Quincunx

No ninja's tale is quite as fun as Treasure Island.

I have to quietly grumble about this. It's a freewrite, not free verse, and it clashes against all of these poems. The beginning sentiment of a poem is here, maybe it should have gone to Writer's Workshop, but not here.

The only line which gives the impression you don't want to give has the phrase "a good time" in it--swap out "good" for a different adjective and the chance to misintrepret would be gone.

Tzimfemme's eyes lingered on the marvelous tower of turtles, each turtle of a different species, and so painstakingly crafted that she caught herself counting the rings on the shells to determine their ages. After awhile, she started to hear Pedro's breathless apologies, "Forgive me please, senorita! His order was specific, Tzimfemme figurines, as one cook to another, I would never adulterate your signature dish by making a mere copy of it!--" "Oh, no, of course not, and you wouldn't find me making such exquisite turtles either," she murmured, not taking her eyes off of them. The new awareness tugged at her though, let her know of his nervousness. "Hm?" she said, and looked at him. . .What was the problem? "Did you need more," and absently ringed the tower with a re-creation of the horrors following the tower disaster. "You. . .do not mind?" Pedro dared to ask. "Sharing them? Heck no, I've been trying to give them away at every Pen function since. . .awhile," replied Tzimfemme. "Just ask. I can't seem to teach the art to non-Angels of Apocalypse. It doesn't take." Pedro swept his chef's hat off of his head and held it over his heart. "I should have asked the moment my eyes first saw you, senorita. . .will you favor me with some of your illustrious chocolate figurines. . .and a dance? Samba? Tango? Flamenco?" Tzimfemme looked longingly back at the chocolate turtles, and then at Pedro in the midnight light. How best to break it to him that her dance skills began and ended somewhere short of disco?

"The Gourmet vs. Gourmand contest was supposed to take place before the concert began, miss," Bob explained to the weaving woman outside the door. "But you can still come in, the dance contest has just started, and I can slip you into the concert between songs." He opened the door a hand's-width, permitting a bit of music to escape without letting drafts in, and made inviting gestures. Tzimfemme grew dizzy at the emotional spill of unfocused, goal-less dancing and merriment. "You don't understand, I'm not here for the contest. . ." What was she here for? Oh yes. . .She drew on the chocolate's collective memory and created a six-inch tall miniature of its last user in her palm. "I need to talk to him," Tzimfemme said, and Bob grew pale. (Elsewhere, a sundae-less gnome lovingly unwrapped a pair of ACME Jet Rollerskates, lifting them tenderly out of the packaging, stuffing the packaging into the toes of the skates, and fitting his tiny feet into the skates. Then, unlit, he backed carefully into the cradle of a towering ACME Particle Accelerator, "Guaranteed to Launch to Speeds Faster than a Roadrunner", except that Roadrunner had been edited with paint to Roadcooker.) Within the dining room, Wyvern slept atop his dessert platter, with his tail curled possessively around the elven wintermint cake and his breath melting a glacier of rocky mountain sundae. A knot of servers stood around him, arguing whether or not he was out of the competition and whether or not they could take away his plates just yet. Tzimfemme tapped one on the shoulder and showed him the figurine; he gulped and pointed a shaking hand towards the kitchen's swinging double doors. Wide-eyed and now silent, the servers watched Tzimfemme saunter over to the doors, but missed her faintly puzzled expression. The doors swung open without being pushed; Tzimfemme made a mental note to have those installed at the Banquet Hall, before remembering that the Banquet Hall was years dead. Pedro hovered over a seventeen-layer stack of turtle confections, adding hazelnut slices to the bottommost caramel cluster to complete the box turtle shell. "mmm. . .Yertle!" Pedro yelped. (Continued when the computer steadies. . )

