Starling- A Lovecraftian Comedy Chap. 5 Mortal Ascension

I started the day as I meant to continue it- with energy and positivity. I therefore performed for [[Lavinia]] my absolutely show stopping a cappella rendition of the Hu’s Wolf Totem. The moral lessons are sound, and it’s got a wonderful sense of drive to it. Mongol heavy metal on motorcycles level drive. 

I was going to follow this with their nationalist anthem Yuve Yuve Yu, but at this point [[Marti]] was waving a butcher knife around, screeching some nonsense about a hangover. I left. She would doubtless appreciate my singing later, once she had a chance to properly wake up. 

Raleigh had taken its usual turn today. Just pissing down with rain. Sometimes, on this day, I would steal a flying beast and go up into the clouds to check if there weren’t actually things pissing down on us. I didn’t get too high, usually, as the cultivators get very pissy about mortals flying. Still. Not like they could always stop me. 

Turns out it’s just weird precipitation that occurs due to the exciting and complex chemicals that make their way into our atmosphere. Who would have ever guessed? Not me, that’s for sure. Something about forming little clumps of magical dust, or unnatural dust, or extra, super, or supra natural dust, and then (this is where it gets wacky) water vapor condenses around the little clumps then just falls out of the sky.   

Rain is just water falling out of the sky, water that was on the ground in the first place. Over and over again. Every exhale from your lungs, pushing that warm, moist air up and out, you are adding your little bit to the next shower. Breathing in the mist, exhaling the storm. Over and over again. Lightning bolts gestate in our lungs. We are the sky fathers and sky mothers, all of us.

Lavinia is growing well. She’s grown real leaves and is already a mighty four inches tall. I’m so proud of him. Her. Did Marti say what gender they were? I forget. I can’t tell. I’m the worst plant parent. I just want to be supportive, you know? Not push my own preconceptions on them.  

“I am the worst plant parent,” I told a passing ratkin.  

“Can’t be the worst. My old gran used to raise petunias from seeds and eat the weakest in front of the rest.” He disagreed, smiling wryly.   

“My God! Why?”  

“She liked to eat the flowers.”

“Eh? Well, that’s not the absolute worst I guess.” 

“Yes, it was a form of transference her therapist recommended. Did wonders for her.”

“Oh that’s nice.” I smiled at the middle aged man.

“I only wish she had gone to therapy *before* chewing the genitals off all those people-”

“You have a great day now.” I interrupted and started walking away. That conversation was only going to go in one of a few directions, none of which I should have to deal with before breakfast and strong coffee. Very strong coffee. I could miss breakfast, but today had to be high energy. The coffee was a must, and not just any would do.

Fortunately, I know a guy. A skilled guy. Quiet. Gets the job done, no fuss. No cops. Cash only, small bills. I walked down the avenue, past the guys selling keychains on sheets of cardboard, past the dwarfs selling newspapers, past the ladies of the night trying to get home. I did the decent thing and blocked the sun for one of them. She gave me a lovely smile, the stars and galaxies spinning through the inky black outline of her shapely shape, and dove into my silhouette. Off to who knows where for a good day’s sleep, I hope. 

I always feel a bit sad about the ladies of the night. It’s almost impossible to communicate with them, even by mime. Somehow, they just interpret information so radically differently, their thoughts don’t even approximate ours. Which is odd to me, because why would they be human shaped if they were so alien? And why were their smiles so charming?

That’s life in the big city- a million mysteries a day. Just waiting for you to follow the smell of  cheese back to the spring trap. Waiting, and not always patiently. The mystery of the ladies of the night was one I had yet to solve. Maybe the city was giving me a hint?  

I would ignore it. Coffee first.  

I turned sharply down the alley, past the overflowing blue dumpster, and found the little metal panel bolted onto the building next to it. I tapped out the first verse of Bonny Dundee, then sprinted to the grate around the corner of the building. You only had five seconds to make it, or he assumed it was a trap and didn’t show.  

“I heard Hoffman rated this place,” I whispered to the seemingly empty air.  

“He only does reviews, not ratings.” The words seemed to fall with the rain.  

“But what if words were numbers, like the setting for the grind?”  

There was a grunt, and the grate opened and a little kiosk emerged from the ground. Looking out of the little booth was a heavyset man, deeply tanned with an ominously thick push-broom mustache.  

“What do you need?” he asked.  

“A large black coffee and a cortado. Must be high energy today."  

