[@] Merroth's Journal . . . . » romesilk

[romesilk]

Edmund Jakomo Garmondsway expertly flicked a slice of cheese from the block with his dagger and scraped it onto a wheat cracker.

"Just eat the damn thing," drawled Em the Black, leaning in her chair with her feet up on the desk they shared. As he always did, Ejay studied the cracker for the slightest trace of imperfection. The cheese was sliced quite even, the edges were nice and square, and the cracker was complete and unbroken. Pinching it between two fingers, he ate it whole, and savored every last bite of it. Black Em watched him warily.

He flourished and twirled his dagger as he said, "If you don't take care what you're putting into your body, you're no better than a rubbish bin."

"If you had any head for science you'd know the human body is nothing but a complex organic rubbish bin," Black countered hotly. She reached out to try and grab the dagger from Ejay's hand, but he was too quick and palmed it away. She held her hand in the air expectantly and a moment later he relinquished the slender weapon.

Black cut away a big wedge of cheese, totally uneven, and took a small bite. They were sitting in the office that the Praetes had granted them out of diplomatic obligation. It was located in the Security Annex between the Bridge and the Neighborhood. The walls were dark wood paneling, stained and moulded. The office was neither large nor heavily furnished, with just the desk and two chairs and a pair of cabinets crammed to overflowing with charts and maps and relics and baubles, the result of twenty years extradimensional exploring. None of it was directly Black Em's doing. She never left a dimension if she could avoid it. She had other people to do the exploring and bring back the plunder.

A few of the objects had been recovered by Ejay, for while he usually attached himself to his commander's side, he was always quietly excited to go out exploring strange new places. He had in his time amassed a great collection of strange things and hundreds of outfits. Foreign fashions were a particular passion. He had a good ninety pairs of tall boots, each representing some strange alien culture or time period. At one point he'd owned a hundred and twenty, but his closet was getting too big, so he cut down to only those boots he could not bear to be without. Capes were a completely different matter. Ejay had at least a thousand now and the collection showed no signs of shrinking any time soon.

Ejay worked on the block of cheese to make it squarely even again. He had a good dagger, kept razor-blade sharp, and if he so much as brushed his finger against the edge it would draw blood. He had never done so accidentally. The dagger was by this point an extension of himself, so practiced was he with its nature.

When Black drank her pomegranate juice, her favorite, some dribbled down her chin and Ejay tried hard to ignore it. He was as fine as she was coarse, as tall as she was short, and a thousand other silly differences. The important thing was that their hearts beat to the same dark drum. Fat lot it was doing them in this universe.

Black finally wiped the juice from her chin and stared out the window. Even with the shade down it was brighter than she liked. It was just another pointless reminder of where they were; the window didn't actually lead anywhere. It was just an opening into the great glowing white beyond that suffused the bonds between dimensions on this side of the mirror.

Ejay handed Black a perfect cracker and piece of cheese. She took it without any thanks, not that he expected or asked for any. Such pleasantries were beyond his commander. Black crunched down and chewed noisily. After she swallowed, she said, "******** white order."

Ejay snorted with amusement. "True," he said, almost laughing, and she laughed for him. It was a harsh, mean laugh, the only kind she had. Ejay sliced himself another square of cheese.

For now, they would simply make the best of the cards they had been dealt.  

[romesilk]

Sitting somewhere else entirely but enjoying the same basic meal of cheese and crackers, Edward John (who was never called anything but) and his sister Generys Anne looked out from their cherrywood porch at the vast expanse of land they had acquired. Acres and miles of lush vegetation and scattered jungle and forest as far as the eye could see, reaching down to the broad, clear ocean of the Caribbean.

Few things could equal the marvel of that pristine water. Warm, bright, and so far removed from the dismal dark waters of their old home, England, as to be practically a different planet. Yet they knew, firsthand, that if you sailed far and long enough you would reach the shore of Britain and the legendarily foul weather.

All their childhood, Edward John and Nerys could remember the days as overcast, even the ones that weren't. The cloud of their elder sister's infant death had hung over the house and consumed them so that all that was good and bright in the world had vanished, replaced by dank and musty corners hiding cobwebs and demons. Even now, surrounded by all this tropical brightness, the overcast quality remained. It was stained into their souls.

Generys Anne was not a particularly finicky eater. She had been, as a child, but several bouts of near starvation had taught her to make meals of rats and eat the swill that spilled on the floor in prison. She huddled in her chair, knees to her chin, and crammed in crackers like a rodent. Edward John was concerned by this. He was not so outgoing, not so brazen, and had known less hunger in his life than his sister. He still threw away food that fell on the floor and did not eat what he did not like. He was not bothered to go to bed with an empty stomach if he felt like skipping dinner; the same prospect terrified Nerys. Edward John had the knowledge that there would always be breakfast, but Generys knew that was not the case. It was true in this house here, but there were places in the world where breakfast was not a given, nor dinner, nor lunch.

The trees around them were full of fruit and monkeys. This island was a paradise of plenty and, if they wanted, could produce a bountiful harvest of sugar cane or cotton or bananas. Generys preferred to let it run wild so that the boars in the jungle were undisturbed. She liked to hunt them and whatever else she stumbled into. There were quite a few stray goats escaped from the small pen they kept for milk and company, and Nerys would track the beasts and kill them if they had gone feral, or bring them back if still tame.

It was a quiet life, and after so many years of war and turmoil, that was just how Edward John liked it.  

[romesilk]

"Look, it's not that we don't want him, but..."

The boy picked at the underside of the desk, peeling the paper tack. The woman looked down at him disapprovingly, but he was oblivious to her frown. The child's mouth hung open in mindless compulsion as he picked, and picked, and picked at the flaky paper.

On upper surface of the desk, Iijima tapped his finger. His other hand supported his cheek, completing a look of bored appraisal. This was not his office, but his office could not fit this many people comfortable, so he had borrowed Dr. Eghert's. It was a bit of a dank and moldy space despite the sunny window, most likely because the window was nailed shut to keep out the possibility of demons appearing on the other side. Iijima's eyes flicked down at the child. There was a higher probability of the demons being right here, inside.

Seated on the other side from Iijima, the man looked at his wife. They were still a young couple, only recently married, the bliss of their marital vows was not yet dulled by the realities of life, but given the circumstances, it seemed life was trying awfully hard. "We just don't think this is going to work out."

"He has special needs," the new wife hastily added, patting her husband's hand. "And we don't mean to be crass, really, but it's just..." She looked at her husband briefly for loving support. "We're not sure we're the right people to take on this situation."

Iijima continued to stare at the child, himself mindlessly compelled. He could not share his thoughts with this couple for so many reasons. First, why was he always the one they called on to deal with these situations? He was not a senior staffer. He was not adoption personnel. Yet somehow, this sort of thing always fell into his lap, like he was secretly running the place and in charge of it all and thus the circumstance necessitated his participation. He should probably ask for a raise.

His second thought, and the one more evident on his facial expression, was, Again?

He could not understand it. Yes, this was a kid, and dealing with kids could be terrible, but was the kid really so much worse than other kids? The stories people told were bad, to be sure, but not overwhelming. He suspected there was something else at work here, but he did not know what.

Iijima finally decided to put this poor couple out of its misery. He sat up, took a breath, crossed his arms, and agreed with them placatingly. "I understand completely." He reached out and slid the forms across the table towards them.

They looked understandably distressed. It was hard enough adopting a child. Bringing one back was an emotional trip Iijima did not envy. He knew what he had to say, so he said it. "Believe me, this isn't your fault. We knew at the start there was a chance this wouldn't work out, and it was great of you two to try it."

At that, the wife burst into tears and her husband put his arm around her. Iijima resisted the strong urge to roll his eyes. He was feeding them the company line, as advised by the psychologist, and he did not for a moment believe it.

