jeux sans frontières

jin&aegaeon: make food, useful to everyone. feminine gender role
addam&hugo: make junk, useful to everyone. masculine gender role

minochi: write stories, dubiously useful if morale and emotional labor is not considered essential, "for most of history anonymous was a woman"
i don't know why i wrote it quite that way. my point was that today we think of writing (and other fine arts, versus handicrafts) as a fairly nongendered activity but once upon a time female characters were played by teenage boys etc. that stuff

sighs dreamily. yui uzuki my husband's outside playing with his junk
sighs yet more dreamily. still collecting the junk are ya
frowns undreamily. flora has a dust allergy

i was just found dead on account of it took me until right now tonight to realize that cole's junk is the ttgc party junk

azzar: why are we carrying this sack of stuff there are people to help
minoth: well fine career you picked spawn of mine how are you planning to do archaeology on a sunken titan that's right smart guy that's what i thought. move your ass

"You're back," said Azzar.

It had finished speaking with Addam several minutes ago, now, and though it harbored no particular dislike for the prince's mannerism and demeanor, it did not particularly feel that today, of all days, was the time to discover the freshly-paved road to getting on with one another. One's left-side father, right-handed and right-braid.

Instead, it waited for Minoth. Minoth, the cautious fool, who seemed to have all the answers.

It had watched Minoth climb out the bedroom window, nearly trip over two Gormotti children playing on the wooden roof, saunter toward the garrison wall, and take about half of the steps down with the same ambling, spill-all-over gratuitous-grandeur gait before remembering himself and finishing the descent with much more practical movements.

He didn't seem to mind that the children might have seen him, though they did apparently take him by substantial surprise - this perhaps due more to his own preoccupation than to their unorthodox choice of roughhouse location. And the militia members, too, were to Minoth nonthreatening. Not just nonthreatening but totally unworthy of caution.

Almost like he felt himself at home.

You're back, said Azzar, a rhetorical statement of fact meant mostly to indicate its presence. But obviously Minoth had already known.

"Ah, you know." Even know, Minoth couldn't help but grin - so much for maintaining nonchalance. "Your mother just wanted to remind me to look both ways when I cross the street."

"My mother?" Azzar questioned, rather than dissect the anachronism.

"Well now," mused Minoth. "Let's be feminist here. You've already got two fathers."

"But she's... We are not related."

Sure. No real argument to be had there. Minoth would sooner see the objection to Addam positioning himself as Mythra's father figure, though. Difficult to define, indeed. But, in general, is the wife of your father not your mother? And is the mother of your child not your wife?

In general. As if Azzar was conceived from any sort of generality. No, no, Azzar was very, very specific.

"They call that the family of things, I think," was what with which Minoth eventually decided to reply. "Anyway, she precedes you, as does your reputation. You fancy yourself a weather changer?"

"I don't," said Azzar, seemingly ever negative in neutrality. "I imagine that honor would belong to a child of you and Haze."

And that...

There was something off-putting about this idea, even as it was phrased strictly dry and clinical. Briefly, Minoth imagined the wide pants hiding the wiry body whose arms manipulated a naginata between, below and around perfectly symmetrical braids of jet-black stick-straight hair. Tetchy, they'd be. Quick to trigger, slow to burst. Moving in phases, akin to a thunderstorm that threatens, threatens, threatens.

"Look to the skies," Minoth mumbled, more to himself than to Azzar. "Who knows when there might be news?"

Good. Bad. Many fair-weather denominations.

Enough of perambulation to advance them to the Armu grazing ground saw most of the clouds passed. Maybe Azzar wasn't apt to change the weather, but it did find it opportune, quite often, to fall in tune with it.

With clearer skies came clearer thoughts.

"You're very happy, that I was awakened."

Of course: it's half a statement, half a question. A fine specimen of unconfident conjecture.

Minoth sighed, to hear it - and resignation is often an indication of the final step between awareness and acceptance, but if resignation can be satisfied, his was.

"Well, why not? It's...fascinating." Not to say fun.

"Because I'm you." With the scars and the furrows and the starpoints and the everything.

(Azzar's eyes were a rusty, dusty gold. Azzar's hair was a heathery shade of musty brown mixed with streaks of reddish. Azzar's doublet was a Tornan poncho.)

"Because you're not me." Minoth shrugged. "We've already had me, right? And I'm still standing here, as we speak."

Always have been. Ever shall be. No regrets. Only initiative.

"You're new. New information. Something we've never had before."

Never had, here or there, before. Never will again, after.

A new Blade, seen born forever, now and now and now. A gift for the present. A surefire red string of fate whose knot was hitched to the post of a thousand years, unknown.

Was it really possible to know that Azzar was really new?

"But I'm also you."

Yes, it really was, because everybody understood it.

"And would you look at that - I don't hate you!"

