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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 92, Frank Discussion
🕑 Added 2022-04-04 15:59:06 +0000 UTC~~~~
Verity hadn’t been prepared for how long clearing out the theater would take, and when the scope of the work became obvious, she didn’t want to be the one to say ‘maybe I’d rather not’. She did think those words though, repeatedly, especially when she began to develop calluses on her hands in the places where she was gripping the crowbar. The gloves helped, but they were also slightly uncomfortable.
There was not a single thing that was good about stripping seats out of the dungeon, actually. The food was repetitive and also not terribly good, there was a faint stench of blood and death even after Alfric took some time to move the bodies he could backstage, she didn’t have a spare set of clothes, and the tent wasn’t particularly comfortable.
She kept thinking that someone would say ‘maybe this is enough’ and she would pipe up with ‘surely each additional chair is worth less than the last, and each hour we’re in here is more draining than the hour before’. But no one ever did say that it was enough, and she didn’t want to prove that she was the wrong choice to stay in the dungeon to do the hard work. Ripping up chairs gave her plenty of time to think about why it had been so important for her to stay, and she’d come to the conclusion that maybe she’d been a bit impulsive or contrary.
She already felt like her role in the group was different from the others, pure support for their endeavors, and if she’d left it would have put her further away from them. Worse, she’d have been spending time preparing for the concerts, practicing and refining, with no one to talk to. She hadn’t wanted to go home and be alone for a few days practicing the same pieces over and over again. She had wanted to be with her friends, talking with them.
Not that the conversation in the dungeon was all that much to write home about.
“So, how was your day?” Hannah asked at the end of their third solid day of taking apart the theater. She said it with a chuckle, a little joke, and Verity had a sour feeling. Three days ago, she might have found it a bit funny.
“I think we’re getting faster,” said Verity. “It shouldn’t be more than another day.”
“Half a day,” said Alfric. “If that. I was hoping that we could leave at the end of tonight, but I don’t want to leave anything behind, not just for the funds, but because I want to be able to compare as much as we can against the original.”
“Why?” asked Verity.
“To map the phenomenon,” said Alfric. “It’s really hard to say from where we’re sitting right now whether the theater is a copy pulled from the real world, or whether it’s pulled from your mind and then maybe altered to fit. I haven’t been to the Ellusifé more than a few times, and it’s not like I memorized some detail that I could use to confirm that it’s accurate.”
“Ah,” she said. “I didn’t see anything out of place.”
“Well,” said Alfric. “I’m operating under the assumption that this is all you somehow, so it would all have to match everything that you’ve seen, extrapolated somehow.”
“It’s early to start havin’ theories,” Hannah. “I’m sure there are scholars who’ve seen this sort of thing before,” she held up a hand because Alfric had opened his mouth to interject. “Not this exact thing, but maybe in the wide world of dungeons, millions of dungeons that get run, there’s been some kind of aberration, somethin’ the scholars know about, or bounds to the problem, or things like that.”
“This is the eighth time we’ve had this conversation,” said Verity.
“You’re the one who asked why I wanted to compare,” said Alfric.
“It was a rhetorical ‘why’,” said Verity. She knew she was being snippy, and took a breath. “I’m much less enthused about this than you are.”
“I know,” said Alfric. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” said Verity with a sigh.
Dinner was rice and beans again. Verity felt like she was starting to get used to it, which was a frightening thing. One of the things they talked about with some regularity, from their small collection of conversations, was what they would eat once the theater was stripped and they went back out of the dungeon.
“I’m just hoping there’s some stew left,” said Alfric. “But Mizuki has probably eaten most of it already. I wonder if she would make another batch for us?”
“Ice cream for me,” said Verity. They’d talked about it enough that she had a stock answer. “We’re missing out on fats. Maybe some crispy pork.”
“I’ll want some advice on what to keep in here if we do this again,” said Alfric.
“I don’t ever want to do this again,” said Isra.