To the Sexy, Sexy Man, Orlan: I'm still not certain how we hit the status of ex-lovers, when we were supposed to be too footloose and fancy-free to have a single lover in the first place. Nonetheless, here we are, two sex-symbol parodies carried with a deadpan expression. I enjoy it, and the chocolate. Also know which one of us is true-life responsible for holding the metaphorical roof over our imaginary heads. Nonetheless, I _am_ going to write into Men of Terra Magazine to rename you "Silent Man" if you don't give us updates on the publication you should be pursuing. --Tzimfemme, the Naked Mage ***** My Starlight. . . so shiny! a man of stars! I've seen the picture and it doesn't capture a tenth of how striking you are! you're my pillar, so tall, and I feel like a climbing rose, blooming in the long suns and the sparkling snows and the warmth of your smiles. you gave me the greatest gift possible. . .I was only potential, but with your help I got to live. living in reality is the dream of dreams, but I'm there, and full of love, and happy. . .please oh please let our children take after you and not me. . . Rydia, adorned with pearls

Michelle reached out with a shaking hand and picked up the jar between thumb and forefinger. "Oh, sweetheart. . ." she quavered, looking more closely at the fetus, "your mother's horrible, she's a bully and a brute, but I can't sit here and let you die. . . ." She reached for the sample gun, holding it awkwardly while leaving her forefinger free, and strained to turn the screw cap before noticing the window of impermeable membrane set into the cap. Instead, she braced the jar against the arm cushion which customers usually occupied and touched the sample gun's muzzle to the cap. The needle sprung out from the muzzle, piercing through the membrane and top of the fetus, then retracted as the sample gun beeped once. Michelle focused on the 'New Client' form which the headset now projected, unconsciously spinning the sample gun again. First Name: "Oh, no, 'Milla. You have to name your baby yourself," Michelle frowned, and left that space blank. Last Name: Michelle made several attempts to spell Ludmila's last name, but eventually just recorded "Tzim" and vowed to call Ludmila promptly after this went to the lab. Gender: She lifted the jar and peered carefully between the spaghetti-thin legs before choosing "Fem". Target Age: 'Eighteen', and after a moment's scowling consideration, 'Permanent'. She never wanted to see this girl again. Additional Notes: Michelle added 'Pure strain', hesistantly, and hovered over the 'Submit' choice for five minutes, looking past the display to the little jar sitting in the arm cushion. All at once she snatched up the jar before deleting the entire form in a temper. "No, 'Milla!" she cried aloud. "You're not getting away with this! Not that easy!" She thumbed the sample gun in the back, but reloaded the sample as soon as it fell out. "If you'll put me through this, then it's going to be my baby too." Laying her own arm flat in the cushion, she braced herself and touched the sample gun to her skin. The needle sprang out and in, Michelle clutched the jar in pain, the gun beeped. 'New Client' displayed again, and she rapidly refilled and verified the form. From the back of the sample gun, the sample ejected, this time barcoded. Michelle set it into the vacuum tube leading to the laboratory and started scanning the database for redial. Ludmila had called three months ago-- "You there! Sample girl!" Master Luc thrust his arm into the booth, startling Michelle. She stopped the database, snapped into public mode, and settled his arm into the cushion, smiling, "I'm sorry, honey, you know how easy us young people get distracted." The vacuum tube sent up a new sampling container from the laboratory and sucked away the used one already sitting there.

I love the scents of men: spice-men who make my nose tingle and invariably have fine, floating hair; clean-men so well scrubbed that I can't even taste soap residue, strange and bland but they make fine accessories; smoke-men, not smokers, but the ones I can always smell coming no matter how freshly they've showered--both aromatic wood smoke and stinking garbage smoke; animal-men who have lived with nature for so long that their odor has merged with the odor of their chosen companion. I do not, however, love the onion-men. Certainly they can't help smelling like vegetables, and it's not their fault that I'm akin to them--the attraction of scent is only meant to bring us closer to people with different antibodies, and I'm quite immune to vegetables already, thankee. Me? I'm a walnut woman. My skin smells like walnut husks on all the outward parts, the weather-exposed parts, even though I'm not a nature lover. The wetter parts seem bitter to me, more like the tough walls within the walnuts themselves, but no one else has complained about it. The walnuts haven't gotten into my hair though: it might look like dark-stained walnut-wood planking, but it smells like rain. Not a good, healthy forest sprinkle--a miserable slow drip onto pavement, the kind which clings like oil and makes people step out into traffic in the hope of a speeding car--that's the rain which has soaked into my hair. Nobody is going to write odes about my hair. Most of the time, most of the fantasies men have, it's a shining wavy wall that you'd have to part in order to see my backside, but that part of the fantasy wavers and dies whenever they get close enough to smell it. Then they look at me with disappointment. Why? I already haven't got a body to call my own, true, unchanging self, and now they want me to give up my scent, too? --Tzimfemme, the naked mage

