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Save Point: The Highgrounds

There's no getting round it, the armour isn't going to fit anymore. It was closely fitted back when she was small and trim, even if she had insisted that they left a certain amount of allowance in the straps in case she gained a little weight (yeah, that went well, it was a perfect opening for a set of feline claws) and has even endured her survivalist, all morals cast aside misadventures in getting across country to Lacrunta to try and catch up with that bitch-cat Cleo, scratches and scores non-withstanding. But after the inexplicable transformation Kilseth has wrought upon her, adding to her height and weight by merging her to another creature entirely, something that shouldn't even be possible and for which he seems to need to refer to that mysterious book of his to understand, it's just not going to happen.

Reluctantly, she touches the scraped and gashed golden-embossed hawk on the breastplate. Now that she's taller by a head, bigger and stronger, and actually has some decently-sized breasts to go in there, it'll never fit. The upside is that her body weight and muscle density has nearly doubled, and she finally thinks that if she was to go claws-to-claws with the bitch-cat, it might actually be a fair fight. She can feel the indescribable something within that lets her make lightning and snap little sparks between her fingers increasing as well, an inexplicable sense of vitality like suddenly being more alive inside.

The downside? She has no idea how it works. Some of the thoughts and feelings she experiences now are strange, not quite her own. A sort of unwholesome hunger, a need that seems to flow in her with blood that is no longer entirely clean. All cuts and injuries pull themselves together with an inexplicable speed that her minimal, sports-supplement version of nanotech enhancement can not explain, inviting sexual excesses of biting and whipping that she finds herself passionately participating in with Kilseth and the others. It's this exact sort of behavior she would once have been the first to condemn, but her new body has its own ideas and doesn't care.

Perhaps Kilseth can help, although she doesn't want to become dependent on him to just give her things, even if she seems to have somehow become his girlfriend in some weird way. Maybe he's just going native with her, shacking up with one of the exotic local girls and indulging in dissolute pastimes, but he's been strangely generous in providing her with all the little essentials of life, all of which have for the most part been borrowed from sethuresses with the movement. The whole 'barbarian splendour' thing that the sethuresses seem to go for, long flowing cloths front and back with a split up to the waist, loose tops with space for several sets of boobs, bendable armbands and torques made from soft but heavy exotic metals, lends itself well to her new larger physique, at least for now. But she'd still feel quite silly if it weren't for the fact that all the other sethuresses and some of the males make her look positively restrained.

The sethura have truly impressive materials technology, based on just the everyday things they keep around that are hardly sophisticated all all, and she has to wonder what they could do in the way of a new set of leathers for her. They have various gear built to fit their own peculiar shapes, but a lot of it is independently smart in its own right and she wouldn't know how to use it without learning a lot more of the sethura vocabulary than a bare minimum. Although Kilseth has showed her the basic symbols for controlling things, and which colours indicate safety of operation, she's not willing to risk her skin against something she can't even read the warnings on.

The fang-like rows of teeth that have grown from her genitals ache slightly, as she tries to decide how best to broach the subject of begging tactfully for a new set of armour. Just like a child with a new set of milk-teeth, there's been a lot of dribbling, some minor accidental self-inflicted biteage, and a certain amount of adaption to something extra where there wasn't anything before.

The fangs seem to slide in and out, partially under her own control, from little gaps or pockets roughly in between her inner and outer labia. Being, well, fangs, their placement dominates and everything else just has to stretch to make room, and they pull some of the pockets wide on one side and loose on the other, minor variations which will eventually even out. It's like having a set of really weird piercings that sometimes try to grab Kilseths cock and trap it inside her when she has an orgasm, to no real gain since only about half of their biology is compatible. When she gets horny, they slide out despite her and tease against her lower lips. If anyone ever tries to rape her again, she suspects that when she clenches up they'll get one hell of a surprise.

