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 Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2025 7:13 pm
Quote: The Lantern Festival (7) : Scientists have been hard at work trying to understand the strange, glowing qualities of the luminescent caterpillars found in the caves by the reservoir. The caterpillars still shrivel up if they are taken out of the caves but their glowing secretions have been processed into an organic paste that can withstand the outside world. The city is selling paper lanterns infused with various seeds. The glow paste is full of minerals to support healthy plant growth without risking damage to the environment; all lantern purchases come with a small packet of activating power that will heat the paste up enough to mimic the effects of a candle without the concerns of flammability. When the glow paste loses its heat, the lantern will return to the Earth and upon the first rain (or any contact with water) the paper will dissolve and the seeds may begin to grow. All proceeds from the lanterns are put right back into the community to support local conservation and environmental protection efforts.
Not through any fault of Isidorâs or something stupid like that. Heibing knew himself enough to know that any weirdness came entirely from him, and it didnât have anything to do with Isidor, really. Everything to do with Taran, though. Taran, who was dead, had been dead for a thousand years, had meant the universe and more to Imnolu but Troilus the world could only preserve one of them to protect it from falling to Chaos.
Taran whoâd probably thought to the end that Heibing hated him, whichâŚâŚeh?
Pretty pink star charm in hand, sitting on a picnic table beside Pergamonâa very fun new âglow-upâ for Isidor (Heibing thought that was the right Terran term?)âThalassa threw back a long drink. Nearby where theyâd set up, paper lanterns illuminated the path, dangling there and swaying ever so slightly in the breeze. He didnât let himself drink too much, since he and Pergamon had to share. Still, enough to get him off the one thought until it tried to take over his mind like (Taran thought you hated him he thought you hated him he died suffering and in pain from whatever Chaos put Troilus through and he thought you hated him until the end because oh boy, there is something broken in you and the only one who could actually handle it, who knew you better than Ryla Imnolu and Bernard had ever done, or that was what he saidâ)
Thalassa shook his head hard, long hair swishing every which way until he calmed down. Or at least until he stopped shaking his head, since something inside of him still feltâŚâŚunsettled.
Once he had, he took another drink, then held the bottle out toward Pergamon. Not fair or very good friendship behavior to hog the liquor. Especially not when Isidor had been extremely kind and gracious in the past six weeks, letting Heibing crash on his couch when heâd gotten too drunk to climb back up, then get into his room through the window. Trying to fumble in the front door and up the stairs carried such a heavy risk of running into Huanxi Xin, someone Heibing did. not. want. to deal with while heâd been drinking.
âWhatâs the weirdest thing thatâs ever come up in your studies,â Heibing Thalassa asked because he was powered up, so he was Thalassa now, but arguably he never got to stop being Thalassa, who even was Heibing Morningstar if you really thought about it? Was he real? Did he have a right to exist? Maybe Heibing Morningstar had died before a Mauvian when he was seven and people only pretended otherwise out of some sense of politeness or social propriety or whatever. No. No. He was sharing whisky with Pergamon and talking.
Throwing out questions at random wasnât always the best way to do things though, so Thalassa added, âScholars of ancient magical and spiritual texts were some of the most revered minds among my people. Yâknow, some people always railed about it, thought we shouldâve gone back to the oral way of doing things.â Thalassa shook his head more gently this time, but rolled his eyes to convey exactly what he thought of that. âBut they were idiots. And it always seemed like, whether it was with my people or somewhere else, people who studied magical and spiritual texts like you just attracted weird bullshit. So, weirdest thing youâve had come up in your studies. Go.â
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Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2025 1:57 am
Perhaps Isidor should have expected that befriending one alien might lead to befriending another. And yet, somehow, Thalassa being friends with him seemed out of place.
Perhaps because he hadn't had many friends of the ordinary kind in a long time. Always more introverted, a quieter presence by his more extroverted wife's side at conferences, though his work tended to speak for itself.