It hopped gleefully inside Minta's head, overjoyed at being back where It belonged and rushing to enjoy all the sugar-fed craziness before she forced It back into another cold snowball to go hurtling to It-knows-who. . . To everyone else, Minta was just rolling around forming snow gobbies (by falling forward with her bottom stuck up in midair, forming gobbie-death-pose-prints all over the place) and bouncing up and down while kicking to cause snow fountains and causing chaos in the usual fashion.

Tzimfemme stood with the fingers of one hand lightly spread on the booth for support. She was perfectly still yet the people passing nearby disturbed the new awareness, like currents in water deeper than her head; she dug her toes into the mud to keep her balance. One of Rosemary's memories bubbled up from nowhere, memories of layers of medieval clothing saturated for weeks, dragging her down along with the shackle on her ankle and the rotten, waterlogged wood to which it had been secured. Tzimfemme pressed her tongue against her sharp teeth and willed both memories and impressions away, focusing on the near and the real, the booth and the donation container. Donation! Thoughts twisted again: eight-and-eight again was Peredhil in the greater scheme of things was sixty-four, how did Rosemary put UP with this, it's loony, but he'd provided seven-and-seven again so she needed to contribute fifteen. She rolled her eyes at the illogic but extracted fifteen gold from a wobbly mini-portal (which turned belly-up and died immediately afterward) and deposited that into the container. The clink stabilized her senses, and another one sharpened: her sixth sense of chocolate. . .in that direction. Tzimfemme let go of the booth gingerly and stepped towards the concert hall. . .

Minta stood on tiptoes, patting a final layer of almost-dry mud onto the bottom of one of the flying mud buttresses that connected her mud fort to Wyvern's booth. She took a pointed anti-cootie gem from her inexhaustible pockets and scratched lizzy-language characters ('cause it was Wyvern's side, an' elf characters had to go on the buttresses that connected to the Peredhil booth) into the finish, then ran to the front of the mud fort to admire it. It was a fort in the medieval sense, a perfect miniature of a defensive castle four feet high (towers soaring to six feet), occupancy: one gnomie. The palisade mud had hardened into Archmage-quality magical barriers, planks from a destroyed barrel bridged the moat beyond, a skellie-bone portcullis waited above the gate, with an unenthusiastic dwarf skellie tethered to its crank, gnomie-size catapults hid behind aiming slits in all four walls, generous piles of mudbombs with extra-liquid centers sat on the ramparts, and the towers held open half-barrels full of pixystix sugar, ready to be spread to soak up excess moisture and retain the fort's integrity. Minta tweaked the features of one of the lower gobbie gargoyles, then marched proudly inside and looked around for an enemy. One mudbomb flew from a catapult, splattering perfectly over Bravery's head, and sending the "The Wyvern is OUT" sign spinning on its pole. Minta cranked the target mechanism downwards, then squinted out of the slit in the castle walls to find Bravery waving one of his socks tied to a stick. It was mud-colored by now but the message was clear. She tied a spare kite tail to a stick and they signaled back and forth for a few minutes before reaching some agreement. The gnomie returned to the target mechanism, then let fly several harder mudballs in quick succession. Each mug was blasted off of the counter, then the final mudball slammed into the latch in the side of the booth, sliding the bolt back. Bravery set his shoulder to the door and shoved, and he was free! Minta hopped down from the rampart, scurried out of the fort, and put 5 gold underneath where each mug had been sitting before racing Bravery to the awesome snowball fight over by the snow maze!