"No," said Azzar. The non-sequitur echo was pleasing, somehow. Self-fulfilling indeed. You know... "I like you just fine."

"You're really going to eat that?"

"That's what you made it for, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but...nobody ever eats my food."

"I may have a sterner stomach than most."

It was the most theatrical Mythra had ever heard Azzar act, and instead of being served an unwanted reminder of its progenitors, she found herself comforted by the familiarity.

Seriously, though. Nobody ever appreciated her cooking but her. Addam and Minoth said they did, but flocked their moseying right to Jin and Aegaeon whenever dinner duty was even in remote danger of being suggested.

Jin and Aegaeon, with the women's work. Addam and Hugo, with the layabout benefit. Minoth, drawing up the queer theory of generational art, in between.

So you can guess, just about guess, who was loved and appreciated, for the work they did, for the contributions they made.

Lora, loved by her own. Brighid and Haze, loved surely by their Drivers - and these two, with their affections garnered by the playwright. Aegaeon, treasuring the freedom of the wild. Hugo, indulgent of his aggraciated Blades. Minoth, also wending that way. Addam, attached to the Paragon. Jin, surrounded in origin. Mythra, seated and served only by herself.

Azzar, on account of being some kind of literal non-dressage workhorse decked in a smart handful of ribbons and bows, also won widespread and unquestioned, quiet favor. But Mythra was rejected; was seen as a burden. Mythra was always and only seen as a burden.

(Could it really be so simple? Was there really nothing more? Did her issue lie neatly within a total lack of introspection?)

But some may have sterner minds and spirits than most. Some may be dispassionately patient.

Azzar's lidded eyes seemed to graze over her so differently than did Brighid's. Azzar's connection to the mechanical charm and its bladed ridges seemed to be personal, more reminiscent of a bunnit's foot, while its consumption of a upa-stuffed bun was merely utilitarian.

Ritual. Routine. Roughshod.

But that couldn't be true. Could it? That by not caring, not getting anywhere near the same stint of investment, Azzar cared more? Cared better? Bore something of worth, to the core?

There was no pity. There was hardly any pith.

The upa made a grotesque crunching noise.

Azzar looked at Mythra, somewhere between its chin and its forehead, and smiled.

"You've got an eye for detail, Azzar."

Addam said it appreciatively, as he did most all things, but there was little avuncular condescension, redundant pronouncement, to be lifted from his words here. Instead, there was heard a thready sort of awe. The slowness of the statement served to illustrate just how impressed Addam truly was.

Of course, that sired by the perfectionist sharpshooter, the one who picked at petty details and never rested until the final flourish had graced the page, should naturally have such a trait. Now, Minoth had neither Keen Eye nor Fortitude to his name (to his nature), but a sardonic temperament approximated this, and on the flip side, this was how Addam was: you couldn't say much about him, to pinpoint, but you just knew that his determination was there.

Azzar, unremarkable. Well, its fathers might never admit to as much, but Azzar rather liked being unremarkable; being plain, personified only and uniquely by itself in a way that defied any description to be truly useful.

What could you say about Azzar? It sang as a Ponio sang. Its body was as heavy as that much muscle and fat were expected to be. Its ears were as perked and pointed as anyone that heard, listened and paid attention. It had breasts and ribbons and bows and garter belts and chips of wear all decorating its hooves.

It had not put these things on, but it also would not take these things off. Fashion was a thing reserved for the future, for other antiseptic centuries.

Certainly, no airs. Certainly, no reputation.

The miniature pieces of abstract art that Azzar produced showcased the limit of its capacity, below propensity, for illusion. The portfolio of copper roses and talisman frames employed the third dimension only up to the point that its inclusion might prove garish. One was never meant to prick one's finger upon Azzar's creations. There were no incidental scratches along the breadth of its broad thighs. There were no springs, no surprises.

There were no switches, no lights, no thumbprints or divots. It might easily have enjoyed weaving, in another life. In this one, as potential others, it heard all and subjected no subtle reinterpretation: what be termed a perpetually perceptive Ear to the Grindstone. And among the endless winding, twisting swarf - the collection of objects and thoughts and sounds that did not matter - so much wild grass did grow, and grow, and grow.

(Azzar didn't see the wind. Azzar only heard it. Azzar only counted thunderstorms in lieu of ever chasing waterfalls.)

Azzar heard Addam speaking low and slow, deterred in his sculptural ministrations by the reminder that there was something of his own to steward - some pride to take, indeed. He might even have been speaking to himself, if not to his distant-present image.

There was no need to smile. There was no need to bend. Humans said so many things for their own benefit, even as they thought them unselfishly.

You're a marvel, Azzar, said Addam, in effect. And Azzar replied, by not replying, I am only what I am. I am just what you see, to you.