Maria had found that offensive. Like she found everything about him offensive.
He took the bottle and poured it into the old fashioned glass he'd brought with him. Usually he took his whiskey on the rocks, but the rocks were not currently present, so straight would have to do.
"I feel like anything I've got is gonna pale in comparison to the real thing," he demurred a little. "Honestly, I mostly just look at how different cultures approach the idea of magic, but until I met Troilus, I didn't think any of it was real. Charms and wards and things like that." He paused, briefly. "But alchemy. Alchemy is fascinating. Men who think they can turn lead into gold, by applying principles we would now recognize as at least somewhat scientific, but there's a lurking undercurrent of the occult in all of it."
Just getting to talk about his research was always fascinating. "Plenty of people think my work is a waste of time, but I think...the way our ancestors looked at what they believed to be magic, and how they interacted with it, says a lot about how they thought the world works. The Greeks thought magic was blasphemy, for instance. And there was plenty of time where the accepted wisdom in Christina lands was that magic couldn't exist, because it was devil-work and God is stronger, so if you did the very unchristian thing of executing a woman as a witch, you ought to be executed yourself."
He was probably rambling. Whatever. He was less than sober, and Thalassa was expressing interest. That was the trap.
Being less than sober as Pergamon, in a city park, surrounded by glowing lanterns, was probably not his wisest decision. Theoretically they might attract the wrong kind of attention. But he kind of didn't care. Good drinks and good friends were worth a little risk.
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Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2025 12:29 am
Pergamonâs insistent use of the glass for his whiskey made Thalassa smirk, and some part of him he usually didnât listen to hoped that it didnât come off too harshly. Especially because Thalassa did feel more amused than judgmental. Perhaps a little bit perplexed as well, but not negatively or anything (although Troilus wasnât around to argue with, in his own mind, Thalassa was defending himself from Troilusâs completely well founded and utterly reality-based concerns that maybe Thalassa might not be on his best behavior with this specific handsome man whom Troilus liked).
(Thalassa wasnât on his best behavior, he realized that. But not in a bullying way.)
Social niceties and, like, manners of the kind that Pergamon displayed were just a little bit strange and endearing. Thalassa chuckled a bit before taking another drink out of the bottle. He continued sipping as he listened to Pergamon talk about his research, nodding along where appropriate. Things were starting to get a bit dulled around the edgesâmore so than allowed by the quick drinks Thalassa had managed to sneak first in the morning (maneuvering quietly so as not to give anyone reason to suspect heâd begun stashing alcohol in his room), and then before heâd headed out to meet up with Pergamonâand lulling Thalassa into a warm, comfortable sense of nothing.
(No, no, it was still something. Nothing was cold. Nothing was black. Nothing surrounded him, crushing him from all sides as he stared into the heart of an immense, throbbing darkness, endlessly hungry and aching to devour him. Nothing meant death, not on Thalassaâs own terms but on someone elseâs, but honestly, what right did he have to any terms? His planet and his people had set the terms for most of his life, thanks to that damn Mauvian. His parents had set the terms for the majority of what his planet didnât claim. And YuanhanâŚâŚ Nothing of Heibingâs belonged to him alone but also to Yuanhan, especially after heâd Awakenedâ)
âBeing fair to you, senshi magic and Knight magic are quite different from what you study,â Thalassa pointed out, sliding his hand up the bottleâs neck so he could press his thumb into the grooves at the mouth that would allow the cap to screw back on. The raised glass wasnât very sharpâthe plastic ones on the stopper Thalassa had removed earlier probably wouldâve been betterâbut he didnât need pain. A little bit of pressure beneath his thumbâsomething small to ground him in the momentâworked fine. âIf anybody out there could turn lead into gold, Iâd put my money on a Ganymede Knight. Their whole culture was extravagance and wealth. But it would probably be some kind of illusion in the end, and it would only last for as long as the Code gives them. But distracting an enemy effectively can work wonders; ImâTroilus and I used to specialize in that part when we ran heists with Pyrrhus and Tyndareus.â
The old Tyndareus, anyway. The real one. Not the Chaos-tainted ******** his starseed had reincarnated into, some little empty-headed b***h-boy stupid enough to believe whatever lies the Negaverse fed him about how Chaos was good, actually.
