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@Draco )
It was a rare individual indeed that had even the slightest interest in Zea's castoff subjects. So few of them survived, and the ones that did tended to lead a strained existence that even Zea herself could see was pitiful enough to be unworthy of continuing. This one had been a particularly hardy little thing, which shouldn't have surprised her. She was very good at grafting hands, and these were so very much
like hands. At one point they had belonged to a large tree lizard.
The long digits, covered in tiny scales like pebbles smoothed over delicate skin, looked too frail and spindly to wrap around anything. Still, they curved seemingly without difficulty over the edge of the glass sample jar Zea had allocated to this little one. Its arched beak swept from right to left, watching the room with black eyes. Zea wasn't fond of bird eyes. They seemed structurally unsound, like they were always just on the point of bursting under the pressure of delicate eyelids. Blue-black feathers flashed under its throat, ending at bright yellow plumage under the little thing's belly.
It shifted one jarringly-drab wing to pick at the feathers beneath before resuming its examination of the room. It froze, staring, before opening its beak to let its wet pink tongue snap forward a full two paces, sucking it back down its throat with a tiny brown spider adhered to the tongue's sticky tip. There were other insects it could be going after, but it did not appear interested. Zea couldn't have this thing killing the only animals in the vicinity which effectively paid rent, and hoped that her prospective buyer would arrive soon.
Getting to Thanatos was always part of her 'rounds'. The strange in between place that made traveling so easy was always a bit of a pain to get to - finding an access point was so specific sometimes - but once she was there, Thanatos was a few steps away. Getting 'home' was faster, too. Xala pushed her hands through her shaggy red hair and took a breath, the directions were clear and she kept her head up and walked along.
There was something of interest to be sold. Xala had a fondness for such things and so, here she was. In her coat. Looking terribly out of place around the plain old humans. They didn't pay much attention to her as she walked along, which was good. It was hard to be inconspicuous in such a bright colour but it helped when people out of their way to not stare.
A living creature, this time. She pulled the note from her pocket and read it over again. The directions were there, the coin was in her other pocket and she looked up to make sure she was going in the right direction. This person was familiar to some degree, the hand writing was recognizable as the one that always bought the extra bits she came to sell.
Xala smiled faintly, curious as to what this thing could be. Something interesting enough to warrant an actual meeting! That must be it. Non-human eyes spotted the house, at odds with all the others - this one on the ground, how scandalous!- and she went to the door, knocking politely. And waited. Another, possibly impatient knock and she crossed her arms over her chest, shifting her weight... And waited. It would be rude to just open her door and let herself into this persons house - no matter how much she was okay with doing it. Xala knew how important being polite was to these Thanati people. So, she waited, pretending to be patient.
Zea had somehow gotten herself into the unenviable position of hiding spiders from whatever this thing was she'd made. Tonguebird. She'd just poked one back down beneath her table, hoping it would have the instinctive good sense to stick to the shadows away from the predator obliterating its cousins and competition. The spirits around her home were whispering and chattering at an unfamiliar presence, but since Zea had invited one she just let them mutter.
At the first knock, Zea backed away from the vapid bug-eating little tonguebird and slid a bamboo panel shut to block the main room on her ground floor off from the hallway and thus the front door. After the second knock, she slid open the outside door. Her curly black hair was pulled back away from her face, forcing it flat until it hit her plain cotton scarf and burst out into thick curls.
She smiled at her visitor, hoping that this was indeed her trader, and dipped in a quick abbreviated bow. Her loose side-slit skirt was black to hide spatterstains, but the simple bandau she wore over her narrow torso was the same undyed cotton as her scarf and it bared skin left ostentatiously blank.
"Xala?" she asked. "I'm Zea Misra." She stepped back to allow the fascinating-looking stranger access to the woven mats laid down over her entryway floor. "Would you like something to drink? I have some maté soaking."
The door opened to... A very ordinary looking woman. Xala was a little surprised, though it didn't show on her face. Not sure of what she was expecting, it wasn't... This. A polite smile and Xala gave an incline of her head in return. "Yes, we're Xala." And she entered the home. Usually she didn't go around doing house calls. They were practically friends though, the amount of deals they've done. The number of teeth and quills Xala has probably sold to this woman were too numerous to count.