“The plants in pots, I mentioned,” said Hannah. “Takes advantage of the stasis in here.” They spent most of their free time in the garden stone space, which at least had the benefit of not stinking of death. The constant sunshine — or mimicked sunshine — was getting very old.
“We could bring animals,” said Isra. “Something we could slaughter. Or a chiller.”
“The next time we’re overnighting probably won’t be like this,” said Alfric. “It’s much more likely that we’re just in for a two day stretch next time, having cleared out the hostile creatures and then with extra work to do on stripping out things of value.” He bit his lip. “It does depend on whether we find another Ellusifé.”
“If we do, I don’t want to do this again,” said Isra. “There are easier ways to make money.”
“It depends on what kind of prices we get on these things,” said Alfric. “There might literally not be any easier way of making money. I don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched, but this is a haul.”
They talked about the money often, and Verity didn’t usually join in. The money might be enough to keep her family in good standing, but from the amounts they were talking about, it didn’t seem likely. She was also a bit skeptical of how much the chairs were actually worth, and that was something that was on her mind quite a bit while she was endlessly ripping them up. Was the five minutes of work worth ten rings or a hundred? The seats had small little metal labels on them, and she couldn’t imagine someone paying for that unless the seats were being sold to a theater. And if they were sold to a theater, how often did theaters get built, or replace all their seats? Her skepticism had grown as their stay went on until she’d convinced herself that they’d get almost nothing for their labor.
After dinner she usually practiced her lute. It wasn’t something that she wanted to do after spending so much time with a crowbar in her hands, but practice was something that needed to happen every day, lest her skills begin to rot. She had sequestered herself in the dungeon, but the concerts were approaching. Unfortunately she hadn’t had the foresight to put sheet music into one of their storage entads, so she was playing from memory, which was never the best. She was getting more familiar with the pieces that she already knew best, and if her memory of a piece had an error, she was making it more firmly embedded in her mind.
The theater was, in theory, of Xuphin, since she was a Chosen of Xuphin, but the entire experience smacked of Bixzotl, God of Copies. There were two thousand two hundred seats, more or less identical, pulled up through the same mechanical motion repeated over and over. They ate the same meals every day, and they’d found themselves repeating conversations as well. And when all that was done, Verity practiced with her lute, producing copies of songs that had been copied by other musicians a thousand times before.
She’d had a nightmare that she would be in the dungeon until she was old and gray, that somehow they would keep finding theaters and keep being compelled to clear them out row by row.
On the fourth night in the dungeon, sleep came on slow. Her mind had too many thoughts, and while she’d always heard that hard physical work helped people to sleep, she had decided that this was simply a lie people told to try to extract work from others.
Isra had stayed mostly silent since that first night. Verity wasn’t sure that they were still friends, or whether they could be friends in the future. She’d tried to give Isra space, but now too much time had passed, and there was no way to say ‘are you still angry with me or what?’ It was all incredibly awkward, and largely Verity’s fault.
Three days had been more than enough time to tear apart their brief conversation a hundred times. Verity had developed several different ways of thinking about it, and when she approached it in her mind, it was a choice between which of the thoughts would dominate and which of the narratives she’d constructed would win out.
Verity had only mentioned that she’d kissed Xy because she’d felt guilty, and she’d only felt guilty because it felt like maybe there was something with Isra, some actualization of their relationship on the horizon. It had felt like it was going to happen in that very tent, on their very first night. The nature of that ‘something’ had been a subject of much speculation by Verity, both before the night in question and after. That Isra felt put off was proof that there had been a ‘something’ and that Verity might have ruined it, or possibly squandered an opportunity.
One of these threads of thought was a compilation of all the times that the ‘something’ had been painfully obvious. The slow dance they’d shared together, the times they’d slept in the same bed, the way they spent so much time together, the moments of vulnerability and sharing … but at the time, it had felt like there was something deniable about it.
In art there was always a matter of interpretation, some of it by the artist, some of it by the audience. Where one person could read contentment, another person could read melancholy. Where someone heard ecstasy, another person could hear unstable mania. The thing Verity was most worried about was that she’d misread their relationship, that she and Isra were not even remotely on the same page as far as what had been happening between them.