(Was it his fault? If heâd stood up to Ryla and Bernard more effectively back thenâif heâd fought them harder and gotten them to give up that stupid crownâthen would Tyndareus have been spared this fate in his new life? Would Chaos have come to any of their worlds? Well, it would have come to Thalassaâs, yes, Yuanhan had done that on his own, but maybe Pyrrhus and Troilus could have been spared, and theyâd ostensibly all have shiny new lives as humans, and Imnolu wouldnât have to grieve his son and husband because he wouldnât even be Imnolu anymore same as New Pyrrhus wouldnât be the Rylafein whom Heibing had known, and New Bernard wouldnât have been seduced by the Negaverse, and Thalassa
Well, he probably wouldnât have the new, sober, terminally boring Kaifeng simpering at him about the alleged reality and value of Heibing Morningstar. Kaifeng had no idea what he was talking about. LiĂĄnlĂ didnât know ******** anything. Heâd never belonged to ******** everybody but himself.)
Thalassa hmmmâd resting his cheek in his palm. âHow does research like yours work these days,â he asked. The less he said anything remotely related to himself, so much the better, probably. âDonât get the sense thereâs much room around your university for everybody to have an isolated tower where they hole up and study their tomes.â
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Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2025 6:55 pm
Huh, Pergamon wasn't sure what to make of the fact that there might be a Knight out there who could accomplish what alchemy had always sought to. Or, at least, could make it appear so.
"About how long?" He asked, curious.y "I don't have magic yet, so you'd know better than me." A strange thing, but then, Thalassa also had a thousand years and then some of experience on him in general, so asking for advice seemed...well, it was easier than asking Imnolu and feeling like a fool in front of someone he was rapidly becoming fond of. It felt like weakness.
Maria had never liked it when he looked weak or foolish. Which he did quite a lot.
"And you'll have to tell me about your heists, too. Much more interesting than my work." He sighed. "A lot of time spent in libraries. I do have an office, but no tower, alas. Just a lot of time spent with books and databases." It felt so...silly, in comparison to magic space heists.
Wow, he was such a loser, it was incredible Imnolu or Heibing wanted to spend time around him.
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Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2025 7:28 pm
âTends to depend on the magic and what it does,â Thalassa said without needing to think very much about it. Even without being a Knight himself, heâd seen enough of them in action to have a general idea of principles that held true. âLike, Kaifengâheâs our human host? Heâs a Saturn Knight. The new one isnât as cool as the one from a thousand years ago but heâs still, yâknow, inoffensively decent and a generally good person? His magic calls on ghostly spirits to attack. He can channel the magic from his Wonderâs Code piece for a while. But Knights with shielding or healing magic can usually channel for longer, as far as Iâve seen. Might also differ based on the strength of a Knightâs bond with their Wonder? Maybe?â
Hmmm-ing, Thalassa softly drummed his fingertips on the picnic table. âBack in the day, there used to be this wholeâŚâŚthing? Frankly, it was even more of a lying fairy tale than the Calamitous Hollow, and he was well in the realm of âcool legend but that couldnât happen for real.â Basically, stories of a senshi having such an intense bond with the core of their world, or a Knight having a similarly intense bond with their Wonder, that those places of power extended special protections to them. Reinforced them against the corrupting influence of Chaos, made their magic stronger, and let them be the shiniest, most sparkling, most fully realized version of what a senshi or a Knight could ever hope to be.â
Thalassa let that lovely idea hang in the air between himself and Pergamon for a moment.
And then, he blew a raspberry.
