do: read; don't: visit 214

[giftedandtalented]

Mehitabel reads a lot.

She starts calling herself "Tab", for short, not that anyone calls her anything apart from Kers. She writes suitably encrypted emails to Aelise about ideas for fixing the world - mostly she asks questions, to start, forming a picture of the exact problem she has to solve.

She misses her parents, but not very much. At least she got to say goodbye.

When her brain won't absorb new information, she bounces around in zero-g.

After six months, Aelise visits again.

Tab says, "Anybody you store up here must be important somehow. If I don't know about the other secret person, I won't know how to come up with ideas that work with them being important however they're important."

Comments

[warmfeelings]

"Excellent, best of luck," says Chelsa, still fuming at the deception.

[salus_populi]

"He's a troublemaker. I am trying to make sure he doesn't have either the means or the motive to cause much trouble."

[warmfeelings]

"You promised me, and of all the ways I could find out - I don't understand what's wrong with me," says Chelsa sitting down heavily.

[salus_populi]

"I don't either," says Aelise, coming up and hugging her. "But I intend to find out. All right?"

[warmfeelings]

"Fix it," says Chelsa desperately, clinging. "I can't live like that, not all cold - I don't know how anyone else can stand it."

[salus_populi]

"We manage somehow," she says, hugging her some more. "I'll do everything I can."

[warmfeelings]

Chelsa sobs, once.

And pulls on all the warmth she can reach, again.

[salus_populi]

Aelise pets her hair soothingly.

[pythbox]

Some days later, on her next visit to Harley, he wakes up as usual - unconscious one second and screaming the next.

But this time, when she's done draining him, instead of looking dazed but contented he takes a breath and starts crying.

And when she moves to put him under again, he hits her ineffectually and twists away—and disappears.

[salus_populi]

Aelise calls Demauri.

[alicornucopia]

"Hullo, Aelise! I usually don't hear from you this often," laughs Demauri.

[salus_populi]

"Harley's gone missing again," she says. "Be a dear and haul him back to me, would you?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sure. Wow, he got a ways away, this is gonna take a while, and I need to requisition a boat."

[salus_populi]

"I think he might have learned how to teleport. I recommend you knock him out when you find him."

[alicornucopia]

"Learned how to teleport? Lucky kid, I want to do that. Will do."

A few hours see Demauri and a laughing fishing crew speeding along in a boat to the correct location, Demauri calling directions to the driver.

They reach the correct location and Harley is - down.

The fishermen haul him up while Demauri loads up a tranq gun.

[pythbox]

Hauling him up is an interesting proposition, because he drowns along the way and for a moment the net is holding nothing but spectral flames. But drowning is slow enough that he doesn't do it again on the way up.

[alicornucopia]

Demauri's really tempted to try bantering again, but instead he just tranqs the kid, puts him on the floor of the boat head turned sideways so he can cough up ingested ocean on reflex without just swallowing it again, and ties his ankles together and his hands behind his back.

The fishermen turn around and head back for shore. Demauri watches the kid.

[pythbox]

Harley is too unconscious to be very interesting. But even unconscious, he doesn't look happy.

Perhaps it's all the drowning that did it.

[alicornucopia]

Demauri reserves judgment on that. Aelise wants him, and he loves her, and he can take or leave Harley.

He hauls a salt-stained Harley before the Empress, when he gets there.

[salus_populi]

"Thank you," says Aelise. She gives him a smile.

[alicornucopia]

"Love and loyalty. See if you can keep him teleporting to such inconvenient places, that immortality thing he does can foul up a net," says Demauri, half-smiling.

[salus_populi]

"I'll try my very best."

[alicornucopia]

Demauri salutes, and sees himself out.

[salus_populi]

And Aelise makes sure Harley is tucked in safe and sound, and then she goes about her business.

She comes back a week later to do the whole thing over again.

There's no way to get him unconscious again instantly after the draining stops, so she tries persuasion this time.

"Can't we talk about this...?"

[pythbox]

"No," he snarls, scrunching his eyes shut. A wavering moment, and then he's gone again.