Part of her wondered what they were for, the other part was just pleased at the things she could buy with the money. No one could call Xala overly curious, perhaps interested in things that could make her money. "Maté?" Was she supposed to know what that is? A strained smile. Did she come for tea? Was this the living thing? Xala's eyebrows went up but she kept her face neutral.
This woman better not have been the living thing. "We've never had that, we usually don't spent much time visiting houses so... Please." She smiled, the pointed fangs visible. "Do we remove our shoes or ...?" Xala looked down at herself, feeling a little awkward. When was the last time she was in someone's home? A long while.
We.
Now there was a thing Zea didn't hear every day. We. She was going to find an opportunity to ask about that.
"Ah! Yes, please do. You can leave your shoes by the door." Zea pointed with one bare foot at the sandals she herself had chucked off into the corner. "And thank you for asking. I should have said." And to think, people called her bossy. "Feel free to grab a cushion in the main room. The thing I made is in there. Just try to open and close the door quickly so it doesn't fly out. I'm not sure yet what it thinks of outside; it's been inside since I worked on it." Zea bit her lip, considering whether she should go in with Xala or go get beverages.
Beverages.
Xala was probably not going to rip the house to pieces any worse than weather usually did, so leaving her alone ought to be fine, right? Leaving them. Leaving them alone. Zea was so going to ask about that.
"But I'll go get some maté." Zea reached to shut the door behind Xala, further sealing in the little tonguebird she'd made after just the wrong combination of coffee and wine. "Be right back."
She hurried off to strain the pulp and stems out of the cold juice blend she preferred, leaving Xala alone with the living room, its brightly-colored cushions strewn about the woven mat floor, the shin-high table, and the jar with the tonguebird. As the most visually interesting thing in the room, Xala was the focus of keen staring first from one of the bird's eyes and then the one on the other side of its head, and then back to the first. It shuffled its feathers and scootched around the rim of the jar by adjusting its little reptilian feet.
Politely the boots came off, tucked beside Zea's and looked up when she was given instructions. Or given the option of doing something - They did sound more like instructions. So, Xala gave a nod and went to the main room while Zea went to get the drink. It was bright. Used to rocks and trees and outside all the pillows and comforts were sort of a foreign concept.
Was she supposed to sit on the cushion? Xala blinked at it for a moment before she did just that and seated herself at the table. Coming face to face with the little creature. Confusion was a keen feature on her face and she just stared at it for a moment, blinking at it. This was hardly what she was expecting. All the teeth Zea bought, Xala had been expecting something dangerous. The little bird-lizard was just cute.
A small smile on her face she reached a hand out. The creature gave her a weary beady eyed look before it decided to explore the new territory of something warm and far more interesting than a jar. So, enamored with the lizardbird, Xala called to Zea. "Would you mind if we bought this for ourself?"
Zea tipped a hollowed gourd over a pitcher, straining fruit pulp and maté stems out of the beverage through a few layers of loosely-woven cloth. It wasn't exactly cold, but it was more refreshing this way than it would be hot, at least in Zea's opinion. She squeezed the cloth-wrapped lump of fruit flesh and prickly wet yerba maté, draining the last bit of liquid out between her fingers into the pitcher.
"Glad you like it," she called back. Whether Xala kept it or sold it wasn't Zea's problem, but it would have been a shame if it had gone to someone who'd wanted to kill it. She'd worked so hard in her boozy intensity to keep it alive.
She rinsed her hands, shook the pulp out into her fertilizer sack, and then pinched two cups between her fingers to bring them with her. With a quick grip and twist of dextrous toes, Zea pulled the door aside and then slid it shut behind her. There was Xala, and there was the tonguebird. It had been handled a fair bit by Zea in its short new existence, but never by anyone like Xala. Zea was pleased to see it so docile.
"I gave it a tree frog tongue, and it figured out how to use it almost immediately. It doesn't want anything to do with flowers anymore. Just wants spiders." She laid the cups down next to the tonguebird's abandoned jar, and poured the yellowish juice-tea into Xala's and then her own. The maté itself was a little bitter, but the fruit juice was sweet enough to balance it somewhat. "Here, let me show you."