“You know the price for such a request?” He gave me a hard look from eyes that had seen too much. I nodded and slipped him ten. The bill seemed to vanish. There wasn’t even the suggestion of change.  

“Wait. Wait and pray. God willing, it will be done soon.” The man in the kiosk made a sign across his chest, a certain symbol that, I knew, had once driven the learned Mufti Ibin K- to madness and speaking in tongues. Ah, but that was long ago and far, far away from Raleigh. I think. The kiosk sank back into the pavement, disguised once again as a grate in the sidewalk.   

It wasn’t that bothersome, standing in the alarming rain. I had done it often enough that I hardly noticed. The way the water drifted over my skin, the chemicals tickling me, licking at me with their electrons and magic and elemental meaning. It had all become a normal thing that happened today. It would happen again the next time it was today. I had never found a way to change the weather. Perhaps when I was a cultivator.  

The kiosk slowly rose out of the ground again. The man behind the counter slid the cups, one the size of my fist, the other barely held four ounces, over towards me. No lids. Protecting my coffee from the rain was my problem. I cut my problems in half by drinking the cortado in two long pulls, while covering the other cup with my palm.  

The cortado- ah, if you haven’t had a cortado, a REAL cortado, let me explain. It is espresso and steamed milk, fifty-fifty and served straight up. Absolutely nothing else. The espresso was cleanly expressed, communicating the awesome power and terror of the bean. The dark academia of the coffee world.   

Then the steamed milk. That shot of steam adding air and lightness, while also cooking the milk sugars slightly. You got just the faintest wisp of dulce de leche in there, swirling down in the darkness with the espresso. All lifted up by that steam.  You do not simply drink a cortado. You experience it. And you will never be quite the same again.  

Which is to say that I blame the Cortado for fueling an intemperate fire that had been building in my loins for some time. I had been managing, but now, due entirely to the cortado’s malign influence, I made a rash decision to act on it. Still, I did manage to cling onto some shred of rationality.  

“Say, random question-” I started to ask.  

“I don’t know nothing.”  

“If I was looking for protection, like condoms and all that, is there any place around here that sells advanced models?”  

This seemed to seriously perplex him.  

“Advanced condoms.”  

“Yeah. Like, top of the line, all bells and whistles added.” I nodded.  

“Bells and whistles on a condom.”  

“Metaphorically speaking. I mean, gross and uncomfortable otherwise.” I continued to nod. His nod in reply was slower, with the quiet alarm of one unsurprised to find the head of their prized racehorse in bed with them.  

“Best I can think of is some kind of thin but strong mer-skin, with every anti-disease and anti-curse charm imaginable baked into it. I don’t know anyone who does that kind of work, but try down in Valnetz. Those people are so curse crazy, someone will have invented curseproof condoms.”

I slapped my forehead. “Of course! Thank you.” I saluted him with my coffee cup. It was held in the non-slapping hand, obviously. That would be a bit silly. The man behind the counter looked like he wanted to ask why, but he had an ethos. The kiosk sank back into the ground without another word. 

I took a long pull of the coffee. The cortado had lit a beautiful fire, but this was the fuel that would keep me going all day. Damn, what a fantastic cup of coffee. Layers of chocolates and dark fruits and I don’t even know what's. It was coffee, hot, black, and delicious. Where the coffee came from, I don’t know. Or any of the food. It just turned up. The city should have drowned in its own excrement years ago. Didn’t. Just how it was in Raleigh.

The word “terrarium” did echo in my mind. An ecosystem sealed in a bottle. It only died if the bottle opened. I took another pull of my coffee, covered the top with my hand again, and set off through the rain. It was a long way to Valnetz. Not in miles traveled, but because there was no easy way to get there if you couldn’t fly. And I wanted those condoms.

Marti had been slowly getting to me. She had been getting to me since the first second of the first loop where I met her, but in this particular run, she had been getting to me more than usual. I think it’s the tension. This run is the best in ages, and it’s the first time I remember having real hope for getting that spirit root. Marti was clearly DTF, and I sure as hell wasn’t worried about curses, diseases or pregnancy.   

Not that they never happened to me, but after the seventh or eighth time I got knocked up by some parasitic demon thing, I stopped worrying about it. A quick step in front of a speeding hippo and problem solved. Straight back to Willoughby park for the next run.  

Or a bus. Or something. Not always a hippo. There weren’t that many of them.  

