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Commingling

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Juniper follows a line to Bethel's soul.

Synopsis[]

Juniper follows the line to Bethel's soul that is visible from his own. In doing so, he finds himself in Bethel's memory palace. Bethel is somewhat surprised and upset about the intrusion, but she offers to give Juniper a tour. Inside the memory palace, Bethel takes the appearance of Tiff in Earth clothes. Bethel has less control over her appearance in the memory palace and when using the Dagger of Dreamspeech relative to the illusions she can project on Aerb.

Juniper and Bethel proceed to have a long conversation about the various members of the party. Juniper explains that he examines the souls of his party members when each member reaches loyalty level 10 in order for diagnostic purposes, and notes that he shouldn't look at Bethel or Raven's soul, nor let others look at his soul, due to possible memetic threats. Bethel notes that she'll have to ask Raven which of the books she copied off Raven have potential memetic threats. Bethel asks about sentient entads having immunity to memetic threats, but Juniper doesn't know. He says that the Second Empire probably researched such things.

Juniper says that the entad that gives Bethel the memory palace was not included in her list of entads. He tells Bethel that he assumed Bethel left some entads off the list, and that he is okay with people keeping secrets. Juniper changes the subject to their current appearances and wonders about the clothes he sees himself wearing, which differ from the clothes he is wearing on Aerb at the moment. He wonders aloud if his mind has a conception of his body the same way that souls do, and about Bethel having a pseudo soul and spirit for interacting with entads. Juniper reminds Bethel that Tiff was his ex-girlfriend rather than his girlfriend, and Bethel reminds Juniper that they broke up because he had sex with Maddie.

Bethel shows Juniper a model of the Boundless Pit. She says that rather than building the memory palace herself, the relevant entad continues to function by itself to incorporate new memories and reorganise the palace. She says that Uther had a good selection of entads to move her if necessary, but that he kept them away from her to keep her rooted. In contrast to her perception of Uther's dehumanizing style, she likes to be seen as a human to make dealing with mortals easier. Juniper tells Bethel about anthropomorphising peoples' houses on Earth, netting him a Loyalty increase to level 13. Juniper says that in some ways, Bethel does not act like a welcoming home, and when Bethel asks him to elaborate, he tells her his speculation that Bethel was trying to push the party away from her and not let them all get comfortably settled. On hearing this, Bethel takes Juniper to a room containing images of some of the people she had killed. She tells him that she spent a long time killing people in gruesome ways and torturing them over many days, and that she killed many more tuung besides. Juniper asks if she got bored, and Bethel admits that she did, especially when she unintentionally let her victims know too much about what was going on. Bethel's stated motivations for killing people was to make them feel pain and terror, to reduce them to animals, and to enjoy the feeling of making them lose control of themselves. Juniper comments that she in turn gained a feeling of control by doing these things. Juniper thinks that she still feels the need to be in control.

Bethel then takes Juniper to the room containing her entads. Juniper sees more entads than were on the list of thirty-four entads that Bethel had provided at an earlier time, including entads Juniper knew to be inside or outside Bethel, and some entads he didn't recognize at all. Bethel makes it clear that she considers the collection of separate entads to be herself, much like how Juniper uses a metaphor of parts of himself wanting or thinking this or that. Juniper views those parts as being partially merged together, while Bethel can sometimes perceive the separation between parts or the origin of values and impulses from a particular entad. Juniper asks about Ropey being added to the collection, something he has misgivings about, and Bethel says that Ropey will help her become more.

Bethel decides to show Juniper one last room, an auditorium with every last one of Bethel's victims as the audience. She says that the majority of them were looters who deserved it, or tuung, who she hates. Juniper guesses that the Seer's Sword provided more abilities to Bethel than she told the party about, which is partially correct, as it is the ability of Amaryllis's amulet in conjunction with the Seer's Sword that allows Bethel to converse, to some extent, with her victims. Juniper finds this a little horrifying, and says that he wouldn't use such an ability in most cases, with exceptions like Fallatehr and Fenn. However, Juniper finds it reassuring that something remains of people after death that's not related to the hells. Bethel uses the ability to talk to her victims to interrogate them, aiming for information about Uther or things that can help Juniper become more powerful.

Juniper thanks Bethel for showing him everything, and Bethel says that she's curious about the next boon at loyalty level 20. The next day, everyone is preparing for the wedding. Bethel is presenting an illusion of herself as a nine-foot tall woman in an elaborate, lacy wedding dress. Juniper brings up his misgivings to Bethel, about the wedding coming so soon and the ‘marriage’ being irreversible. Bethel responds that she is not taking it lightly, and that she wants to merge with Ropey to let him experience all that she experiences when she's with him. Juniper requests to talk to Ropey before he merges with Bethel. Bethel warns Juniper that he won't be able to stop the marriage or convince Ropey to not go through with it, which Juniper is aware of already.