She clicked her tongue, and the little chimera looked at her. Zea dipped a finger into her cup of maté and then hung it downward so that the creature could see the drop hanging heavily from her fingertip. It blinked once, then snapped its stretchable tongue out to snatch the droplet back into its narrow curved beak. Zea had not been entirely precise before; she'd actually given it three tree frog tongues. "I've just been calling it Tonguebird but I don't think birds care what their names are."
Tonguebird was quite the feat. Xala was enchanted by it and all it's strangeness. Her interested grew at the fact that it liked to eat spiders. While she didn't have a problem with them, Xala had never enjoyed the surprise of having them crawl on her. Perhaps this little Tonguebird would be a good companion. "Tonguebird." Xala repeated, looking at it.
Watched it snap it's tongue out for a quick drink. Yup. "Good name." Now, Xala focused her attention on the woman. With Tonguebird on her hand seemingly content to just hang out now was the time for idle conversation. Also payment. With her free hand she went to the sack of coins and slightly awkwardly placed them on the table. "We weren't sure how much you wanted for... Tonguebird." She looked to it, and they had a moment of touching eye contact. "We hope that should suffice?"
And she took a sip of the drink, it tasted unfamiliar to her but she simply paused before taking another sip. At least it wasn't bad. Just different. "Do you make things like these often? We've never had a direct offer to sell something of yours before."
Zea watched the two creatures bonding. This seemed like it would work out. Hopefully Tonguebird--which was evidently its forever name now--would live long enough to make a decent pet. She was not really clear on bird lifespans beyond the ones people kept as pets because they were deranged and hated happiness.
She poked around in the coins for a moment, finally settling on pouring them into one hand and shifting them to the other. If her days at her mother's knee while Quinn gambled were any indication, this was absolutely fair for something Zea had ended up cobbling together while drunk.
"It's a hobby, I guess." She drank her own maté, decided that it did not in fact need any extra sugar, and then set the cup back down. Then after a moment's thought, she picked it up again and drained it the rest of the way. "The alchemists and I end up with a lot of the odds and ends, and I don't really know what to do with subjects that survive. I'm too busy for pets."
Not live pets, anyway.
Xala took another sip of her drink and her eyes went from Tonguebird to Zea. She was glad the amount sufficed and after it was accepted, there was an instant sense of possessiveness over the critter. It was terribly unique. Like her. Except she was all lizard and no birds. Xala smiled at the lizard bird and watched as it slowly climbed up her arm.
"Survive?" She looked interested, "Do they not always?" Another glance at Tonguebird as it made it's way up over her elbow. "We're only curious." Xala offered a smile, turning her attention back to Zea and finishing off her drink which turned out - to her surprise - quite refreshing.
Curious was acceptable. Curious was quite possibly the only emotional experience Zea ever wanted to hear about from anybody at any time. It excused far more than prompting Zea to discuss her work.
"Nah. Honestly I prefer working with dead things. They squirm a lot less, usually." She shifted one of her ankles to sit cross-legged in front of the table, the slit in her skirt splitting over her thigh nearly to her waist, and reached forward to refill her cup. In case Xala were only drinking theirs to be polite, Zea slid the pitcher closer to allow Tonguebird's new custodians to decide for themselves how much to consume. "But this little guy had a wounded foot, and..." She waved one hand in a aimless sort of circular motion. "...inspiration happened. It's hard to figure out how to put something so small to sleep, though, without killing it. Must have hit that sweet spot this time, so here's... well, Tonguebird."
The story had her looking at the critter and she nodded, "Well, it's nice to meet you, Tonguebird." She smiled at Zea and tilted her head, blinking those big non-human eyes. "So, you put all those teeth and quills on dead things?" Her tone held a entertained note, half not quite believing that's all she did. She leaned on the table and finished off her drink, deciding that it was indeed nice and filled her cup again.
"We don't know what you're up to... But we imagine you do far more interesting things than Tonguebird here." She leaned in and her voice got lower, "If we ever settle down we'll come to you with some requests, hmm?" An eyebrow tweaked up and she smiled.