The point was, I generally didn’t give that much of a damn about safer sex, because the consequences for either myself or my partners would be nil. My normal response to Marti making a pass would be “Yes!” But this run was going too good. There was too much at stake to goof off. If I wanted to partake- and I WANTED- then I would need to take precautions. 

Because there was something about Marti. Her towering over me in her naked glory. All the mad lust and the taste of her. I couldn't quite remember it. But some instinct screamed at me that I would need to throw a rubber on it, at the very least. Which, you know. Sensible. 

On the other hand… Valnetz. I generally avoided Valnetz. Completely. For what I think are very good reasons. It would probably eat the whole day too. Not that I had anything urgent that needed doing. Just waiting on Lavinia, bless her little metaphorical socks. 

I waffled back and forth for an embarrassingly long time. The coffee was wonderful, but it could only do so much. I swore, and tossed the empty cup into a trashcan, and stalked off into the rain.

The greatest advantage of being stuck in an eternally reoccurring loop is time. The greatest suffering of being stuck in an eternally reoccurring loop is time. Time to try everything. Time to try everything. There is no reason to wait, if it goes wrong, just start over. Or don't try it for decades. It makes no difference. The only thing that will have changed is your memories, and what are they worth? Fragile, unreliable things that they are.

I had a thundercloud on my mind, fit to match the gentle chemical rain. I stomped past a couple of huddled holsturs.  They were giggling, holding a tarp over themselves and whispering secrets. Siblings? Lovers? I didn't know. They had matching flower garlands perched between their short horns and matching symbols of Hathor on their strong arms. 

Despite the fact that it was pissing down a chemical rain, they still wore spotless sundresses. One in white, the other in blue. Despite being six-six in their bare feet, they still chose to wear strappy 'sandals' over their cloven hooves, with just a touch of extra sole in there.  

Holsturs were like that. Always careful to distinguish themselves from their minotaur siblings, insisting that while they were one species, the genders were essentially different cultures. That while minotaurs might glory in violence, holsurs never did. They were sweet, and lovely, and if you had ever seen one after a night on the tiles you would never believe their PR ever again. I saw one drunkenly backhand the head off a parking meter. That stays with you.

No time loops for the giggling holsturs. They were one and done. Except that everyone trapped in this loop with me was as immortal as I was. They just didn't know it.

And then they were gone, as I pressed deeper into Raleigh. Feeling the city swirl around me. I could read the city better now. Feel it's occult currants and trace the esoteric mysteries within the myriad lives here.  But I couldn't remember it all. Some of it stuck as instinct. 

Why hadn't I grown the seeds with Marti before? It couldn't just have been that I was stuck in a rut. Was it? It was so easy to loose track of time. To loose yourself. Was it because Marti reset me? I doubt it. 

Loads of people have reset me in all kinds of upsetting ways. No reason to let that scare me off. Hell, sometimes I would throw myself into the demon's maw over and over again, just to see if I could trigger a new result. Or just for fun. There is no rush quite like skydiving without a parachute, knowing that you will be standing up unharmed at the end of your drop.

The drizzle was starting to get to me. It was all just so *grey.* My beautiful city was always a riot of color, and light, and joy. Not this thin piss. Some orks were shoving about, gnashing their horrible teeth at people. One tried to shove a short, stout man. Somehow, that resulted in the ork standing directly in front of an oncoming truck. 

It was a mystery. Probably related to the fact that the short, stout man was, in fact, a dwarf. He must have left his ax at home today. The other orks looked puzzled over what had happened, and the truck driver was pissed. A minor riot broke out. The orks managed to tear one arm off, but they were outnumbered. 

Once they were on the ground, all that was left was the stomping. Then that was that. Some ratkin came running off, and the bodies vanished into shops and loading bays. Never to be seen again outside of a sausage.

I stayed out of it, naturally. Nothing good for me there. Nothing worth learning. Nothing worth risking the loop. I could feel my energy draining away. It was the day. I should spend this day inside, always. Cuddled up with a good movie, or book, or friend. Never outside. Letting my thoughts run down with the sky water into the foul sewers.

I stopped at a corner shop, hiding from the rain under the awning. It felt like the city was draining away all my energy. "Just stop," it whispered. "Just enjoy Marti. Hell, you could skip the condoms and just find out if you did, actually, have anything to worry about. That's how you learn. That's how you grow."