Maybe they had many more things, effects and stow, than Lora had once and ever had, but there were many more of them, altogether being told, and so it was no immense undertaking to carry all the supplies, many for the splendoring, from place to place, and even to leave them in the inn.

They didn't leave them at Aletta, maybe because of that business about Vez and the safe, or maybe just because these were their things, their traveling things, and what would be the point of ditching them off at a wayside?

They carried them up to the Holy Gate. They carried them through the thorax of the Titan. They dropped half again as many screws and nuts and ornamental berries as they had found in the shifting sands, of course, but it was alright so long as they hadn't holes in their bags.

Even up to the Soaring Rostrum. Why? Well, because if Auresco persisted in material things, markets and bistros and peace gardens, despite the black and apocalyptic nihil nature of the attack, then these would be people who fought against the divine scourge. These would be humans, Drivers, equipped with their Blades, and all of them together equipped with mementos more than any collective memento mori.

When it came time for the impromptu evacuation, Jin was concerned with Lora, Addam was torn between the body and the soul, and Haze seemed rooted to the spot in dry, silent weeping for her inability to revive the imperial corpse.

The two of pack animal mentality were left to pretend to rummage for bandages. Azzar would have been quite content, to the extent of such a possibility, to act as an onlooker standing by for imperative reins, but Minoth was the one to break the stock of stillness and hand him objects with drawstrings, even as the transport Titan groaned overhead.

There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to stay.

And Azzar, who never questioned a request, who preferred silently acquiescing to ever arguing about whatever it was someone was asking it to do, gave a great shudder of its broad shoulders and turned its unblinking face upon Minoth.

"Why are we carrying this sack of provisions? We can't possibly need it where we're going now. There are people to help."

Still, it kept walking. It did not pause, for this all-important debate.

Minoth stopped, however. One of his arms traveled all the way up into the air above his head, rustling his ponytail, its inertia helping to wheel him about and set his treads in the rapidly-churning mud between the cobbled tiles.

"Well, fine career you picked, spawn of mine." The harsh words seemed to rush out of his mouth without his bidding. "And just how are you planning to do archaeology on a sunken Titan?"

Azzar didn't reply, but not for lack of considering what would even serve to separate paleontology enacted upon the bones of the beast and a recovery of esoteric artifacts all bound to be crushed and scattered in the frenzy.

Did Minoth mean to state that these various and sundry implements, boxes and helmets and wings and flags, were intended to be recovered at any and all cost, should they not be bundled along in the here and now? Did he mean to imply that Azzar's own study of them would motivate the work of an entire lifetime, someday long into the future?

Was Minoth saying that this junk was far more important to him even than Azzar's own life, or that of the salvagers that would have to be involved, at such a date?

In a way, it could see clearly the logic. In all other ways, it merely puzzled and blinked. It heard. It processed. It reviewed its inclination to argue.

(It kept its mouth closed ad hoc because it found that habit and its inverse as easy as breathing, unaffected.)

"That's right, smart guy. That's what I thought." Somehow Minoth managed to look imposing even with distended burlap silhouette impinging his jaw, chin and cheek. "Now move your ass."

"But who's going to die?" Flora had asked, pensively. "That is, whose death will cause Azzar to...disappear?"

A late-night conversation, maybe. Addam had frowned. "We don't know. Let's just hope it's to be a long while off."

Though appearing somewhat distracted, Minoth had nodded as well. Sure, let's just hope. One at a time, huh?

Whose hands had been on the Core, when the awakening had commenced in earnest? Who had been the first to let go? Who was suited to be a Driver, in general? Was Minoth's Core data inextricably tied to Azzar, regardless? Were they altogether certain that, seeing as she'd missed her initial goal by half, Mythra had really then done what she'd claimed to do?

But surely Flora would follow this thought out to the next natural question.

"And when Azzar returns to its Core?"

"Bury it," said Minoth, without waiting for Addam's response. "Baby horseshoes, never worn."

And Addam couldn't answer to this, anyway, since admitting the possibility of Minoth's death occurring any earlier than his would leave such a rotten taste in his mouth that it denied him speech.

Flora just pursed her lips, taste or no taste. Indeed, they all rather implicitly understood and agreed that Azzar's wellbeing was Minoth's purview, principally, and the jurisdiction of such needed little input from Addam, the nominal Driver. Addam and Flora had their own children, pending. If Minoth lived forever, ageless, then so Azzar would, too.

(Was it also possible that Azzar would outlast both of its fathers, either on principle of mutual cancellation into perpetuity or just so as to be the last of the three to fall?)

But certainly, there would be no new Azzar, no reintroductions, no reinstatement of the unmistakable overlap, without Addam. Without Mythra. Without Torna.

A new Blade. A Blade for the moment. A Blade born of union with a human. A Blade born of an unnatural dream. And yet, beyond all of that, a Blade of classical honesty - a creature, great or small.

