suffer and die. If you hear about a weird mass suicide it was probably a witch. She kills them and, I don't know the details exactly, eats them to power her magic? This may actually make her a force for good in the world on balance, but I don't usually manage to find that comforting."
"Ghys does have magic enemies but they actually manage to be even worse than she is," she murmurs. "Sort of - floating pocket dimensions of evil that make the people around them suffer and die. If you hear about a weird mass suicide it was probably a witch. She kills them and, I don't know the details exactly, eats them to power her magic? This may actually make her a force for good in the world on balance, but I don't usually manage to find that comforting."
onceandforall
"...I wouldn't think so. Uh, this is a sleepy little town with very few mass suicides, does she have to go to big cities for fuel?"
thisbrokenworld
"Yeah. Not that often unless she's using a lot of magic. I don't have an exact count because sometimes she goes to big cities for other reasons, but maybe once every two or three weeks on average? And I don't know how much of that is killing witches and how much is just - scouting for them."
onceandforall
"Could you run away while she was on a witch hunt? Or would her magic plus presumably having the legal status of being your aunt suffice to locate you?"
thisbrokenworld
"I've tried to run away before. I've. Stopped trying," she murmurs. "It never ends well. If I just do everything she wants me to all the time, and be the exact version of Solvei that she wants at any given moment, then she lets me go to school and visit friends and I get to spend most of my time being a version of Solvei whose life is completely fine."