The newer elongate canines in her mouth, trim and sleek, are elegant and demure in comparison. She really likes the way she looks now, it's just so much... more. And if even half of what Kilseth says is true, this is just the start, and there are all sorts of other changes she could make, things that she could do. She's in charge of her now and intends to take it to a whole new level.

Feeling resolved, she decides to go find Kilseth and just straight-out tell him that she needs a new set of leathers. If they're together, then they should be able to ask each other freely for things, and he should respect her needs and what she wants. She will reward him in bed for the generosities he shows toward her, a simple old-fashioned relationship with solid values.

~*~

"These waitresses will serve you their own cooked breasts," says Kilseth proudly as he shows her to their seats. "They're a special sort of crazy, they like doing things to their own bodies that they know will heal back. Just to show that they're in charge of themselves. You pick your waitress and she shows you the goods," he points to circulating sethuresses in frilly costumes that leave their chests bare, carrying trays, "and then you pick which ones you want and they get sliced."

He indicates a peculiar device consisting of two vertical uprights, and a v-shaped blade designed to slide down between them, with a cut-out from the center of the blade leaving only an inch or so of metal around the edges, presumably so the waitresses expression can be seen as she is sliced.

The blade itself has a peculiar attribute, a sort of shimmery bluntness as though it was hot and rippling the air around it on a fine scale. "The blade is designed to compress and then cauterize, although not using heat," explains Kilseth, noting her professional interest. "The angle is to match the average shape of the underlying pectoral muscles and tissue, removing everything as neatly as possible," he adds in a whisper, not wanting to spoil anyone else's meal with the boring technical details. "Then they wrap 'em tightly with a sterile bandage or two and they have the cooking time to ache and get used to it, before they come out and serve you their own delicious baked flesh."

"This is actually allowed?" asks Kirstine, turned on despite herself. The idea of such submission by another to her hunger in kind, such total service, kind of arouses her.

"Absolutely and completely legal," Kilseth assures her. "Once the waitresses are out of boobs or its the end of the evening, they can go home, although some of them like to stay and have drinks and dance with the customers, or maybe get a meal of something else if they're popular and it's still early. Then they get the next week or whatever off until everything has time to grow back."

"I think..." says Kirstine, pauses, "...I think I would like to watch that."

"I bought you here to show you what we can do," elaborates Kilseth, taking her hand. "The sethura, I mean. None of us are purely mortal any more. We do not need to have any fear, we can do almost anything and survive, but instead they all take refuge in cultural conventions and traditions, and are afraid to break rules that no longer even apply. I cut my brother nearly in half at an exhibition sword-spear match, and he was fine, but instead of making him realize that there was nothing to be afraid of in pain and injury, that we can do anything, it just made him even more determined to stubbornly preserve the status quo. We need to be free to be all of ourselves."

She can't help but be won over by his passionate argument, even as she questions it. Over off to the side there is a squeal and she turns her head to see one of the waitresses gasp theatrically as both of her primary breasts sag into the collection tray with a crunching and slicing motion, like a stack of paper being trimmed to size. The fresh meat is collected with tongs and the sethuress has a binding on her before you can blink, breathing carefully so as not to strain the excision cuts. Her lower breasts now jut out prominently beneath an empty space, pale and delicious-looking, ready to become seconds if the top pair prove tasty enough.

One of the other waitresses helps her raise her right fist into the air in a gesture of triumph, even as the left hand clutches firmly at her bandages, then helps the sethuress to a seat where she rests and pants and blinks, getting herself in hand while meat is applied to grille. There are cheers from all around, but especially from the table she's waiting.

"Are you ready to order?" a different sethuress startles her by asking, having slipped up behind Kirstine in complete silence whilst she was distracted by watching. Like almost everyone she runs into here, the waitress seems just as fascinated by her as she is by them. "If it's your first time, no pressure. Just watch for a bit and decide which bits you'd like, although it's first come first served, so you'll need to choose before everything's gone."

