Oh, they're great fun, aren't they? I've always had a soft spot. In this case... Destroying the future at least brings skill opportunities.
I will try and work on the next update with fewer delays; I keep saying that, but I really am trying seriously. I'm just having trouble with my pacing recently.
Part 18: Pygmalion and Galatea
Whether as Venus put it, due to her difficulties with information disclosure, because she dismantled the system that allowed time-travellers to disseminate the hair knowledge into the past, creating a hairstyle paradox (I had to read that, and so you have to read it, too), or because of the influx of paternal awareness, but Stannum elected to change some of his style, starting from his hair.
Personally, I’ll go with the fatherhood thing; Stannum’s boys were both becoming toddlers.
I think that’s Brennan, but it just as easily could have been Sterling; the photos I have aren’t labelled terribly clearly, and the two kids don’t really start becoming clear until Brennan became a child (and by then, the situation was complicated further by…)
My point is, Stannum dedicated his Spooky Day to trying to be a good father.
And a rare public sighting of Moses puts as a party that day – and, now free of the frustrations of living with younger-than-him parents, surprisingly enough, a girlfriend: one Lucinda Shaw. Given the hospital records, she would have likely been pregnant with their first child at this time; I suppose it did prevent her from enjoying the costume party, since there’s not much for Spooky Day Maternity Wear.
As for everyone else? Well, take it away, Ferrus’s journal. [/i]
From the Journal of Ferrus AlchimiaI’m not sure why, but it felt there was a weight off my shoulders that day. Maybe it seemed like there was finally, finally some hope of getting the ‘chances to prove my skill’ that my mother mentioned done; I’d gotten a phonecall about some Egyptian photography, and that had some promise. It could really work! It could all really be OK! There’s only a few sculptures left, and I’m some of the way through my other goals, so maybe – OK, enough rambling.
Well, I guess my good mood was showing, since I went with Diane and Venus out to the festival: even Venus picked up on it.
”Well, it’s all gone, isn’t it? Everything in your path crushed to remnants, Marc Antony’s name be stricken from the record and hail Augustus!” She explained, cheerfully.
“…I wouldn’t go that far, but things are definitely looking up.”
”Nah, Ferr, revel in it! Things are looking up! It’s our birthday tomorrow! So I say, hail Augustus!” Diane draped an arm over my shoulder.
”Come on, let’s everyone get some face paint!””I want a charm to ward off evil! Can we get a pumpkin?”“Whatever you want.”
Things are definitely looking up. For the next five minutes, anyway, and we had a great day – I know I’ve been pretty much chained to the art room lately, but it was nice to go somewhere.
Mom was…
Mom was mom, by which I mean she took genetic samples from everyone she could find in the park. When I asked her what she was doing, she said,
”Establishing a genetic record of some of the more noticeable residents. Besides, what experiment or study – including into differing properties of alchemic sims to natural sims – is not improved by a greater array of samples?”So. Odds of her cloning the entire town? Pretty low.
But I’m not hearing that she won’t be cloning some of it.
I checked in on Venus when we got back, when she’d already started getting to work on her project.
”No, it cannot be a smile, grinning in the dark… No, it cannot be a … Yes, I think it must be a ghost. Is he a happy ghost, or is he a sad ghost? The ghost with all his guts cut out…”She muttered, carving with a tense fastidiousness. You’d think the muttering with a knife would be, um, kind of horrifying, and another of my list but her tone of voice was just sweet like a song.
”I think I may have to make him a happy ghost; I definitely couldn’t stand it if he were a sad one.”I was working for the rest of the day, so I have no idea if she managed to make a happy or a sad ghost or what. All I could do was churn out sculptures – at least until tomorrow.
After all, tomorrow was my birthday. My penultimate birthday. I’m running out of these things.
The clock is always ticking, and the moments when I’m sure I know what’s what, and that it’ll all be OK, and that I’m safe and it’ll work out and I’m not letting down everyone, sculpt faster you fool – those are all so brief. My whole life is like building a tower, but if it’s not tall enough, it’ll all fall down on my head. Is there a figure in this marble, or am I just whittling things away?
I’m past the point of no return.