Within the pocket dimension was a cold vacuum, cut off from the soul fires of the carnival patrons; instead the heightened sensitivity fed solely upon Peredhil, flooding Tzimfemme's brain with calculations and correspondences and three out-of-body glances at Rosemary/herself. . . .Slowly the mad blood burnt itself out and Peredhil's fueled the visions, and even more slowly, Tzimfemme understood. She opened her mouth a few times before remembering how to speak, but waved her hands jerkily, and finally brought the two together to say, ". . .fine now. . .thinking. . .fine. . .no burning. . .thinking," and stared off into space for awhile. Peredhil waited quietly. "Rosemary started to fade awhile ago," she began tonelessly. "I. . .took part of her back into me. Some bit which had come loose, lodged in another soul." Tzimfemme looked over her shoulder, looked down, rolled her eyes upward to identify the body in the way, then lost her focus again. "So that was done, face to face, in drab reality. Rosemary's speech is in me now. . .I cannot say who. Now you," and she looked at Peredhil for the first time in all this time, too close but that fact stood in isolation, "you have her vision. That part called to the part I have, must have put the blood in my hand. I am very unaware of those things." Tzimfemme thought. "Something different about you. The others who have bits of Rosemary. . .I had kissed them. Against their will." She stared at him, eyes going blank again. Just behind him were null spaces, positively outlined in static. One for his wife. One for his life. One for the trace elements which made it into no persona. The no-name of the quincunx seeped into Tzimfemme's voice. "You are already claimed, a memory pure as a unicorn. I could take the unicorn, the kiss, and the facet of Rosemary by force. No. I could not," it hesitated. Peredhil was still too close, but necessary. "I must, to go on. . . .May I. . .kiss you?" He gave permission without moving a muscle. She did, yet the memory instantly evaporated with the no-name's retreat into its silence. All Tzimfemme would remember would be Peredhil's compassionate eyes and the dawning awareness of people being connected. The new awareness stretched slowly, like a rubber band, as Tzimfemme moved towards the curtains in slow motion. There wasn't any awareness coming from beyond the booth though. . . "Peredhil. . .did you put up a shield or something?"

Minta hadn't come home for a few weeks now--far too long for Rydia's taste. She looked out of her window and saw the snowflakes swirling over the carnival site, and decided to dress warmly: thick warm leg warmers that fit inside her boots, matching long gloves and scarf knitted from extra-fuzzy yarn, a stretchy hairband with sleek yarn that would not tangle in the hair, and fuzzy conical ear warmers. Bundled up above and below the nose, she stumped downstairs and out into the courtyard. It was peculiar, definitely magical, how the snow fluttered only over the grounds of the carnival, and she hurried through the warmer sections of the courtyard before beginning to sweat inside her layers. She slowed down when entering the snowstorm, feet turned slightly inward to prevent a loss of traction, until she noticed the total lack of ice. Rydia's ears started to slice elliptical tracks above her head to brush snowflakes away before they could land near her eyes, and she scooped up a handful of snow to make a pre-emptive snowball--it was best not to go unarmed into snow of this perfect snowball-forming quality. Following the light breeze, she rounded snowbanks and booths until she stopped dead in her tracks. The forgotten snowball landed on the toe of her right boot. The snow maze glowed everchanging pastel with all the colors Gryphon had set loose within it, twinkled at a million points with ice crystals, and sometimes let loose a ricocheting comet of deeper-hued light into the sky. "So shiny," she breathed, and wandered glassy-eyed into the maze.

