by Andrea Höst
After that there was the snowman judging (carefully arranged for the maximum number of prizes – most creative, most colourful, scariest) and then a huge and somewhat frosty picnic lunch and some more generalised snow sculpture and then everyone staggering off to their respective homes. Nils and Zee were my bodyguards for the afternoon, and so it was a quick and nippy flight back. I did a projection of a bunch of mugs of hot chocolate and pushed to make them as 'real' as possible, and they at least lasted long enough for us all to taste. Overall it was a great day.
Not everything was perfect of course. I've got a serious chocolate jones now, and Sen's a little ill. Getting waterproof Winter clothes for everyone wasn't too hard, since there's been plenty of preparation put in for dealing with Winter, but keeping it on Sen is almost impossible, so we had to hunt about for the layers she'd shed, and she'd managed to chill herself enough to be running a fever the next day. Nothing too serious according to the medics, but she's very grouchy and hard to please when she's got a cold. We've poured a couple of fortifiers down her and that should be enough to kick it.
Plus, while the Setari extended family is very cheerful and happy and supportive, no-one's cheerful and happy and supportive 100% of the time, and there were little spats of grouchiness, particularly from a couple of the elder kids. Lohn's eldest niece is a bit of a drama queen and so far as I can tell she thinks Shar should pay her some attention. Shar has just turned fourteen and is in an increasingly complicated position since a news story about "Nuri's heir", and is almost certainly going to have to walk an even finer line than Maze did regarding fluttering hearts. Lohn and Mara have been a real boon to him.
But not everyone in the Setari extended family is super-nice, and one of the things that underlined that was when complete details and tons of scans of our snowball fight turned up on the news by evening. It's very likely someone sold the story, and the problem with it being someone who came to the fight is that they're all family. Kaoren says we'll have to think about a slightly more restrictive guest list next time, which is probably a good idea anyway, since it was a lot of people.
Oh well, it was a very positive story and all the shots of my kids were good ones - particularly Ys and me throwing snowballs at each other (and Ys actually looking like she was having fun, which she would since the thing she likes most about snow is an excuse to throw things at me – I think she finds it therapeutic). There's a cute one of Lira sprinkling crushed nuts on a cake, and that scene of Rye throwing his arms around Kaoren when they were announced the winners and Kaoren smiling down at him. And also one of Kaoren's snowball interceptions, when he knocks an incoming ball out of the air with one of his own. I have to agree with his increasingly frenzied fandom that he looks so hot when he does that. Kaoren's fan club is beginning to rival Raiten's, and all the Setari sites completely boiled over with all the great 'off-duty' images of them. Shar and Lira both have sites devoted to them which make me tremendously uncomfortable, though, and I definitely want to avoid feeding them.
But my biggest down for the day was Eeli, who still hasn’t shown any signs of waking. She was so happy when she was first to capture me last year. She would have enjoyed this year so much.
Neither Third nor Twelfth have been posted to Muina in an age, but both are due to be rotated in soon and I'm really looking forward to seeing Zan again.
Chapter 10
September
September 20
Super-Grumpy Month
A stupid action group decided to put forward a stupid motion in the 'parliaments' of Tare, Kolar and Muina demanding changes to the proposed laws written up regarding the 'use and control of touchstones'. They want an oversight committee, complete disclosure of all mission tapes, committee approval for all tasks performed, and permanent second level monitoring of both Lira and myself to ensure that nothing is ever done without permission. We've fought so hard to keep Lira off second level monitoring, and were making progress toward getting me off it, and it's sounding less likely by the day.
I caught the initial announcement and warned Kaoren while the kids were in the middle of breakfast. The action group (translates as 'Citizens for Responsible Management of Touchstones', more or less – I call them the Crummies) tried as much as possible to make their motions simultaneously on all three worlds, so there was no forward notice from KOTIS.
Kaoren's eyes went to slits while he was reading the detail – just because we half-expected something like this eventually doesn't mean any of us liked it – and then he called a family meeting and explained what it was the action group was trying to do, and what was likely to happen in the short and long term.
Fortunately the talent school was in school holiday mode – no formal lessons, just supervision for those who needed it since quite a few of the kids still don't have homes to go to. They're well past the halfway point of adoptions, and quite a few of the Setari extended family have chosen to add another child to the mix, but KOTIS Command has been careful to settle the kids into families which are ready to look after them, which isn't necessarily everyone as soon as they arrive on Muina. Many Tarens, particularly, have to go through a psychological adjustment to all that sky, and lack of ceiling, and things flitting and jumping and creeping and crawling everywhere. More than a few Taren immigrants have gone back to their nice enclosed cities.
School holidays were good timing for this stressful patch because I wanted the kids sheltered until the petition was settled one way or another, and so I kept them home even when the rest of the students started managed lessons again. The interface does most of the schooling anyway – attendance is really babysitting, sport and socialisation, and the classes themselves very rarely require the kids to be there or even interact.