Verity was in her own head too much. She kept meaning to talk to Hannah, who was trained not just in giving romantic advice to people, but in giving advice on exactly this sort of situation between women. Unfortunately, Hannah had been having private talks with Isra, and Verity worried that it might seem like she was attempting to use Hannah as an intermediary, or possibly as a spy. There was, certainly, a conflict of interest there, though Hannah hadn’t said as much, and perhaps this was just another example of Verity being a coward.
Verity had thought that what was happening between her and Isra was some kind of slow feeling each other out, perhaps because Isra was unsure of her own attraction, and definitely because Verity was unsure of Isra’s attraction. What it might have instead been was that they were just going Isra’s speed, which happened to be slow. Maybe Isra really was like a wild animal, one that needed to be fed with exaggerated slowness and care if it was ever going to be domesticated. Perhaps up until three nights ago it had been going exactly as was best for Isra, and now she was just back to being skittish.
All this was guesswork without talking to Isra, but Verity had still not done that. The ball was in Isra’s court, wasn’t it?
There was another thread of discussion in Verity’s head, which was the one where she discussed with herself whether or not she’d done anything wrong. She had spent hours on this topic, weighing in from all sides, and the answer appeared to be ‘yes, but no, but yes’. It was exhausting and fruitless to think about, but Verity felt bad, and allowed herself that bad feeling, because Isra wasn’t talking to her, and what was the point in trying to absolve herself? It was easy enough to pin this on Xy, but if Verity had been effectively partnered with Isra, if that was the nature of the ‘something’, then it was clear that Verity should have put a stop to that arrangement much sooner. If Isra was upset, it seemed certain that was what she was upset about.
It was very clear that the time in the dungeon was wearing on Verity, and she wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
Isra slipped into the tent without warning and laid down next to Verity, close beside her. Verity had been laying on her back, staring at the ceiling, and Isra was on her stomach, propped up by her elbows.
“Hi,” said Verity.
Isra stayed silent and looked into Verity’s eyes.
The kiss came slowly, though not tentatively. The meeting of their lips was soft and tender, with the artful firmness of someone taking the lead in a dance. Isra moved with surety, and Verity did her best to yield. It was a moment that Verity had been dreaming about, sometimes fitfully, and now it was happening. She did wonder whether it was a dream, but she never realized her dreams were dreams until she woke up, and the sensation was too real. She tried to burn everything into her memory, to savor it, but there were too many individual pieces of think of, the way Isra was slightly on top of her, the gentleness of her lips, the faint smell like woodchips or cinnamon, curled hair hanging down, the warmth of her breath, the sounds that seemed to flood her ears, all of it.
Verity had no idea why this was happening, or why it was happening now, but she let her thoughts float away.
~~~~
In the morning, Isra was gone, and then it really did feel like a dream. Verity wondered whether it had happened at all. They had fallen asleep together, cuddled up close, skin against skin, and hadn’t said a word. In the cold light of morning — metaphorically, given that the garden was a timeless place and mildly warm — Verity was left wondering why it had happened and how, and who she needed to thank.
Everyone else was already eating a breakfast of rice and beans, but Verity had eyes only for Isra. She was without her headscarf, the curls of her hair hanging down and looking gorgeous, even though they’d been stuck taking short showers with something Alfric called ‘powdered soap’. Isra gave Verity a knowing smile, then went back to her bowl of food as though that was it.
“Last big push today, and we’re home before nightfall,” said Alfric. “If we don’t get the last of the seats … then that’s fine.” He glanced at Hannah, and Verity wondered whether they’d had some private discussion on this point.
“Good,” said Verity. She was feeling chipper. The rice and beans even tasted better, though Hannah had been experimenting, and perhaps it was just a matter of having hit on a good combination. “I’ll be very happy to leave this place behind.”
“Does it help, do you think?” asked Hannah. “Takin’ this place apart?”
“Help in what sense?” asked Verity, arching an eyebrow.
