Challenge #00247: Craftsmanship
Ordinary excellence.
“If you want it to last long, hire an expert. If you want it to last for long enough, hire a JOAT.” – Galactic saying.
Rael got most of his income from people who wanted their patches to last long enough. As in, long enough to make a profit out of this trip. Or, long enough to get me back home. And, in some cases, long enough so I can trade this heap in for maximum due.
He reported those ones.
They were attempting fraud, after all. And besides, the stipend he got from Station Security was far more generous than any tip that fell from the fraudster’s fingers.
Crime did pay - the informants.
Nevertheless, Rael did his best to make certain the patches he put into various vessels lasted for much longer than they were expected to do. This was the way he built a reputation. This was the way he kept food in his almost-perpetually-empty stomach-analogue.
And, lately, it was where he was gaining an audience.
Rael stepped back from his work on a dodgy engine - more patch jobs than original parts - trying to gain a new perspective on the problem… and almost tripped over a pair of white boots.
“Sorry…”
“I can’t take a break, yet, Shayde. I have real work to do.”
“Aye, and I was identifyin’ soap operas all day. Sortin’ em. Workin’ out which ones were which. Which is never fun. So I’m takin’ a break and watchin’ an artist at work.”
Ugh. Why did she keep coming back? He made it abundantly clear that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what to do with her or how to enjoy anything of himself… Yet she kept turning up. Eating at the same restaurants. Shopping at the same places. Inviting him to events. Forcing him to socialize.
And baking him things.
He spared a glance away from his work. He was safe, for now. The ritual tin box was nowhere in sight. There was, however, a deck chair and a beverage with a small paper umbrella in it. And Shayde lounging there.
She smiled a special smile for him. He tried to quell the rising warmth inside that had nothing to do with ambient temperature or how much he had to eat.
Stop it. That degree of companionship is impossible. And if I try, I’ll only make a mess of things, he told himself. Back to work.
Work mattered. It was truth. When something was done properly, it was done properly. And it would work, and work well. That, and it paid his food bills.
There was nothing else to fix. Or at least, nothing else he could fix in the allotted time window, which had nearly expired. He put his tools away with regret. The pilot/owner was going to have to replace the entire manifold as early as possible. The fact that they had ignored this advice for three patches so far was not a good sign.
Nevertheless, he noted it in the engineering logs and signed off on the time stamp.
Shayde applauded. “Well done, there. Na. I found a place that does some real beignets the old-fashioned way. And a whole lot o’ soul food besides. You in?”
“Beignets?”
“They’re like a deep-fried pancake. Served wi’ mountain of powdered sugar.”
Short-term calories with a side of long-term fats and carbs. Sounded, as Shayde would put it, right up his alley. “I’ll have you know I can afford to ‘go dutch’.”
“Do ye want to?” Somehow, she’d folded up the usually carnivorous deckchair and made it vanish.
Sigh. “Yes.”
A grin. “See? I have ways of gettin’ a 'yes’ out of you.”
Humans…
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Challenge #00246: Meter and Rhyme
Professor Xavier on why he abandoned the idea of a institute theme song.
“Professor? Why isn’t there a school song?”
“To be very brief, I couldn’t come up with anything good,” he confessed. “Begin with the fact that the Institute doesn’t have a catchy name, and add to that the fact that I have all the musical talents of a diseased whelk…” he shrugged. “If you can come up with something, you’re welcome to, but–”
“Geethanks, Prof!”
Whoosh.
“…I don’t hold high hopes…”
Inside of two weeks, after the literal battle of the bands, Professor Xavier had a third reason not to have a school song.
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Challenge #00245: Learning Curve
Scott, the new floral and somewhat emotionally expressive studmuffin, wows the blue hairs at the convention. His ego does a world of good for it.
“I do a lot of beach-combing for interesting pieces,” said Scott. “And I get bucket-loads of shells from that, I never knew why I picked them up in the first place, but I had bucket-loads of shells and I had to do something with them…” Click. The next slide showed an orchid made of shells. “And that’s what started the Earth and Sea collection.” An array of semi-realistic not-plants made from shells, felt and driftwood. “And then… I dreamed up this creature.”
