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'Someone once told me, there's a land of dreams, where our lives are never done... they go on, and on...' (Beads of Tears, Mermaid's Scar)

"What do you see?"

What a loaded question this always was, she thought. He was doing his best, she couldn't fault him for that. The inkblot test was part of the job. It was something that he offered to many of his clients, when he assessed that it might help jump start them into a helpful direction. "That's the question, isn't it?" He nodded. "There's no wrong answer." She thought about it idly for a moment, distracted by an ink pen on his desk. "Where did you get it?" He blinked. "What do you mean?" She pointed at it. "The inkblot." He shrugged. "From the store." She shook her head. "Where do they get the ink, I mean?" He covered his mouth in thought. "You know, I'm not sure."

It had been the first question that had popped into her head. "Sorry, I guess I'm missing the point of the test. I don't mean to derail." He shook his head. "No, no. There's no such thing." Mano had always had a way of surprising him. "Is it made from animals, do you mean?" She nodded. "I'm just curious." As a journalist, as a vegetarian, *and* as an octopus herself, it made sense that she'd wonder about such things, Mandrake couldn't help but think. "I think it *used* to be made from animals, way back in the old days. Not anymore, though." She grunted in acknowledgement. "Thanks." This was already telling on its own. "You think about where things come from a lot, don't you?" She acquiesced.

"Where they're from, where they go... Cause and effect in general, I guess. It comes with the territory, maybe." She didn't declare herself certain of anything lightly, the otter noted. "Does it make you think of anything else?" She opened her third eye at it. "It always tells you more about the person looking at the image than about the image itself when they answer, doesn't it?" He nodded. "That's true. That's part of how it's supposed to work." She squinted at it with all three eyes. "See, when I looked back on Eli's life's work, I saw the work of someone who wanted peace in the world... When Atlan looked at the same thing, he saw someone's work incite him to violence. He encouraged others to see it the same way."

His whiskers twitched. "The question of interpretation is always a vital one, isn't it?" She nodded. "That's what I've been thinking about, yeah. On one hand, I was raised to believe in the value of non-violent resistance. I was proud to stop Atlan's warmongering. It was one of the things I was proudest of in my life, you know?" He nodded. "As well as it should be." She'd saved many lives with what she'd done, fish and non-fish alike. "Thanks... It's just that, in the wake of everything that's been happening, I've been starting to worry about the importance of context. Up here, we fish and other minorities have just started being targeted even more than before. I've been wondering if it's right for me to risk encouraging people not to fight back."

She scratched the back of her head. "That's because you don't take your new role at the head of Fishism lightly, isn't it?" Her face turned an almost bluish shade of purple when she was embarrassed. "I can't really afford to you know? There are consequences. Cause and effect." She saw him underline something on his notepad. "Did you talk to Eli about it?" He asked her whether she'd talked to her dead girlfriend in her dreams in the same tone in which he'd have asked her if she'd talked to Klein about it, just like that. "I did." He raised an eyebrow. "Did you talk to her about it last night, before what happened?" She nodded sheepishly. "Yeah..." He looked her in the eyes with empathy. "What did she say about it?" She sighed.

"She said I'd know what to do. She said to keep paying attention to each situation on a case-by-case basis. If I keep doing that, she said, I'll know what to do." He tilted his head at her. "Was what happened at your job part of why you asked her about that?" It did seem like the timing of it had been too fitting for it to have been a coincidence. "It was," she admitted. "When those people threatened me... I got scared, Mandrake. Even though I know how to fight, even though I saw combat back when I was a war journalist in the Middle East, it was a long time ago. It was... different somehow. I have to seem brave for the other Fishists, though, you know?" He nodded. "But that's not always easy for you to do, is it?" She shook her head.

"No... You see, it's like someone is a parent, and they're talking to me about it like I'm the other parent, going 'Oh, you can't show weakness, we have to put on a brave face for the kids, or they'll be even more scared.'" It was an imperfect analogy, but it seemed to serve her purpose well enough. "The thing is... I *am* the kids, Mandrake. And I'm terrified." She looked down. "We're all scared, Mano. What happened was a scary thing for all of us. It doesn't mean you're weak that you'd be shaken by it. This isn't an ordinary foe. Our entire way of life is under fire, and it's coming from inside the house, you know? Do you think I'm not scared, Mano?" She looked back up at him. "You're Jewish." He nodded emphatically.

"Exactly. You warned me for a reason, didn't you?" She sighed. "You know what I'm most ashamed of, doc?" He shook his head. "I... I haven't been into work ever since." He raised an eyebrow. "You mean since the threat?" She nodded shamefully. "I've been scared they'd make good on it. They seem like the type. People have been getting away with assaults on fish, women, queers, immigrants, and journalists. I'm all five..." He grunted knowingly. "Do you think you're going to lose your job, Mano?" She gulped. "I've been on sick leave. The truth is, Mandrake... I've been thinking of quitting." He gasped. "Do you think you could find another job all right if you did?" The economy wasn't about to get better anytime soon.

