“Speaking of which,” Terenei said. The hand pying with my hair paused, and through the communicator as well as right behind me, I heard him say, “Aryennos? Heket? Unless there’s some objection, we’ll be meeting up with Serru’s friend Jaelis at the Ruby Dolphin for supper and to enjoy the music. Your friends are welcome to join us, Heket.”
After a brief pause, Heket said, “Nami thinks that’s a wonderful choice. Don’t wait on us for supper, but we’ll be there and see how much of her family wants to come along. How’s Myu?”
I raised a hand to my throat. “Fine. Happily exploring the really great garden right outside our window. The innkeeper likes cats and we’ll make sure she has food and water before we leave. I’m absolutely sure she’ll be happy and safe here while we’re out.”
Aryennos said, “Sounds fun. I’m not going to have much luck here, but the local librarian has a suggestion I need to talk to you about. Which inn are you at? I might as well just come join you.”
Serru offered the name and location; Heket supplied easy directions from the library to us.
“I’ll be there soon,” Aryennos said. “I’m just going to check a couple more things that won’t take long.”
“Please tell me,” Terenei said, without the communicator, “that I can braid your hair properly. And since you don’t have anything fun to wear to go out, I’ll just have to see what I can come up with.”
I saw Serru smile, though she kept her attention to all appearances on putting everything back into her bag.
I ughed. “How else would I know what’s appropriate to wear? I’m absolutely in your hands.”
“Oh, this will be so much fun. And I can do more than one at the same time, and a lot of what I have in mind for Nathan doesn’t involve magic. Something sexy for Jaelis? Or just generally being outrageous because why not?”
“I have several friends I stop in to visit,” Serru said. “Some have been my friends for quite a while. Some I have other sorts of understandings with, sometimes not. You’re the one I’ve known the longest, without question. There is only one friend I have both known longer than Jaelis and had a longer understanding with, and that’s my jotun friend Zanshe, who is in the Highnds but not properly on the route to the Quincunx from here.”
“Does that mean you don’t need anything sexy?”
Serru grinned at him. “It means that dressing sexy is certain to be appreciated and get a good reaction, and I have something with me I’ve been saving for this since I saw it in Goldenswan Lake, because I don’t normally have you with me. It’s tempting to ask you and save it for next time, but I’d rather you did your best on Nathan. But I will borrow paints and possibly your help with that, since I don’t have more than basics on me.”
Terenei ughed. “Fair enough.” He swung his backpack around into reach in front of him and started pulling out boxes of paints, his always-clean jar of water, his sketchbook, and a hairbrush. “I think I’m going to pn to include the jewellery you have on, it’s beautifully-made and a gorgeous contrast against your skin. If I do body-painting, which I am going to do because it’s even more wildly popur with aquians than it is with jotuns, even though jotuns are the ones who invented it, you need to make a decision. I can do it the regur way, and it will wash off with soap and water, or I can do it the proper way, and it will stay until you use one specific cleanser that breaks down the binder so it can be washed off.”
“Is that how Anid and the shopkeeper and the innkeeper here got the gorgeous tattoos?” I asked, startled. I’d assumed it was either more transitory body art or maybe the for-life kind. Silly me.
“You have those?”
“It’s not paint on the skin. It involves getting pigments in between yers of skin so they stay for always. Removing them is difficult at best.”
“That sounds painful and inconvenient.”
“Some people get them for really deep personal reasons. Some people get them because they think it looks cool. Levels of regret vary.”
“I could imagine events that might lead to wanting a permanent indication of that,” Serru reflected. “An important achievement, overcoming a difficult situation, a recognition of something that was a definitive inspiration.”
“Our way,” Terenei said, “isn’t forever. Like anything else, you lose it if you die. If it isn’t removed, it will eventually start to deteriorate from normal wear-and-tear, colours will fade and blur, that kind of thing, although any artist can do some repair work. But that takes several years, typically, unless it’s been badly abused. It’s literally just a different kind of binder than the sort used for everyday cosmetic effects.” He fished two jars out of his backpack; the rger one I recognized, but the smaller one was unfamiliar. “Your choice.”
“You just happen to be prepared for that?”
“No. I’ve used it before but don’t tend to keep it on me. Serru bought it when she picked up all the hair beads and ribbons and such and gave it to me at the same time.”
“I decline to comment,” Serru chuckled.
“Well, if you’re going to go to that much effort,” I said, “might as well make sure it sts as long as possible.”
The rger bottle vanished back into his backpack. “Now, what design to use... is there anything you’d like me to use as a base? Something meaningful to you, or that you happen to like?”
“Your world’s symbol for a paramedic, like we have hearts for healers and flowers for alchemists?” Serru added.
“Or that. Our paramedic star would be reasonable.”
“The usual crest,” I said, “is a six-armed blue star with a white snake up the middle coiled around a staff. The one on my bag in human form, or on the clothes I was wearing when I got here.”
“Show me.” He handed me his sketchbook. “Also, what colour are your scales when you’re in the water? I don’t want anything to csh.”
By the time Aryennos joined us, my midnight-blue skin had been painted with a number of asterisk-type six-armed stars with soft blurred edges, all in a range of blues right down to near-white, anything from palm-sized to loonie-sized. Sharp-edged, they might have felt like too much, but this way they just sort of blended in, like they were fading into sight.
