Dual Dynamo
"I thought the honeysmoke for Thomas was a sure thing - didn't you?"
One tumbles unceremoniously off the pile, and Seren has to make a miraculous dive to the variously-sticky floor, rugs aside, beneath L's shop in the unindustrialized end of Armory Alley to catch it before it, too, explodes and brings indigens, or else Zaruboggans, a-running. Not that they would mind. Giogion might, though, but Seren doubts it. Medical bills, shmedical bills.
L smiles at the heroic action, offering Seren a nonchalant hand back up and curling cir nails into their palm as ci does so. "Ah, but there is no thing so sore as a sure thing!"
"No such thing," Seren corrects, feeling glum enough to be pedantic (though not enough to peg the honeysmoke ball at the wall). "And there's no such thing as a fat mim..."
"Perhaps Nelly's reaction to our wares was less effusive, as you'd recorded it, but was she not delighted to observe the many inventive uses of our electric hammock?"
Oh, absolutely, delight after delight! But that doesn't change the fact that Seren had expected one turn and been turnt another, full of fish stories but with no actual BLADE-relevant gains to show for it.
Not that they care so unearthly much for BLADE gains, offhand.
"L..." Seren has wondered this for a while, which is to say just for the course of the afternoon. "When you say 'our', do you mean yours," they point, and ci poses, "or ours, like the two of us, together?"
L blinks at them - ci is so rarely speechless, but if ever there were a moment, it is now.
"Why, what ever should be the difference?"
"Well, you're the one who made the stuff, for one. Anybody could have gone to fetch the materials." Anybody with the patience to look down the barrel of a Gun Snake, that is, but Seren could probably name a few besides themselves. A few fewer for Abyssal Crickets, even so.
L sighs. "But would anybody have?" The inflection judders and jags like an escalator, climbing weakly if yet whimsically up, up, up. An escalator that goes up and down at the same time...yeah, that's got L'cirufe's name written all over it. Such things often take one to heaven or to hell!
Perhaps Seren is secretly pleased that no one else on Mira would have; that they are the only one blessed and cursed with the craziness that would drive one to sparkle, heart aflutter, at the thought of being deemed and dubbed Special Assistant Manager.
Their bond with L, special among all creatures and entities in the infinite universe...
Well. Much though Seren professes to be completely ignorant of the human notions of romance and sexual interest, the happiness they feel when around L is what makes them so adrift with wonder at the proliferation of goodwill between species that they've helped engender here on Mira. Indeed, not lovecore but wondercore - and L is so wanderfully full of wonderlust.
So, to answer L's ardently rueful, ruefully ardent question, Seren replies, "I suppose not. That's why I'm your Special Assistant Manager. And that's why you're the Liceor to my Saltat, the Max of my Overdrive, the Dizzy to my Pazzow, the Aria to my Zauberflöte, and the devil to my angel."
Twice in one day - L blinks again. Well, it was quite the speech. Seren does their best not to let their expression fade or dim in self-consciousness or shaky doubt.
But, then, ci grins broader than ever and grabs Seren's hand again for a celebratory dance. "Indeed, my dear friend, indeed! We shall not be bested by one day of mysteries. Our success shall howl at tomorrow's moon with a whistle, while we work!"
Undoubtedly, it's Seren's influence that has gotten L to try out odder and odder combinations of idioms in a devastating feedback loop and echo chamber of incomprehensibility. Which, again, is just fine with them, if it means that they're the only one who can truly understand cim.
Is that a bit possessive, d'you think? But no, L has other friends - Neilnail, Celica, Tatsu, Yelv (well, citation needed, there), and Ga Jiarg, and even Nagi. Vandham, ci's still working on, and Seren has no idea how to help, but enough shared meals with him and Lin and Elma, and the commander's sure to be won over by L's effortlessly ineffectual intellectual charm.
For now, it's dancing, dancing, dancing, in happy ignorance of all what should come to pass if L's peculiar peeler should happen to encounter a Godmelon, or be applied to a Royal Grape, or come into contact with a Cluster Papaya, or enter proximity to a Nightmare Pineapple, or enjoy the vicinity of a Lava Mango, or fall into the path of a Babaco Leaf.
Really, what ever should be the difference between any of these fruits and the starlit host of supernova pectin; between L'Seren and any other couple, such as the cookery chancemaking Nelly spoke of, in NLA? Seren readily admits to a touch of disquiet at the idea, the fragile concept, that there should be no nuance, whatsoever.
Well, for one thing, there's no uncertainty about it, no shaky sensemaking in the dark of a date. There's only the truth, stood here in an alley, embarked upon earthfall and eager earnestness, mapped to missions and mindstorms and, yes, maximum Overdrive counts.
"Do we have a permanent contract?" Seren shouts, over the tapping of boots and crakows on and off those same unsticky rugs.
"As long as the city shall have us!" L replies, barely maintaining balance.
And that, perhaps, is the crux of it: balance, between two disparately statured individuals, impossibly well compared and compromised.
The notion of a time "as long as the city shall have us" bears no parameters of sales numbers, satisfied customers, burgeoning unto blooming affinity, and indeed may be entirely reliant on Elma's observation of Seren as a good-faith partner in L's ridiculous strategies and schemes. Which, of course, Seren is endlessly ecstatic, euphoric, elated, enraptured to provide.
On the topic of pet names, such as those that those in relationships traditionally use to call upon each other, L'Seren will find that they have none, excepting, perhaps, "my friend" and "my partner" in a venture larger than life and limb.
The dancing feet finally settle; brows of alternate sizes are ceremonially wiped. If they missed any customers while at recess...well, they don't really care.
"And if the city should kick us out?"
"Then we should hop on the nut a mile and a half and bum about-" or else live off the fat of the land "-together!"
i try to be so snappy with these but perhaps it's all only a study for spamton