âBut thatâs a ******** lie and it literally never happens,â he picked right back up. âThat has never happened to anybody. I guess the legends about it have survived enough for some contemporary senshi and Knights to get tattoos honoring them? Like, aspirational marks, I guess? But it doesnât really happen, so you canât get too vigilant about Chaos. Gotta stay on top of things,â he started leaning across the table, âand not let any of them put their ugly Chaos-tainted hand, like, here.â
Thalassa intended to poke at the pink neck-ribbons, at the spot where they fell right over Pergamonâs heart, where the starseed was supposed to go, because he was making a Very Important Point about protecting oneself from the wiles and insidious influence of Chaos.
Instead, Thalassaâs finger landed a bit off from his mark. More on Pergamonâs chest, whichâŚâŚdid not feel quite right? Thalassa frowned, blinking at where his finger had landed. As soon as his brain caught up, wading through alcohol as it was, Thalassa jerked his hand back.
ââŚâŚThatâs not where your starseed is,â Thalassa said, like a cat who definitely intended to fall off that shelf. âItâs more in the center. With your heart. So donât let any Chaos freaks try to put their hands there. Butâyou wanna hear a heist story, huh?âNoir Songxbird pergamon sweetie i am so sorry for your drinking buddy and how confidently wrong he is
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Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2025 10:46 pm
Pergamon nodded, pouring himself another drink and then pushing the bottle back towards Thalassa. He wasn't entirely sure how much of this he would retain, in the morning, but that was fine. He'd learn it himself, probably, and be a useless a*****e as always until he did.
He had a talent for being a useless a*****e.
"That...doesn't sound real," Pergamon agreed. Sure, okay, he was the very first Knight of Pergamon and he'd talked with the Code, but getting all extra magical by befriending it, or whatever? That...
Okay, maybe it shouldn't feel like a step too far, but. Well. It did.
"I've had someone take my starseed before," Pergamon confessed, "and I'm not looking to repeat the experience. Surprised 'Nolu never told you. It's how we met. He saved me. So, yeah, heard, no touching."
The idea of being magically protected did sound nice, but it also sounded like something that happened to Other People.
"But yes. I do. Tell me one of your heist stories." He leaned forward, eager and interested.
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Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 3:39 pm
Listening to Pergamonâspecifically his bewilderment that Thalassa hadnât heard about him getting starseeded beforeâdid trip a wire in Thalassaâs mind. A very unexpected wire but still, Thalassa had to concede, âNo, youâre right, he did tell us about that. I just havenât thought about it in a while. So I didnât remember. Still, ********â weird situation that the Negaverse guy gave your starseed back so easily. Glad he did, mind, but usually theyâre a lot more aggressive about keeping ******** pricks. Chaos-infested sellout pricks who didnât even care how good they had it, with their living, functional planets that werenât just charnelhouses of Chaos-induced death. ******** every single one of them.
âAs for a heist story, thoughâŚâŚâ While he thought about that, Thalassa let his legs sprawl out wherever they pleased below the picnic table. One ankle knocked into the leg of Pergamonâs bench. But although Thalassa was not putting in effort to specifically avoid kicking Pergamon (or avoid initiating the Terran courtship ritual that some of LiĂĄnlĂâs shows and movies referred to as âfootsieâ), he managed not to do either of those things. âGods, so there was this one heist we did, andâokay, an important bit of context first, I guess?
âOne of the other kinds of Knights out there, they have Wonders on the star Polaris. Theyâre Polaris Knights. Back in the day, a lot of them used to be diplomats or scholars but a lot of them were also just gossipy busybodies. And there was this one of them who was the <******** worst.â Eyes closed so he could rub at one of them, Thalassa could still picture the twink in question very easily: that blonde hair in the long, long braidâŚâŚthose rounded but overall feline ears, white with black spotsâŚâŚthe thick, matching tail. âI think my older brother was the only one who hated that shitty little twink more than I did, which didnât even make sense because theyâd only met each other, like? A handful of times?â
Even so, Thalassa could also remember Yuanhanâs hand resting heavily on his shoulder, the ice cold feel as his grip tightened around Heibing, and likeâfor what? It wasnât as though Heibing liked that obnoxious little p***k with the Polaris symbols all over his uniform.