“With the emotions you feel over the comin’ performance,” said Hannah. “I’ve seen you up on the stage, doin’ your practice.”
“That’s only to get a more accurate sense of things,” said Verity. “On the day of, I’m not going to be playing with this lute. And presumably the whole thing won’t have a stench of dried blood, the floor won’t be wrecked, and the theater won’t have been looted, but I suppose one never does know.” This got a smile from Isra, and Verity smiled in turn.
“We’ll have some rest once this is all done,” said Hannah. This was directed at Alfric, though he hadn’t shown all that much sign of needing rest, in spite of the fact that he’d been putting in more than his share of the labor. Verity suspected that he’d had an undone day where he’d left the dungeon, if he had, he hadn’t disclosed that, and she hadn’t asked.
“We’ll rest,” nodded Alfric. “Though with the way the chest works … right now we have a very tall vertical column of loot. We’re not taking enough to build our own huge theater, but it’s got to be close. Unfortunately, all that stuff is stacked up in whatever order we were able to put it in, which means that when we sell any of it, that will mean unpacking all of it. So … what we need, ideally, is better storage, which we don’t have.”
“This is a thought that’s been brewin’, has it?” asked Hannah.
Alfric nodded. “It’s something to think of down the road, but ideally we wouldn’t be packing more things on top of the theater parts, because with the chest’s capacity, there’s a risk we compound the problem by putting it off.”
“If I never see another theater seat, it will be too soon,” said Verity.
“We have a full day of work ahead of us,” said Alfric.
“I don’t know what day it is,” said Isra. “It might have been four days, or six.”
“I doubt we worked too much,” said Alfric. “But I suppose that’s a possibility. The daylight in the garden has been throwing off our ability to tell time. I’m hoping that we have a timepiece in the future, but it was something I considered fairly low priority. The most vital thing we’d need it for is making sure we didn’t pass over to the next day for the purposes of chrononaut stuff, but I don’t think I would ever put us in that kind of position.”
“Hopefully we’ll make enough from this venture that we can get everythin’ you want … which seemed to be a whole room full of things for us to pull from,” said Hannah.
“Yes,” said Alfric. “Two rooms, ideally, plus a walk-in chiller if we’re pulling meat, which, with Isra, I’m hoping is something we begin doing more of.”
“I’m afraid more logistics will make my head explode,” said Hannah. “And the more we spend our time talkin’ about this sort of stuff, the more glad I am that we have someone who enjoys it.”
“It is interesting though, isn’t it?” asked Alfric.
There were some murmurs, but not any explicit agreement. A few days ago there might have been some conversation, but it died out quickly, and then it was time to pull out more of the chairs. Verity was okay with that though, because Isra was smiling at her.
They worked together for most of the day, and talked together, really talked, though not about what had happened the night before, or about that ‘something’ between them. It was like coming out into a warm spring day after months of winter, and it made the labor bearable. They kissed twice, proof that the night before hadn’t been a one-time thing, quick kisses in stolen moments when they were putting a set of chairs into the chest, or when they were working together to remove a particularly stubborn nail. It was strange to see Isra with such a persistent smile on her face. It had never been Isra’s default expression.
Later in the day, after lunch, Verity found herself next to Hannah.
“Things goin’ well?” asked Hannah. She had been getting sweaty, and had been doing most of the work stripped down, with the leggings she normally wore beneath her armor rolled up to show her thick calves. Her breasts were tightly bound, with no shirt.
“Very,” said Verity. “Thank you, for whatever advice you gave Isra.”
“Your talk went well?” asked Hannah.
“Not much talking,” said Verity, which bordered on being an indecent amount of gossip. It was said with a grin that couldn’t be suppressed.
Hannah gave a hesitant smile, but it didn’t stay on her face for long. “Well, if I can give you some advice, and hopefully this isn’t an overstep, I think the two of you should be doin’ a pretty hefty amount of talkin’. Talk about what you want, what you like, how you think things are goin’, how you think things should go, what you expect from each other —”
“Like you and Marsh are doing?” asked Verity.