"I don't know," she shook her head. "I just can't help but think that I can't do this anymore, if it puts me in a position like this... It's just so dangerous. I can't *not* do it, because Fishism would either fall apart, or fall back into the hands of another warmonger. So sometimes I start wondering, if they *did* attack me, after what I just tried to do to myself last night..." He shuddered. "... how hard would I fight back? Would it... Would it be easier for me to just let them kill me, you know?" He looked her in the eyes. "Oh, Mano..." At this point he gave up on formality to put his hand on her arm like a friend. "What an octopus trap you must feel you've wandered into." She chuckled grimly. "I seem to have a knack for it, don't I?" He pursed his lips.

"What is it that made you want to become a journalist in the first place, Mano? All that time ago?" She raised an eyebrow. "That's an interesting question." In so many ways, she'd been such a different person back then. "We all have to make a living, don't we?" He nodded. "That's true." Even his decision to become a therapist, as much as he did care about helping people, had been partly influenced by that. There was no getting around that. "I didn't want to end up in a call center like my friends back in India, you know?" He got that this was part of the equation. "You could've become a botanist or an engineer though, couldn't you?" She'd talked to him about how her parents had seen promise in her in both fields. "Why this specifically?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. Why do any of us become anything, you know?"

***

"Hey buddy, pick a species, did you ever stop to think about *that*?" "Why, you...!"

_ Rakim turned angrily to face the man who'd said that to his boyfriend on the street. "Hey, love..." The bat turned his head back to his boyfriends' four heads as the chimera put his hand on Rakim's shoulder to hold him back. "Forget it, okay? It's fine." The bat sputtered. "But he...!" Ogun nodded. "I know, man... I know." The street harasser raised an eyebrow. "Did you just call her 'man'?" He laughed. "You're one of them chicks what thinks she's a dude, ain't cha?" He seemed to find this hilarious. "What did you just...?" This time it was the chimera's turn to stare daggers at their harasser. "Hey, man..." This time it was the bat's turn to hold his lover back. "Don't. Please." Ogun growled, but relented grudgingly to the stranger's jeers._

_ "Go home, sand rat!"_

_ It was always easier to shrug off about themselves than about someone they loved._

***

"It seems self-serving to say I became a journalist to help people, you know?" She smiled, seemingly derisive about the very idea. "I mean, look at me! I saw people's suffering, and I just *had* to go and do something about it. Aren't I special, you know?" She chuckled at her own jest. "What's the earliest thing you remember about watching the news when you were small, Mano?" She scratched her head. "You know... When I was, like, a child, I didn't pay very much attention to the news. It was upsetting to see people suffer. Living where I did, I already saw a lot of people suffering in daily life, you know? It didn't feel good to see even more. Often, I looked away." He raised an eyebrow. "What made you change your mind?"

She stopped, and thought about it. "Well it's... It's not like people's suffering didn't affect me or anything. I mean, if it didn't, it wouldn't have bothered me enough for me to want to not feel how it made me feel, you know?" He acquiesced. She went on. "The thing is... It's not that I blamed people for their misfortune as such, but... I guess it'd be more accurate to say I used to think that fortune and misfortune were just random, you know? You had it good or you had it bad. Luck of the draw. I didn't think people who had it easy always deserved it, or that people who had it rough always deserved it either, but... It seemed like something that just sort of *happened*. Does that make sense?" He nodded. "But now...?" He tilted his head.

"Ever since I started watching the news as a teenager... Now, when I see suffering, I almost always see it through the lens of being *connected* to something, or being a *part* of something. I see the nature of cause and effect at work in suffering now. I see that, when people suffer, their suffering isn't something that's just an individual thing, that it's something that's both an effect of other causes, and a cause for other effects. Not that every rich person is individually responsible for the suffering of every poor person, but that it's the fact that we'd have wealth *as a thing* that's indissociable from the *existence* of poverty, famine, sickness... and death. I started wondering where the ink was coming from, Mandrake."

***

"Are you ever tempted to meddle in mortal affairs, master?" Soma asked her as they basked in the afterglow. "You could say I've been meddling in them right now, couldn't you?" He chuckled. "That's not what I meant." She tilted her head at him. "What did you mean then, boy?" The rat was lying on her back with her arms crossed behind her head and the snake was lying on his side next to her, his arm draped across her like a blanket. "I meant... about what happened to the world last month. About what's *going* to happen. Being a goddess..." Mnemos raised her finger at her pet. "You know I don't think my people are gods." He clucked his forked tongue at her.

