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Save Point: In The High Places

The Battle Of Kalikshutra

"What is this place?" she demands, of curiosity, when they come to a height on which seven spurs of yellow-grey stone, like the bones of the world exposed, curve upward to form a cradle hosting unfamiliar vegetation.

"This is the dreaming place. Lie down, and let the scent of grasses steal your breath, and your sleep will be filled with an eternity of dreams."

She looks with a certain dazed suspicion, down through the thin air of the high places, upon the familiar grown strange. She sees the look in the familiar strangers eyes, looks herself at him, uncertainly, over one shoulder.

Reluctantly, she steps within the sky-spurs and curls up amidst the grasses. They break under the weight of her body, releasing a heavy and aromatic vapour that washes over her, burning at the back of her throat.

Suddenly, the world folds itself up into a bubble that holds everything, and she is carried away on the flow of the worlds blood, the beating of her heart.

~*~

Sethkill finds himself compelled to speak to Hirussien.

"She is alright? She'll live?"

"Of course she will. With a little assistance, anyway. Keeping things alive is a specialty of mine."

Sethkill suspects a note of bitterness in his voice. He's not quite sure what it means, since he's never has to work with Hirussien personally, at least not for any extended length of time, and Hirussien is from both a different continent and a different genotype than his.

Hirrusien is a repairer of things. Sethura pneuma, broken and incomplete machinery, occasional human hearts. Sethkill hasn't needed repair of late, with the notable exception of his arm, which might or might not qualify as incomplete, or perhaps simply absent. Hirussien is confident he could in fact fix it, given several months and a vast amount of processor time to firmly pin down exactly what actually happened and thereby undo it. He has of course simply asked; Sethkill refused to define the exact circumstances and he accepted it, a psychologically necessary evasion. For now the arm is lightly silvered grey composite, with a recognisable ancestry somewhere in steel, but a matte composition speaking to a bloodline that is mostly ceramic.

He puts the arm curiously into the sterilising fire, and watches as a smear of Cleos blood burns into that flame, becoming a dark trace of complex carbon buckminster-fullerenes.

Against his will, his eyes are drawn again to Cleo where she sleeps, breathing against the resistance of a pale green oxygenated fluid that segues in and out of her open mouth like cat drool, covering her whole body up to point where the tips of her aureole barely escape. The main support is somewhere between her shoulders, and her head hangs down backwards.

The machinery is intrusive. It grows out of the hard black stone that is the sarcophage casing in curved organic spurs that are slightly thicker than his arms, to reach the necessary parts of her body. One runs up between her thighs and into her flesh, branching out there like a colder, darker, more angular version of the fur between her thighs, but mostly inside her. Two more attack her from either side just beneath her breasts, one interceding into the gaping spaces inside her chest where such damage has been done, another snaking around the lucent orbs and routing itself downwards into the femoral artery, to misuse the terrible wound as a primary shunt. Another, much narrower lead splits in two, like the cheap cable on the earpieces of a music player, to fasten itself to either side of her neck, for later, if the damage can ever be fully undone.

"Did you have to do all of this?" Sethkill demands, referring to the almost fictional overkill that Hirussian has put into setting all this up.

"I don't know. Which is the problem. She's a very strange creature, isn't she? Yet almost a little bit like us. There's some human, and some cat, and some custom stuff I don't know what it is. The blood she has left is full of multiscalar nanotech all the way down to the level of detection. Some of the physiological stuff reads like she's in first term pregnancy, but she's definitely not. The rest says she's excessively fertile, but she's totally unable to conceive, simply by definition. The required functionality doesn't actually exist." Hirussien shrugs. "I shouldn't actually be allowed to discuss any of this with you, but there isn't anyone else who knows her. And you're the one who shoved the catheter up her, so it seems rather pointless to keep secrets at this stage."

"There's no chance she's aware of any of this?" Sethkill offers, cautiously.

"I calmed her mind to stop her burning everything in sight. She might have felt that, but I think she accepted it. Because if she hadn't, I don't think I could have stopped her. She's dreaming now, down in some very, very deep place. Presumably she'll wake up, eventually."

Sethkill sighs, slowly, letting the dry air whisper out quietly between his fangs. "She looks like the monument," he suddenly bursts out. "Like the legend of Keselt and Sandrakouth. The original one, that is. Like we should be worshipping her, or something. It's wrong."

"She is very beautiful, isn't she?" suggests Hirussien, trying to distract him. Sethkill notes a hint of professional interest in his voice. "Care to tell me who made her?"

"It was a one-off effort," Sethkill replies evasively, after considering. "That makes her unique. So take good care of her. "

"Don't worry. It's perfectly save to leave her like this. She could sleep for any number of years if she had to. Others with far worse damage have done the same."

They sit for a while and watch her, contemplating the silence. Soon they will have to change their clothes, but there wasn't much blood left to spill by then, not enough to soak through cloth, and now pale green effervescence circulates through her in its place. Cleo stirs a little in her sleep, but it is only a dream.

~*~

My cat is an angel from heaven above,

With sandpaper kisses and a tongue full of love.

If something should happen between you and me,

Where oh where then, will my pussycat be?