Hannah’s frown was quite pronounced, and Verity felt like she deserved that. “I don’t know what it is I want, or how to balance the different things I want. It’s one of the things that I’ve been thinkin’ on while we’ve been in here, what the shape of my life is goin’ to be like, and how Marsh fits in with that. You and Isra … are you partnered now?”
Verity pursed her lips. “We haven’t talked about it.”
“I saw you kiss,” said Hannah. “And I’ve seen the looks you’re givin’ each other. But I s’pose if you haven’t talked about where things stand, you can’t say. I get the sense that I’ve stepped past my bounds a bit too much though, so I’ll leave you to it. If you do want advice, you let me know. It’s somethin’ that I have some trainin’ in, especially between two women, especially between two young women who maybe don’t have much idea what a relationship should be like.”
Verity took a breath. “I’m sorry for being catty.” She’d found herself apologizing a lot lately, perhaps because she’d been on edge and too quick to offer insult.
“It’s fine,” said Hannah. “You’re happy, which isn’t your default state, and you wanted someone to share the happiness with you.”
Verity was momentarily startled, because this was exactly what had happened, and she hadn’t even fully processed it. She had wanted someone to share in her joy, and Hannah was the only one available, because she was sure that Alfric was holding back some words about how inappropriate and unprofessional the relationship was.
“I am happy,” said Verity. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Hannah nodded. “And I’m happy for you, I just want it to work, and if you don’t talk to each other … there’s a chance that it will work anyhow, but then it is chance. A good partnership, in my opinion, shouldn’t be left to chance.”
“You might be right,” said Verity. She glanced across the mostly stripped down theater, looking at Isra, who gave a friendly wave back. “And what did you tell her?”
“There are limits to what I can say, but the same, mostly,” said Hannah. “I said that if there are problems, they need to be talked about, that there are always areas of negotiation, that communication is vital and shouldn’t be skipped over because it’s awkward or difficult. All stock advice, really. Garos puts emphasis on reflecting back and forth, mirroring each other in your own heads. Think about what the other person is feelin’ and how you would feel, see the places where there’s some symmetry between the two of you. Obviously I can’t discuss the specifics of what I talked about with Isra, but relationships are actually pretty simple, it’s just navigatin’ the emotions and the mental state of the other person that sometimes need — or want — some help.”
“Thank you for not taking the dig about Marsh personally,” said Verity.
“Please,” said Hannah. “I know that I’m doin’ things wrong there, mostly because it’s not what I’d planned on. And you should remember that I’m a professional. I wouldn’t be much of a cleric if I got upset when people lashed out at me. We do our best not to escalate. I’m just tryin’ to look out for you in my own way. You’re both friends, and I want you to do well together. And I know you both have some problems with communication.”
“Both?” asked Verity. “I was raised knowing how to speak with people.” That Isra wasn’t was left unsaid. That wasn’t a bad thing, but it was a thing, and the suggestion that they both had problems with communication, perhaps equal problems with communication felt absurd.
“You were taught to be proper,” said Hannah. “But you’ve said yourself that your mother didn’t seem to hold much respect for honest emotional communication. You’d get shut down or deflected, so you learned not to express it.”
“Ah,” said Verity. “That. Well, there you may have a point.”
The conversation did dampen Verity’s mood a bit, and put some of what had happened into context. Isra had been told to go talk, to have a lengthy discussion about their feelings and what they meant to each other, and rather than talking, Isra had decided that wordless kissing was what the situation needed. Verity was happy with that, very happy, but it did make her a bit nervous, because it meant they’d skipped past the talking. Hannah seemed convinced the talking was necessary, and the kiss had felt to Verity like a non sequitur, but she decided that she was simply going to adjust to this new reality, and if Isra didn’t want to talk about it, that was fine.