"So, are you on the menu?" Kirstine asks curiously. "What's it like?"

"I'm the hostess tonight, so I'll only be available at the end or if we run out. As for how it feels... well, you would know, wouldn't you? I can tell you're... intrigued."

Kilseth takes mercy on her by pointing out a relatively stacked sethuress, who clearly hasn't been made a meal of in a while. "She's just too big, but her flesh has the most wonderful marbling if it's cooked well. Her secondary teats are a treat."

The hostess goes over and summons her, and the next few minutes are more like a normal meal, with notes being taken as to what drinks they'd like, what dishes and seasoning would be good, or how they'd like the meat cooked, although Kirstine can't help staring at the waitresses breasts, all up close and presented for their delectation. She wonders exactly what rules this breaks and can't tell, but the waitress mistakes her attention for hunger and notes, "Don't worry, you'll be able to enjoy me soon," with a wink. Kilseth teases by encouraging her to 'weigh the meat' and takes her hand possessively, making her cup the sethuresses warm flesh, heavy with her blood still pulsing through it, that's about to become their dinner. Dark nipples harden slightly.

"See, she has marvelously good circulation," Kilseth compliments her. The waitress is all charmed and excited by his sweet-talking praises and saunters off toward the kitchen with the list, having almost completely forgotten her upcoming appointment with the blade.

Kirstine feels obliged to keep her eyes open, unblinking, and watch. The sethuress is offering up part of herself for their feast, the hunters prayer for the beast that has given itself up actually a lie, but made real here tonight. Yet the sethuress just keeps winking at her, raising an eyebrow ridge whenever it seems no-one is paying attention, right up until the slice and the crunch.

While things are cooking and their waitress is catching her breath (probably easier, with a weight literally off her chest) events return almost to normal and light conversation resumes as they take the edge off with very pale purple distilled water and light crunchy baked snacks.

"I have a slight ulterior motive, bringing you here, as well," Kilseth admits. "You see, it reminded me of that tattoo you have, that flying creature..."

"It's a hawk. You never remember the name of it!"

"...yes, the hawk. Anyway, I've gotten to know you very closely, seen every single part of your body from the length of my own muzzle, and it's very clear to me that you got that originally to cover a scar. And not just a small one, but a really big one, in a v-shape. The original scar is gone, healed out from under it, but you kept the tattoo, am I right? The distribution of the ink, it's different at where the scar used to be."

"Someone slashed me across the chest with a knife once. It's no big deal."

"Don't lie to me. I had to do research to figure this out, my species don't scar anymore and haven't for generations. And that must have been a really big scar, not just some minor slip-up in a back alley when you had something they wanted. What really happened?"

Kirstine sighs as she realizes that he's pretty much called her on it and there is no easy way out.

"When I was young and poor, I developed a really bad cancer," she explains. "It's an uncontrolled cellular replication defect, yet another thing your species doesn't get anymore after engineering it out. There were treatments for it, even then, but I couldn't afford them, so I had to skip straight to the least subtle possible fix, which was cutting both of my tits off immediately, as completely as possible. It's a simpler procedure than you'd think - or you might, having seen this," she points a thumb casually at the waitresses, "but done cheaply, with just a very sharp scalpel blade and no augmented healing to clean up the edges? Big scars, very big, in a v-shape right at the center, and a chest like a boy only less so. With a peculiar feeling of weightlessness and lightness, off-balance where everything was removed. I didn't want anyone looking at what I had left."

Kilseth puts him arm around her in a peculiar mix of sympathy and triumph, having uncovered a vulnerability and proven himself right all in one go. He knows the conventional position on this would be that to bring her here was deeply wrong, but still.