Iijima stood up. "Why don't I leave you here to complete the paperwork. ..." He had forgotten what they were calling the child. It came to him after a moment. "Freddie, why don't you come with me." He rounded the desk and extended his hand to the boy.

"Thank you," said the husband weakly, his wife trying to say the same through her tears. She had gotten a handkerchief from her handbag.

Iijima could not look them in the face. Little "Freddie" took his hand like he might have been a perfect little angel, same as usual, and allowed Iijima to lead him out of the room. At the doorway, the boy paused, scrunched up his face with determined concentration, and farted. It was a farewell that totally confirmed the couple in their instinct to return him and made Iijima almost laugh. Almost. Then the door closed and "Freddie" tried to bite him.

Iijima was too fast. "Nuh uh," he said. "Third time's the charm." The boy just fixed Iijima with a dark look. "You're not going to make this hard on me, are you? Come on, you know the drill."

There was a strange look on the boy's face a moment, then he grinned. He was missing most of his teeth still, but the gums were reddened with incoming chompers. "Uh oh!" he said, gleefully, and Iijima covered his face. That was something the kid had picked up from his second guardian, the woman who had so cheerfully assured she could bring sunshine to any rainy day and believed in the power of little cute things to hold inner goodness. "Freddie" craned his neck around and confirmed Iijima's guess. "Poop."

"Okay, off to the Sisters," was Iijima's conclusion, because he was not dealing with that particular situation again. Not after the last time. He had plenty of nieces and nephews and knew how to change diapers, but this kid's s**t was something else entirely. He could smell it already, mingling with the remnants of the fart.

The couple had thankfully dressed the boy in something with a collar and Iijima was able to get his hand upon it without any further attempts at biting. It was just to keep the kid from running away. After the first return, the monster had gone tearing off and managed to get himself into a class three area. A lot of people had gotten upset in the process. Security was not amused. Iijima could still remember one of the officers grumbling afterwards, "They should have let us stun him," but Dr. Akari was firmly against it. Not her cabbage children. The Lab did not perform those kinds of experiments. How many times had Dr. Gusman tried and failed to get permission?

Shirt firmly in hold, Iijima began the arduous process of getting the boy back under the care of the Sisters. He suspected the kid had learned a few new tricks in his last attempt at homing. He was not disappointed.  

[romesilk]

Looking at it, Black was not impressed, but then, so rarely did things impress her that this was not an unanticipated reaction. Turning to Ejay, she asked, "Do you want to go inside, then?"

It was a subtle game they had, of Black pretending she had no interest and suggesting that Ejay had, thus maintaining her facade of nihilistic pessimism while still getting to do what she wanted. Ejay gladly played along. It was this which made him an essential adjutant to his leader. "Certainly, I am most interested in examining these facilities."

Their guide, an undistinguished female scientist (for why else would she have been assigned to such a meaningless duty) gestured at the doorway. "I will be happy to show you any part of the facility you like." She did not sound wholly confident. Her somewhat mousy appearance hinted at a certain level of social awkwardness that was probably exacerbated by the stress of the situation. It was not every day you had the dubious honor of escorting a demigod from a mirror universe.

Behind Black, Peri Stillbrook nodded her approval. If the scientist was their guide, Peri was their escort, ensuring that in their tour of the realverse's facilities Black and Ejay did not cause any trouble. It was diplomatic posturing for both sides. Peri was identical in her physical parameters to Black, but she looked much kinder, like a different model of person cut from the same mold. She was Black's realverse counterpart, her reflection. It made the best sense for her to be the one providing escort: she knew her counterpart in ways even other Ems could not. Still, she kept her wand at the ready, prepared for trouble at any moment.

The scientist led them inside, through corridors and workshops and laboratories, remarking upon the importance and type of research at each point. Grey pretended not to be interested, quietly picking up notes that she could send back to her own scientists, and Ejay feigned only the vaguest intrigue and asked only obvious questions. Peri trailed never more than a step behind. She had been to this facility countless times before, knew all the research already, and might have been the tour guide had Black any interest in listening to her.

It was a long circuit through the building, and Ejay would have gladly absconded from the tour had not he observed Black's hidden interest growing stronger every minute. She even, when they entered the sublevel devoted to cloning, asked a few questions herself, and they were neither obvious nor easy to answer. Ejay was a little surprised at the breadth of Black's knowledge in cloning, her questions requiring the attention of the section's head scientist to answer.

And then finally it was over, the viral research area their final stop. This was the section Ejay would have thought Black to find interesting, weaponized viruses and biological contagions, but Black returned to her earlier deadened state. They headed back to the entrance.

"We did not travel over there," noted Black in the courtyard, a few yards from the exit. She had the ability to map things out mentally in perfect detail. On the other side of the courtyard from the Lab's main entrance was an apparent second entrance. Black's faint glare was directed at Peri, who merely shrugged, suggesting the area was of no importance.

"Oh, that's just the nursery," supplied the scientist, saddened that Black had noticed. A few more steps and the tour would have been over and she could have returned to her work. True, she was not the most glorified or essential person in the facility, but she was a part of it and was beginning to experience separation anxiety.

"Nursery?" asked Ejay, as Black wanted him to. Anything that Peri thought unimportant was of great interest to the mirrorverse delegation.

"For the results of Dr. Akari's experiment," explained the mousy scientist. It was not a subject that had been touched on earlier. The cabbage project did not have a place in the laboratory at present, being conducted out in the courtyard garden as it was, so it had simply not been an area they had stumbled into during the course of the tour.

"If you insist," sighed Peri. She was genuinely reluctant to continue with the tour, which had already taken more hours out of her personal day than she cared to note.

Black could not change her mind once she had made it. She could not be sure that Peri's dismissal of the nursery was not merely a ploy to distract her from something important, even if she believed it honestly wasn't. "Let's see it."

They started towards the Nursery, but the escapee stopped them. He came through an open window, the long white curtains billowing faintly behind him, and rolled in the dirt outside before he found his feet. A woman called after him and leaned out the window, but would not climb outside to follow him directly, instead disappearing to find a different exit.

He was pantless and dirty, charging at the tour group without care for his half-nakedness. After a moment, it became clear that his goal was not the group itself but the front entrance behind them.

Ejay and Peri swept into action, but Black was faster by virtue of having had the idea first. As the escapee tried to charge past her, she swooped down and plucked him up by his arm. He let out a cry of shock and anger. Ejay sheathed his gilded dagger.

Black was ungentle, grabbing hold of the other arm as well so the escapee hung from her hands like a monkey on a tree, or more accurately a shackled prisoner. She smiled with schadenfreude.

The woman glimpsed briefly in the window finally came rushing out from the nursery's entrance, her long skirts gathered in her arms to assist her running. "Wilhelm!"

The escapee's face twisted with disgust and anger and he thrashed and tried to kick Black, causing Ejay to slide his dagger up just a little. Ejay was not normally in the habit of hurting children, but he did not mind inducing in them a bit of healthy terror.

"Grah!" said the escapee, face wild with anger. Black held him quite firmly, fingers biting into his fleshy baby-fat arms, fixing him with a glare of pure darkness. The woman from the building came to a panting halt before them, pausing to catch her breath.

"What kind of experiment?" asked Black, keeping her eyes firmly on the escapee.

The scientist was still in some state of mild shock and did not readily answer. "The Commander asked you a question," Ejay prompted, clearly threatening her. The poor woman scientist jumped a little and hastily answered.

"Dr. Akari's vegetal biocomputers, some months ago they mistakenly began producing fully biologic children. And some animals." Not that the latter was kept in the nursery. "We haven't been able to fix the coding." Not that anyone was trying to. If anything, Dr. Akari seemed dedicated to pursuing the project, even expanding it. To what purpose, the junior scientist did not know or ask. Every scientist was allowed some eccentricity provided they had the results to back it up. Dr. Akari certainly had that.