Tzimfemme slipped away from the Bachelorette Auction, still musing on the problem of the ring ("Don't wear artifacts controlled by your wife" had gone into the last carnival's Tips jar, and rightly so) and whether it was more devaluation to have to pay for a date, or accepting gold for it. With moral quibbles occupying her mind, she wandered up and down the byways of the carnival, past the kissing booth, through a small blizzard of snowballs, past the kissing booth again, into one of her own portals and out again with a shotglass of Rosemary's blood in hand, and past the kissing booth yet again, sipping absently. Everyone around her started to glow, faint pale lights at first, but growing brighter and more colorful by the second. Tzimfemme whimpered and dropped the glass, shielding her eyes with her hands, as her dormant vampiric senstivity awoke again, overlaid with Rosemary's perceptions. The whole world was auras and fires! She twisted from side to side and finally found a colder spot, a refuge. Head down and hands still shielding her eyes, Tzimfemme stumbled towards Peredhil in the booth, breathing "help, help". . .

Tzimfemme stares at the artifact, trying to sniff more detail out of it. "Maybe I could take a spin at partly disenchanting that for you," she talks to the ring, "tone it down a few cycles. When would it go off, when you bid, win, or go out on the town? because if it's not the last option, it's wound a bit too tightly." She frowns a bit. "So long as it maintains a 'Mine' field around you, you should be fine. We don't have any poachers on the Pen grounds as far as I know."

After reading, Tzimfemme steps up to the line of people waiting to shoot troubled sleep, toting a big grin and an equally large gun with multiple rounds. "Pardon me, excuse me, coming through," she chanted, cutting into the line bullets-first, then stepping sideways into the new gap in the line, then swiveling the gun every-which-way as the people released their safetys and tried to return fire. Once the noise dies down, only Tzimfemme is left standing, blood-spattered and still grinning. She tosses the gun off to the side (one of her overworked portals opens up to carry it away, then snaps shut) and gives a thumbs-up to troubled sleep.

8AM Christmas morning, Eastern Standard time. . . Here it's 2PM, and Christmas Eve is the important day. Enjoy your Christmases yet to come.

Odd to say, but I'm almost glad to hear that you have a good, solid diagnosis--better the enemy you know, and know how to medicate--although I'll agree that it might have been welcome a tad sooner. Salinye--Now you have me curious, I was born in 1980 and had this vaccination. We're not very far apart in age--or am I misreading you by thinking you didn't have the vaccination as a child? The misreading is more likely.

Behind the Walk-Ins booth at the rejuvenation clinic, Michelle twirled her index fingers, the right one spinning a needle-pointed sample gun, the left searching through the database encoded into her headset. She found a likely number and dialed. "Mister Luc?" she chirped into the mouthpiece, as his pre- and post-rejuvenation pictures flashed onto her retinas, along with his last dates of treatment. "Sugar, you still don't look a day over thirty. . .five. Yes, we guarantee thirty." Michelle flashed a cat's grin, amplified by Maori tattoos, and dropped the sample gun's handle into her hand with a flick of her wrist, needle pointed at the ceiling. "Yes, there'll be no studio fee if you make a walk-in appointment. Yes, there will be equipment fees, we do sterilize. See you in half an hour, honey." She shut off the connection, traded the sample gun for an old-fashioned ink pen, and filled in amounts on the paper receipt Mister Luc would receive before tuning back into the headset and crossing off another free checkup on his account. The pen twirled as she combed the database for another aging technophobe. "'Chelle! Snap out of it!" Michelle froze and the pen spun out of her fingers. "'Milla! What are you doing here? Do you know how long it's been!?!" She started to reach downwards but Ludmila darted after it herself. "Three months of pure hell," Ludmila snarled, tapping the pen on the booth to emphasize her words. "I've never been so sick in my life, morning, noon, and night! Look at me! I've gone bulimic," she moaned. "And even if I have lost any weight from being half-starved, it's gone right back onto my--" "I told you not to come crying to me when it didn't work out," Michelle purred. "How about you come back when it's all over, and I can see the baby?" Ludmila reached inside her purse, slammed a small screw-top glass jar down on the booth in front of Michelle, and snapped, "It IS over." Michelle quailed. She stared at the malformed little lump floating inside the jar, then raised her eyes to Ludmila. "My god. . .You did this. . ." Ludmila nodded twice, calmly. "How could you?!?! 'Milla. . .you can't do this. You can't even do this to a pet. You don't just kill them if they get in the way! And you certainly don't go around showing. . .that! . . .off to all your friends--" "Not all of my friends," Ludmila interrupted. "Just the ones who can fix things. . .You love fixing things, 'Chelle. You fixed me up with a male who'd never sleep with me if I hadn't gotten him drunk. You fixed it so that I'd have a pure strain child and never checked the Rh factor--I told you about being sick? It wasn't morning sickness. Right now, 'Chelle, you're going to fix it so that this little thing, which does not deserve to die, as you pointed out, goes into the rejuvenation clinic and comes out in the pristine body of an eighteen-year-old," Ludmila raised her voice and bludgeoned down Michelle's protests, "and if you do not, I can take some of those receipts you have lying around, and add them to the handful I grabbed back when we were dating, and prove to the clinic how much you've been stealing. The fetus is large enough to give a usable sample. Start sampling."