Zea bobbled her head diagonally in a gesture that wasn't quite a nod, nor a negating shake. Some were dead. Some were alive. Teeth frequently got repurposed into things like pen nibs and other things that couldn't be permitted to soak up and waste too much pigment. She'd worn hair beads made from them for a while, but had lost them in some flood or other and never cared enough to make new ones.
Maybe she could make piercings...?
At the notion of requests, though, her face lit up in a rarely broad smile. Was Xala not put off at all? She must have her limits somewhere but... well... maybe Zea wouldn't find them immediately. That would be a nice change.
"That would be lovely. Aside from my research, I just tend to let inspiration strike and see what comes out of it. Teeth and quills are good for grafting onto just about anything, though." Zea leaned forward as well, her elbows on her knees. "I mean, imagine a stray dog. Only imagine it with an extra row of teeth and layers of quills mixed with its fur. Maybe some of the quills are poisoned. Makes a far better guard animal than your average human," she added, shrugging one shoulder. "...and guard humans don't need to be much smarter than a dog anyway."
Her free hand went to her face and she tapped at her cheek, drawing her nails over the scales on her cheeks. A sideways look to Zea and she did indeed pause to imagine such an animal. "That is fascinating," Xala said, still looking curious. "You're very talented. All our abilities are... From being what we are." Another pause and she went quite for a moment. "Is there a way to... Separate them? I mean, Tonguebird. If you wanted to. Could you make it two creatures again?"
She took a sip of the drink and stared down at the table before sort of looking up. Trying to seem non-nonchalant about it but still trying to ask the proper question.
It was a reasonable question, and more astute than Zea expected from almost anyone. Shockingly astute.
Zea squinted one eye shut, visibly calculating. "Three. No, four, five. And..." That head bobble again. "I guess? Seems like maybe it'd be sort of cruel to do that to something that was still alive. That's the kind of experimentation I reserve for subjects I have..."
Phrasing... phrasing...
"...subjects with whom I have absolved myself of certain ethical considerations."
There.
"But that?" She waved a hand dismissively, then pressed it into the mat behind her to lean on her arm. "That's an animal. It's not smart enough to do anything but follow its nature, so there's a limit to how much suffering I feel like I can get motivated to inflict on it."
Apparently Tonguebird was made of a grew creatures. Another glance at it, now at her shoulder. It was probably making it's way to the back of her neck to curl up and take a nap. Xala could relate, sometimes all she wanted to do in the sunshine was curl up and nap. Usually didn't happen though. A solemn nod and Xala moved slightly to look at her hands.
It was a long shot but... Maybe worth a try. "What about... Humanoids?"
"Oh well. That's different."
Plenty of sapient creatures were complete shit. With the worst of them, repurposing their anatomy was effectively a public service. With the trouble some folks got up to with their hands, wasn't it better for the whole world to find some other base on which to install them? On the rare occasions when Zea bothered to justify herself to herself, humanoids seldom gave her any difficulty.
"Anybody whose opinion I've got any interest in can just consent once they know what I'm proposing, and then it's no fault of mine if my best doesn't work out. And if I don't care about their opinion..." Zea put her other arm behind her on the mat, locking her elbows to let her shoulder muscles hold her up. "...every now and again it provides some educational opportunities I wouldn't get otherwise."
Zea was beginning to think she liked these Xala people. Good head on their shoulders. Not too squeamish.
Hm, the woman didn't understand. If she could fuse things together, Xala gnawed at her lip, looking down at the ground and then smiled when the feeling of something crawling into the back of her shirt. Ah, there Tonguebird was. Ready to take a nap, it seemed. Maybe his tummy was full of delicious spiders. "What about Us?" She tilted just stared at the table. Then again. It was just one body. Xala pulled out her cheeks while she try to figure it out mentally. "We were two people. And now..." She wiggled her fingers, "We imagine it would leave us with... Only half a body though. We're not enough to make two of us."
Zea jerked backward slightly as she realized what Xala were getting at.
"Oh!"