âAnyway, the shitty little Polaris twinkâwhich is such a useful word, by the way, thank your entire society for inventing it? But heâs not actually a character in the heist. The heist itself was one of our more straightforward ones. Xingyi-Kaifeng, his fatherâs family was into organized crime on Murikabushi, and his grandmother kept various stashes of artifacts all over the place. She also loved to throw a good party. This was after AiranâSailor Murikabushiâhis lover started a whole revolution to overthrow the monarchy and the nobility who sided with them because they were mistreating his beloved senshi. The Kuroganes were technically an on-the-rise mercantile family, though, and mostly managed to escape someâŚâŚum, meet and greet? With Madame Guillotine?â
Thalassa paused briefly, looking to Pergamon for some kind of confirmation about whether or not heâd used this Terran phrase âmeet and greetâ correctly. But he didnât linger long.
âFor one of these parties that Previous Kaifengâs grandmother threw,â he went on, ânone of us are remotely on the guest list. But Airan, even though he primarily ran with these rivals of ours, he was ******** amazing at a game of âyes, and.â On top of that, he thought pretty much any interaction between two senshi counted as diplomatic exchange. So, when Troilus and I show up, claiming to be guests of the senshi, Airan is like, palpably unhappy but he goes along with it anyway. He probably knew we were up to something, and he probably knew that Pyrrhus and Tyndareus were around tooâwhich of course they wereâbut Madame Kurogane had been kind of a s**t to and about him before the revolution, so he decided to let us carry on.
âWhich we did! It was great. Lovely party. They used to make this, likeâŚâŚâ Trying to recall the taste of it made Thalassa sigh wistfully. âListen, Murikabushi the world created the senshi of hunger, right? And whatever it was about them that kept them so attuned to hunger as a people, it made them go the ******** off about their alcohol.â
This time, Thalassa did not need to seek validation; he knew heâd used that contemporary phrase correctly.
âThere used to be this one familyâAiranâs loverâs childhood best friend was a b*****d of their second son, I think?âand they made an amazing liqueur. Flavor like a mix of Terran strawberries and chocolate, so alcoholic you had to serve it suspended in cream or people would ******** die. And it still hit like it was trying to murder you. I managed to make off with several bottles of the stuff when we were done, all because Troilus and I kept hustling some of the venerable Madameâs children and grandchildren to keep people distracted. They kept betting expensive alcohol and losing. And nobody notices that Pyrrhus and Tyndareus are busy making off with this ancient saber, itâs a relic from some of my worldâs people, and it doesnât ******** belong on Murikabushi, gathering dust in some crime lordâs vault.â
But they were getting to the real big moment of the heist story now, and Thalassa needed to take a drink before he could finish it.