"Experimental mistakes," mused Black, studying carefully the child for clues as to the nature of its origins. The little boy only stared back at her with hatred in his dark eyes. His struggling gradually ceased in Black's firm gasp, which was secretly reinforced with the gravity of a thousand suns.

The woman who had come from the nursery raised her hand. "Please, if you wouldn't mind..."

Black did mind, and her lip curled in faint distaste. Ejay tactfully stepped between Black and the hapless nursery attendant. Peri held back and watched, a holding spell on her lips, though it was not certain who might be her target should she choose to employ it.

Black narrowed her eyes. "You just... keep them?"

"Until they're adopted," said the scientist, careful to adhere to the lab's stated aims of compassion and tolerance.

Black was assessing the boy on more levels than were obvious. She could sense at the hidden turmoil of his mind, the leanings of his soul, and above all the fierceness of his spirit. His eyes were possessed of a darkness, deep and cold and empty like the recesses of outer space, a void that might extend to infinity.

"I'll take him," she decided, and smiled with equal darkness. She ignored the surprised stares as she intoned in almost-song: "Incendite Tenebras Merroth."  

[romesilk]

In the end, it was a simple matter of some diplomatic papers, because it was within Black's right to claim nearly anything she wanted from the Realverse, same as it was their right to claim what they wanted from the Mirror. It was less simple to decipher her reason for wanting the boy in the first place.

Peri let her do it, watched Black sign her name with an elegant flourish at the bottom of the adoption papers that gave the boy's name as "Tenebras Merroth" -- the fourth name he had been given in as many months -- and let them leave the laboratory complex. All the while, the boy struggled, and Black simply contained Merroth in ways only she could.

He tried to bite her, she changed the resonance of her body to the frequency of hardened stone. He tried to run, she warped the gravity around her to pull him back like a yo-yo. He started screaming, she stripped his voice. It was brutal but effective, for Black had little patience and even less compassion.

It was easy for Ejay to see what it was they had brought back to the office. Black's newest plaything. He knew, too, from experience that she would tire of this plaything, same as she did most everything else, but she would not ever relinquish it. He was not sure he was completely comfortable with the arrangement.

Ejay was, in his innermost core, the blackest of the black, and he hailed from the wild, merciless Mirrorverse, where anything less than a will of iron evil would leave you dead, but he was not in his heart a bad person. He believed in a certain degree of lawlessness and free will. He did not believe that people should be treated as objects, not unless you wanted a dagger in your back, and the adoption of this child left him with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach he did not share with his patron.

Black noticed it anyway. Merroth had grown tired of noiselessly screaming and was ramming himself repeatedly against her leg, which had gone quite wooden in hardness and scalding in temperature. Just enough to frustrate, but not seriously hurt. The sort of long, drawn-out torture Black preferred. "Eeejay?" Her voice was nails on chalkboard.

"Sir?" he said reverentially.

Black studied him carefully. "You've been quiet ever since our excursion and I don't pay you to stand there like an idiot in silence." She did not pay him at all, but the massive resources he had at his disposal was reason for loyalty enough.

Ejay stared at Merroth, ramming himself obsessively against Black's leg and struggling to pull her pants off. "You don't approve," concluded Black.

"I don't understand the reasoning, oh mighteous one." It was a vaguely sarcastic drawl that only Ejay could use around Black. Anyone else would suffer consequences for insubordination. How they endured those consequences determined whether Black would ever respect them, or allow them to repeat the tone in her presence again.

Black reached down, pinched Merroth's chubby toddler cheeks with her hand, and turned his face up to hers. It was filled with sweaty, exhausted anger. Black smiled thinly. "I was once a praetorix."

Of the three roles the avatars of deities might play in the expanse of the god-machine in which they were but wheels and cogs, praetors were the most directly evident to mortals. They were somewhere between family and guardian angel, skilled manipulators who could twist you to their will in the guise of serving your best interests. Black was so spectacularly uncompassionate that she had become the leader of the praetors in the Mirrorverse. She was the only praetor who cared more about authority than the subjects.

Ejay did not understand it, but as he watched her looking at Merroth, he saw the devotion in her face. It had no outlet in reality, but she had connected with this foul-spirited child on the same level as any other praetor, just without the tools necessary to create a positive impact, which most praetors considered their divine mandate.

Black held the boy's face still with the tendons of a jungle cat, stared into the darkness of his eyes. "If I let you speak, are you going to continue screaming?" The boy said nothing, rebellious. Black turned her head slightly and smiled condescendingly. "Of course." She kissed him on the head.

She released him, and the sonic disruption that contained his voice. Merroth stumbled back a step, more from surprise than gravitational distortion, and stared at her. He lifted his arm, pointing.

He was still young, too young to have a strong understanding of the workings of adults or the vastness of language, but he was smart. He learned the words that were used around him, same as he learned to open doors and spill juice and scream and tear things. He pointed at Black, and he used the same admonition that had been used on him so very many times already.

"Bad!"

Black erupted in laughter, clapped her hands, and strode forward and scooped Merroth up. "Aren't you adorable," she said, cooing at him with contempt still written on her face. Merroth struggled in her arms a bit, then tried to spit at her, but his mouth was full of frost. He let out a yowl of frustration.

So she dropped him, straight from her arms like a stone. He rolled a bit, and when he stopped she was leaning over him close enough for her breath to tickle his face. "No spitting, no screaming," she said. "Or I hurt you." He felt a twinge of pain behind his shoulder. Black straightened, smiling down at him for his answer.

With heaving breaths, Merroth stared back at her. He had been in so many homes now, and in each one he had been able to make himself the master, destroying peoples lives in the space of just a few short days or weeks. They had not been more powerful than him. Taller, yes, and stronger, but such things could not stop him for long. Black was not only taller and stronger, but also more powerful and vastly more experienced. His every move was countered before he made it.

Merroth rose, never taking his eyes off her, and wiped the frost from his lips. No screaming, no spitting. He would endeavor to do both to her, but there were plenty of things she had not disallowed. Biting. Kicking. Tearing and ripping. Climbing, scratching, and burning. Marking on the walls.

He glowered. He did not like being told what to do. Somehow, he was going to make himself the master, just as he had with everyone else who deigned to call themself his master.  

[romesilk]

Merroth soon found that this new arrangement was quite different from any home he had previously encountered. For starters, it was only one room, plus a dark and dusty closet. Black had helpfully offered to throw him in that closet should he egregiously misbehave and he had since been trying to see precisely what behavior would earn him the right to scream in terror at the dark loneliness of being locked in a closet. He had been locked in a room before, but it had been filled with light from a window, and he had broken the window.

His first attempt was to scrape at the sides of Black's desk with his fingers, but finding that ineffective he picked up a small piece of gravel that had come from a hole in the sole of Black's boot. He scraped off the varnished surface in a giant scribble, muttering nonsense to himself at each particularly brilliant stroke. Black scarcely bothered to notice, and he was furthermore ignored by Ejay. Since the former was presently too big a challenge, he tried to affect his will on the latter, but if anything Black was more discouraging of attacks on Ejay than she was of attacks on herself. He started to run towards Ejay and was two second later sent flat on his bottom, bouncing off an invisible wall. He tried to get around it or press through it, but there was simply no doing, and Ejay and Black continued their adult conversation.

"Hey!" Merroth shouted, thumping his fists on his chest. "Me! Looka me," but they flicked their eyes toward him for only the briefest of seconds and continued to ignore him.

Merroth slammed himself against the side of the desk, so hard it made him dizzy. He held his head in his hands. He slowly walked towards Black and found no restricting forcefield, so smacked her leg as hard as he could.