"Later on they discovered a really cheap treatment for the same condition," she continues in her explanation. "It had been suppressed just to make money. Someone killed a whole bunch of public officials who were involved. Anyway, to try and recover my strength and build up some muscle in my chest to replace everything that was missing, I took up exercising and weight-lifting, and much to my surprise I was really good at it. I built up lots of lean strength, even if I couldn't manage the bulky muscles that the true powerhouses go for, and most of the other female lifters had skinny chests as well, because they'd exercised away all their body fat, so I fit right in. My chest healed and my balance came back better than ever because I weighed less, and I could breathe easily. If the scars were still nasty, well, they didn't pull, and as long as no-one was actually looking I didn't mind. I was kind of happy. One of the other girls I trained with had a relative who'd had a similar problem, after she had no choice but an emergency procedure when she was pregnant, and it left her with an unsightly scar across her belly. She'd gotten herself a tattoo to cover it up, and so the girl suggested that I do the same.

"It seemed like a good idea, so I designed a pattern to cover up the scar, based on a logo that I saw once for an old game. A hawk, with its wings raised, holding a sun with both claws. It was meant to be symbolic, my statement of a new self, risen like the sun from the ashes. I drew it out about twenty times before I was satisfied, cutting out copies and sticking them to my chest, adjusting all the scales and angles until it was perfect. I picked out a very specific deep purple ink with black and gold highlights, because it would best camouflage the scarred bits. It took hours and hours to get it right, session after session, and it really hurt the whole time as the tattoo artist had to try and work the ink in evenly across the scarred tissue. But it was totally worth it, because I could finally look at myself topless in the mirror again and not want to look away.

"Then one day that bitchy self-promoting sex kitten Cleo walks in while I'm at the gym, all curvy muscles and big tits and an attitude, and says something about how I'm doing really well for such a skinny little thing, but that maybe I should lift a little bit less because it's taking away my pretty curves, and stares at my tits like she can see the scars, at which point I crumble.

"I can't really remember the details, but apparently I shouted her out and stormed off and then spent several hours crying in the showers. The next day I had an existing medical appointment, it was already booked, and I found out that the cancer had come back again. Collectively, it was the worst few days of my life, worse than the first time, because all that called for was a swift decisive decision as to what I was willing to give up in order to live. This time, it was already in my bones, deep inside me, and spreading stealthily. It hadn't hit anything critical yet, and with my improved health I hadn't noticed, but soon it would and then I was gone.

"Fortunately, technology had improved since that first time around, and I wasn't dirt-poor like I was before. My new specialist doctor gave me a card and said that I might be just what they were looking for, and within three days I'd made a deal to test the latest wave of sports nanotechnology, entirely one-sided, because I agreed not to sue them in the event that I dropped dead. It wasn't a full suite, you see, just a 'sports enhancement' stripped down to the bare bones to reduce the cost, targeted at existing athletes willing to take the risks for greater performance. But what it had to be able to do, to make it work, was quite enough to save me. It was, maybe, immortality by a hairs breadth if you were in good enough condition to start with.

"Needless to say, it worked. The uptake was more than a hundred percent, some overclocked sort of number that surprised everyone, and suddenly I had forever instead of maybe next week, or possibly next month. They tested stuff on me, all of which worked brilliantly. I entered into fights as "Kirstine 'The Hawk' N'Marie" and destroyed everyone else in my weight class with them as my sponsors, which made money for everyone, including me. The scars healed away and my tits grew back, still small as anything - this was a sports supplement and I was in much better shape, after all - but definitely there. My trademark tattoo got to spread its wings a little.

"But I just couldn't forgive or forget the way Cleo had looked at me in that locker room, like I was nothing compared to her. And the rest you already know."

~*~

Around them the room flickers slightly. Kilseth hits the wall alongside his chair and everything is restored to normal after a moment of dislocation.

Kirstine scowls. "I'm still not entirely convinced that this place is real. I'm starting to think that it might just be something you made up to mess with me."

How, oh how, he loves that fierce scowl. "Oh, it's definitely real. I wanted to show you my favorite restaurant in all the world and this is it. Normally I'd use a neural clip, you understand, given that we're both currently off-planet, but you have an entirely different species architecture and so I've had to go back to something a little more primitive. I've been here lots of times. In fact I'll take you here for real one day if we have the chance."