Two people with one body's worth of... well, body. That was a tricky situation. Zea had been there, but only briefly, and the ownership of her body was no longer the sort of thing she was willing to contest or even haggle about. She was a vicious tyrant and did not share well, not anymore.
Still! This was why Xala spoke in the plural! Zea hadn't even had to ask! Answers to questions needed to just fall in her lap more often. Not always, of course, because that would be boring, but people could certainly stand to save her some of the work of interrogating them.
"Well, I can communicate with spirits, but I don't have an empty body I could put one of you into, assuming that's even something you'd want." She shifted her weight to reach up and pull a curl of hair away from her ear. "Not a good body, anyway. I'm working on making a better one, but so far they all either have expiration dates or end up being parasites of one kind or another. They're not ready."
The look on Xala's face was comical to say the least. She'd been expecting... A far different reaction. Instead it was something like 'I'm sorry I can't help you right now.' Her hands went out and she shook them gently in a sort of 'hold on' fashion. "We don't..." she smiled, "We were just curious. There's..." Xala tilted her head, trying to figure out a good way to word it.
It was amazing alone that the woman went to solutions instead of more questions, "There's... One." She frowned, trying to word it right, "But... Two." She moved to entwine her fingers together, holding her own hands with the fingers interlocking. "We're just not ready to be one yet." Xala smiled, tilting her head to the side, "It's been years but we're still unsure of how to be one person." Another sip of the drink and she cleared her throat, "This is delicious by the way. At first it was a little weird because we've never had it before but it's... Good. Thank you for sharing it."
Just curious. What was curiosity without the pursuit of anything in particular? Xala were giving her a line, Zea was fairly sure, but that was all right. When Xala were ready to admit to themselves that they wanted her help, then they'd come and present her with this fascinating problem and she could pick around at the seams of their souls.
That would be a good day.
"I'm glad! It's good for waking up and staying alert, though it's not quite as intense as coffee or coca."
She was still watching Xala carefully, watching for signs that they were at all in conflict over what to say or how to move. If they felt separate but could cooperatively run the body... that must mean that the borders between them were at least a little blurred. Zea had never been able to share her body with anything, not without some degree of resentment or a little bit of a power struggle. Not since she was a kid anyway, but then she'd just been a kid. Zea had been easier to push around then, for a spirit sufficiently motivated.
Perhaps Xala had an arrangement that was more harmonious. Fascinating. Zea couldn't imagine ever trusting another soul so much, enough that becoming one entity would be anything short of a nightmare. How very odd.
A smile and she finished off her second cup, "We mostly drink water. We're rarely with civilization. You'd be surprise at how many interesting creatures live in remote locations." The tone of voice implied that Zea, in fact, would not be surprised. The lack of questions still surprised her but she kept quiet and gave a shiver when she felt Tonguebird ruffle it's feathers at her neck.
"On our next outing, is there anything you'd like us to find in particular?" A smile on her face and she kept her hands on her lap and her back straight. It would be bad to be rude now, of all times.
Tonguebird was getting comfortable. What a horrible little thing, getting all over Xala's skin. Zea liked such creatures better when they were dead. What if it defecated? Birds did that, just... all the time. Live birds did, anyway. Dead ones just occasionally flaked or oozed, which Zea found far more manageable.
"Just the usual. Tough hides, sturdy jaws, spines, poison, blah blah blah."
The usual. Zea's usual.
"We have tanners here but their workspace smells bad even by my standards, so I'd much rather just get the stuff fresh and have an entropy specialist stop it from decaying."
Xala looked... they looked fine. How were they so damned comfortable?
The usual.
Xala nodded and tilted her head. Yeah, those were words. "Magic is beyond us," She gave a wave of her hand and smiled. "Though, being able to control fire would be very useful." She folded her arms over her chest and glared off at nothing, "We can just blow it out. How useful is that?" Not interested in Zea she leaned in. "What's it called?" She indicated to the critter in her shirt, "what you made him with."
Blowing fire was actually quite useful, outside of Thanatos. In places where they didn't care about what impact they had on their local environment, Xala could be a smith, or a glassblower, or a baker, or run a crematorium. Probably some other stuff as well. A chef?
