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Finnah's just arrived at work to open the store for the morning shift; she has her apron on but hasn't put her hair up yet. She lets in the customer who always takes half an angle to determine that he wants four buttercreams, again, and then nips into the back to tend to her hair and check the overnight progress of the rock candy.
This isn't the back.
But that -
No, he's too tall to be Mial, if this is a Mial prank it's a stupidly elaborate one.
"Okay, I give up," she says, "what the hell?"
isthisart
"Nothing obvious, but names aren't always definitive," says Linyabel. "Mini-me was adopted as a baby and named Nika, but my other alt and I had similar names. 'Stalas' and 'Milo' have almost nothing in common in terms of sound even absent that confounding factor."
thisvorlunatic
"I don't have a boyfriend, I have a wife. Stalas's boyfriend is Mark. Mial is single. None of us has a cat that I know of," says Miles. "What are these people's other characteristics? And why include the cat?"
first-and-final
"Why not include the cat?" wonders Milo. "Her full name is Catherine. She's shy with strangers but friendly with people she knows and likes, and very few people will believe me about her glorious sense of humour."
isthisart
"I knew an Ekaterin, but she is not a cat, and we haven't spoken in some time. Do cats often have senses of humor where you're from?"
abeance
"I would imagine so? I mean, we're not witches, so Milo can only understand her via elaborate code and guessing, but I don't think they actually depend on the presence of witches for anything except interpretive services."
first-and-final
"The elaborate code and guessing is really not as hard as everyone makes it out to be," says Milo. "I don't understand why more people don't do it. Well, I guess most people who really want to understand a cat don't also have personal reasons to avoid becoming a witch."
abeance
"Yeah? Why don't you want to be a witch?" asks Aurin.
"Milo has to be very concerned about his gender presentation because for unclear reasons things keep mistaking him for a girl - a princess, specifically. A dragon carried him off once about it."
Aurin looks Milo over. "I don't have the faintest urge to carry you off," he says helpfully.
"Milo has to be very concerned about his gender presentation because for unclear reasons things keep mistaking him for a girl - a princess, specifically. A dragon carried him off once about it."
Aurin looks Milo over. "I don't have the faintest urge to carry you off," he says helpfully.
middlingalong
"Aurin's a dragon," clarifies Ivan. "Hence for some reason the eye color while he's shapeshifted like so. I'm not anything interesting but Little Ivan was a secret firebird."
first-and-final
"...well, good," says Milo. "Do continue refraining from carrying me off. So if cats aren't people in your world, maybe Ekaterin is an alt of Cath, but we'd have a hard time finding out since Cath is at home keeping Reko company and you haven't talked to Ekaterin recently. Okay, how about Glynn and Reko. Glynn is... really good at chess, although not nearly as good as me. Reko is... um... the Duke of Ferdinandia? Jann, do you have any better idea of how to describe these people?"
abeance
"Reko is very much the duke of Ferdinandia? I don't think I have any recently minted Ferdinandian coins on my person. Heeee is three years older than me - five older than Milo - pretty good at duke-ing, was all set to pine for Milo forever until I did some excruciating matchmaking in which he waited until I was just about despairing of being able to make eye contact again before telling me he was in love with Milo... pale, dark curly hair, an inch shorter than me?"
thisvorlunatic
"...um," says Miles. "This may be ringing a bell. I'm not sure it's a bell I want rung."
abeance
"Yeah! He's probably whoever you're thinking of. Is yours his evil twin or something, what's so concerning?"
thisvorlunatic
"He's the emperor of my planet and a close childhood friend and at no point have I ever considered dating him," says Miles.
abeance
"...Well, I hope yours isn't just pining forever, but you seem to be doing all right on your end."
thisvorlunatic
"If Gregor is pining after me he's doing it very very quietly," says Miles. "Good God."
first-and-final
"Okay, moving on - Glynn is absurdly good at being a knight, do you have anyone like that around?"
middlingalong
"My best friends are neither singularly competent nor such standouts-as-friends that they'd come up in a conversation like this and none of 'em have names that sound like Glynn," says Ivan.
"I don't even have anything like being a knight - Ivan's at least in his planet's military, I don't do anything in particular to meet absurdly good knightlike persons at," says Aurin. "I mean, I could have had a friend exactly like this Glynn person when I was seventy and just not remember it and he'd be dead of old age by now but that seems not to be how this... spree of alts... has been working."
"I don't even have anything like being a knight - Ivan's at least in his planet's military, I don't do anything in particular to meet absurdly good knightlike persons at," says Aurin. "I mean, I could have had a friend exactly like this Glynn person when I was seventy and just not remember it and he'd be dead of old age by now but that seems not to be how this... spree of alts... has been working."
abeance
"I'm a dragon?" says Aurin. "I'm a little over two hundred years old? Do dragons who carry off princesses not work like that?"
"I mean, they live a long, long time, but they also don't turn into humans," says Jann. "Also, I think you might remember Glynn if you had a Glynn, even if you met him a hundred and thirty years ago. He thinks I'm hilarious? Has beaten Milo at chess?"
"Well, now he's just sounding disturbingly like Mark," says Aurin.
"I mean, they live a long, long time, but they also don't turn into humans," says Jann. "Also, I think you might remember Glynn if you had a Glynn, even if you met him a hundred and thirty years ago. He thinks I'm hilarious? Has beaten Milo at chess?"
"Well, now he's just sounding disturbingly like Mark," says Aurin.
first-and-final
"Yeah, I keep being thrown by the part where you look very much like a human at the moment," says Milo. "And also I haven't really thought about the dragon lifespan problem from the dragon's perspective before, the only dragon friend I have is old enough that he might conceivably not outlive me... I really don't think Glynn is a Mark."
abeance
"I don't know how your dragons work, but for ours up to about age two hundred you can divide by ten and get a human equivalency and then after that there is no real equivalency, just 'that's a dragon,'" says Aurin. "Mial works the same way age-wise even though he's not a dragon, he's a hundred seventy at the moment."
"What is he instead?" Jann asks, quite innocently.
"...He's a shren, and now you're going to make me explain that, aren't you. Mial, you're the one who decided to be a shren, explain it to these people."
"What is he instead?" Jann asks, quite innocently.
"...He's a shren, and now you're going to make me explain that, aren't you. Mial, you're the one who decided to be a shren, explain it to these people."
thisvorlunatic
"A shren is almost exactly like a dragon except that, one, our wings don't work in our natural forms, and two, the magical language that both shrens and dragons natively speak loves them and despises us," says Mial. "There are some other negative side effects but that's the one I'm especially pissed off about."