"So, what will we really be eating? If not in fact the delicious pound of girl-flesh promised on the menu I can barely read."

"Just be happy you can't read the prices. It takes a lot of sethuresses a really long time per serving to pack on all that boobage. We actually had a couple willing to try it, sort of an extreme show of loyalty to the cause by lightening their load and all that, but it turned out we didn't have the slicer and it would've taken a little too long to print one. None of them was quite up to doing it the old-fashioned way, the ball-less bitches."

There's a tone of affection in his voice as he casually derogates his own followers.

"Seriously, is there going to be dinner or not? I mean I'm enjoying the floorshow and all, and I'm impressed that you could simulate warmth and weight that accurately, but I'm really getting kind of hungry. Also, they all keep staring at me."

"Dinner will be assorted delicious jungle animals, as prepared by Valsheir, selected based on the ones that taste good to him for me, and the ones that pass a genetic screening for you. You could sleep with these dirty wild beasts and have beautiful children, they've been so thoroughly vetted. Much like the waitresses here, in fact."

Kirstine can't help herself and starts grinning instead. "Well yes, you wouldn't want to find out that your boyfriend has been screwing your dinner. It could totally affect the quality."

"See, you're getting in the mood already. Valsheir, how's it going?"

There is a sort of indistinct chef-ly grunt in sethura from the room where the kitchen would be if it really existed, which seems to imply that it will be ready soon and to stop being pushy. It seems that all of Kilseths followers in the Storm Front movement have spontaneously decided to get in behind their leaders plan to create, almost literally ex-nihilo, a romantically perverse night out at an exotically depraved restaurant with his unexpectedly non-sethura girlfriend-cum-plaything.

"Just a couple of minutes. Valsheir's girlfriend will be delivering the meal, although an appalling lack of dedication to authenticity means that she still has all six of her tits fully attached. Valsheir has not yet been able to adequately explain just why she happened to have the dress conveniently to hand in her wardrobe, although I suspect she's probably been teasing him all day and there will be toothy late-night nibblings-on later on after she's collected the plates."

Kirstine is still grinning but in a resigned, there's-no-help-for-it reluctant acceptance sort of way. "I still don't get all the staring and casting glances though. If this is all a simulation, shouldn't they just blithely disregard me, no matter how outre my appearance? And don't tell me it'll be a good learning experience for when we visit the real thing, because this isn't it."

"It's not just one sided. The simulation tracks your real position and appearance for things like collision detection and touch simulation. I think what's happening is that it assumes by default that any users will be sethura, so it tries to classify you as one, then runs into trouble. From its point of view it probably thinks you're a young sethuress with lower legs it can't detect correctly, and both of her secondary breasts missing. So, maybe a young double amputee with temporary prosthetics, being taken out by her father or uncle or boyfriend to a very unusual restaurant, as a sort of reassurance that it's not as bad as it looks and there's far weirder stuff out there? But since you have no horns, at all, it probably also flags you as potentially underage and sort of borderline-inappropriate to be in a place like this. Yet, if you were in an accident, maybe your horns broke off as well and you had to have them trimmed down? And of course you have almost no muzzle at all, which would be kind of disturbing if you were a sethura."

"You make it sound disturbingly intelligent for software."

"It's not intelligent at all. We're very cautious about that sort of thing as a species, wouldn't want to create something totally incapable of relating to us. It just uses speculative extrapolation based on your appearance to try and create convincing dialogue and behaviours based on a sample set. A certain amount of staring and some whispered comments would be entirely normal."

"So what I need is a circlet that looks like horns or something," Kistine muses.

Valsheirs girlfriend sweeps in wearing realistically topless costume, looking surprisingly dashing and surely having had it carefully fitted. She has the nearest tray that they could find to the ones being used in the simulation, and takes care to weave around the other characters as though she was genuinely coming from the kitchen.