The jolt was electrical in nature and he leapt back with a cry of pain that drew tears from his eyes. He had gotten such a jolt once before, trying to play with the electrical cords coming out of a power strip, but the buzz had not been as strong and powerful as this one. In fact, that earlier experience had led him to try experimenting a few times with electricity, but he had never felt massively hurt the way he did now by it. His limbs seemed to shake of their own accord and he sat down and silently cried.

Several times he had made the humans who adopted him cry, and several times he had faked it for their attention and further misery, and as well he had cried from getting hurt, but this was altogether something worse. He was in pain both mental and physical, both at a threshold he had not before experienced.

"Black," prompted Ejay after several minutes of this, and Black rolled her eyes but went to attend Merroth. The little boy shrank away from her, fearing a second shock, but her hands were only flesh and blood for the moment.

Black did not know how to comfort a person, nor did she care to learn. She sat her hand atop Merroth's head for several moments and seemed to think this sufficient. "Do you want something to eat?"

Merroth had not eaten since that morning, so he nodded tearfully and let Black pull him up and towards the table. She sat him down in her own lap, pinched a piece of cracker in her fingers, and offered it to him.

He reached for it and she pulled her hand back, laughing, before she gave it to him. Merroth had never had a less satisfying cracker, more from the way it was given to him than the ingredients. Ejay sliced off a piece of cheese and stuck out his dagger within Merroth reach. The dagger was not withdrawn, and Merroth enjoyed the piece of cheddar a little bit more.

"On a more serious related note," said Ejay, resuming his work on the cheddar, "where were you planning on keeping the boy?"

"Merroth, his name's Merroth," Black happily corrected. "Looks about the right size for one of those little dog beds."

"Em, you cannot be serious," said Ejay, abandoning the cheese and leaning forward.

"Why not?" said Black, shrugging her shoulders and feeding Merroth another cracker even though he tried to bite her fingers. (The fingers slid like oiled snakes from his mouth and Black wiped her digits on Merroth's shirt sleeve.) "We could even teach him a few tricks. Say woof."

Merroth wisely and obstinately said nothing. His mouth was full of cracker anyway.

Ejay frowned at Black. It was one thing to attack someone else before they could attack you, as he and Black had always done in the Mirrorverse. It was another thing entirely to provoke someone into attacking you. It Black continued this the way it was going, the boy was going to end up seriously hurt through very little fault of his own when he really tried to get vengeance on the adults he could probably only see as his captors.

Merroth swallowed the last bit of chewed cracker and cleaned his teeth with his tongue. He shifted, considering, and demanded loudly, "Juice."

"Thirsty, are you?" said Black, eyeing the bottle of wine between herself and Ejay.

"No," said Ejay, "and waste a perfectly good vintage?"

Black was certainly not going to give Merroth any of her pomegranate juice so she carried him the short ways down the hall to the bathroom and filled a cup of water. Merroth was complacent in her arms, a predator in waiting. He had trouble with the glass as they walked back to the office. It kept slipping in his hands and only about half of the water made it into his mouth. The other half ended up on him and Black's shirt. She seemed not to mind. The glass was empty by the time they entered the office.

"More," said Merroth, and Black scoffed.

Noting the wetness of their clothing, Ejay petitioned on Merroth's behalf. "With how much water you're both wearing, I sincerely doubt he had enough to drink."

"It will have to do," said Black, setting Merroth down on the floor and taking the glass before Merroth could try to break it, which he was about to do.

Ejay cast a look at Black that sincerely doubted her qualifications as a parent and took the glass from the desk. He returned a minute later with a full glass and set it down on the floor in front of Merroth.

This time, Merroth was more careful. He gripped the slippery glass tightly and sipped at it, gulping everything he could. He drank the glass bare. It was probably too much to ask for another serving, so he kicked the glass across the floor and stood there, waiting.

He could feel the liquid coursing through the passage into his stomach, putting pressure on his bladder. He waited until he knew it was just enough, then he dropped his shorts and aimed at the middle of the floor.

Merroth gave it everything he had, his face a look of fierce determination, his abdominal muscles squeezing out every last bit he could. Ejay and Black both stopped their conversation and stared at him. There was silence in the room but for the noise of Merroth's urination. A strain spread and sank into the unfinished grain of the floorboards. Only when he was certain he had squeezed out every last available drop did Merroth abandon his efforts. He then placed his hands on his hips and smiled at his puddle in triumph. Now she was sure to put him in the closet, or perhaps return him to the nursery.

The response he got was laughter. Black howled and hooted, slapping her leg in amusement. Merroth looked at the adults, crestfallen, seeking answers. His rebellion was a complete and total failure.

Ejay raised an eyebrow. "I think she likes you," he said, and all Merroth could hear was Black's howling laughter. It would haunt him until the end of his days.  

[romesilk]

It was only with extreme exhaustion that Merroth succumbed to sleep. He had wanted to outlast the adults, but they had much more stamina. Unbeknownst to him, Black and Ejay had, like many of the Mirrorverse's people, been converted to not need sleep, a useful adaptation in a war that spanned temporally-disjointed dimensions, though one that quite literally robbed them of their dreams.

"He's not staying at my place," said Ejay, who was carrying Merroth, and had correctly guessed this was the reason Black had instructed him to pick up the child in the first place.

"Oh? And why not?"

"Without you there, he'll break my things."

"Then I'll stay over," snickered Black. She and Ejay walked in perfect tandem, their strides different but paces matched.

"No such thing," said Ejay. After a moment's pause, he added, "You really didn't think this through, did you?"

"Pah," said Black, "I don't care what you do with him." She truly did not. "He's no good to me dead."

"Asleep," corrected Ejay.

"Is there a difference?"

Ejay smiled. "Not with regard to you." Black could bring back the dead, so to her, it was as if the dead were only sleeping, and the difference between asleep and dead was moot. Both were states that had no direct usefulness to her.

Black did not propose to modify Merroth, because as useless as he was to her sleeping, it was too much effort. They had done away with the need to sleep as a result of the necessity of war, and Black was far too attached to efficiency to want to waste resources for her own personal enjoyment.

Ejay said, "We can’t work with him constantly around us." He had already formulated an idea. "I know a place we can keep him, and you can have him back whenever it suits you, work allowing."

"So do it," said Black, annoyed, increasing her stride to pull away from Ejay.

Ejay stopped and let Black go. In this state and without Black's protection, Merroth was liable to drool on the shoulder of his cape, so he would have to move quickly.

Ejay had all the cybernetic implants, all the best of the Mirrorverse's technology, and in some small ways it made him Black's equal. He opened a gate in the wall and turned off into it, passing through with total confidence and ease. The transition was immediate. Night to day, hallway to tropical island paradise. He emerged on the front path that led from the splendidly rickety house to the jungle. He was pleased to find his intended hoeing the front garden.

Generys Anne Garmondsway, in another universe, could have been Ejay's sister. She was short, curvy, with too-strong arms and shoulders, the result of years spent sailing. She had an unusual combination of the Garmondsway features that gave her a round face and petulant cheeks, rather like her mother, instead of the long, thin features favored on her father's side. It was the father's side that Ejay resembled, so the difference between them was immense, but the resemblances were uncanny. Same eyes, similar mouths, matching hairlines and something complimentary to their facial proportions. If his parents had decided to have a third child, Ejay suspected she would have been a dead ringer for Generys.

But she was not his sister. Her parents were not his. Physically identical and socially similar, but different people altogether, born in a different universe. For this reason, Ejay did not mind considering her as a woman, especially given what he knew about her. It had been a shock when he learned it, but when the shock wore off he found himself oddly intrigued, and then slightly aroused.

With each strike of the hoe into the earth she was bent over, almost like an invitation, but Ejay had his arms full. She was beautiful when she worked. Her arms were so strong, so powerful, and the way she swung the hoe was as if she was attacking the earth, forcing it to bend to her will. A stunning woman in every regard. Her will was of iron, her spirit of fire, and that was exactly as Ejay preferred his women.