Terenei was working on my hair, and I had my eyes closed, completely incapable of tension or apprehension at that moment. Serru had gone in the other room, probably mostly out of consideration for my increasingly-inconvenient ingrained modesty.
“Hello?” Aryennos said. “Oh, hey, I like that.”
“Thanks,” Terenei said, hands still moving. “If you think of anything you want, let me know, of course. Just think of me as your local one-person fashion shop. The tradeoff of an infinite inventory is the length of time any item sts.”
“I’ll think about it. Um, is this a bad time to bring up the library?”
“To Nathan, yes, and Serru’s in a strikingly good mood looking forward to time with her friend Jaelis, and maybe not thinking about research right now. Anything urgent?”
“There’s nothing here but I might have a lead.”
“That can wait. Tonight is for unwinding. We can be serious over supper or something if it needs to be before tomorrow.”
“All right. What’s with Nathan?”
“Not as familiar with aquians? They’re very touch-sensitive. Not in the same way felids are. And this is all new.”
“Ah. Got it. I forgot about that bit.”
Terenei’s touch was no less intense than Serru’s, but despite the roughly-equivalent sense of intimacy, I was finding it restful instead of stimuting, and I would have been perfectly happy to skip going out and stay right here.
Still, somehow we all got ourselves dressed and organized. Terenei offered me a wrap that, instead of being mesh, was a shimmery fabric that looked like pearly pink from some angles and pale violet from others, fastened with a brooch shaped like a flower made of shells; it worked perfectly with my newly-decorated skin and my shell-and-pearl jewellery and even my rainbow-fringed white bag. It also matched with my hair, which now had multiple irregur braids, each threaded through with either a bright shimmery ribbon or a near-invisible cord with pearly coloured beads spaced along it. The base pale silver remained, but the pastel blue, green, violet, and rose highlights had been subtly enhanced, more visible without being in direct sunlight.
I hadn’t actually tried wearing any sort of footwear in aquian form, but I had yet to see an aquian who was less barefoot than a felid. Presumably there was a reason. Aquian feet weren’t significantly unlike human feet, as near as I could tell—I’d met regur humans with toes that weren’t much longer, although it was less likely theirs were webbed. It might be partly practical, a counterpart to the tendency to wear fabrics that dried quickly, or just a cultural thing. I wasn’t going to argue, since there was nothing in the town to damage my feet on and it was comfortable.
Aryennos unearthed blue-and-purple trousers, shirt, and jacket that I recognized after a moment as the ones he’d been wearing when we’d met him, though they looked much less the worse for wear now. The deep purple velvety jacket, pale mauve shirt, and indigo-blue trousers with a mauve-and-white geometric pattern were not only no longer damaged by several miles of being tossed around by a river followed by my resuscitation efforts, but they looked a lot less unusual to me than they had then.
Terenei produced for himself a typically flowing and eyecatching outfit in the dark pinkish-red of fresh raspberries, blue-green aquamarine, and pale cream, which I was sure was a combination I’d seen him in before but the style was different, less solid fabric and more yers of fringes, showing off opera-length fingerless gloves and high boots with intricate coloured designs on them, highlighted with makeup and a lot of gold jewellery and a fringed hairband for his violet hair.
Serru came through the open connecting door, maybe to investigate the voices, maybe just finished dressing.
My brain short-circuited completely.
This world had tex clothing?
Whatever it was made of, that dress was skin-tight and glossy and it left little to the imagination. Primarily it was a rich pine green, with a high front that rose to wrap around her neck, but it left her shoulders and colrbone bare down to the tops of short and very loose sleeves. Subtle but unmistakable boning in the bodice smoothed the fit against the curve of chest to waist to hips, and offered some support to her substantial breasts without pushing them together. The skirt reached her knees, but while it was snug over her hips, both sides had a ruffled insert just below that point. The sleeves, the ruffles on the sides, and a symmetrical abstract design down the centre that drew attention to her own shape were all silvery-bck.
Throw in knee-height boots in that same silvery-bck, with unexpectedly high heels, and her metal-and-sparkly pink-green-and-white earrings and bracelet, and I stopped being able to think clearly at all.
She smiled as she spread both hands. “I’m open to any ideas on what to add.”
“Uh... wow,” Aryennos said. “I don’t know where you found that but it’s perfect and whoever made it is a master.”
“There’s a tailor in Goldenswan Falls that makes amazing sexy fashions. I keep pointing out that tex clothing drives aquians mad and he’d be unable to keep up with the demand if he moved closer to the Shallows. He says that’s why he won’t. I have a dark red one with a vine-and-flower design that’s transparent so skin shows, but Jaelis has seen that one. And also the two-piece halter-and-skirt in brighter green with pink edging and ruffles.”
“That might be good motivation to make a trip in that direction,” Terenei said. “Hm. Since Jaelis is aquian, a bit of short-term body art on your shoulders and arms? What’s something flirty? A couple of bright red and pink flowers up high and petals scattered down your arms like they’re falling? Maybe with a matching flower partially across one eye?”
“I need to bring you with me more often,” Serru chuckled. “Sounds wonderful.”
“Do you want any of it to st longer? Any more friends coming up?”
“The only one I would even consider who is roughly between here and the fourth site is Zanshe, up in Brightridge, and that would mean taking a less direct route. She’ll understand the dey. I expect this to be the st time I wander off on you overnight. I probably shouldn’t even do that, but with a library to investigate... speaking of which, you’re back early.”
