Thirty-eight

"I'd never do such a thing."

"Perhaps it's a safeguard and killing would release you somehow. I've heard of such cases - mostly in stories, though." And mostly involving canids. No hero or heroine in their right mind would follow instructions from a kitten, after all...

We should point out that there's no such thing as a domestic cat on Shade. Suitov didn't share his familiar's, erm, aversion.

Meanwhile, inside, Grey decided that if this was his hallucination, he might as well have a look around. He got up a bit shakily, and after a nervous glance around the room walked towards the door. Slowly.

Being wary of someone of Serpentine's appearance, even ingoring the wings and ears, was sort of a hardwired reaction.

When he walked past Serpentine, Grey kept his head down, but couldn't resist a look at the wings - as close a look as he could manage from the corner of his eye. Somehow he hadn't expected that texture and level of detail from a hallucination.

The door was surprisingly heavy, and the outside surprisingly bright. After his eyes got used to the sun, Grey saw more plants than he had ever before seen in one place, which was pretty impressive, and something that might be supposed to look like a street, that wasn't impressive at all.

He decided to have a closer look at the trees - maybe they would get fuzzy if he got closer - and started wandering around.

---

Snog said he didn't want to reply, so...

Having finished cocking its leg against a few of them, a black dog the size of a mastiff (though more herding-dog in build) chose that moment to emerge from the trees.

It snuffled peacefully at a few blades of grass, looked up, saw Grey and trotted over. Viewed close up, it had visibly red eyes.

"Yo," the dog said in comprehensible English (or what sounded like it, anyway).

"Hi." About what did you talk with a dog? "Nice weather, isn't it?"

Grey knew the general shape of dogs, but had never seen one up close. He wondered for a moment if red was a normal eyecolour for them, before dismissing it as not important.

"Oh yes. A hunting wind." The dog raised its nose and half-closed its eyes, remembering chases.

"You new here?" it added. "I didn't smell you around before."

"Yes?"

Grey blinked at the dog in utter befuddlement. Smell. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"What is 'here' supposed to be, anyway?"

Preying on Grey's mind was the sheer detail. He couldn't remember any dream in which he could count blades of grass, or hairs of dog fur, let alone smell anything - and the air here had a strange smell. But then, maybe inside a dream that was normal, and you just forgot afterwards. Thinking about it made his head ache.

"It isn't really any...thing... or anywhere, whatever. I personally think here just exists because people appear here. Or maybe the other way round."

This dude was clearly hungover. Baskerville had the good sense not to mention that he knew a brilliant cure for that.

... which was just as well, because for Grey it would not be a good thing to roll in a fire.

The idea the dog expressed made perfect sense in Grey's still rather confused mind.

"And how long do people stay here, usually, before they disappear again?"

"Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes days. People kind of wander off if whatever reason brought them here went away. Then again, sometimes if they're kitties, they hang around and we can never get rid of them."

He scratched his neck energetically with a hindfoot. There was no accompanying jingle of tags, because Baskerville never wore a collar.

A long, drawn-out hiss, rather reminiscent of a sigh, echoed out through the interior of the inn, wending its way quite nonchalantly from the back veranda. "I heard that, doggy-woggy. I'd teach you a lesson if I could be bothered moving."

Jelly yawned and turned his head back towards the mages and their discussion, resting his head on his tiny forepaws and half-shutting his eyes.

"I should ignore him, Jelly, if he's annoying you. He's quieter without an audience." Suitov smiled pleasantly.

The same was true of himself - not that Iceheart was ever what you'd call rowdy any more. Even talking to his old gang earlier in the day, and waving them off as they left, had felt dangerously mechanical.

Not relaxing much these days. Knowing me, of course, I'll have gone and forgotten how.

Maybe a good bump on the head would have helped.

At the moment Sylvie very much wished that on someone else.

"What area did you have in mind for the garden, anyway?" she asked Suitov.