âOf course all of us managed to grab up things other than the saber, because we were good at what we did. And of course, we went around to fence them. Then, with another successful heist on the books, we head out to Rhiannon. Not where weâd usually go for an afterparty, but Yuanhanâmy idiot brotherâhas been trying to get in touch. Heâs pissed off that I wonât play nice with his stupid wife and wonât lie to their inveterately useless kids about how they could totally be Knights someday.â
Looking Pergamon in the eye, Thalassa shook his head. âListen, the old Knight Academy let in a lot of people who had less obvious strengths that made them good Knights. If youâd lived back then, you couldâve gotten in easily. Plenty of scholar-Knights existed, and plenty of them were good at what they did. But my shitty, useless nephews were never gonna get in. Their father ******** spoiled them. He doubled down any time someone called him out on it. It was the only thing his wife and I ever agreed on, but he didnât listen. And then he expects me to lie to them about how they definitely deserve to get charged with guarding some Wonder on Saturn, or Ida, or Polaris, or Ganymede? As if Knighthood isnât a serious responsibility? I think the ******** not.â
He exhaled heavily, slouching back onto the table, cheek back in the cradle of his palm. âAnyway, bringing us back to why I mentioned the shitty little Polaris twink? Yuanhan managed to get intel on where we were from ******** somewhere. He shows up on Rhiannon, finds us while weâre minding our own business, trying to go from one tavern to another. And Yuanhan is in. a ********. mood. Ready to fight. And I had more physical substance than the average corpse at the time, so weâve been partying, and Iâm intoxicated but not wasted. Turns out, Yuanhan broke the lock on my chamber door while weâve been goneâagainâand he was looking for myâŚâŚâ
A soft, groaning noise and a vague wave of his currently unoccupied hand. âModern day parlance, drugs. He was looking for my drugs. The drugs I told him I wasnât using anymore, even though I was, because he was meddling and I didnât feel like telling him the truth if he was going to be like that. But ultimately, he isnât even pissed off about having found the drugs because he knew I was lying, he just wanted me to not be?â
Thalassa huffed. âNo, what has him all inâŚâŚa tizzy? Itâs that he found this bracelet. Polarian silver, with an intricate design of snowflakes and the compass rose symbol that Polaris Knights and Princess Polaris wear. Which, of course, Iâd stolen off the shitty little Polaris twink. And like, never mind that said twink and I had a perfectly normal blood feud rivalryâwhich was one of my peopleâs traditions, even if Yuanhan didnât care for it? No, see, he wants to have it the ******** out about absolutely spurious allegations about the Polaris twink, and why I even have his bracelet. All kinds of garbage, talking about me like Iâm sinning against our dead parents by disobeying himâas if Iâm not an adultâor talking like Iâm something to be stolen from him. And okay, yeah, the shitty little Polaris twink wasnât even going for that, but it sure made an exhausting ending to what had otherwise been a perfectly solid heist.â
Nothing in the way Thalassa related this incident to Pergamon suggested that he found anything strange about his late brotherâs behavior. Beyond finding it exasperating, Thalassa spoke about it as if it was normal sibling behavior, then glanced over at some of the civilians, hanging up their little lanterns.
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 10:46 pm
Pergamon nodded. "Have to agree. I still don't feel like I understand it." It had worked out for him, to some degree. He felt...better. More alive. More like he cared if he got to see tomorrow.
Had only tempered the drinking so much, but whatever.
He nodded along with the story, wrinkling his nose at the way Thalassa described his relationship with both his brother and the "Polaris twink" that had caused so many problems for him. He wasn't sure what was twigging as off about the entire situation--until the end.
"...Kinda weird of your brother to get jealous of you having jewelry from another man," he said. "I mean, I don't have siblings, but....seems weird. Especially if this is some rival of yours and nothing else." Which he wasn't entirely sure he trusted Thalassa on, given the detailed specificity with which he remembered said awful Polaris twink and that he was stealing jewelry from him, but...well, love and hate looked weirdly alike, sometimes.
"Like, that sounds more like how I'd have thought my ex-wife would react if she found some pretty trinket from someone else in my room." He paused. Huffed. "Well. She'd probably throw it at me. Decide what it meant without listening to what I had to say." He took a drink from his glass. "But I bet she'd have been pleased because it would have given her an excuse to leave me sooner. Even if it wasn't what she would have assumed." He shrugged his shoulders. "No matter what it was, though, not your brother's damn business if you were sleeping with this Polaris Knight or trying to kill him. Sounds like he sohuld have been worrying about his spoiled kids instead, especially if he wanted them to be Knights."
Whatever else, Pergamon had absorbed that Knighthood was a major responsibility. One he still wasn't sure he deserved, but whatever, that wasn't really his call and telling powerful forces they were wrong didn't usually go well.