It was his first and most nightmarish ur-creature. He’d cleaned a beached blob monster and, after making certain it wasn’t anything endangered, used what remained of its skeleton in a work that could only be judged as threatening. The wire also held beach glass he’d turned into beads, making it both beautiful and revolting. Sticks, rocks and shells made parts that were missing from the skeleton.
“I’m still working through a lot of things, and with some help, I managed to figure it out. My little brother Alex loved the beach… and I hadn’t been down to one since… I lost my entire family in a plane crash.”
Murmur murmur murmur, went the blue-haired arts donors.
“The daymares, as I call them… are all me trying to deal with death. They’ve been… an obsession since I finished putting the Hunter together.” He wanted to say, Please buy some of these, they’re taking over a whole basement and they’re creeping everyone out including me. Instead, he said, “By facing down the spectre of death, I grew stronger. I learned to conquer my fears. And now it’s time for these monsters to find their place in the world.” You don’t have to take them home… “You can own a little piece of strength against the grim spectre of death.”
Silence. And then, stunningly, applause. The blue-hairs, grey-hairs and sundry elite filed out of the presentation hall and into the gallery, where a stunning array of macabre artworks stood behind glass.
It almost bothered him that he could convince people to buy this stuff. It bothered him more that he had fans. Who were busy beach-combing for blob monsters for him.
And worse, some were trying to imitate them.
But the money, the real money, was in the rich artsy people who didn’t have a lick of creativity of their own. So they compensated by buying galleries, and owning art.
“They’re really quite stunning,” said a blue-hair by his elbow. “All the things from the sea. It reminds us that that which we enjoy too hard can also be our doom.”
Instead of being stunned by the revelation, Scott acted pleased that she’d noticed. “Yes,” he said. “Life is too fragile to take anything for granted.”
She had a slip of paper in her hand. She’d bought the Gorgon. Yikes. He thought he’d never get rid of that thing.
He’d already told his fans, no more dead bears. Or dead pigs. Or the bones, in fact, of anything larger than a labrador. And no dead small dogs, either. And damnit, he was not in the business of turning your dead pet into an artwork. Gah.
’…have a granddaughter about your age, very interested in the modern art scene.“
Whoops. Good thing he’d learned to pick up hazard words instead of listening on autopilot. "Sorry, ma'am, but I already have a fiancee. She’s meeting me in…” he checked his watch, “Five minutes ago. I do apologize, but I simply must go find her. You have a good evening.”
Sure enough, he found Jean by the less disturbing floral creations. No surprise. She’d told him that if she “had to look at another one of those things,” she’d be doing so through a weapon sight.
“You’re looking confident,” said Jean. “I like it.”
“It helps that they like me,” he shrugged. “And that you do, too.”
“And you got rid of the dead bear. Yay,” she whispered.
Telepaths. You couldn’t keep anything a secret. “Want to hop over to the Performing Arts place and hear Sara playing?”
“Yeah. I owe her some ‘personal thanks’ for putting you onto using bones.”
“Hey, at least she shared how to stop them stinking up the place.”
“Survival mechanism, studmuffin. Survival mechanism.”
Scott laughed and walked in step with the love of his life. Things were looking up.
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Challenge #00244: One Beautiful Morning at the Bi-Annual Fair
I’m in an oooey gooey mood so please give me a sweet romantic sappy drippy waff-fest about a couple who meet long after they knew each other in high school. Extra points for any amusement park item.
In order to reduce the severity of Silly Season, Amalgam Station held a station-wide fair once every five months. Every human got some time to play, even folks like Lyr, who worked security.
Even other species got into it. Chitanians were busy hanging lights where no human could reach with the same opposite of assistance. Assorted Saurians were putting up what they believed to be appropriate Terran decorations. She didn’t have the heart to tell them they’d got Halloween and Christmas mixed up again.
By the pricking in her neck… Lyr could sense someone familiar approaching. Not close-familiar. Just someone she used to know.
She turned. O Powers. “Tae Driscol. It’s been too long!”
He smiled. “I should have known I could never sneak up on you. Haven’t seen you since Spooky School.”