"The base is a sunbird. The legs are from a tree lizard. The tongues are just from tree frogs. They're all pretty common and mundane taken individually." Zea overstated a grimace for comedic effect, miming embarrassment. "I just... kind of got into my cups the other night and realized they were all similar sizes... one thing led to another..."
Things happened. Tonguebird happened.
Xala listened with interest and just smiled, giving a soft chuckle. "We meant the magic. It was magic, right?" She made an attempt to look over her shoulder at Tonguebird but she couldn't quite turn her head that far. "Tonguebird is perfect. It's like you made him for us without knowing it!" A grin and while Zea wasn't seemingly too pleased with the spider eating monster, Xala was quite content with it.
The priestess nodded her confirmation that she'd used magic to make the grafts. It was typically easier and cleaner to just pinch everything together than to bother with sutures and cauterization and probable gangrene and eventual death. Just squish things together and move on, done. Usually she didn't have anybody get this excited about it, though...
Zea stared dubiously at Tonguebird, looking between it and Xala. She didn't see it. But whatever. Most people didn't get what she was into either, so maybe it was just one of those things that nobody could understand about anybody else.
"Glad you're happy. I don't know how long its base organisms tend to live or how that'll impact its lifespan, but if you get really attached you could probably find someone to reanimate its remains."
"Re..." Xala paused, frowning for a moment, trying to process this information. Oh. She shook her head, "It's... All good. If Tonguebird passes away we'll send it on it's way." The idea of having a little reanimated corpse bird lizard was a little too weird for even her. As if on cue, Tonguebird meandered over her shoulder, clinging to her coat and giving Zea the look only a beady eyed bird lizard could.
"May we ask how you became interested in..." She looked at Tonguebird, trying to find a good word for what it was, "Creating creatures?"
So that was a definite no on the reanimation. To each their own, Zea supposed. Seemed like a waste, but Tonguebird belonged to Xala now so whatever.
"I don't know, I guess..."
This wasn't the angle people usually took when inquiring about Zea's work. Nobody really cared why her interests and values were what they were; they just wanted to make the minimum amount of polite conversation before fleeing at the earliest opportunity to talk to someone who had never watched a human heart beating. Now that she was a priestess it'd be rude to do elsewise, but hell. Here was Xala. What did they know about rude?
"...I just see ways things could be better, and then I can't really unsee them. My intention is to build a better body for mortal souls to inhabit, since these ones--" Zea laid her hand on her chest below her throat. "--are great, but have a lot of room for improvement. They fall apart just from having been alive too long."
"We're not human," she motioned to the scales on her face. To her eyes. The strange tattoos on her face that weren't even actually tattoos. Xala licked her lips, pondering for a moment before she leaned forward on the table, looking Zea over. "Do you intend to become immortal?" Xala looked her over, finding the revelation of someone wanting to not be human interesting.
There was a while in her life when the twins had wanted to be human. There wouldn't have been such a tragic mess if they had been. "You know, an elf would be good for something like that. Those things live for ages."
Zea grinned, and then chuckled, at the notion of just pulling on an elf body like a new sock or glove or sleeve. What the elf was supposed to do then, she supposed Xala was not really intending to help decide.
"They do. It's not really a large scale solution, though." Zea leaned back on her hands again and tilted her head so that her cheek was resting on her shoulder. It left her looking at Xala from a sort of frozen shrug. "At that rate I might as well just kill every human except myself and then forcibly colonize those regions with elves, since all those human bodies would die off anyway." It was the most direct path, right? "I want to fix us. You know? I don't mean being entirely impervious to anything the world might throw at us, but we've been dying of old age and infected hangnails and falling off of tall things for so long, and it's time to grow up and take a little responsibility for ourselves. So I guess that's what I'm trying to do."
While Zea was leaned back, Xala was leaned forward with Tonguebird crawling up and down her arm while she spoke. "All species have their fall backs." Xala started, "We're young, maybe younger than you?" She shrugged, "We're from a very small tribe in the Thunderblacks. Eventually, they turn into a sort of... Dragon. We eventually learn to mimic this form, simply because there are so many humans," Xala pursed her lips. "We're not human. In anything more than appearance, but you're so numerous we learn to look like you as a safety measure." Her eyebrows went up and she smiled, "We would say that's a good trait. There are many of you, simply because you pass away so easily. There aren't many of us."