One of the dwarf skeletons tried flicking the tap with its finger. No drops--the barrel had run dry. Its clavicles and scapulas slumped as it shook its skull. The other skeleton heaved itself to a sitting position, then fished around in the mud, looking for a few missing digits. Slowly they got to their feet with the aid of the empty barrel. One of them tried to watch Venefyxatu, swaying gently as it tried to keep its balance during the backflip, and latching onto its companion for support. They staggered arm-in-arm across the sea of mud, sinking their foot bones deeply into the muck, weaving around Minta's carefully constructed mud fort, towards the nearest dry land. "Guido, what are you doing?" Nuncio hissed, watching his brother signal to the pair: stop, come forward, stop and drop!, come forward. He replied, without taking his eyes off of Minta in the middle of her construction, "I think dis pair got a chance to escape. Look, she's not lookin' up more than once a minute." Guido shaded his eyes although the fedora made it redundant, then signaled again. "Even if they do, you still haven't got a chance of winning the bet." Nuncio sounded the least bit smug about that. "Shhhhhhhhhh." Both skeletons slowed to an unstable halt in front of the booth. One leaned dangerously far forward and almost bumped into the sign, then it stumbled back. . .looked up at the Giant Guinea Pigs. . .and at the sign again. It elbowed its companion in the ribs and got its elbow joint stuck. The pair creaked ominously, but was making more noise than bone grinding on bone. They were laughing, deep hollow emotionless laughs, until one of them managed to guffaw, "Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisses!" The rib-entangled one bent double in mirth, popping free, while the other. . .female? . . .dwarf skeleton rounded the booth, eyesockets latched firmly on Guido. Nuncio, who was already weak from laughter, was set off again, and chortled until a surprisingly strong grip on his suit brought him up short. Dwarf short. The kisses were long, and surprising from beings without soft flesh, although very cold. Still laughing that dead laugh, the girls released the guinea pigs and stepped back to admire their shaken conquests. "Gooooooooooooooold. . ." one moaned. The other pointed at Minta. "Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." Arm in arm, they staggered off to enjoy freedom and the rest of the carnival.

Minta tired of the project as the mud was simply too slippery to hold writing. Instead, she started sticking pixystix end-up into the mud, forming a firm perimeter as the sugar soaked up some of the water. Sitting in the middle, she pushed mud towards the pixystix wrappers, where it clung to form a palisade, and studded the outside with razor-sharp bits of crushed mana crystals. So engrossed was she in her work that the skellies started to slip free of her control. . .

Minta squeals with glee, "Mudpies!!!!" She dashes out of cover after tugging off her shoes and happily slogs through gnomie-knee-deep liquored mud, making wonderful splorching noises with her toes and soles. The hem of her robe at first floats on the thin layer of purer alcohol on the surface, but gradually absorbs water and sinks, leaving a deepening track in the mud just above the rapidly refilling foot- and leg-prints. Back and forth she goes, stirring up that section of the carnival grounds to an impassable bog, stamping out her name in mud tracks, but only getting to the T before the M sinks back into the mud and she needs to start all over again. By the sprung barrel, one skeleton filches a second mug from the booth's back-up supplies and grandstands a bit, alternating pouring from both mugs above its head, booze splashing on its skull and jaw and soaking its vertebrae before falling into the mud. The other skeleton lies on what was once its back, jaw wide open, under the tap, and lets a frothy stream fall through its open mouth and onto the mud, flooding out to join the pool forming all around the booth, and soaking the hems of Black's pants.