Grey leaned forward and had a really close look at Baskerville.

The big black dog observed him back, though with his nose more than his eyes.


"Just about where it was to begin with," Iceheart said. "I know it's difficult to make out through the overgrowth, but, well, here -" He sketched a luminescent line around the boundaries, causing them to show up clearly in the afternoon light.

He wondered as he did so whether this use of magic would shock her too. Too bad if it did, because he wasn't in a mood for relentless disapproval. He'd been at this for ten years and change, and had managed in all that time not to injure anyone he hadn't meant to.

It barely made her blink. Quite apart from her having by now some small idea of Suitov's style, light and visual illusions were said to be notoriously easy, and she'd seen more impressive ones. Sometimes she regretted having ignored those fields almost completely, since for things like this they were actually useful.

"Looks like all you need for a hedge all around might be trimming what's already growing there. You wanted some space behind the building for outside tables when the weather permits, yes?"




Grey did not smell of alcohol (or decomposition products thereof) at all.
He had a vague notion that keeping a conversation going would be good.

"Are you a hallucination?"

Not the most sensible or diplomatic thing to ask, but, well...

There was a certain amount of wagging at this. "That's always a possibility, in the sense that one or both of us might be dreaming being here while really asleep on a couch or street corner somewhere. If I was someone dreaming, I'd definitely want to look exactly like this. But still, I'd have to say that no, from my perspective I'm as certain as I can reasonably be that I exist. Then again, maybe that's what a hallucinatory dog would say."

---

Oh thank goodness. If she'd been alarmed by something as simple as a light illusion, I'd have panicked.

Light was easy. It was no coincidence that the first thing a magic-able child learned was a simple torchlight. Except for young Iceheart, who just had to be different and leap straight for the states-of-water transformations.

(But then, he'd had a very specific task in mind. He hadn't been considering making a proper study of magic. Indeed, he hadn't had any kind of plan in mind to cover the eventuality that he survived.)

"Yes. On both counts. If we start from what was there before - though that's not to say I'm married to that layout..." Iceheart added more lines, a rough indication (gleaned from poking around the weed-overgrown garden before Weft and the others had arrived) of flowerbeds, paved paths and lawn, interspersing succinct comments: "I'm hoping the caryopteris there is salvageable" and "The rose bushes will have to go somewhere around here".

"Then there's the fountain; it can stay where it is, though I think the centrepiece will have to be replaced for crimes against good taste." A wireframe overlay grew up, almost organically, around the crumbling sandstone, showing where the worn and eroded parts might be replaced.

He went back and shaded a few parts in colour.

A black hole with a diameter of about one meter appeared in the air near the fountain. It seemed to get a gray rim after appearing, and soon Kim plopped out of it to stand on the grass. Ey was wearing eir trenchcoat and hat (besides usual clothing like pants and shirt) for the moment.

Kim performed a light telepathic scan to check for anything dangerous or otherwise out of place, but was content with finding nothing with a light probe, after which ey focused eir attention to the other people which for the moment seemed to be Grey and Baskerville. Ey attempted lightly scanning them as well – it wasn't just a basic survival method, but ey couldn't really help it, either. Ey tried to do it so that they wouldn't notice it even if they had telepathic or similar abilities, but that was always a game of some chance with weird creatures, even with Kim's level of skill and high experience.

I think I have just been outsmarted by a dog who might not even exist.

Grey turned around when he heard someone approaching (or appearing). Out of pure habit he greeted with a wave and "Hello", sounding slightly dazed.

He had no idea about telepathy whatsoever.

The surface of Baskerville's mind was full of scents, facile philosophical thoughts, dollops of contentment and a discreet yearning for violent combustions. He definitely didn't seem to present any immediate danger, though.

A flurry of tailwags directed at Kim was the dog's analogue of Grey's greeting. He tried to catch eir scent; that could potentially give him as much information as a light telepathic riffle, at least with creatures he knew.