They ate lunch, rested up, then continued on with the work. They had, in the end, managed to remove almost all of the seats, most of the panels, the chandelier, the majority of the lighting, and other bits and bobs. Reclaimed wood was relatively cheap, so they’d left most of that in place, especially given the labor that would have been involved in taking the entire stage. There was also fairly significant damage to the stage, along with the first few rows of chairs, many of which had been bloodstained from the battle. Still, much of the theater had been taken apart, everything that wasn’t nailed down had been packed into the chest, and many things that had been nailed down had their nails removed.
“I think we’re done,” Alfric said. “There’s more we could take, but we’re hitting diminishing returns, and I think we all want to get home.”
“Oh thank the gods,” said Verity.
“Let’s go home, and hope that home wasn’t burned down,” said Hannah.
They went down the path they’d last been down several days ago, with Alfric armed and moving slowly, just in case there was some kind of surprise waiting for them. Thankfully, there was nothing.
Coming out into the real world was a literal breath of fresh air. Verity stood for a moment in the sunlight, face turned up, breathing air that hadn’t been fouled by their breathing, and feeling cool wind against her skin. The dungeon had gotten worse the longer they’d been in it, and she hadn’t fully grasped how bad until she was out. She wanted to write a song about it.
“I used to like the garden stone,” said Verity with a sigh. “And now I never want to go in there again.”
“Er,” said Alfric. “You need to go back in so that I can use the dagger.”
“I’ll take the chest instead,” said Verity. “I’m quite serious about taking at least a week break from being in the stone. I want good, properly cooked food, a long bath, and some time to not think about dungeons.”
“Alright,” said Alfric. “Anyone else going to stay out of the stone?”
“I’ll go in,” said Hannah.
“Two can fit in the trunk,” said Isra with a nod.
<I really don’t know what it is,> said Mizuki. <He’s nice enough, attractive enough, interesting enough, he’s just not —>
<Mizuki, we’re back,> said Alfric.
There was silence in the party channel.
“Was she … talking to herself into the party channel?” asked Verity.
“Must have been,” said Alfric.
<Well I’m mortified,> said Mizuki. <How much of that did you hear?>
<Just the last sentence,> said Alfric. <Sorry, I would have stopped you sooner if I’d realized that it wasn’t meant to be public.>
<Ha ha, yeah,> said Mizuki. There was a brief silence. <Awkward. But anyway, you’re all home? No one died?>
<We’re just outside the dungeon,> said Alfric. <And yes, we’re finally done, with what we hope are hundreds of thousands of rings worth of things to sell. If it’s not too much trouble, we’ve been eating rice, beans, and sausage, so some kind of good dinner would be very much appreciated.>
<On it,> said Mizuki. <But you mean lunch, right?>
“It’s before noon,” said Isra. She was looking up at the sun. <Our timekeeping was imperfect.>
<In which direction?> asked Alfric. <Has it been four days or five?>
<Including the day we first went in there, it’s been six,> said Mizuki. <Come home quick. I’ve been missing you guys. Let me know what you want for dinner, I’ll probably have to run into the store, or I can whip something up.>
<Stew,> said Alfric.
There was a pause from Mizuki’s end. <I’ve been eating stew basically the whole time you were gone, sorry. I’ll figure something else out.>
<We’ll be home soon,> said Alfric. <We’re on a bad schedule, it’ll take some time to adjust.>
<See you soon!> said Mizuki.
There was some faffing about as Alfric put everything metal into the chest, then loaded Hannah into the garden stone, then took off on his own. That left Verity and Isra next to the chest, which would run along once they were inside it. They were alone, together, for the first time in days.
Isra’s kiss was more urgent this time, and perhaps a bit more confident. At least some of the night before had been them learning how to kiss each other, a process that was sometimes slightly awkward, but they’d made it work, and it was clear that they were going to be getting more practice in. On this point, Verity was firmly committed to the idea that practice made perfect.
A small part of Verity was distracted by Hannah’s words, and the fact that she hadn’t really had a conversation with Isra about what this was and where it was going, but that inner voice was easily drowned out. The only thing that stopped them from staying there at Callipygian Point was Mizuki loudly saying into their ears that lunch was ready.