Two short, thick-skulled skeletons amble to the side of the booth, concealed by the barrels taller than they are. One taps on the side of a barrel with its long skeletal fingers, skull tilted to the side, listening; the other lifts its skull off of its head and shakes until a sharp-edged tap and small hammer fall out. The taps change from loud to muffled, and the tapping skeleton points to a certain level at the barrel. Both look intently at the spot, then rumble, "Booooooooooooooooze!" Minta peers from around the edge of a nearby tent, giggling madly at the pair of dwarf skellies. It took lots an' lots of cave exploring to find two dwarf skeletons not crushed by rockslides or eaten by big scary cave monsters, but this was sooo gonna be worth it!

"No spying! A great cook keeps his secrets," Zachariah proclaimed, and gently shooed Ludmila out of the kitchen. She stood by the doorway, sniffing the air. It didn't smell like any food she could identify, definitely not what she'd been planning to serve. However, once Zachariah had seen what was playing on the television, he'd bolted into the kitchen, and neither "Television dammit OFF, NOW!" nor presentation of an array of takeout menus had coaxed him out of there. Ludmila flipped her hands in exasperation, then retreated to her bedroom to change into something fancier. When she opened the door, he was waiting at the table, with dinner piled onto the plates and a large pan with more food sitting in the middle of the table. "So," she said, sitting down, "what are these?" "Pirogi," he said, looking puzzled. Ludmila chased one of the little pastries with a fork until it stopped slipping around the plate, stabbed it, and sampled it. "I don't think I've ever eaten these before." "The person who gave me your number, she said you were a pure strain. . ." "I am, but what's that got to--" She stopped and looked up from trying to stab another pirogi. "You're pure strain too? Eastunion group? I'm a. . .a. . .Tzim-something-or-another, could get my driver's license if you're interested in spelling." Zachariah brightened. "I was born and raised in the old way. You weren't? A shame, a shame." Automatically he refilled his plate and hers, relaxed his posture, and let the hint of a different language show in his voice. "We're Kozyols, married to more Kozyols. We used to live in the north and you in the south, but now we're all living in the same Purity district. Better to save a dollar than buy a gun, we say." Ludmila's expression faltered at every repetition of 'we'. "Truly there must be no time like now, that one of us is thinking of mending fences with your people. Don't you know that?" "Nah. It was just a coincedence, my parents were both semi-eligible, and I got the right genes," Ludmila replied, "but I didn't use it for anything other than the free tuition. Single people don't qualify for lowered rents." "That would be perfect," he said wistfully. "With the child, you would, and you could move in with my family. They would be overjoyed if I finally brought a woman to them," he smiled as Ludmila shook her head violently, "no, no, I would be gone just like you wanted. My boyfriend and I are going to move into the Living History Reservations, but we needed to show some contribution to the city before entering the system, and a pure strain child counts as a contribution for two people. According to the city's records, and what you can tell my family, I'll have died from a late-night burglary that became violent. They'll weep and mourn. . .I will miss them very much. . .but they will provide for our child, no matter what. Isn't that well-planned? Your friend, she is very wise." Ludmila was struck dumb, fork still in hand. She stared helplessly at Zacariah, calmly eating his pirogi.