He approached, boots crackling over the mixture of dirt and sand and gravel stones. Generys whirled about with her hoe at the ready, wielding it as a weapon. Her face was flustered beneath her sunhat from the tilling. Her skirts billowed around her, layers of faded and stained cloth piled atop one another to accentuate what he knew was the swagger of hips well-suited to childbirthing. A little powerhouse, that's what she was, and even without the benefit of a corset she had a waist he could almost encircle with the both of his hands. An absolute powerhouse of a woman.

"You," she scowled, knuckles white on the hoe's long handle. Her passionate fury was truly a sight.

Ejay knew she was probably carrying a pistol somewhere on her person, perhaps under those voluminous skirts of hers, so he did what he could to appear nonthreatening, holding up the one hand he could spare for peace. "It's good to see you too, Nerys."

"Don't you call me that!" was her immediate response, hiking up her skirts to keep them out of the dirt as she stalked over. "You call me by my given name or as captain or I shoot you where you stand." She released the skirts and brandished her hoe anew. Ejay was quietly encouraged that, despite the threat, she had not drawn her pistol.

"Quiet or you'll wake the child," he responded.

Generys eyed the boy, not knowing or particularly caring what Ejay was up to. "I'll not play any of your games, Edmund Jakomo."

"It's not a game, Generys Anne, it's a child," said Ejay, smiling facetiously. "Yours if you want him."

"And why would I want that brat?" she demanded, but they both knew the answer.

Generys Anne wanted a child. She wanted one so badly, and she had been trying and trying, but nothing happened. Poor Generys Anne, already so tortured by the circumstances of her life, was infertile, and it was the one thing she could not force to bend to her will.

"There are some conditions," Ejay continued as if Generys Anne had accepted his proposition, which he knew she would, "as this boy is greatly favored by my employer, Em the Black."

"What conditions," sneered Generys, moving easily into a bartering mode.

Ejay never got the chance to answer. There came a threatening cry from the house's front porch. Standing there was Edward John Garmondsway, Generys's actual brother.

There were only superficial physical differences between Edward John and Ejay. They could have been twins whose lives had simply taken a different path from one another, leaving Ejay the dashing and tanned pirate and Edward John the paler and thinner shadow who played occasionally at piracy but hated the sea. In that regard, at least, Ejay was more similar to Generys.

Edward John was holding a rifle and pointing it at the two of them, not willing to shoot his sister, but willing to try and protect her should the opportunity present itself. Ejay was familiar with Edward John's skills. If nothing else, the man was a decent shot. Not so great a shot that Ejay wanted to test his doppelganger's skills. "He'd have to come back with me from time to time," Ejay said to Generys, "when Em requests his presence."

"Edward John put down that rifle," snapped Generys. She dropped the hoe and held her arms out to Ejay. "Give him here."

They completed the exchange with the minimum level of jostling and Generys found herself suddenly holding the one thing she had always wanted but never been able to capture. A child. Her heart skipped a beat. Ejay smiled at her, feeling triumphant, but she was not so accommodating. "Now get the hell off my land," she said, not taking her eyes off Merroth.

Ejay tipped his hat and bowed, retreating part of the way towards the dimensional gate. Edward John's eyes followed him until Generys called out, "Does he have a name?"

"Yes," said Ejay, turning, aware of the heroic figure he must appear in his fine livery and broad feathered hat. "It's Merroth."

"Merroth," repeated Generys, to make sure she had got it right. Cradling Merroth, she made her way up towards the house.

Ejay continued on his way, down the path and through his invisible gate, returning to his life and leaving Generys to hers. For now.  

[romesilk]

For lack of a better phrase, it was an island paradise, but a rough one. Merroth awoke to the call of birds and the sea air and was disappointed. He had really been hoping for that closet.

He had no idea where he was, how he had gotten there. He remembered nothing of the past hours, of sleeping or dreaming or being carried from one world to the next, of being transferred from one person to another. He knew only that he was alone in a bare room, the walls a rough and stained wood, the bedsheets his only company. Through the window palm fronds were gently swaying, and when he stood on the bed he could see clear down to the ocean shore where the waves lapped at the white sand. The water extended off to the horizon and the infinite beyond, perfect crystalline blue, so clear he could spot fish swimming in the shallows even from where he stood. The jungle he could see less of but desired more, its secrets hidden by dense vines and foliage.

There was little to speak of in the room. A single door, a single window, one bed and one table with wax drippings upon it. A little pot sat in the corner, not easily breakable. The walls and wood were a grey wood stained by wind and air and sea and bleached by sand. Though the materials had a weathered appearance, like the wreck of a beached ship, the exposed beams and rafters were straightly-cut and solid to the force of Merroth's foot. The craftsmanship was impeccable.

Merroth tried the door but found it locked. He wished he had something to unlock it with, but his pockets were empty. He tried the window, but could only shift it a little, enough to let the breeze in.

Frustrated, Merroth sat down on the bed to wait, but realized he had got something at his disposal.

---

"Come now, Nerys," Edward John protested for at least the fifth time this hour. He was exasperated and tired of arguing but still felt compelled to try. Not that his protests in any way constituted the beginning of a real argument -- Edward John always let Nerys have her way. He just retained the ability to express his dismay about it.

Generys Anne merely sniffed. She cared little for Edward John's opinion in the matter, as she had already made her mind up. His was about the only opinion she cared about, but only if he managed to make it known before she had committed herself to a decision. After that, his protests became a moot point. Captain Generys Anne "Scarbreast" Garmondsway never went back on her word, unless she was intentionally lying. She had meant it when she had agreed to take the child from Ejay, and she could no more go back on that than willfully rend Edward John in half. Some things were simply impossible.

Edward John merely sighed, dangled his glass of brandy, and drank from it. Then he sighed again. There was a time when he had been the stronger sibling, when Nerys had turned to him for support, but that was all in the past. Now he depended on and lived for her. He traced the back of her hand with his finger, quietly glad she no longer pulled away at the slightest touch.

"Give me that," said Nerys, taking his brandy. She guzzled down all that was left and returned the glass to him empty. She followed it with a small burp.

"Don't drink laying down," Edward John faintly chided, letting his head fall back over the arm of the settee. Nerys settled against his chest like a kitten, but she did not allow herself to so languidly relax. She kept her muscles tense and senses on the alert.

There was nothing to be alert about. This island was theirs, totally and completely, and it was the one place no one could ever reach them. No one except Ejay and his lot, but usually they did not bother, as neither Generys nor Edward John had little patience for them nowadays. Their service to Ejay's companions was over and this lovely, wild, deserted island was their reward. A place where they could live out the rest of their lives in peace and quiet together. No more fighting, no more battles, no more danger and seasickness. A time and place to relax.

Generys had not been able to relax since she was thirteen and Edward John wished, not for the first and not for the last time, that he could kill the man who'd done this to her. He just wanted his little sister back, the smiling and laughing little sister he had shared secrets with in the hideaway in the garden. The only person who could make him smile. It had been years since they had smiled together. He had to settle for keeping her safe.

Curled up on top of Edward John, Generys felt the buzz of the alcohol in her stomach. She was small, but no featherweight, and handled it better than Edward John did. Still, she questioned what she saw outside the window, thinking it must be some sort of hallucination, but she saw it again.

She sat up, ignorant of the pressure her arms put on Edward John's chest. He had never recovered from his stay in the hospital, not completely, and sometimes had trouble breathing. He coughed a little. She slid off the settee and stomped over to the window. Edward John remained laying and asked, "What is it?"

Generys did not answer and went storming up the stairs. Edward John half sat up, felt a little dizzy, and decided against following.

When the door to Merroth's room burst open, Merroth was prepared from the sound of the key in the lock. He let out a high-pitched war cry and charged forward, fully expecting to meet the boots of Black or Ejay and instead plowing into the skirts of Generys Anne, bouncing harmlessly off her petticoats. They were as an effective a shield against the charge as Black's dimensional magics.