“Don’t call it that?” Lyr begged. One bad choice of words, and she was an insecure little pre-cog again, trying to figure out how plastic her future was, and how she could use her erratic gift for the greater good. And just like that, she remembered being in love with Tae Driscol.
He was still as handsome as ever. The cut of his clothes and the natural materials used in them told her how successful he was as a Finder.
‘If’s from yesteryear snowed down on her mind. If she had said 'yes’. If she hadn’t had that vision. If she’d just tried to fight fate one more time…
But she knew better than that, now. She wasn’t a silly teenager, any more. She had a teenaged daughter of her own. She had a family. A husband.
“I see you’re doing well,” she managed.
“I heard you had three kids. How did you manage all that and stay this fit?”
“You haven’t met Ambassador Shayde, then.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I try to Find ways to stay out of trouble…”
“And yet you Found me.”
Another classic Tae grin. “I was after the place with the best fun. And here I am.”
Fond memories made her smile. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Happily married. Allowed to arrest you for trying any nonsense.”
“No nonsense,” he held up his hands in surrender. “I just want to win you a toy panda at the ring toss. For old times’ sake.”
Not the panda. She’d almost forgotten the old toy he’d accidentally destroyed in their class project. The project that proved to be the end of their relationship as a portent of doom.
“If you use your Finding ability, I’ll have to arrest you for cheating,” she warned.
“Flirt,” he countered. It was a joke. An actual joke that was not at her expense. He had changed.
“Jule’s bigger and stronger than you. And I’m… stronger.” Her family had always run to shortness. It just meant she had a lower centre of gravity to use against the enemy.
“Peace, Officer,” said Tae. “I’m here to mend bridges, not burn them.”
She sighed. “It’s hard to forget some of the shit you pulled.”
Tae lead her to the stall that had toy pandas as a prize. Unlike the fair attractions of yore, this one -and all the others- gave participants an actual chance to win something. There were laws against the kind of shenanigans they used to pull during their origin years.
“Well… karma’s biting my ass. My own daughter’s… a lot more like you than me, back in the day.”
“Keep her away from egotists, she should be fine,” teased Lyr.
He threw darts at balloons like a man driven. Every one hit their target. “I was so mad at you for some thing you said the week before the project? I burned your old toy on purpose, and made it look like an accident.”
Lyr stared. “I said we’d be enemies inside a fortnight,” she murmured. “And it’d be decades before we even spoke to each other again.”
Flick, flick, flick, went the darts. Pop, pop, pop went the balloons. “Never argue with a precog.” Another set. Flick, flick, flick. Pop, pop, pop. “She needs to know she can make it. Even with the headaches.”
“Can’t relax into it?”
“Yeah.” He tallied up his points and paid for more darts. “The kids in her class aren’t much of a help, there.”
Lyr remembered that, very well. "Espers can be assholes, sometimes. How often does the therapist work with the class?“
"Daily. Not that it helps. Neither does telling Katie how everyone is all worked up about their own problems that they don’t have much room for empathy… So…”
He had twice the points he needed for a plush panda. Lyr got a 'flash’ of a young, insecure girl crying into one. “She has your hair,” she blurted.
“I’m going to confess,” said Tae. “And give her a panda. And hope it works.”
“Give her a link to my bio. I’m living proof you can improve after a near-asshole experience.”
Tae handed her a panda. “I’m sorry. I had no idea and I didn’t want to catch one.”
Lyr hugged it. It was not the same panda as the one that had helped her through too many rough nights and anxiety headaches, but the feel bought back the memories.
This one would help Elaise, when her gift bloomed.
“Thanks,” said Lyr. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”
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Challenge #00242: One Fine Afternoon Just Outside the Danger Room
A romantic moment between Scott and Jean that starts after she witnesses the New Recruits realizing that an less emotionally restrained Scott as Danger Room facilitator means a tough day for all.
Argh. Her aches had aches. Jean had lingered in the hot shower in an attempt to soothe them. She was still stretching in the hall when the younger recruits passed her by.
“Ow!”
“Man, my aches have aches…”
“The aches of my aches have aches that ache.”