"Being whatever it is that you are, able to do things that people like me will never be able to do, I mean. Did it ever occur to you to, well, you know... stop him?" Ah, so this was what he meant. "Believe me, if I could, I would've already done it by now... People like him are not good to Memory. They have kind of a reputation as historical revisionists, don't they?" Soma nodded. "So what do you think happens to me every time what happened to the people they killed is washed away?" Now it was his turn to understand what she meant. "You lose a part of you. It's part of how they hurt you." The rat nodded. "Often, when they attack me directly... If they hurt me just the right way someone, somewhere, loses a memory of someone they loved."

This sort of thing hadn't occurred to him. "So if you did try to go after him directly...?" She shook her head dejectedly. "Entropy guards him herself these days. Can you imagine? Not only does he erase the truth like it's a bodily function, but... Who has a greater chance of causing a nuclear holocaust these days?" Soma gasped. "You mean...?" Mnemos nodded grimly. "A scenario like that would be like the Cat's Eye's dream come true. Everything burned to the ground, nothing left... No one left to remember anything. She's protecting an investment like that personally, with at least two or three of the Cat's Eye as bodyguards at all times. It's not just that I can't *beat* Entropy, boy... I can't even *fight* her. Not even for a second."

He looked down. "So there's... nothing we can do, master?" She shook her head. "That's not true. You can be there to protect the people you care about. You can pay close attention to everything that's happening, so you can remember it when revisionists try to tell you that's not how it really happened. You can remember the lessons history taught you. You can keep the Memory of those who have been lost alive. You can keep me, Mandrake, and Rakim in mind, all the time. Any of us that's still standing at the end of a day on which they wanted to see us fall is another victory. You heal people every day. They rely on you. Be there for them, boy..." He smiled, nodded, and kissed her. "I will, master." She petted him lovingly. "That's a good boy..."

***

"So you didn't become a journalist because of Eli, did you?"

She tilted her head at him. "No, I guess not. Why?" He shook his head. "No, it's just interesting. I wasn't sure." She crossed her hands behind her head, looking up. "I guess it *would* make sense for me to have done that, wouldn't it? She did always encourage me in it, it was just... a path I'd picked myself before that." He smiled. "So you found your way there yourself, but she gave you a reason to stay?" She chuckled. "I guess you could say that!" That was a way of putting that, in any case. "It seems to point to something you had in common before you met, doesn't it?" She nodded. "Yeah, it does... It was a tougher job than I thought it'd be, but her support helped me get through it every day. So I stuck with it, you know?"

He looked pensive. "It must be especially hard to keep going through it without her now." She looked down. "You know, doc... I blame myself for what happened sometimes. Maybe if I'd said something, all the way back then, when her family was abusing her, even if it'd cost my parents their jobs... she'd still be alive today, you know?" He put his hand on her shoulder. "You can't blame yourself for that, Mano. You were just a kid. You didn't want to get your parents fired. Your whole survival depended on that, and so did theirs." She gulped. "That still doesn't make it right, though... In some ways, I feel like I still need to make up for that. I've got to speak out, about people's suffering, about what's causing it... while there's still time."

He looked deep into her eyes. "She'd be so proud of you if she saw you today, Mano..." She held back tears. "That's what she tells me every night, doc... She always tells me she's proud of me, that she believes in me. Even though I know she'd have been the first person to tell me that she doesn't believe that there's an afterlife." It wasn't as simple as that. "You told me she asked you something one time, a long time ago." She tilted her head. "What do you mean?" He went on. "You told me she asked you if, since you believed in reincarnation, you believed that she and you could find each other again, in another lifetime." She nodded. "I did." He tilted his head. "What did you tell her?" She sighed.

"I don't believe that people can remember their previous lifetimes, Mandrake... I mean, I know there are people who do, but it's just not a part of my belief system. I believe that if any of us could remember, we would all remember, you know? So we have the same *personality*, just... not the same memories. Does that make sense?" He nodded. "So if that's true, then... that means you'd both believe that you, right now, in your current incarnation, are the only person alive who still remembers her just the way she was, who knew her better than anybody else?" She nodded. "Yeah... I guess you could say that. I'm all that's left of her, aren't I?" He held her hand. "Don't you think you should go on living, so she'll be able to live on in you?"

The octopus shook her head. "You're right, I know... I *can't* give up by this point. I just can't. I'm, I'm in too deep, you know?" She chuckled. "So what are you going to do about your job, Mano?" She blinked her third eye at him. "I'm going to go back out there, and I'm going to do my job, doc." He looked at her proudly. "What are you going to do if the people who threatened you come at you, Mano?" She looked at him with a fierce expression. "If these people come at me, they're going to get what's coming to them, and I'll make them regret it." The otter held up the same inkblot picture that he'd shown to her at the beginning of their session. "What does the inkblot look like to you now...?" She stopped, and thought about it.

"It looks like I sneezed on a wall. I'm sorry," she grinned, "lemme wipe that off for you."