This whole thing with the Crummies also shifted the feel of having Setari guards, because of the demand that touchstones be monitored to prevent inappropriate use of powers. KOTIS Command was ordered to at least temporarily put this into effect. Even though there was no actual change to what was happening – I'm already on second level monitoring, and two Setari are assigned to be my guards every day, swapping over mid-afternoon, spending the night, and leaving the following afternoon – the simple fact that they were not simply there to protect me, but also to stop me from Doing Evil, was just so annoying. They were all aware of the shift, of course, and embarrassed by it. Maze has been careful to only schedule people I'm close to for the entire time, because that made it less uncomfortable.
We're thinking of building a second, smaller house a little around the side of the hill for our daily bodyguard detail. Even though most of the Setari assigned to look after us are friends, we're not going to be close to everyone who gets scheduled over the years, and it's just very weird to have a permanent rotation of houseguests. They only need to be 'within quick reach' of me, not actually in my presence, and if Lira and I really are going to have to have mandatory 'for life' guards (as now seems impossible to escape) then we may as well accommodate them properly.
The first couple of days after the motion was made were pretty quiet for us. We just stayed on Arcadia and read the frenzy of response on the interface and tried to distract the kids. There was an enormous backlash against the Crummies, up to and including death threats, and a couple of huge public demonstrations on Tare. Lots of petitions and rabid message sites. But also excitement at the hope of having all the mission logs released (and, indeed, some people were keen on the Caszandra version of The Truman Show and making every single thing I do public knowledge). And between it all, growing conversation regarding the extent of a touchstone's powers, and what exactly it was KOTIS was getting me to do, and what it might get me to do, and what Lira and I might choose to do on our own account, and after all, wasn't Lira the reason the spaces had been broken in the first place?
Since the governments of three different planets were involved (which basically means four governments, since Kolar is firmly differentiated between North Continent and South Continent), there was a bit
of a delay while they decided how to handle a response. It didn't suit anyone's purposes for four sets of laws to evolve. Since I was a stray from Earth living on Muina, and Lira was Muinan, and we had made a permanent home of Arcadia, Pandora was the obvious place for an Inquiry Into Touchstones to be conducted. Each planet got to have two members on the board of inquiry, and they would hear evidence from KOTIS, and submissions from the petitioners and any other interested parties, and then redraft the laws. And then I imagine there would be some inter-government negotiation.
They've only just managed to get set up, and start to hear initial evidence (they want complete details of all my assignments and training and test results, and the medical information about Lira). Then they plan to question the people who 'control' me, and then me, and then take submissions from anyone who cares to make one. It's going to drag on for months and I can already see that it's going to be even worse than I feared. Anyone who had a plan or opinion about touchstones will have their little say, and some of the proposals which have already come up don't exactly acknowledge that Lira and I are people.
It was tough keeping Lira's spirits up. One of the news articles was about a person questioning why I'd been given 'control' of Lira and whether I was the right person to be in charge of her care and development (being, after all, a traumatised stray prone to nearly dying). This sparked the only uncontrolled projective-dream Lira's had since she's been with us: she dreamed that she'd never escaped, that she was back in a world controlled by people who were using her, and would poke her with spears when they saw her. She made our house look very like a Lantaren house, and conjured a bunch of people with spears who promptly chased her out into the back garden to flounder through the snow. Siame, whose window overlooks the back garden, got it open and zapped the spear-carriers before they'd managed to catch Lira, and Nils and Zee came boiling out via the kitchen, closely followed by Kaoren.
Lira was absolutely terrified, shaking and sobbing, and half-frozen after ploughing through drifts of snow in her pyjamas. I took her into the shower with me and calmed her down, and we had a 'touchstones-only' conversation in there that I'm hoping doesn't get reviewed since Lira was being very wild and angry in response to having been afraid. We'd already had several conversations with the kids about the gap between what people propose and what's likely to happen, and been all very calm and reassuring, but of course we couldn't say absolutely 100% that Lira wouldn't be taken away from us, or that neither of us would ever be plugged into another machine like the one which had destroyed her life. I did tell her that I wouldn't accept such a thing, though, any more than Kaoren would, and I think my tone made her believe me. Of course, she's also aware that her claim of no longer being able to project is pretty much busted, and we had to take her for a medical, but she's valiantly pretending she hasn't given herself away.
Sen had been woken by the fuss, and I settled Lira in the baby's room for the night and took Sen in with us because she was upset by Lira being upset. Since then Ys has been sleeping in with Lira, though not advertising the fact. Nils once said that Ys' character could be judged by Sen's, and I think that's really true. For a really sensitive Sight Sight talent like Sen to be so full of love says a lot about who raised her. The care and protection Ys and Rye lavished on her were enough to overcome even the truly negative environment she was raised in.