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Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 2:20 pm
Not that Thalassa wanted to tune Pergamon out or ignore him or anything. He wasnât Taran, where pretending to ignore him wouldâve been funny, but was instead currently about the only friend Thalassa had who had a sensible and healthy about alcohol (namely, that it was very, very good) and being drunk (namely, that it was extremely fair and right for Thalassa to do this as often as he damn well pleased to exactly as much excess as made the entirety of, like, existing into something ******** bearable). But some aspects of what Pergamon had to sayâŚâŚdidnât entirely land for Thalassa.
He heard them, sure. But trying to take them in left his brain feeling all fuzzy and aggressively not-empty? Still not possessed of any thoughts that Thalassa could make any sense of, though.
âYuanhan was just like that,â he said, slowly shaking his head, as though this would exonerate his late brother of literally anything. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Thalassa wondered why he even cared about exonerating his idiot brother, in light of what Yuanhan had done. In light of how many people had diedâin light of how ******** up their entire world had gottenâand in light of why Yuanhan had ever trusted the Chaos-tainted artifact that heâd brought home? Did he deserve Thalassa speaking in his defense at all? âTroilusâll tell you if you ever want to ask him about it. Iâll even preemptively give him permission so he canât wriggle out of it by trying to go âOh, I donât know, I love telling all kinds of stories, Iâm honestly so ******** gifted at it that if I hadnât been a senshi, youâd think I was born to be a storyteller? But I donât know, Thal is my friend, and I donât wanna disrespect his boundaries or whatever.ââ
By way of expressing what he thought about that idea, Thalassa blew a raspberry. Not a particularly loud or obnoxious one, though, because he knew that Troilus, if heâd ever tried to be like that, wouldâve had his heart in the right place.
âYuanhan was a jealous ******** p***k about him, Pyrrhus, and Tyndareus, too. Didnât matter that Imnolu had a husband, or that Pyrrhus and Tyndareus were married to each other. Didnât matter that I wasnât their type and they werenât mine, aside from all of us beingâŚâŚâ Making a throaty, indistinct sound, he lifted a hand so he could tilt it back and forth in the way heâd learned humans did to indicate noncommittal feelings. âPyrrhus and Troilus are definitely male.â In a way where some idiots hadnât believed them about it, and had gotten their throats slit or their kneecaps shattered about itâbut even drunk, Thalassa knew better than to say that for them. âTyndareus was definitely male. And Iâm, like? Male in a way where Yuanhan and out parents always told me that I am, and I guess thatâs easy enough, so I want people to ******** off and stop asking because it doesnât matter to me like that.
âJust like it didnât matter to Yuanhan that my best friends and I werenât sleeping with each other. He already couldnât have all my time to himself because of my duties as the senshi. Having to share my time and affection with the boys made him absolutely crazy. Jealousy was just his way, yâknow?â
Not that making said excuse for his brother stopped him from frowning at what Pergamon had to say about his ex-wife. âIf your ex comes around and tries anything like what my brother did, I will ******** murder her,â Thalassa told him, voice low and deathly serious. âI canât feed her body to my worldâs leviathans or shijing anymoreâthanks for that, Chaosâbut itâs not like human law enforcement can look for her on a moon of ******** Neptune. And I donât care how she wants to excuse her garbage. Nothing gives her the right to tear down one of my friends or lay hands on him like that.â
The hypocrisy of Thalassa feeling so strongly about this, while simultaneously feeling like his own relationship with Yuanhan had been nothing to worry about, Thalassa drowned in another swig of whiskey.
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Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 2:33 pm
Pergamon nodded along, even if he didn't really think Thalassa's descriptions made any sense at all. Nor did his nonchalance to the whole situation. But then, he didn't know. Maybe there was cultural context he was lacking.
Still didn't sound good, but...well...here they were.