"You!" screeched Generys, a cry that finally did rouse Edward John from downstairs, and she swooped down and grabbed Merroth by the arm. She dragged him, even more ungentle than Black, to the bed, and tossed him upon it, much stronger for her size than Merroth had expected. "What is this!"

Merroth glowered, wondered where his nemesis Black had gone, and spat on the bed. Then he spat again and again, aiming more at Nerys, but she blatantly ignored it, instead pulling the line of knotted sheets in from the window. Merroth had tied all of the bedsheets together and secured the line to the bars of the metal bed frame. Had he been able to get the window open far enough to stick his head through, he probably would have climbed down it. The sheets stretched all the way to the ground outside.

Seeing his opportunity, Merroth let Generys fuss at the bedsheets and made a dash for the open door. He ran straight into the legs of Edward John. "What's this now?" Edward John exclaimed. The impact with his spindly legs was not as kind as Generys's full skirts had been, and Merroth banged his kneecap painfully.

Edward John grabbed ahold of Merroth as easily as Generys had, for he possessed the same strength. This was not to say that Edward John was weak, but that his sister possessed the strength of a full-grown man, and so did he. Neither would win any weightlifting competitions, but both could easily handle a small child, even a writhing, struggling one like Merroth. Edward John was considerably gentler than Generys, Black, and Ejay had all been.

"Oooh," seethed Nerys, studying the length of her sheets. The bottom had trailed onto the ground and gotten dirty. She grabbed it and shook it in Merroth's face. "Do you see this? Do you see this?"

"Kerrogh!" squealed Merroth, trying to free himself from Edward John.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you!" screamed Nerys, pulling Merroth from Edward John even as Edward John raised his usual, ineffectual objection. Merroth completely ignored her request in favor of more struggling and yelling. The memory of the electric shock was too fresh in his mind for him to try biting. "You like ruining good sheets? You think this is acceptable?"

"Nerys," pleaded Edward John.

Nerys shoved Merroth on the bed, gathered up the line of sheets, and headed for the door. "Keep him here!" she ordered Edward John. "You can do that, can't you?" Edward John did not reply, but even if he had, Nerys wouldn't have listened. She stormed out the room, not bothering to close the door behind her.

Sprawled on the bed, it took Merroth a moment to catch his breath, but when he did, his eyes went straight to the door. He started to jump off the mattress to try for it again, but Edward John was standing between the door and the bed. "Sorry, mate, I wouldn't if I were you," said Edward John, and Merroth for the first time looked up at the man.

It was Ejay, but quite clearly it was not. Merroth was confused. Edward John had the same eyes and face, but tired and sad-looking, and his hair was shorter. He was dressed considerably less richly than Ejay had been and looked like a thinner, more worn-out version.

Merroth tried to read Edward John's expression for some clue, some sign of weakness, but the man was quite plainly already defeated and the only message Merroth got was "give up." That was the expression he had put on the faces of the people who had tried to be his parents on Gaia, only this time he had not been the one to put it there and that fact disturbed him. Merroth frowned determinedly, not prepared to so easily throw in the hat. He decided to throw the little pot in the corner instead.

Edward John did not stop him, not when he left the confines of the bed where Nerys had thrown him, not when he walked into the corner where the pot was, not when he picked up the pot. It was quite hefty for its small size. Merroth threw it with all his might.

He might as well have thrown a feather for all the good it did him. The pot did not travel nearly as far as Merroth wanted and instead landed on the floor and rolled, Edward John discreetly moving one foot even though he was in no peril of coming into to contact with the object. Then Nerys was back before Merroth could retrieve the pot for an attempt from a closer distance. The sheets were gathered in her hands, as well as a hammer and several tacks.

Edward John said nothing. Nerys thrust the sheets at Merroth, covering him entirely. The sheets had been slightly dirtied before-- now they were positively sullied. "Here!" she announced, "you want dirty sheets? You've got them!" She went straightaway to the window and began to hammer the tacks while Merroth tried to escape the folds around him.

Nerys was faster at her task than Merroth was his and stepped down from the bed, pointed shoes tapping noisily on the wooden floor. With one yank of her arm Merroth was revealed from under the dirty sheets. Nerys leaned menacingly towards him. "Shape up or ship out!" she barked, kicked the sheets in his direction, and stormed out, pulling Edward John away with her.

The key clicked in the door. Merroth waited for a brief moment. "Hey!" he shouted, and ran full-force at the door. "Hey!"

Nerys palmed the key on the other side. "He'll learn his lesson, same as every sailor."

Edward John watched Nerys stomp back off downstairs. He had only one thought in his mind. To love her is to fear her.  

[romesilk]

Edward John eventually came back because Nerys never would. She was too stubborn. Edward John, however, remembered occasionally taking care of his sister and was slightly more attuned to the needs of children. Merroth was not glad to see him, but he was not so proud that he would refuse the plate of food Edward John offered. He wolfed down the jerky and slightly stale biscuit greedily. There was even a glass of milk, but Merroth found it strange-tasting and spit it out. "Goat's milk," said Edward John. Merroth spilled the milk intentionally on the bed and Edward John sighed. He was not going to clean it up for Merroth.

Merroth had spent several hours screaming and kicking the door, several more pacing and pulling at the tacks, several more making a mess of the filthy sheets Nerys had given him, but he had been forced to accept that they were not going for him if he simply made more noise so he tried to be quiet, and eventually it seemed to work, since Edward John had returned.

"Please try to understand," said Edward John, as if Merroth possessed the compassion for such a task or cared about trying, "she's had a hard life." It did not excuse her actions, same as Merroth's life did not excuse his actions, and Merroth kept on eating until the plate was clear and Edward John took it away.

There were shouts downstairs, an argument, and Merroth put his head to the floor but could not make out the words. Someone came up the stairs. Nerys, by the sound of the shoes. The key clicked in the door. "Stand back, brat," Nerys said, and kicked the door open. Merroth was luckily still sitting on the bed. The door could have really hurt and he resolved never to stand behind it.

"Yagh!" said Merroth in greeting, making a face and sticking out his tongue. Nerys swished her skirts and approached the side of the bed.

"There are no free rides in this house, do you understand me?" Merroth farted in response. Nerys snorted derisively.

"Food!" demanded Merroth, even though he had just had some and was momentarily satiated.

"Like Hell," said Nerys. "You apologize to me for ruining my sheets." This was a fairly large request for her to make, especially since a) Merroth had no intention of ever apologizing for anything if he could help it and b) Nerys had been the one to dirty up the sheets the most and Merroth was not about to take responsibility for something he had not done. Nerys waited but no apology was forthcoming. Merroth stared at her with dark fire in his eyes, but her gaze was just as fiery.

Nerys held up her hand. In it was the key. "You see this? You can have it after you apologize to me."

Merroth grabbed for the key, but it was too far away. "Hey!"

"You can sleep on it," sneered Nerys, heading back out. Merroth made a run for the door but Nerys too easily blocked him, knocking Merroth aside, and then he was alone again. No one else came the rest of the night.

He was forced to sleep again after some hours, but the bed smelled of stale goat's milk, so he slept in a pile of sheets in the corner on the floor. He hated every minute of it. As much as he enjoyed sometimes creating grand messes, he did not himself enjoy being dirty and always tidied himself up quickly. Now he had no choice. The floor was too hard without sleeping on something, the bed too smelly, and all in all Merroth did not have a restful night.

When he woke in the morning Nerys was already in the room with him. He had not heard her enter. He lifted his head groggily and she promptly scooped him up and carried him down the stairs and outside. He struggled a bit, but her arms were much stronger than usual for a woman of her size and her full skirts too much padding for his kicks to have much effect. "Go! Off! Down!" he shouted, and she ignored him.

