Gratuitous Epilogue : Touchstone Extras (9 page)

If Ys ever lets her
guard down she might find that more people are drawn to her than
she expects. For the moment I think she has a crush on Shon (who
scored brownie points both by being great with Rye, and by being
related to Isten Notra, and pretty damn intelligent on his own
account). She pretends to find him boring, of course, but Isten
Notra is not the only reason she's so careful about her appearance
when she goes on her monthly visits.

I'm such a softie about
Ys. I went to one of the few custom clothes-makers in Pandora a
couple of weeks ago to talk wedding dresses (to make projections of
what I mean by wedding dresses and to try and design one which
doesn't look completely out of place) and my primary preoccupation
was that I needed flower girl dresses that were both girly and yet
suited Ys. Ys won't wear girly clothes because she thinks she
doesn't suit them, so my secret mission is to find something which
looks so good on her she can't help but want to wear it.
Fortunately the dress-maker seemed to properly understand what I
wanted, and to take the request seriously. [Of course, being able
to say she designed Caszandra's wedding outfits gives her plenty of
incentive to take me seriously – I have to admit I find this fame
useful at times.]

That's about all the
planning I've managed for my wedding. Maze and Alay's baby will be
born just before it. I did agonise for quite some time over whether
to postpone getting married until I can try to bring Mum here, but
Kaoren had to struggle to hide how much he hated that idea, and I
think Sen would be too upset.

Other than First Squad
romances, it's been a quiet month, the highlight being Kaoren's and
then Sen's birthday (I had a winged fairy princess dress made for
her, which she would wear for every moment of every day if she were
allowed to). Kaoren thinks we're over the first bad stage of her
Sights development, and we've been having more unbroken nights, and
Siame is being very useful and encouraging and giving Sen
confidence that things will get better. [Siame is getting along
very well with everyone but me. Me she still tries to have as
little to do with as possible, and we're letting it go at that for
the moment.]

Siame spends most of
her time being fascinated by snow, and has been making very white
paintings – and naturally all the kids find snowball fights and
building snowmen and discovering icicles to be amazing and new and
fun. Only a light snow layer at the moment – the heavy snowstorms
haven't started yet – and first weekend after it starts to snow
properly we're going to go across to Siriath and have another epic
snowball fight, but this time with children and random family
members involved. We're going to make a yearly tradition of
it.

Rye's rather mournful
for the effect of Winter on his garden, but was handily distracted
into documenting the Winter habits of all the animals he's
discovered in Summer. And is practicing faithfully for snowball
throwing.

Lira's twelfth birthday
is in two weeks and I'm really stuck on what to get her. It would
be easy to buy her a statue, but she seems tremendously judgmental
about the statues she doesn't like, so I think I'd better leave her
statue-collecting to her.

August

Epic Fight is Epic

So much fun. The big
snow dump finally came, and 'First Park' (as we've taken to calling
the park between Lohn and Mara's and Jeh, Ketz and Grif's houses)
was a fantastic place for it – we knew where the benches and rocks
were, and there were enough trees for a little bit of cover, but
not enough to be getting in the way. The fight was in two parts –
first a massive, silly free-for-all which all the younger kids got
to participate in. It was great to see Deal running about shrieking
with the rest of the younger kids – and also that he went and clung
to Grif when he got a bit overwhelmed. He's still a pretty trembly
sort of kid whenever anything unexpected happens, but is no longer
constantly dependant on Zaranar, and has become rather possessive
of his three new parents – he gets jealous if they pay too much
attention to anyone but himself, Zaranar or Enna.

After the first fight,
Alay and Ketzaren took all the younger kids for a snowman building
competition on the patio of Ketz, Jeh and Grif's house, and the
snowball fight became 'serious business'. Well, as serious as it
can be with ten year-olds. The second game was a paired hunt, and
each Setari was paired with a relative to make winning harder.
Kaoren was paired with Rye, of course, and I teamed with Ys while
Lira teamed with Siame until deciding to pretend that she'd been
injured and going to Lohn and Mara's to watch (and obligingly help)
Mara's grandparents prepare some of the truly massive amount of
lunch needed – her interest in cooking hasn't waned yet. The hunt
was a frantic affair with so many people (all Setari on Muina had
been invited, plus any relatives they wanted to bring) and though
everyone was supposed to keep it light-hearted, it got rather
intense in spots. It was a very close fight – Raiten's younger
brother has a strong Combat Sight and together they were
extraordinarily good, and there were plenty of other excellent
teams. Rye doesn't have Combat Sight, and he was totally white with
nerves beforehand because he hates the idea of letting Kaoren down.
Fortunately Kaoren's just god-like at these things, and also rather
good at creating opportunities for Rye to get shots off, and though
he didn't win as totally as last time, he still brought 'Team
Ruuel' in first. He said afterwards that wanting Rye to win was
excellent motivation for doing his best, and I have a nice image
for my collection of Rye's celebratory hug with Kaoren. Kaoren
totally looks like Rye's Dad in the picture (except for only being
ten years older) and it's one of the few images I have of him
publicly smiling.

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.

September

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?