Xala pondered for a moment, "We would like to be human." She smiled, "Far easier that way."
Rare draconic species. Zea was talking to a representative of a rare draconic species that could potentially merge multiple individuals into a single one. They could definitely camouflage themselves as humans and eventually would go--sort of--full dragon.
What an interesting specimen.
"Yeah, blending in can be useful. Also being able to use ladders and chairs. I don't know how many limbs you normally have or how big, but human architecture doesn't leave much room for other body types."
Zea hadn't expected to be anybody's ideal form, except perhaps for a few forms of undead or people laboring under other troublesome curses. There simply were too many design flaws. Then again, there had to be a reason Zea had been given these insights and not everybody else. Zea was the one who was supposed to do something about them. Xala... Xala doubtless had some other purpose.
"And we get everywhere, so I suspect human architecture is kind of ubiquitous."
Zea tried to picture a centaur living in a traditional Thanati elevated house. No part of it made sense.
There was a kind smile and she listened, tilting her head. Zea was ... Different. Very educated. Very... Well, Xala could barely read, so she was even sort of amazed they were having a decent conversation after the purchase of Tonguebird. "We're as big as we're going to get." Xala chuckled, "We're the odd one out of the tribe, we won't be changing." And she'd accepted that. Sort of. Not really at all. There was no fixing it now though, and she'd grow to accept it. Someday. Maaaybe.
She shrugged, "You worry about things no one else does, don't you?"
So Xala weren't just rare. They were unique. As interesting as that was for Zea, it lent some context to Xala's assertion that being human might make for an easier life. Being interesting to Zea was not the same thing as having anybody to relate to, anybody whose life might take a similar path. Being interesting to Zea was frequently somewhat cold comfort for everybody else in the world.
"Ha!" Zea tilted her head back to grin briefly at the ceiling. "Sure does seem that way sometimes."
Thunderblacks, though. Too bad Zea's mother was some kind of incurious and savage beast in rut; it might have been nice to ask someone from the plains what Xala's tribe was really like. "Is the double-person thing common for your tribe? I've never heard of it outside of possession, but you're also the first person I've met from the Thunderblacks. Or, y'know." Zea winced. "Pair of people. Sorry."
"Well, someone has to worry about things no one else does." Xala nodded, trying to provide some small comfort. Clasping her hands together on the table she watched Zea and blinked at the question. She frowned for a moment, trying to think of how to explain it. "It's not common." She started, looking up at the ceiling before down at the table.
"We're not really... A pair." Xala pursed her lips, trying to think of how to explain it. "It's... What was a soul torn in two but... In us it's... Just one." Which was the super weird part. "We remember two of everything until we were merged." she tried to smile, but mostly came out as a confused smirk, "We were a pair of people. Now we're... One person... But... We don't really like it. So..." Xala tapped at the table, "We haven't gotten used to it yet."
Zea let the air out of her lungs through loose lips in resignation. This was a shitty fate on a level that she couldn't quite get her head around. Certainly she was used to a certain amount of noise, but any cohabitation of her body had been temporary. She wouldn't have enjoyed being stuck that way, but then again...
...she hadn't liked that spirit very much.
Maybe Xala liked theirs--hers? each other?--a little better.
"How'd you get along before? I've had..." Zea swallowed, unused to mentioning this even euphemistically. "...some uninvited sharing happen myself, but I suspect yours is different."
How did they get along before?
Badly. Xala remembered herself when she was the two girls. The twins. The fights they'd get into. The anger. "We didn't." She chuckled, tilting her head. "We weren't whole as two people. It made us angry. We were twins, we were mirrors." She looked down at her hands, giving them a flex like she was still not used to seeing just one pair.
"It's just... One now." Which was odd to admit, "But we were two people for so long..." Her voice went soft, "It feels like I'm throwing my twin sister away when we don't talk... Like we do." Xala paused and tilted her head, "Ours is much different. We were one soul with two bodies and now we're one with one body but two sets of memories." Yeah, Xala frowned looking Zea over.