Probably the train of thought in the first post wasn't just interspersed with a commercial, it was inspired by one--thanks, Wyvern--dropping the note here to revise after more of the story is complete. [EDIT: Other things to be smoothed out, partly style questions, partly unifying details written over weeks.] First post: The commercials that display while Ludmila thinks aloud show a happy family gathered around a holographic television, then a divorce lawyer, both with a backdrop of bursting neon signs. Add details that show Ludmila is young-at-heart mid-twenties, and lives alone, perhaps a number of objects-for-one, and the general disarray of the apartment. Ludmila herself is unclear: she is gaunt-faced and thin through her waist, but then her body gave up and let her hips and thighs be contoured. Second post: Mention that the credit card disappears into the door lock. Delete "responded" and make the door simply open sluggishly. Change "shoot" to "break". Take the "d" off of "wrinkled". Turn Ludmila's driver's license and/or photo into something that marks her as a pure strain--watery eyes, heavy brows and hips contrasted with her current bland beauty. Change "layer" to "curtain". Ease the awkwardness of the non-quotation thought. Rephrase "downed" to "swallowed". Third post: Change the pasted smile to something which lets the contempt show and "true students" to "student workers" or somesuch. Clarify the instructions on wearing the gown. Change "sockets" to "rounded prongs", also smooth out the phrasing of the instrument tray. Unite the following sentences beginning with "With her other hand. . ." to the previous paragraph. Delete "I'm" from "I'm sorry," as Ludmila is not polite. Remove mention of ex-girlfriend, it's too blatant at that point. Fourth post: Add an air pollution index (high) to the television. Change the sentence about the loveseat so that it is inanimate like the following descriptions. Add liquor to the table--what would Ludmila drink, something strong and tasteless? Change "do battle" to something more deliberate. Clarify the voice command to the door. Mention Ludmila looking at the ceiling for patience, remove the inward groan. Rephrase "suit jacket", it's technically correct but awkward. Expand "they're" to "they are", "get" to "purchase", and elaborate after the dash, showing the missing word. Fifth post: Change "at the table" to "beside the table". Think of a word better than "serve" that implies Ludmila's takeout habits. Refine "we" and "you" to "our family" and "yours" respectively. Kill the phrase "don't you know that" and rephrase it to ". . .Haven't you been curious about your family?" or somesuch. Reword the Living History Reservations to the Historicals, as it stands it's a direct plagiarazation, perhaps exchange "transplant" for "move" to imply permanence and soften the statement of the contribution, that's Ludmila's voice in Zacariah. Last sentence is still awkward, reword. Sixth post: Name the rejuvenation clinic and put a promotional poster on the booth. Replace "chirped" with a softer, oilier verb. "it" in the second paragraph is still awkward, perhaps use "instrument", something other than "pen". Rephrase the passage of time to "Three months, and it's been hell." Change "bulimic" to "anemic" and/or "anorexic", extend the rant by a sentence or so after removing RH mention, it is scientifically inaccurate, and blood clumping. Replace "reached" with a more violent verb. Delete "of an eighteen-year-old". Add "--and the police--" after "clinic". Add a closing sentence where Ludmila turns her back and leaves Michelle with the jar. Seventh post: Smooth out the phrasing of the windowed cap on the glass jar. Remove one repetition of "sample" from the "sample gun" phrases. Make "Target Age" a single reply and add fields for "Insurance", after which she drops the jar in the trash, and "Subscription"--annual, per decade, none as options. Remove jar from trash for second sample and show that the fetus is already dead, add Michelle disarming the gun before sampling herself. Correct "Master Luc" to "Mister Luc". Last sentence is still awkward, reword. Eighth post: Have Rajiv inspect the sample visually to justify the hair detail. Remove "preserved". Tzimfemme's skin is translucent like amber glass, changing hue when placed in the slightly stronger lights above the recovery bed. Add "his" before "finger" and change the verb to something more deliberate. Condense his later words to "hey, fem, you busy on Friday night?" Change "drop" to "release". "Told" is not told to a voice-operated system, replace. Change "flicked" to "fumbled". Tzimfemme cried when Rajiv tried to clothe her, not when she saw the robe. Add a curse after "oof!" and another set of ellipses, and he ends the conversation by removing the headset. [EDIT #2: Never edit before the story is complete! I've been bogged down in nitpicking for weeks.]