"If they actually do serve you something, just push it aside so the dishes don't overlap, otherwise you'll be as confused as the Wolfmothers twat," she observes in passable Azatlani. "We tested it at lunch and it's smart enough to know what hardware it's running on, so it doesn't expect you to try and eat the imaginary food, but it will serve you something eventually for the sake of realism."

She seems to be having great fun playing waitress, and makes a big show of passing out cutlery first, the sethura version recognizably similar, if somewhat different, to the basics already arrived at by most human cultures. There's a knife, but ending in a semi-circular crossblade, that can be rocked back and forth to cut through things or slide across them, and a very stabby sort of fork with two broad tines. The two appear to be designed to interact, so you can trap the blade inside the tines of the fork, to keep it from skipping, or apply leverage to the fork with the blade, to crack things open. The curved knife is probably good for scraping a plate clean at the end.

Next come the drinks, which are seemingly your classic alcoholic beverages but in shades she's never seen before. There is something that might be wine but it's a distinctive shade of green, and what would probably be its distilled equivalent in a clarified and refined shade of purple. They're probably safe to drink given their sheer ethanol content, and of course taste is a somewhat lesser consideration for anything so ferocious. The earlier crunchy snack things and distilled water will hopefully add a touch of restraint and dilution to the affair.

Finally she passes out the main course, cut and packed by Valsheir's ingenuity to resemble what the real dish is supposed to be, although based on the musculature she thinks it's actually either haunch of a large black jaguar, cut away in a sort of large collop and cooked with the fur still on by sizzling it in a pan. Symmetrically placed injections of some sort of vegetable-based filling mash have swelled up the shape, rounding it appealingly, and for a final touch Valcheir has burned away the fur in a precise circle at the top, to create a crispy areola, then injected it with what looks like milk or something similar to create a raised nipple that drips gently as it steams.

She can't decide whether its brilliant, or in the worst imaginable taste, or possibly both. Certainly if Valcheir has successfully made something that is delicious to two entirely different species, that makes him one hell of a talented chef. It definitely smells good.

For the sake of thoroughness and in case they want more, other bits of the jaguar have also been served up on various plates. Baked jaguar pussy-lips and roast jaguar anal-sphincter with the skin stripped away are offered up as treats, as are two strips of crackling made by firmly shaving down the fur along the beasts underbelly and then crisping either row of nipples. For those who aren't such connoisseurs, the front legs and ribcage have been provided as more of a general meal. The terminal paws haven't been cooked, just wrapped off tidily at their points of severing and used as decoration. She grasps a paw, examines the withdrawn talons, waves it at Kilseth. "Rawr."

"We caught an entire small pack of them, this is just the best one," explains Valsheir's girlfriend as she lays it all out. "It was the mommy one, had a whole bunch of smaller ones that were nearly full size and ready to go. Valsheir practiced on the others and then did the big one especially for you. They were really yummy! Call out when you're ready for me to collect the dishes."

"So, why exactly is Wolfmother's twat confused?" Kirstine asks, as she uses the rocking-knife to slice strategically into her gently steaming 'jaguar boob', then impales it with a fork and imagines happily doing the same to Cleo. Very gently and slowly, so she gets to quiver. That would be really exciting, feeling her strain and beg and tremble. Making her admit she was sorry.

"Wolfmother gave birth to all living things," explains Kilseth. "Or at least all of the first things, the 'children of the first universe' as the legend says. Her twat is entitled to be confused."

"She must have been very saggy afterwards," concludes Kirstine, and boldly takes a bite of jaguar without even tasting first.