We'd all calmed down more by the time it was Lira's birthday, in part because the days had ground on without anything happening. I'd eventually decided on jewellery for Lira's main present – good, expensive stuff that would keep and look nice at any age. That went down well – much like Sen, she likes pretty things, and dressing up, and jewellery is something she recognises as a sign we consider her important. And we all had a fun discussion about getting ears pierced, since my ears are pierced, even if I don't wear anything in them. [I wonder if the holes might have closed by now.]
Maze and Alay's wedding is in two days – it's going to be at Keer's house at Mesiath (Keer really likes the tall trees and is the only one of the Senior Taren Setari who took his land grant somewhere other than the islands). Alay's just starting to show, and she and Maze are so funny together right now. She's been rostered on 'light duties', and drops to only training at the talent school after the wedding. Maze wants to wrap her in cotton wool, and you can see him making himself not do that, and you can see Alay trying not to enjoy too much how he's fretting over her. They've fallen so hard. I always enjoy when they're rostered to guard us – Sen insists on saying hello to the baby by wrapping her arms around Alay's waist and kissing her stomach. Alay goes all pink when she does this, but says that there's no need to tell Sen not to. I've been seeing quite a lot of them both because Maze and Rye, having finished preparing the place for Maze and Alay's wedding, have started working on "The Wedding Garden" for Kaoren and me, and have been pulling out trees and scooping out dirt and experimenting with water features on the south side of the island. Alay comes and watches and is highly amused and happy about how much Maze enjoys it all.
I feel very protective of them, which is silly of me, but I don't want their wedding spoiled by the brewing shitstorm about touchstones. Between the kids and the Setari I've been busy playing down any upset I might be feeling myself. Kaoren's not fooled of course, and knows that I've had to wake myself up out of a few projective dreams as well. I make sure I don't dump all my stress on him, and after over a year together I'm better at spotting when he's stressed or worn, and knowing ways to make it better. His meditation garden is really important to him that way: a space even I don't go into unless he asks me. His sights are so overwhelming sometimes, and one of the things we designed the entire house around was this quiet and peaceful place. He'll go out there even when it's snowing when he needs to de-stress.
But he smiles more easily these days, and that makes me very happy indeed.
Chapter 11
October
October 19
Grilled
Just finished being examined at the inquiry. It wasn't fun – they had a Sight Sight talent I've not met before who acted in combination with a medical scanner as a lie detector. They started out by checking whether there were any missions I'd done which hadn't been presented, and then if anyone had ever asked me to use my powers for non-mission things, and then whether I ever used my powers of my own accord for non-mission things. Which of course was yes, and then they wanted to know exactly what and when and why and spent ages trying to get me to admit to doing anything which could be seriously disapproved of. I'm so glad I resisted the temptation to peek on Nils and Zee when they went off camping. They also wanted to know if I thought I had any limits to what I could "make real". I said: "My tendency to collapse after ten seconds, and then for whatever it is to fade away." They wouldn't just leave it at that – particularly when Lira is still non-faded. I still don't know if I made her or not, and they weren't tremendously satisfied at my answer to whether I thought I did: "I could barely think at all at the time. All I knew was that the roof was falling in, and so I tried to stuff us both into a corner. I'd completely forgotten she was projecting herself. I wasn't trying to do anything more than stop bits of rock hitting us."
The questioning wasn't hostile, just a lot of polite, clever questions to go with the lie detector, but I hated it all the same. When they'd run out of new ways to try and trip me up, they asked if I wanted to say anything, and I said: "Just that it's very uncomfortable being treated as a potential criminal all the time."
That comment got a lot of headlines (though for all the protests, people are thoroughly enjoying all the information coming out via the inquiry, and the viewing statistics of me being questioned are pretty much 99% of the population – the other one percent being too young to watch). Kaoren says it's lucky that I live such a blameless life, or at least am too embarrassed at the idea of being found out to spy. We talked about what would have happened if they had hit on the only things that I did want to hide, which was my theories about the creatio
n of Muina, and the Kolaren government trying to buy me. I'd spoken very briefly to Raiten to ask him what I should answer if I was asked anything which touched on that, and he told me I should just tell the truth. I'm still glad that the subject didn't come up, though.
There was a lot of discussion about whether Lira should be questioned, but fortunately we won that argument by pulling the too traumatised card. The nightmare worked for us in that respect, and KOTIS had mine and Lira's main medic talk for a while about the anxiety attacks the inquiry had caused her and how her loss of conscious control of her powers could be psychosomatic given the extreme trauma associated with them. Lira was very annoyed about any of this being public, but pleased that she didn't have to front the inquiry. It would have been damn interesting if she had – she would have given them all an imperial dressing down, because her response to upset is to attack.