"Uninvited guests? That's unfortunate. We've never had to deal with t--- Wait." She sat up straight, staring at Zea, "Ghosts? Of people?" She frowned, not liking the idea of those. "We don't like things when we can't simply... Beat them up."
This all sounded really really fucked up. Inima's clit, Zea'd never heard of such a fucking thing. What a hideous situation. Being properly one wouldn't solve all that, but neither would splitting back to two. It was just probably going to be horribly shitty to be Xala forever.
She blinked away this brief moment of perspective and gave a single shocked bark of laughter.
"They cause more trouble outside Thanatos than here. Here we tend to take care of them well enough that they don't fall apart and get too deranged. The only ones here I've had trouble with are the ones that came with us when we moved, but they don't tend to mess with me anymore. You get any ghost problems, write me, yeah?"
Was Zea seriously offering this? She really was. And what was even more bizarre, she meant it. Weird.
"They don't know what the hell to do about ghosts on the mainland. Like ignoring them will just make them go away. Like dead people have anywhere to go anyway, right?"
Xala made a face and nodded, "We'll write you." Or she'd try. Really hard. Maybe manage a few words before just scribbling the words ghost and how she thought she spelled her name. There was some sort of repeating letter in there, she was sure. Maybe she'd just sing a song to a bird and send it to Zea, that was more common for her. Except not, Xala couldn't remember the last time she'd sent a message that way.
"Sure they have somewhere to go," Xala smiled and then dead panned, "Away from me. We don't like ghosts. Too..." She wiggled her fingers as Tonguebird crawled onto the back of her hand to stare at Zea with it's beady little eyes, "Spooky." Xala didn't do spooky. Give her an impossible challenge or some strangely large thing to climb.
Live people were so weird. Ghosts were spooky, even though they were just people outside of bodies, but sharing a body was just one of those things and obviously composite monsters made by drunken mortologists, well. Those were all fine. But take a person out of their body and the world got spooky.
So weird.
"In Thanatos they tend to be pretty okay. We take care of them so they don't fall apart and lose track of themselves. Places like Connlaoth, though..." Zea shook her head and directed a low whistle up at the ceiling. "That's got to be a total shitshow."
Xala squinted slightly and rested her chin in her hand, looking at Zea for a moment she shuddered. "Connlaoth has those Mordecai things." She looked off to the side, having never come across one but knowing what they could do. Gently she shook her head, "maybe they keep ... Those... Under control?" She shrugged, not really knowing.
"We don't know much about ghosts, they don't..." She tried to think of how to phrase it, "We go somewhere else when we die." She frowned, "At least that's what we believe."
Xala had been taught some interesting things about how death worked, but perhaps there were special cosmic arrangements for people who started out their lives separate and merged later on. Zea doubted it was what Xala referred to, but still... the matter was worth considering even if Xala obviously could not help Zea figure it out.
"Not everybody sticks around so close to the living," she conceded. "Quite a few people, when they pass? They really pass. Just..." Zea made a whooshing sound and swept the air with one hand. "...all the way over. But anybody left behind pretty much ends up going through the same stages if they're not cared for. I don't know if Mordecai can banish or destroy ghosts, but if they can't..." She sucked her teeth derisively. "...I wouldn't want to be anywhere near their backward asses come Night of the Dead."
Xala's eyebrows went up and she leaned forward, interested.
"What's Night of the Dead? Is that..." She leaned back and frowned, "They don't come back to life do they?"
Mainlanders. What the hell were any of their parents or clergy teaching them? Knowing when the spirits of the dead were particularly close to the world of the living seemed like the kind of very basic information about literally every single mortal person's present and future that someone ought to be letting them know. If Zea knew, nobody else's parents had any excuse.
"Not in bodies. It's just when their spirits are closest, so on Thanatos we have a lot of parties to celebrate the time we were able to share with them when they were alive and the certainty of seeing them again someday. It lets us take care of the living and the dead at the same time. Without magic it would be very difficult to do that."
It'd certainly be a one-way communication: ghosts freaking out, living people unable to cope, living people become ghosts and freak out, and on it would go. It was no way to manage an afterlife.