***

She was walking home from her session in the snow when they started following her.

She changed her trajectory to try to lose them, moving off into a side street that she knew how to use to get back to her place from a different location. Both of them followed her unfailingly like a shadow, like the shadows that crept across the alley that they'd all walked into around them. Before she could finish making it out of the other side, though, two more were already waiting for her blocking it so that she couldn't get out through it like she'd planned to do, as if they'd predicted that she'd try to get away from the first two and had prepared for it by making sure that they'd be waiting there to stop her from doing so, which they had. They had her caught in a pincer strike, an expression that always made her think about hermit crabs.

"We hear you've been talking some trash about our man up on top," the dog gritted her teeth. "I don't know what you're talking about," she answered as calmly as she could. "Sure ya do," the pig oinked, "it's been all over the paper, hasn't it?" He gave a side glance to the lynx. "Hasn't it, Bob?" The feline nodded. "It sure has." The lizard punched his own open palm, catching his fist in it. "You know, ain't it ironic, fellas?" The dog tilted his head. "What is, John?" What a pack they made. "See here," the lizard spread his hands as he talked, "we have a fine representative of them population what wouldn't be here if our borders weren't lying open like barn doors in broad daylight, like a hooker's legs at sunset, y'all catch my drift, yeah?"

The pig nodded. "John's right!" The lynx cracked his knuckles. "So we let you in here from wherever the hell you're from, right?" The dog spat. "We give you all them freedom of the press bullshit y'all don't got back in Fishistan or whatever the shit, don't we?" The lizard nodded. "That's right! And what does she do with a generous gift like that, fellas?" The pig shook his head. "I know, right? She has to go and use a gift like that, what come from the kindness of our hearts and whatnot, to bite the hand what feeds her itself!" The lynx shrugged and rolled his eyes disbelievingly. "The most fucking ungrateful thing! Know what I think, gents?" They shook their heads.

"Methinks we been too generous with a bitch like that to begin with, y'know what I'm sayin'?" The dog scoffed. "That's right! In a way, it's almost our fault, you know, guys?" The lizard nodded. "Yeah! We let them get away with too much for too long. No wonder they think they're cock of the walk." The pig grunted. "So it's up to us to make this right, isn't it?" The lynx raised his arm over his head. "Yes! Maybe if we teach her a lesson and all, she'll learn to appreciate freedom of the press well enough to use it the way it's *supposed* to be used, am I right, guys?" The dog smirked. "Yeah! Then maybe she won't be so quick to take it for granted like that." She raised her palms at them in a gesture of appeasement. "Look, guys..."

They were already on her, the lynx in front, the lizard left, the pig behind, the dog right.

She flung her cloak off up overhead, shifting skin color. Her sixth arm had grown back. She parried the lizard's kick while backhanding him over her leg, spat ink at the lynx, brought her low arms back down to stop the pig's knee from reaching her back, and twisted a right arm out of the dog's grip while bringing another right elbow down on the dog's arm. In a jumping front split, she blocked the lizard and dog's kicks with two arms each as she front kicked the lynx while back kicking the pig, one of her backhands blocked by the dog but the other hitting the lizard. From a front split on the ground, she blocked their descending strikes with four arms while hitting the dog's legs with a backhand as the lizard jumped over another one.

The lynx ducked under her left leg going right, she pressed with two hands on the pig's fingers to break his headlock around her neck, she parried the dog's low punch as he ducked under her right hook, and she and the lizard parried each other's left hooks. Her left leg hit the lynx going left, she lifted the pig's arms overhead with two arms while elbowing his gut, the dog blocked her descending strike from the ground, and she hit the lizard with a left reverse elbow. Arching her back, she front kicked the lynx while blocking the pig, dog, and lizard's descending strikes with two arms each. Bringing two fists down on the lynx, she back kicked the pig while bonking the dog and lizard's heads together over her back with her other four arms. Her head bounced from the lynx's uppercut, back headbutting the pig then front headbutting the lynx.

They were all out of commission. She grabbed her descending cloak to put it back on.

The lynx had thought her neck would snap. He didn't know much about invertebrates.

Fortunately for Mano, a few people had witnessed the event from nearby buildings, some of which even later confirmed her version of events so that she did not get in more trouble than she had to for having defended her life from the attacks of strangers. It would have been yet more fortunate if any of them had intervened when it was going on, she couldn't help but think, but she should take what she could get while she could, she tried to tell herself. Typically, her assault was not prosecuted as a hate crime. She knew it wouldn't have been fair to expect most people to fight back the way she did. What it did do was send a message to bigots everywhere that, sometimes, they might just not know who they'd be up against.

People say you can't cuddle up to your idealism at night. That night, she'd do just that.

"What do you know...?" She looked at a bruise on her arm. "It looks like an inkblot."