But I wasn't growing. I was... diminishing. There was less of me every loop. I could feel it. Just a tiny, tiny bit. Little grains of me, drifting away, one at a time. Sometimes I forgot that was happening. Most of the time I forgot. 

I would head back to Marti’s. I just couldn’t bear to risk losing little Lavinia. Not now. Not when I had come so close.  I slapped my cheeks twice, firmly. I WOULD get my spirit root this loop. I would! HIGH ENERGY ALL THE WAY!

"WOOO WOO! HIGH ENERGY COMING THROUGH!" I screamed at the sky. The city seemed to feel my resolve, for I swear, it tested me. 

First were the hookers, whistling and clicking at me. Their long leathery wings draped around them, hiding the long, boney claw that was their namesake. Scratching it along the pavement. Harmless, so long as you let them be, but today, they crowded in alleys, round red eyes staring. Hoping I would be foolish enough to come close. 

I stayed well away, right on the edge of the curb. Which almost saw me clipped by a cross town snake still learning how to corner with people on its back.  

This set the pattern. After the hookers came a cultivator battle. Not real cultivators, flying around on their swords and blasting qi-fireballs at each other. No, these were scrubs from the lowest levels of the lowest sects, bouncing off walls, jumping fifteen feet through the air to deliver a flurry of brick smashing kicks and punches. They were, at best, unconcerned about collateral damage.   

Close on their heels was a piano that fell from a fifth story window. It wasn’t a particularly big window. Something had propelled the piano hard enough to get most of it through the window, and the rest of it came out with the wall. Double hung window, I noticed, as I strained every muscle to *move.* 

I managed to dodge the piano, but the exploding manhole cover almost got me. I picked up the pace to a brisk walk, escalated to a jog when I saw dozens of stone statues writhe like damned things burning, and capitulated into a flat sprint when the street lights started singing, offering me the same deal the sirens tried to cut with Odysseus.   

“What if I threw in a six pack of beer and a snuggle?” Purred a walk signal. I ignored it, head down, legs pumping hard.   

“What if I threw in the album Kurt Cobain always dreamed of making but never did? It’s great. Really. Barely self indulgent, by mid nineties standards,” crooned the neon sign in a shop window. That one almost got me. Love the MTV Unplugged live album. BUT I WAS TOO CLOSE TO STOP! 

Marti’s pine tree was just in sight. I was getting winded, but that was just because I was exhausted. No reason to quit.   

“Baby where did you sleep last night? In the pines in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine. I would shiver the whole night through.” Oh cute, now the street lights were putting out a cover.  Kurt did it better. I blew past the door guard and raced up the stairs. Safe. For a given value of safety.   

I swept back into the apartment. Marti was out, which was a sort of luck, I suppose. I raided the bone-bedecked refrigerator, noted without surprise that the bones were entirely genuine, noted with disappointment that it was empty of already cooked food, and collapsed on the sofa. Then rose as if electrocuted and lurched over to Lavinia. 

“MY SWEET! How have you been while I was away?” I was starting to flap. It was all too real. I was scared that it wouldn't work. Scared that it would. But Lavinia, sweet, darling Lavinia, understood me. She, he? Was doing their best for daddy. 

Since I sang the sweet, spiritual song of the Hu to them this morning, they had shot up another four inches. There were leaves, five pointed, curling down like the paw of an imperial dragon. The stem was sinuous, yet strong.   

Marti was wrong yet again. The singing helped, and the subject matter mattered. I immediately belted out Yuve Yuve Yu, making sure to really get those guttural base elements. I worked my ass off to master the little bit of throat singing that I could manage, and I made sure that my sweet Lavinia got every warbled note. I could see them writhe with pleasure. Growing stronger. More mighty.   

I knew she needed more. More of that raw energy. That ferocious will, rooted in timeless wisdom. But what? What could be the perfect grace note?   

I remembered the revelation of the morning- today must be a high energy day. Must. Which meant the answer was as obvious as the lusciousness of Marti’s lips. It could be nothing less than the joyful whirl of Bii Biyelgee!  

I gave it my all. I sang my very heart out. Perhaps I captured a fraction of the steppes, of that enduring sky-full spirit. I stomped and I soared, and let the mad ecstasy overwhelm me. At some point Marti came back, and I grabbed her hands, whirling around as I sang at the top of my lungs.  