"Gender of 'wearing a red shirt at Target,'" Pergamon said, as if that was sage wisdom and not something kind of ridiculous he'd once heard one of his students say. "Very weird of him to be so possessive regardless. Should have put all that energy into not being miserable. Sorry. But your brother sounds awful."
Maybe it wasn't his place to judge. But he didn't like the idea of things like that happening to his friend.
"Anyway, Maria's not coming back," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "She's all too happy to make sure I know how much better she's doing without her dead weight loser husband dragging her down. Her friends had a whole party when she left me and moved to California. She has a Congrats on the Divorce mug. She could not possibly be more done with me." He took another drink. "Oh well. She gets to live it up in California with some new younger guy and I get....magic. Which is way better than admittedly visually pleasing surfer bros."
Who had won, in the divorce, really.
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Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:09 pm
Even though Thalassa didnât entirely understand what Pergamon meant by that comparison on the gender business, he snorted anyway. Comprehension or not, the phrasing was funny. Heibing could ask LiĂĄnlĂ about the actual meaning laterâŚâŚlike, in the morning, when he was hungover but after pushing himself through the process of scouring his mouth, teeth, and tongue with everything available to him, and dragging himself through an intense shower with the strongly scented body wash. Exhausting rituals, but LiĂĄnlĂâs man made them feel more than somewhat necessary.
At the commentary about his brother, though, Thalassa shrugged. âHe had his moments,â he said without clarifying what those moments were or their overall character. âOn one hand, he was a possessive idiot who spoiled his children and it was very directly his fault that Chaos came to our world. But on the other hand, until I went off-world for some diplomatic business and met Pyrrhus? He was the only one who acted like I, the person, still mattered. Everyone else only cared about the senshi and what I could do for them, after that ******** cat came up to me, a seven-year-old, and got all like âOh, you have the special starseed of magical destiny, itâs your calling to carry the burdens of your world and all your people, blah blah ******** blah.ââ
Seemed that he and Pergamon were just going to have to keep trading off on thinking each otherâs not a big deals were actually pretty terrible. âThat sounds like some bullshit behavior on her part, even if she isnât still here physically,â he said. âDo the city buses go to this âCaliforniaâ? I donât reallyâI think? Kaifeng said that they have some of your most skillful bards of the rap-hop arts there? Likeâlike, the Iced Tea? Two-Packs Shakur? And, oh, Kendrick! Heâs brilliant, not exactly like some of the bards my people had but what he does, itâs, like? Familiar enough to get into for me, but still different, and its own thing, and heâs from California? Thatâs where Compton is, right?â
Well off on a tangential train of thought, Thalassa perked up with almost childish excitement. âSo, what, how long is the bus ride to California so we can break your exâs petty beverage mug? I havenât seen California on any of the lists of stops on the city buses, soâŚâŚ? Do we have to switch lines and go outside city limits?â
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Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:30 pm
Ah. Yeah. Pergamon got that.
"...Yeah, I stayed with Maria for as long as I did because she used to make me feel...good. Important. Like I mattered." He exhaled. "Things weren't always as bad as I make them sound now. And I did plenty wrong myself."
He glanced off into the middle distance of the park, briefly. He would swear there had bene good times. After they got married, even. But it felt harder to remember them, with the haze of booze and memories that were more like "I've told you a thousand times I hate your cooking" except that she'd sworn she loved it once.
Sort of like she'd loved him, once.
But Thalassa's question brought him back very quickly.
He blinked. Once. Twice. And then smiled, shaking his head.
"We'd have to fly, California's on the other side of the country. So I don't think there's any buses that'd get us there...as a direct route....probably. And it'd be a several day bus ride if we did." He laughed, a little. "But your enthusiasm is noted, and so is your good taste in music."
Pergamon had missed having friends. He'd fallen out of touch with his college buddies when he got married and had made few new ones--but now he had plenty. What a lucky change.
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