He is reading a summoning textbook - it's not as interesting as the electrical engineering textbook but it's just as important and he wants to pester some daeva about the languages spoken in Heaven, Hell, and Fairyland. It has a background chapter on Revelation.
He asks Bar for Cam's obituary.
"Uh, murderers should go to prison, people occasionally cheat on their spouses, giving people a per-person stipend just encourages the poor to have more children, it's probably reasonable to draw and quarter people for treason -"
"I did read a little about humans before I got here. ...But I don't know what 'drawing and quartering' is."
"It's a form of execution in which you are dragged by horses to the place of execution and then chopped into four pieces, usually in front of a crowd."
"...okay, do you actually think that's reasonable or were you just looking for a reaction -"
"I mean, given the resources we have, no, not reasonable at all, if you're a Muggle king reasonable though not really any the less horrible for that."
"I can imagine tolerating execution under the sort of dire conditions humans have been known to work with, there doesn't seem to be any reason to bring the horses and the butchery into it."
"I am not especially interested in explaining things we can instead end, but public executions are astonishingly popular and well-attended and enjoyed, and talked about, and the 'talked about' is important."
"What do you think, am I being precious about that," she asks her alts.
"2179 is also precious. Less so, though, they don't censor the shampoo commercials or books containing socially inappropriate conduct."
"All our books depict inappropriate conduct, people are competing for Eru's approval. I can hardly think of any books that feature well-adjusted people communicating effectively and overcoming obstacles."
"Not literally all, some people write for audiences other than Eru. ...Er, I don't know how you think we come to decisions about what shampoo to buy but there are advertisements..."
" -oh, I want to see an Elf shampoo commercial - recommend us a company, Cam made a big screen to watch Atriama on -"
A flock of doves dive through the sky in formation. Someone tilts a basket of flower petals and they fall in slow motion to the ground. Waves crash against a beach.
And there is a totally nude Elf with very carefully braided hair, not a strand loose, lifting a raspberry to his lips.
"Spring Dew," says a pleasant female voice.
Water is running down the Elf's back! (The Elf's hair remains carefully untouched.) Shampoo is pouring out of the bottle in a glorious swirl, into the Elf's palm. (The Elf's hair remains carefully untouched.) The flower petals and doves make another appearance. The Elf sets the shampoo bottle back on the side of the shower, and smiles.
"We probably actually shouldn't show you human ones, it'd be inappropriate."
"Okay honestly though should I braid my braids into more braids - and tell Karen to if she wants to meet Elves, she usually just has it down -"
"You're fine, at least at the age you are, although it'd look prettier done up more elaborately - I can get used to humans wearing their hair down if it'd be very inconvenient for them otherwise, or if they don't like how they look braided, or something."
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