Diane’s midlife crisis is, I think, simpler. And more complicated. She’s been busy for a long time, now. With work. With Venus. With helping us. With Me. She’s spent her entire young adult life for other people.
”And I love you guys, I do – you know,” She says in the art room that evening (when was the last time I went to bed, exactly?) There are moments when I do not know, not really know, but I don’t say this. Because I’d like to ignore those moments.
”But, I dunno – it all went by so fast, you know? I’ve already got wrinkles!”I wanted to say something then, but everything I could think of was hopelessly cheesy.
“When was the last time I talked to someone who wasn’t in the band or one of you guys? I’m just all cooped up.” She explains, working the chainsaw as if that block of ice had all her frustrations.
Chips flew. A thing of ice hit me in the face.
“Ow!...Well, I think we’ll find some time coming up. I’ve got a call to go somewhere –“
”You. Are. Taking. Me. With. You.” She plunged the whirring blade into the side of the ice. It made a sound like a monster.
“The time has to be right! I don’t want to go with things unfinished!” I tried very hard not to break my pose.
”Fine, fine… But still. It’ll be a great get-away!”There was one other thing, though, if you go back to the party.
Stan’s still…restlessly moving his way, looking for love in pretty much any place he can find. Which, normally, you know, I have no problems with.
His discretion, though…Leaves a lot to be desired.
Venus is a fragile girl! Just think of the psychological damage! Just think of all the explanations I had to give that I wasn’t ready for, and I don’t think Venus even understood! Couldn’t he have locked a door? Bedrooms exist, Stan. I think I pretty much was ready to explode when I heard it – I’ll have to give him a serious talk the next time I can pin him down.
I didn’t find out right away, since in a rush of embarrassment, he found Mom and begged her to get Venus out of the house.
And what she said was, ”I believe I can find appropriate recreation,” which must have been a relief. Stannum didn’t want anyone underfoot in his grand quest for love, or at least temporary thrills, and he certainly didn’t want his sister-in-law to murder him (Actually, I don’t think she ever found out about this.)
So, Aurum appeared before her grandchild, and swept her away to a spot she’d never been before…
But which Aurum’s 2 generations of information-gathering and tracking studies – no, really, she had a graph about this – pinpointed as being ”Of supreme interest to you.” And there, among the horses – who alone would have stirred Venus’s meandering passions and honed them to a single, focused point – was something even more ‘of supreme interest.’
It seemed to call the night inside of it, with all the stars glowing underneath its skin the way she felt, sometimes, when she was alone with the Other Venus, like there was a star inside of her, pounding bright and glowing – that’s what she reported, anyway. It was lovely and good in a way that made her heart ache, free as she didn’t know how to be.
It was, she claimed – and claims, if you ask her today, the most real thing in the world; certainly, she wrote, she did not know how to be half as real.
She saw it, and she was loved it, and if she’d ever been her own (she doubted this; in her own mind, she was already bound to so many people, whatever that means), she was no longer, and would never be, not ever again.
She spent the evening watching it, as still and quiet as she could manage. Aurum took notes, and observed:
“To my granddaughter, the unicorn is Alchemy; perhaps it was to begin with, a synthesis of magic and the earth, of innocence and wisdom. But to her, there is no question – this is the pursuit of her own Legend.
I will follow this pursuit with interest.”
Speaking of horses, the next day was Sulfur’s last day as a young colt,
Allowing him to grow up into a proper stallion. With Venus’s birthday in a few days, it was decided they would keep him a bit longer, until he could be trained up by her – she would allow it to no one else. The next evening, I stood before it:
A wooden statue, depicting the fickle nature of the muse. A momentous thing – perhaps, not all I wanted (I should have cut with the woodgrain more there), and yet…
I felt satisfied. I felt like all the materials I’d learned, I was at least good enough in, experienced enough, to produce a body of work that people thought worthwhile; certainly, I knew it’d be enough for the local artist’s community and their notoriously low standards.
I was done. I’d completed my supermax; I was free, free, in that moment, to move on to other things.
Which I guess means it’s time to grab Diane (and drag my brother where I can talk things over).
Because the thing I need to move on to now is a trip to Egypt.