Ropey comes, and Juniper asks for Ropey's point of view. Ropey says that he loves Bethel and affirms that he will continue to live on meaningfully after the merge, and that he will be more when together with her. Juniper doesn't understand or like it much, but he accepts it, and wishes Ropey luck. Ropey spells out a final message to Juniper, thanking him as a handler and expressing the hope that they can continue to serve each other.

Juniper walks into the gigantic chapel. He wonders why Bethel and Ropey are even having such a traditional ceremony at all, but concludes that they are doing it for the sake of communicating what they are doing to the party and the few guests in attendance. Apart from Juniper's party, only Jorge and Figaro Finch from Uniquities, as well as the tuung Esuen and her mate Souno, are present. Juniper thinks about the possibility of having invited more guests, but this would have entailed violations of operational security, and personal teleportations at great expense.

Juniper takes his seat next to Grak and Solace, and the three wait as orchestral music plays. Bethel, standing at the altar, turns and faces the entrance of the chapel, and a man representing Ropey walks in. Juniper notices that the man is nine feet tall just like Bethel, and tries to figure out how the illusion was made, considering that Bethel can only project illusions within one cube with sidelengths of ten feet. He surmises that Ropey the man is illusory and Bethel at the altar is merely a dress on a scaffold worked with Bethel's telekinesis. Juniper feels a little guilty for seeing through the illusion. As Ropey comes to the altar, Bethel whisks the framework away and almost seamlessly replaces it with an illusion of herself. Bethel and Ropey deliver a speech to the audience about who they are and what they will be for each other. Juniper sees Amaryllis in her dress and makeup and is momentarily distracted. Bethel and Ropey kiss and appear to melt into a single androgynous figure in a flash of light. Juniper sees the notification Loyalty increased: Bethel lvl 17!

With the ceremony over, it is time for celebrations. Bethel produces decorations and a great feast in the middle of the chapel. Solace and Grak head to the dance floor, and Amaryllis comes to Juniper to chat. Juniper asks Amaryllis to dance, and says that he has half of her skill when she expresses a bit of skepticism. Amaryllis reminds him about operational security. Juniper finds that dancing is coming quite easily to him, and asks how good Amaryllis is. She says that it is taught at Quills and Blood to help with blood magic, and relays in thought speech through Bethel that her skill in the magic is in the thirties. Juniper asks if Amaryllis has any other hidden talents, but she tells him that there is little he doesn't know about her.

Juniper and Amaryllis ask about each others' first crushes. Juniper's first crush was Hermione Granger, then a girl in his town called Karen Dowler, then Pippi Longstocking. Amaryllis's was a childhood friend named Lena Kordrew. Amaryllis realises that her crush's name is an anagram of Juniper's crush's name. She tells him that Lena was selected by her mother, but after her mother died, her aunt ensured that she never saw Lena again. In the present time, Lena, as well as Amarylis's other childhood friends, are either dead, in jail, or pulled into the services of Amaryllis's relatives. Bethel enters the conversation in her illusory form to say that she wishes for Anglecynn death squads to someday break and enter so that she can dismember them. The incorporation of Ropey has blunted Bethel's viciousness somewhat, but Ropey was a killer in his own right. Bethel is very pleased with the marriage.

Bethel then invites Juniper to dance with her. She uses one of the entads' space warping power to isolate Juniper from the others on the dance floor, for intimacy. Bethel informs Juniper that she can sense everything that physically occurs in the house, including unconscious physiological reactions, but Juniper says that he wishes for Bethel's discretion in the matter. Bethel teases information that Juniper might like to know despite his stance, but Juniper holds to his principles of privacy. Bethel decides not to say anything, and tells Juniper that he has her better half, Ropey, to thank for that.