~*~

After several delightful if rather surreal hours, punctuated by Kilseth casually glancing a strike on the emitter in different styles every time the image flickers, their meal winds inevitably to an end in that way such things do, when you know it's over. Kilseth pays their virtual hostess a small usage fee that is associated with running the simulation, charges deftly incorporated as though he was paying the bill for real, while Valsheirs girlfriend (the name she inexcusably keeps forgetting; which is just wrong because they know each other quite well) collects the real plates and scraps to carry them off to the dining hall, slash restaurant, slash food area that keeps their little band of suspiciously well-armed research terrorists or whatever they are fed. Kilseth has tried to explain their philosophy to her on a number of occasions, but it really doesn't make much sense unless you're a sethura raised in an orderly society that makes it difficult to do all the exciting things you know are wrong. It seems to be some sort of applied transgressivism, for lack of a better term, but she doesn't really care because she seems to have fallen in among friends.

Kirstine interrupts with a gentle hand to Valsheir's girlfriends wrist, which she knows is thought of as a socially acceptable manner to interrupt sethura at meals and won't cause her to be upset or anything. "Just curious, did you keep the jaguar heads?"

"We used their heads for centerpieces in the dining hall!" she explains excitedly. "They looked so fierce with their jaws open and things stuffed in their mouths! We didn't bring one in here in case it might, you know, spoil the ambience."

"Could you keep the head of the biggest one for me? Or maybe two just in case I break one? I have an idea for a little art project and I think it would be just perfect for it."

Many of the Storm Front, being mad transgressivists, have odd hobbies that express themselves as art projects that get spontaneously installed in living areas. They use lights and spare pieces of electronics to create outbursts of sculpture, paint intricate stenciled designs onto bare walls that play with perspective and viewing angle, and explore stuff she can't actually see that only exists in the virtual spaces they access with neural clips. Her request to keep a jaguar head or two, well, it barely scratches the surface. One of them is outside in the forecourt right now installing an almost totally pointless waterwheel made of archaic riveted steel, that catches the waterfall condensing from the rain mists higher up along the spire as it runs over the edge and falls into the abyss.

"Do you need the jaw? We may have kind of played with them a bit and so they're not quite, well, you know, fully attached anymore."

"No, no, I don't need the jaw. Just the skull. After all, that's where the brain is."

~*~

How to clean the skulls effectively is the next step. Kilseth actually does have things to do, being the leader and all, so she contemplates how best to go about it. Slow boiling would work, and then a bleaching of the remains, but having boiled things previously, she can just imagine the scum of thickened cat-grease that would accumulate around the edges of the cooking vessel she has just liberated from the dining area, and then fishing out any stray unidentifiable bits. Not to mention the lingering scented steam that would spoil her memories of an amazing and strangely liberating dinner with Kilseth. The cooking vessel may look a little like a cauldron but that isn't really quite what she had in mind for her materials.

Instead she removes a sort of deep-frying attachment, a steeply concave mesh of wire with broad gaps between the strands, flips it upside down, and then pins the biggest jaguar head under it by tying it down with a spool of void cabling that voided its own warranty many years previously (it was apparently sort of like optic-fiber but more bendy, because the interior of the cable consisted of nothing but an empty space with the air pumped out, and the mirrored inner surface was then the functional component). This batch is hopelessly leaky but still makes excellent tie downs and restraints of all kinds.

The location at which the jaguar head is held captive is located just off the spire forecourt, near a nest of particularly predatory insects, ants or beetles of some kind, that apparently caused quite a nuisance when the spire complex was being set up initially. They are now kept under control by measures that no-one has yet been able to adequately articulate to her in translation, but it seems they have somehow been 'vigorously advised' that the volume of the spire complex and forecourt are off limits. They turn neat perfect right-angled corners above and below to avoid some unseen threat box with unspecified consequences.

None of this keeps them from instantly infiltrating any food item left outside, of course, and the glazed glance of a dead jaguar with a floppy jaw is no exception. She runs a thin stream of sugary syrup, also borrowed from the kitchen, between the conical temple-mound of their nest and the new treat offered to them by their vengeful goddess to encourage them.