If the Core Crystal had been blank, it had served its purpose well. If it hadn't, then more respect ought to be paid to its original occupant, and whatever Mythra had done to it, them, all.

It was here in the playhouse now. Minoth had toyed with the idea of asking Addam to fashion a replica of a replica worthy of Azzar's dynamic life, some kind of tasteful-gaudy urn or coffin, but never followed through. So, into the Astronomer's Pot it went, because though Minoth had enjoyed Azzar's metalwork greatly, he didn't think the contours of Hi-vis Wire were entirely appropriate for the décor of a dimly-lit room; he carefully piled Azzar's own output into the Box of Legions, for indefinite safekeeping.

Oh, what a wretched, righteous, everlasting interconnected all-encompassing no-account family of things.

And when Vandham lambasted him for his inability to let things go, for his concrete construction and abstract erection of a fortress about his aging self, mind and body, Cole thought, you know, I should tell him, shouldn't I? I should give him a regular gallery walk.

But such an endeavor would uproot the artifacts, the pots dried by Torna's campfires and the gizmos tested in Gormott's glens, out of the past; out of their essential mystery, out of the all-important context.

Vandham wasn't wrong. It was junk. All junk. Nothing but junk. And old notes, crumbling pages, Sticky Stick Insects that had died in transit rather than at capture, pens that were out of ink or missing a spring or cracked in the barrel, quills that had frayed through out into nothingness.

If Azzar had been avian rather than equine, Minoth would surely have written epics entirely via the apparatus harvested of his clone-foal companion (half colt, half filly, all tossing of mane). If he had had the appropriate equipment, he might have collected horsehair to sell to bards (and wondered, in a rare state of complete mental drift, whether it might have been worthwhile, as relevant, for Azzar to train at an actual musical instrument and the corresponding theory, systems, notation, rather than just its voice).

Who could blame me? Cole asked himself this time and time again, whether he was peacefully shuffling his way through the office to the storeroom or he was unrecoverably fallen to the rug and rubbing at the fresh bang on his hip, elbow or knee. Oh, yes it would bruise - how it would bruise...

Iona would have to find him, which was a task enough in itself, and then she'd have to scurry to the front of the playhouse and check to see if anyone promising was out in the circle. Probably, he could hoist himself up, somehow or another. But supposing he couldn't?

Not that Vandham's own knees, under lurching threat of otherwise bulk, were so good. It'd be no trouble for Roc, though, with lift and clutch into the air.

Of course, he told himself. Of course, if everyone just loved each other (one another) a little bit more, and hung onto the past a little bit tighter, and paid a little more fresh and close attention to the sharing of myths, as told by bards and 'wrights, then the world would be and become just fine. The world would justify its own equatorial turning.

But if that were so, then he should tell Vandham, you know, once upon a time I had a child - oh, son, daughter, doesn't matter. A real strong'un, hardy and patient. Clever. Handsome. Beautiful. Wise. I had a child. The child was with me. And, being that I was and am a Blade, I've still got its Core Crystal here with me now. We'll never be parted. We'll always go on.

If that were so. And maybe it is. But he can't do that. He's not sure why.

Architect forbid, the playwright remember that sometimes the past needs to stay in the past.

who loves

lora: lora's blades
jin: lora + haze
haze: lora + minoth
addam: jinlora
mythra: herself + jin
minoth: ardainian blades
hugo: ardainian blades
brighid: jin + minoth
aegaeon: lora's blades

who is loved

lora: 2 (blade + addam)
jin: 5 (incl. aegaeon)
haze: 2 (driver + aegaeon)
addam: n/a
mythra: 1 (herself)
minoth: 2 (haze + brighid)
hugo: n/a
brighid: 2 (driver + minoth)
aegaeon: 4 (incl. jin)

categories

addam: staple/charm
flora: veggie/fragrance
minoth: staple/fragrance
xander: meat/script
evie|roc: seafood/charm
vandham: meat/script
azurda: veggie/talisman
mythra: dessert/meat
malos: seafood/dessert
mikhail: staple/talisman
milton: seafood/script
lora: meat/talisman
jin: seafood/charm
haze: veggie/script
hugo: veggie/fragrance
brighid: seafood/fragrance
aegaeon: dessert/talisman

category counts

staple: 3
meat: 4
seafood: 5 (6)
veggie: 4
dessert: 3
charm: 3 (4)
talisman: 4
fragrance: 4
script: 4

and thus azzar

staple foods (whole upa in a bun) - mythra
charms (mechanical charm) - lora

there's a problem here about evie&roc coexistence. not sure how to solve it. xander/evie/azurda remixes team lora which is also true of vandham/roc/azurda and that's awesome. and of course the seafood exacerbation. malos's fault i think. he can't be allowed to do that. i do not want to convert evie to staplefoodshipping sooooo. idk!