horrible cold

[warmfeelings]

Chelsa buries herself in her friends, and the warmth of the world that Harley isn't on anymore. She doesn't understand him. She never will. But there's Corona, sun-scorching and intense; there's Amdon, her oldest and closest; there's Anneia, sweet and smiling; there's Sandre, cuddly and fun; there's Tima, pretty-kindling and empathetic; there's Pacco, bright and deferent; there's Jony, hot as a kiln; Lionara hot as molten glass. And Aelise herself, who makes so many compromises but who does love Chelsa after all.

Harley wasn't like that one cold, cold girl, who - she wasn't even technically a sociopath. Sociopaths kindle like everyone else. She was just - cold. Like an airless environment in which no fire can burn.

But Aelise had her killed, and Chelsa made sure no one would miss her, and if anything like that ever happened again, Chelsa has every confidence that Aelise would make it right. Harley's one thing. He can just be - out of sight, out of mind. Aelise would never expect Chelsa to compromise on the existence of such a terrible cold.

Comments

[salus_populi]

"There are two people you could ever safely talk to about any of that. One of them is me," says Aelise. "The other one is my aunt Kerestine. And you wouldn't be able to talk to either of us for a while, if you went home. You'd have to pretend everything was normal - normal the way it is for most people, not for you - without any help, for at least a little while. And once you were grown up, you'd have to keep pretending for as long as it took to find a way to get rid of her. It's been three hundred years and I haven't found one yet; it might take you your whole life. You couldn't ever go anywhere that Chelsa might be, because if you ran into her by accident she'd know you didn't like her and she'd be very upset. That's one option."

She pauses.

"The other option is, you could go somewhere that you wouldn't have to pretend, and grow up there and live there until you solved the problem. It would be lonely, but it would be safer. And you could read whatever you wanted without anybody interrupting you. And you'd have my aunt for company."

[alicornucopia]

"What about my mommy and daddy, though?"

[salus_populi]

"What about them, specifically?"

[alicornucopia]

"Either which way what would I tell them?"

[salus_populi]

"If you went back to pretend for the rest of your life, you'd tell them that I took you to a doctor and I let you read your book all the way there and back. If you went to live with Kers, I would tell them that you'd been terribly sick and died."

[alicornucopia]

"...Oh."

Mehitabel considers her book.

"I don't like lying."

[salus_populi]

"You would have to do a lot of it, to pretend you liked Chelsa and everything."

[alicornucopia]

"Chelsa is spoiled," Mehitabel asserts, "if she can't stand having even one person not like her."

[salus_populi]

"That is not new information," says Aelise.

[alicornucopia]

"If I were picking somebody who I had to keep happy or everyone would die I would not pick her," Mehitabel says.

[salus_populi]

"Me neither," says Aelise. "But things like 'somebody you have to keep happy or everyone will die' usually don't come with a wide range of available choices."

[alicornucopia]

"Things like that? What other things are like that?"

[salus_populi]

"Fortunately, not very many."

[alicornucopia]

Mehitabel giggles. "I dunno," she says, and she sighs, and reaches for the borrowed tablet again and doodles incomprehensibly on it some more. These meaningless symbols are in something like a chart format.

[salus_populi]

Aelise goes back to her reading.

[alicornucopia]

"My mommy and daddy will be very sad if they think I died," says Mehitabel after a few minutes.

[salus_populi]

"Yes, they will," says Aelise. "Chelsa could do something about that, but I don't think either of us wants her to."

[alicornucopia]

Mehitabel shakes her head firmly. "She's done way too much to them already."

[salus_populi]

"So where does that leave you?"

[alicornucopia]

Mehitabel considers her doodles. She makes a few dots, and a circle, and underlines a sequence of consonants.

"If I pretended you got a doctor to fix me even though I'm not broken," she says, "Mommy and Daddy would be happy about that, but they shouldn't be. If you pretend I am very sick and that I died - then they will be sad about it, but they should be."

She sighs, and pokes along all the lines in her chart, re-checking.

"When I fix it they can find out I'm alive, right?"

[salus_populi]

"Of course," says Aelise. "And they'll probably still be alive too, even if it takes you a very long time."

[alicornucopia]

"Maybe since you have already paid special attention to me, you could immortal them, to make sure," suggests Mehitabel. "You could say 'I am sorry I could not fix your sick daughter, would you like to live forever?'" She pauses. "Also, could I be dying slow enough to say goodbye? Is there a disease that would do all that but also be slow?"

[salus_populi]

"You'd have to lie," Aelise reminds her. "But yes, I could find a disease like that, and a doctor to lie and say you have it. As for making them immortal... right now, I can only make very few people immortal. I'm going to try something soon that might let me make everyone immortal. If it works, your parents will be part of everyone. If it doesn't, I might have room for them, or I might not. But your parents aren't very old right now, so there's plenty of time to figure that out."

[alicornucopia]

"I can lie a little bit to say goodbye," Mehitabel says. "I think that's better than just pretending to die without saying anything. If you can make everyone immortal does that mean you don't need Chelsa anymore because the problem with wars is people dying?"

[salus_populi]

"No," says Aelise. "I can't make people that kind of immortal. I can only make them younger, down to about eighteen or twenty, and a little bit healthier, so they don't die of old age and usually don't get sick."