She carried him straight down the path that led from the house to the shore, across the sand, and into the surf. The spray lept up and tickled Merroth's legs. The water pulled at Nerys's heavy skirts but she strode onward.

And when she had gone far enough, she sat, Merroth in her lap.

At first, he still struggled and shouted, but after a moment relaxed. The water was warm and he licked the salt from his lips with the enthusiasm of a pony. Nerys rested her chin on his head.

Since he had the opportunity, he relieved himself, but Nerys did not seem to notice. He was going to need the use of a toilet at some point soon.

They sat there for some minutes, seagulls calling and goats bleating in the distance, the waves sweeping the shore around them. Merroth stared out over the waves, the ocean seemingly infinite, an ever-changing pattern of water as far as the eye could see. He was mesmerized by it, watching as if waiting for something to come.

Then Nerys stood up and dragged him back to the sand, heavily weighed down by her skirts. She put Merroth down just where the tips of the waves could lap at his feet and began to undress, depositing her many layers of clothing higher up on the dry sand where the waves could not take it. Merroth watched, wondered what he should do, looked for a route of escape. He was really hungry and figured he should probably get at least one good meal in before he tried escaping. (Breakfast, he had always thought, was crucially important to getting a good day of anything done.)

Before he could resolve himself to a plan of action, Nerys, unbuttoning her last petticoat, said, "I'm going for a swim." Merroth watched her for just a moment more and then decided to mimic her, which was a lot easier for him. By the time she had kicked away the lacy petticoat he was tugging off his pants and he followed her right back into the ocean.

Nerys had obtained a small spear from somewhere on the shore and dove gracefully with it in hand, disappearing in to the water. Merroth toddled after her, feet slipping in the shifting sand, and found himself suddenly quite alone.

She did not resurface for what seemed forever. Merroth began to get a bit worried, not exactly liking the idea of being completely alone despite the grief he gave the people around him. He still depended on people for a lot of things. He was preparing to call out for her return when she emerged in a spray of droplets, a line of five fish on her spear. She threw the spear like a javelin toward the shore, striking a short distance from the piles of their clothing. The silvery fish were still wriggling.

Merroth looked at Generys. She remained in the water, her limbs treading water. "Can you swim?" she asked him.

Merroth had never been invited to try and was not sure. Nerys, taking his hesitation as a negative response, drifted over with a single stroke and demonstrated. "You kick with your legs, reach with your arms, and take a breath." In a moment, she was several feet away. "See?" Merroth tried it. He didn't get it quite the first try, ending up thrashing and sputtering, but Nerys was patient.

Up on the shore, Edward John came down the path from the house, gathering up and removing Nerys and Merroth's clothes from the sand, and the spear of fish as well. He watched them for a moment, playing in the surf, and then headed back up the pathway.

Nerys swam laps between the shore and a small exposed sandbar with a single palm tree some yards away, leaving Merroth to work out the finer details of swimming in the shallows where he could still stand. They might have stayed there all day had not the enticing fumes of a cooking fire wafted down towards them. Nerys led Merroth by the hand, picking him up where the pathway was jagged. They found Edward John hanging up the laundry on the line; their clothes from the morning. The fish were roasting over the fire.

"Hose me down," said Nerys, and Merroth was struck with confusion until Edward John picked up what was clearly a modern garden hose and drenched them with it. Nerys laughed and Merroth sputtered in the water, but once he was rinsed his skin no longer itched from the ocean's salt. Edward John tossed them a sheet to dry off with.

Nerys wrapped Merroth in the sheet. She worked her fingers into the short hair on the back of his head and teasingly gave him a shake. "Every day God gives us is a new one," she said. "You'll not be messing with my bedsheets again, will yeh?"

Merroth could smell the tantalizing aroma of the cooked fish. His stomach softly rumbled. "Nuh uh," he agreed, with apparent sincerity. He would find other ways to torment her and Edward John. The bedsheets could wait until some point in the future. For now, breakfast was in order.  

[romesilk]

So it came to pass that Tenebras Merroth began to live with Edward John and Generys Anne, but not without learning several hard lessons first.

When he requested the toilet rather emphatically, he was introduced instead to the chamber pot. It became the only place he was allowed to pee, because if Nerys found so much as a whiff of a droplet outside the pot, she punished Merroth beyond all reason.

When he demanded food, he was pointed to the bare pantry and told to wait until mealtime when some food would be foraged up from the island because Nerys and Edward John were not Merroth's personal waiters. They would get him food when they felt like eating, too, and not a minute sooner. Theirs was not a household accustomed to many snacks, and simple things like cheese and pasta were considered rare and an unusual treat.

When he threw a fit and bit Nerys, he learned that she gave as good as she got. Nerys might not have been an ex-goddess like Em the Black, who was able to stop Merroth in his tracks with a mere thought before he so much as started, but Nerys was the first adult truly willing to bring herself down to Merroth's level and play by the same rules or lack thereof. He bit her, and she bit him right back. He threw sand in her eyes and she threw sand at him, and furthermore ground it into his hair until he was a dirty, yowling mess, screaming to be washed off. He kicked her shins and she twisted the skin on his arm, leaving a red mark. And if Generys did it, chances were Merroth tried to do it, too.

There were some things she could do that he could not. Throw him into the lagoon, sit on him until he capitulated, hold things up out of his reach and laugh at his stature. She had very long hair and he pulled it every chance he got, and she smacked his hand sharper and sharper until he decided to stop because the burning sensation would not go away. He spat at her, she spat at him, and tied him to a tree with some rope and let him hang there for an hour. Nerys was much older, a full adult, but she surely did not act it.

They escalated. Every morning, a fresh new day as Nerys claimed God gave them, and by evening welts and bruises and scrapes on both sides with poor Edward John standing in the middle, begging one or both of them to stop.

Edward John did everything for Nerys, and in turn for Merroth as well. He cleaned, he cooked, he did the wash, and Nerys ran around the island with Merroth occasionally in tow doing as she felt. Sometimes she would listen to Edward John's reason, out of respect for him being her older brother. More often she did not.

If Nerys told Merroth not to do it, he tried his hardest. Her punishments for bad behavior were, quite frankly, creative. Merroth destroyed a journal belonging to someone important and she made him eat the ruined pages. The ink made him ill for hours. Merroth stole the wash and threw it in the ocean and she made him stand on the little sandbar island until it dried out. His skin turned red and peeled, but Nerys cared not. "That's how you get a hide as tough as the ocean," she informed him. She was full of little sayings like that. Edward John put some plant salve on Merroth and the sunburn went away.

When Merroth ruined their dinner, he went without. When he stole something, he had all his things taken away, even his clothing, and had to earn it back by being silent for various periods of time determined by Nerys.

But as terrible and awful as Nerys could be, particularly when paired with Merroth, she also possessed a capability for being absolutely wonderful.

They would swim in the morning, splash in the sea spray and be nice. Nerys would always catch the same breakfast: one fish for Merroth, two fish each for Edward John and herself. She showed him the different kinds of fish, and the other marine creatures, warned which were poisonous and advised which brought good luck. "If you end up at sea and haven't got a piece of gold on you for Neptune, you can collect a thousand sand dollars in its stead."

She knew everything there was to know about their little island, showed him how to milk the goats and skin the boar she caught. She warned him about the dangers of the jungle, about how a boar's tusk might tear through flesh like a knife in butter, and showed him a scar on her ankle from one such beast. Then she showed him its hide on the wall, with five-inch tusks. She introduced him to fruit and palm trees, but he could only watch when she climbed up like a monkey and obtained the choicest examples for lunch.

She told him about the constellations, pointed out their shapes in the night sky, and indicated how they were used for navigation. She even showed him how to tie a few simple knots.