When she tells Kilseth about what she is doing, he is fascinated and they come out to inspect the progress of the scurrying horde on his breaks. He builds his own frame using a circular wire mesh recycling bin that has clearly been the subject of vastly excessive industrial design, in its contrived and elegant diagonal sweeps. The second jaguar head is smaller but she has a head start, so it's an even contest as they compete for worshipers to see which will be stripped first.

Kilseth seems proud of her idea and attempts to relate what they are doing in some abstruse way to the Storm Fronts transgressivist philosophy. The insects are a microcosm of an orderly society and they, by being above and beyond it, demonstrate their superiority and bring down gifts unto the ones they rule over, or something like that. He seems happy that she understands what they are trying to do, although she really doesn't, but she's willing to let him think well of her.

The feeding insects become a spectacle for a day or two and interrupt work schedules as every single sethura there has to come and see, even the few she rarely meets who busy themselves down in the depths of the spire, and seem to try and say safely as far from daylight as possible. Her project attracts many congratulations as everyone seems to think it's a meaningful statement regarding the cause and not just a ways and means to get the skulls clean.

Those who bring food outside the unseen threat box on their breaks rapidly find that the insects are in fact trying to eat them. Possibly this is the true lesson of the piece.

~*~

Once the skulls are clean, every last fragment of flesh nibbled away and jaws fallen off, she tries to exact her original vision upon them, painting fine traceries on them in a non-absorbent ink that she can wipe away when the branching patterns she is drawing go awry, which happens far more often then she'd like. She has a mental image of how they should look, but it's not really detailed enough and she can only tell each time when she stumbles on getting part of the branching right.

The patterns look uncannily like circuitry of some sort, connected in very stringent patterns that, although they curve instead of forming straight lines, split and rejoin along specific factors of two, occasionally interrupted by symbols, hollow circles and triangles that bias the flow. Nonetheless, she just can't quite seem to get it right until Kilseth, who has been keeping tabs on her project and seems delighted by what she is doing, brings her a grainy drawing sampled from some non-digital original, perhaps an old book that has been scanned somehow.

For some unspecified reason, instead of storing it as a picture and then showing it to her, which is what he'd normally do, he seems to have physically printed it to a piece of tattered recycled paper. The thought that comes first to her mind is that maybe he doesn't have the original anymore, or couldn't find it again, and so he's giving her the best copy he has. But none of that matters much after she sees it, because what it shows is a hand-drawn illustration of a collection of seemingly very ancient sethura skulls, painted with patterns that are very similar to her own efforts, even if they're not as detailed as she would like. Each pattern has its own theme, a uniquely distinctive artistic style, and each has a word or two written underneath.

She doesn't need Kilseths hand-written translations into Azatlani to know what they mean. The patterns themselves express their intent, clearly indicating concepts like 'vengeful' or 'obscured' (which might in fact be 'striking' and 'hidden' but words only convey part of the meaning). As she scrolls down the page, she finds one very similar to her own incomplete efforts, which is 'binding' or possibly 'entrapment'. There's something strangely non-specific about it, as though refusing to say with certainty just who is is being bound and trapped by whom.

Still, it is exactly what she was looking for to inspire her effort, and in a single continuous session of several hours she manages to lay down the entire pattern. The cranial architecture of a sethura differs considerably from that of a jaguar, and so a certain amount of improvisation and flexibility is called for, but this is her own creation and not just a copy of the thing in the book, and has to be of her own design to achieve her ends.

She's starting to see what it that she's making. After she's done, it is late in the evening and she and Kilseth dance in their shared room to unfamiliar music, the patternated skull on the table in the corner attracting occasional admiring glances. "You must be developing powers really fast," he exclaims in her ear in wonderment, as they stretch and curve about one another in extemporized patterns designed to combine their differing shapes. "Somehow you knew instinctively what you wanted to make, even though you'd never seen any of the designs. You'll be so very strong before I'm done with you."

Things get a bit bondage-y after that, while the skull watches.