God, Marti can dance. She plunged into the whirling noise with me, her voice lifting up my own, filling in the laughing families, the crying livestock. The joy of a life lived to the bloody hilt. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to whirl forever with the endlessly fascinating Marti. Losing myself in the mountains and valleys of her, dancing on the rolling steppes. Fathering my own horde. Riding forever in the land of the blue wolf.  

I turned to look at Lavinia. She had outgrown the pot, some two feet tall now. Atop the stem was a tiny cluster of flowers, spikey, reaching up like a mouth. Waiting for something.   

“Your child thirsts for blood. Ah! We would make such beautiful children together,” Marti crooned in my ear.   

“Soon. Very soon!” I gasped. “But first, only the best for a child of mine!” I staggered to the couch and fished out the cursed dagger and the bowl of spirit beads. “Only the best.” I popped one of the beads into my mouth, feeling the delicate membrane floating gently on my tongue. The qi in it would burn me out like a lightning struck tree. Normally.  

The cursed dagger was sated, filled with ninety-nine stolen lives, and one freely given. It was time to fulfill its final purpose. “Only the best. Daddy’s got you, baby. Daddy’s right here.” I raised the dagger and stabbed it into my heart.  

One hundred lives poured into me. All the raging strength of their blood, all the promise of their lives, all mine now. My vision turned red. Every muscle pumped. Rippling with energy. Too much energy. More than my body could endure. It would explode soon. Soon, but not this instant. There was time enough. I crushed the spirit bead in my mouth.  

The cool qi poured down my throat. Like an ancient, unsullied glacier sublimated and inhaled. Like an ice storm that knocked out power across three states. Like the lightning that comes with thundersnow. It swirled around my body, finding nowhere for it to go. No meridians to channel it. No spirit root to accept it. Instead it was forced into my flesh and organs. Where it met the blood-power of the dagger.   

Blood-fire and Ice-air clashed and annihilated each other. I shoved two more beads into my mouth, fueling the conflict, the explosive refinement. The qi showed its contempt for mortality, exterminating all “impurities” it found in the blood and flesh. Which was nearly everything. The blood was filled with its own arrogant pride, smashing down that overmighty qi and absorbing it.   

In less time than it takes to write, the whole process was done. My body was a hair from outright collapse. The blood energy had been almost all used up, and the qi dissipated. What remained was strong. A distillate of flesh, blood and spirit.   

I slowly drew the dagger from my heart. Blood coated it, thick and heavy like mercury. I staggered to Lavinia, and dripped the blood into her waiting maw.  The dragon seemed to bite down. A flower bloomed, eye-blink fast, and turned into a tiny fruit. First black, then crimson, all the way up through the color gradient, past violent, then it seemed to shimmer with colors impossible to describe. Colors beyond a human’s comprehension or mortal vocabulary.   

I gasped, hand outstretched. The whole stem broke away the second I touched it, strong and vital in my hand.   

“Eat it whole. Swallow it down.”  Marti’s voice was breathless, urgent. The room smelled of her. Smelled of sex. Of the deep woods and all that lived there. I tilted my head back, letting my jaw unhinge as far as it would go. I plunged Lavinia into my mouth and down my throat, swallowing convulsively. I could feel its leaves clawing inside of me, pulling down. Even if I had stopped swallowing, it would climb down. This was its purpose. Who knows how many loops it had waited for this moment?  

It didn’t stop at my stomach. It just burrowed out through the lining. I could feel it fusing to me on a level beyond explanation. It was small comfort, almost lost in my screaming, but I could feel it. Feel the fire and strangeness of it. Feel something changing in me.  

“I can’t wait.” Marti tore my clothes off, shoving me onto the floor. “I won’t wait. No more games. Give me your madness. Give me… all of you.”  

I stared up into the naked beauty of Marti. Her pert ears above a pert nose and endless shark-like teeth and thousands of limbs, limbs like trees and the screams of goats. She was vast. Beyond vast. A planet made of forest-cathedrals and things done under a full moon. NO, she was an elf, staggering beauty, black lipstick and black nail polish and torn fishnets wrapping around my waist and there was a supreme moment-  

I was standing in Willoughby Park, flying sword in my left hand and a sack of seeds in my right. Back to the beginning. Again.  

“FUCK!”   

Cockblocked by the entire goddamn universe?! No! Unacceptable! That was the best run ever, and it ended like that?! I glared at the phallic metaphor in my hand, and with immense sarcasm, yelled “Sword, come!”  

And with a little lurch, the blade popped an inch out of the sheath.