When he cut his foot on a jagged shell one morning, Nerys screeched and tore her petticoat to use as a bandage, overreacting for what Edward John established to be a rather small cut. Edward John knew a thing or two about medicine, apparently from having spent time in a hospital, and advised Merroth not to walk without shoes and wash the cut each morning and night. Merroth spent the entire day not tormenting Nerys in thanks for her display of loyalty. The next day, his foot was feeling better, and they resumed their warring.

Medicine was not Edward John's only skill of note. He was also, in addition to his cleaning and cooking, a man of letters. Merroth found Edward John alone in the house writing one day and asked what it was all about, so Edward John taught him to write his name and read the words "sky," "fish," and "sea." Then Merroth learned to write them as well, and a whole slew of other words. Tree, wind, bird, cloud, wave, leaf, goat. He wrote the words everywhere, even on the walls, and no one seemed to care.

There were a lot of things Merroth was allowed to do that in the other homes he had tried he had been forbidden. Writing on the walls was just the tip of the iceberg. He could also slam doors if he wanted, and chew on things. He could play with the cooking fire, but got yelled at if he burned something important or tried to set anything large on fire. He could kick the goats they kept for milk and meat, chase the chickens all day long, and anything that was given to him was his to do with as he liked, even if it meant breaking the item in question. He owned a broken telescope, a broken sextant, a broken ship in a bottle (the ship was broken, not the bottle), a broken ink pen, and a charred boot Edward John had mistakenly given him and Merroth had successfully argued was his own property by insisting it was gift until Edward John caved and conceded. Merroth would let the boot smolder, put it on a stick, and walk around with it smoking and stinking up the house.

But he also learned that as wonderful as Nerys could be, as much awful fun as it was fighting with her on a daily basis, sometimes Nerys was frightening. There were certain days that she would walk around possessed by so foul a mood she would hit even Edward John, and curse at them both, and try to hurt them any way she could find. She would scream and snarl and kick and Merroth made the mistake of trying to antagonize her on one of those days and Edward John rescued him and they hid in the cellar until dark. Nerys was wonderful and amazing, but terrible and unstable. Merroth's queries why were never answered, but when he asked there was such a darkening in Edward John's face Merroth knew he must some day find out, perhaps when he had enough words to read all of Edward John's letters which Edward John wrote and hid in the secret compartment of his writing desk.

But most days were the good ones, with raucous fighting and shouting and competition to see who could piss the farthest or throw the biggest stone at the rats that scurried along the island come night. (Nerys won both of those contests, but, Merroth was resolved, not for long.)

At least, that was his life with Generys Anne and Edward John. It constituted most of Merroth's days, but not all, for he was forced to attend whenever Em the Black called, and his life with her was a very different one.  

[romesilk]

The first time Black called for him was a week into his stay with Generys and Edward John. There was no warning. Ejay came, waited on the pathway to the house, and Nerys begrudgingly sent Merroth with him.

"So," said Black, lips curling into the cruel expression she called a smile, "are you enjoying your primitive life?" Merroth didn't understand the question, and answered by sticking his tongue out and making a rude noise. When he did this to Nerys, she copied his expression and did it right back. After a week, this was the response Merroth expected, but not the one he got. "He smells of animals and salt," she commented to Ejay with disdain. "Bathe him." And Merroth got a bath, forcibly, with things that Nerys and Edward John did not have like shampoo and commercial soap. Peeing in the water only turned an unpleasant bath into an unpleasant shower, which was like being hosed down but not quite as fun when the water felt like a heavy wall and strong arms were holding him down. He yowled as loud as he was able and Ejay grumbled loudly and did not wholly dry him off so afterwards Merroth was left feeling slightly damp and uncomfortable in his clothing. Not like when he and Nerys dried off. They always waited to be completely dry before getting dressed.

Black's office had not changed, and even seemed to retain a small shade of the pee stain, though it was without any smell. Merroth pulled at his clothes, sewn inexpertly by Edward John out of an old shirt and some soft sailcloth. Black appraised the boy carefully. "He needs better clothes." This time, she accompanied them on the shopping trip instead of just leaving the task to Ejay.

The shop she took Merroth to was small, private, with racks and racks of all sorts of clothes. The floor was red carpet and Merroth would have peed on it but he was feeling a bit dehydrated. Black chose all the clothes with some advice from Ejay. A strange man measured Merroth (he kicked the man in the shin to no effect) and everything Black wanted was the right size. Black smiled at her handiwork, frowned when she disliked it, and by the end of two long and very grueling hours Merroth had a new wardrobe. He made sure to voice his displeasure about every bit of it: the clothes, the process, the mirror, the changing room. "No. No. No. No." It became his mantra, a chant he maintained at varying levels of pitch and volume as his legs were thrust through children's trousers and his arms slid through shirts like an uncooperative doll. Ejay and especially Black were too physically powerful for him to escape any of the many articles of clothing. When it came time to decide what to do with the clothes he had been wearing, Black threw them away, and Merroth just watched, stricken, as the things that had been specially hand-made for him were discarded and replaced by the stitches of industrial production.

And then Black bought Merroth ice cream and let him drop and step on his cone, gave him her cone, and Merroth actually enjoyed the cold treat as he sulked and wiped his shoes on a nearby wall. The shoes would end up sticky and ruined and Merroth would later treat them just as Black had his homemade clothes. Black had gotten him eight pairs of shoes in total, the loss of one was hardly worth a note.

The more Merroth tried to get Black to dislike him by tantruming, throwing things, cussing with the few words he had picked up from Nerys, and being a little monster, the more Black seemed to like him. In that regard she was Nerys's equal. It took him seven hours to finally get too tired to continue his rebellion and give up, at which point Black, bored, let him go home.

Nerys and Edward John never asked what had happened to clothes he was wearing that morning. They gave him a chest in which to keep his new things and Merroth burned everything instead, even the other pairs of shoes, which was worth noting. The next time Black called for him three days later, he arrive barefoot and in charred shorts and she sent him home with new everything, same as before. So he burned those as well. Finally, Nerys sat him down and talked to him about the sheer idiocy of wasting perfectly good clothes, and Merroth was so mortified at being called an idiot he did not burn the clothes Black gave him at their next meeting.

The worst part was Black had actually chosen things that, given his own choice, Merroth would have chosen. Furthermore, every time he went to see her she bought him something new which was entirely to his tastes. He hated it, wondering what the hell made him so predictable, broke a lot of what she gave him, and piled the rest in the corner of his room for a few days until the messiness of it was driving him batty and he mumbled out a request for a bookshelf, which he got.

It was a complete dichotomy. Nerys taught him many things, but had little in the way of worldly possessions to share. She treated him as her equal. Black taught him nothing, but bought him everything, and treated him like her pet. Merroth could not help but to take everything each woman offered.

One day, expecting Ejay to arrive to pick up Merroth any minute, Nerys remarked, "I don't see why she's got to keep asking for you, I'm your mum." Standing on the porch beside her, Merroth felt slightly aghast at that, but when Ejay turned up on the pathway he mumbled a very quiet, "Bye, mum," before taking off down the stairs to go bilk Black for more presents and sweet things he could not get on the island.

Even though he said it, he was never quite committed to either Nerys or Black. Neither could provide him everything he wanted. Merroth sulked over his predicament. Black Em and her creature comforts, or Nerys and her consistent attentions? He always arrived at the same conclusion. He would do his best to torture each woman for not being enough of the other. They were neither totally good enough in his mind.  

[romesilk]

Rainbows and Lemon Drops (at least, we hope it's lemon)
PRP with Wisp

 

[romesilk]

Smelly Todd, the Demon Toddler of Fleet Street
PRP with ShortGreen/Evan
in progress

 

[romesilk]

Splish Splash!
PRP with Ishizuke and Leviathan
in progress

 

[romesilk]

The Anger Strikes Back
PRP with Wisp