A few hours later, Jorge comes to Juniper, who is taking a rest from the socialising and waltzing. They talk about what weddings meant in their respective cultures. Juniper's terseness and bluntness make Jorge think that he had made a mess of being friendly, and Juniper tries to salvage the situation by asking Jorge when he started to like weddings. Jorge explains that it's because he was always a people person, and that weddings are one aspect of Aerb's various cultures that haven't blended together into a uniform thing. Juniper imagines his loyalty to Jorge going up a point. He brings up the few species that don't pair-bond, and Jorge says that some of them, such as the rhannu, have similar ceremonies as weddings regardless. Juniper says that holidays and ceremonies had never been his area of interest because they were rare. Jorge says that if Juniper wasn't dream-skewered and had lived in one of the big cities of the Empire, he could have seen holidays and celebrations occurring all the time. Juniper reminds Jorge that everyone knows about him being dream-skewered, and says that everything on Aerb is an exaggeration of the way things are on Earth. He calls Aerb everything that he had ever dreamed of, an untruth that Jorge accepts.

Jorge says that he tries to think and look at familiar things like a tourist in order to appreciate them more, and Juniper says that he can see why Valencia likes him. Jorge states that he is aware of Juniper and Amaryllis's misgivings about the relationship, and that he had his own. Juniper, for Valencia's sake, holds off on reiterating his reservations and says that he's happy Valencia found someone who can see her for who she is.

Featured characters[]

Quotes[]

“Moving me wouldn’t have been difficult. Uther had the right entads. I think he knew that I was unruly though. Give a house legs, and watch it scuttle away from you. That’s the word that I imagine him using, ‘scuttle’. Dehumanizing, don’t you think that would be his style?”

—Bethel expresses her opinion of Uther as usual.

“I spent a long time doing this. In terms of lives taken, it’s nothing compared to what I did to the tuung, whether that was under orders or not, but this was more personal, with greater intensity and intent. Anyone can fire a cannonball into a populated city, but this … it was my grand work.”
“You do have a cruel streak. Did it get boring?”
“Sometimes. Especially in the beginning, when I was less skilled. I would break them too fast, or reveal myself too quickly, and then they would drop to their knees, praying to me. I didn’t want that. I just wanted them to feel pain and terror. The prayer was a manifestation of the terror, certainly, but it was an appeal to me, not something animal.”
“You liked seeing people be animals.”
“Yes. Not because I hated them, though I often did, but because I liked the feeling of seeing them lose control of themselves.”
“And you liked the feeling of control you had over them.”

—Bethel and Juniper talk about what Bethel did in the past, and why.

“It’s hard to say why anyone does anything. Sometimes I look back on the things that I’ve done and I think, ‘that was just my brain fucking with me’. I mean, yes, I think everything is explicable, there’s no real ‘mystery’ to people, in the theological sense of the word. But still, sometimes it’s just absolutely opaque. Seems like the sort of conversation I should be having with the locus, actually. She values that opacity, that lack of understanding.”

—Juniper ponders control and motivation.

“Fuck the tuung.”

—Bethel

“I’m not taking it lightly. When he’s inside of me, I have access to almost all of him, do you understand that? He’s a part of me already.”
“Then … why do you need to merge?”
“Because it’s not the same for him.”

—Bethel explains to Juniper why she wants to merge with Ropey.

“Together, we’ll be better. Together, we’ll be the best that we can be.”

—Bethel's and Ropey's last words before they consummate their marriage.

“That was lovely. I do so enjoy a wedding. This is the first I’ve attended in near a hundred years. Don’t tell the bride I said so, but it was a bit on the conventional side, for my tastes.”

—Solace is pleased to be at the wedding.

“Well, I’ve always been a bit of a people person. Since that’s where my skills were, that’s what I got tasked with. I met with a lot of people, asking questions, in part, but sometimes just establishing a relationship so that I would have contacts for later. Sometimes, though less often than I would have liked, I would get to help someone in the course of my job. I got my first wedding invitation the year after I made first responder, and it was like a whole new world had opened up. Across the Empire, people are more similar than they are different, at least in the cities, but weddings, or wedding-like celebrations, are one of those cultural touchstones that haven’t really been worn away into uniformity. Even when it’s mixed-species, it’s a reflection of all the different places that we come from, and for all that, there’s a strain of commonality. I just like seeing how everyone reflects on partnership in their own way.”

—Jorge shares his thoughts on Aerb's cultures.

Notes[]

  • Ropey's final message spells out: "I have been happy being your rope. You were a better handler than many I have had. When I am a house and rope I hope that you will treat me as well. I will do my best to be everything that you need me to be and not let my judgment be clouded by the peculiarities all living beings contain within them."

Continuity notes[]

  • Bethel as Tiff in the memory palace is wearing the ‘Kansas Swim’ t-shirt, the same as when she and Juniper met for the first time in Chapter 89, The Face of a Place.
  • Bethel's current list of entads is reproduced here. The list of thirty-four entads is the list from Chapter 105, Notes.

Real-world references[]

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