“Can we stop saying ‘ache’?”
“Man… who thought flower arranging could make Scooter so much more of a hardass?”
“Dude, stop saying 'man’.”
“Man, stop saying 'dude’.”
A half-hearted scuffle ensued.
“Hey!” Scott shouted. “If you have the energy to fight, you have the energy to give me three laps around the mansion.”
“Aaaawwwww…”
Jean giggled. “Way to show them, tiger.”
Scott blushed, smirking. “Leader’s gotta lead. That? And Logan makes me wax his bike every time they aren’t worn out after a training session.”
“I knew there was an ulterior motive.”
“So… while they’re busy. Um. Wanna go hang out in the theatre and… er… watch a DVD or something?”
“Sorry,” said Jean. “I have a hot bath and a nap all planned.”
She managed to drag herself away, but she still heard his distant mutter of, “…damnit…”
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Challenge #00241: Household Gods
Papier-mache elves.
He knew he shouldn’t ask. Technically speaking, anything that kept Shayde busy and not in anyone’s business was a good thing. Anything that kept her out of Sherlock’s notice was wonderful.
Apart from the fact that Sherlock now had her on his permanent watch list, and her alarming habit this time had been buying the cheapest paper and glue available. Which meant she was up to something.
Which meant Rael, once again, had to go, find out, and presumably stop it before it got on anyone else. Or, at the very least, tone it down to the level of minor nuisance.
Which was why he was watching Shayde apply bits of glue-soaked cellulose to a wire frame. The purpose of this was completely beyond him. Obviously, it was a form of art, since art was defined as activity without purpose, sometimes creating objects without purpose in the process.
This? This just looked like a mess.
But he had to ask.
“What are you doing?”
“Makin’ papier mache elves.”
“Elves…” he echoed. One, evidently, had a tail.
“Aye, I couldnae find the ones I was after. Bloody seeker kept sendin’ me tae the Mythos Embassy. When it weren’t sendin’ me tae the Cogniscent Rights office.”
Ah. Of course. ‘Elf’ had changed its meaning in the years she’d been jaunting through other dimensions. There were the Elves of planet Mythos, descendants of gengineered humans with pointy ears, longer lifespans, and tongue-clotting beauty on their side. And then there were ELFs, Engineered Life Forms like himself, the Skitties and, regrettably, his Wave of the Future gene-cousins, the Cleaners.
“So… you’re making… idols?”
“If that makes sense to ye, aye.” She picked up a small, stick-like tool and worked some fine detail into the glue-moistened paper. “I’m tryin’ tae make a home here, ye ken. And it’s not home without some little elves.” A crooked smile that meant that inside, she wasn’t smiling at all. “Me mum had a bitty collection. Elves from around the world. An’ she tole me the story, when I was little, about the cobbler and the little elves… So I’m makin’ the entire set. Celtic, German, French, Swiss, Russian, Tolkein, Pini, Cockrum…” A sick little laugh meant to stave off tears. “Ev'ry elf there ever was. In mem'ry o’ memum…” The laugh failed just as her voice did, and a thick tear fell down her ebon face like a meteor in the night, falling to a planet.
Homesick. It was a word he never understood. He never had any place where he knew he belonged, not even now. And the cure, a visit, was not even plausible. Her home was five hundred years ago, and millions of light years distant.
Rael sat next to her and awkwardly put his hand on her arm. Black and blue. “Tell me?” he asked. “Tell me about the happy times?”
Her hands moved again, placing paper in patterns he couldn’t fathom, let alone help with. Sometimes winding, sometimes patting, sometimes pressing… and she spoke, conjuring a peripatetic childhood, roaming between countries and continents, picking up languages like any other tourist would pick up tchotchkes. Picking up culture and learning, and never staying in one place.
Home, for her, was her family. Her mother, father and brother. And the little elves that her mother carefully packed for each move, and unpacked again when they settled once more.
She could not reach her family. Did not want to confirm that their lives had long since ended. So she was reaching for the next best thing.
An echo of home.
“May I help?” he asked. It wasn’t much comfort, but he was good at making new places to belong. Maybe he could teach her.
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Challenge #00240: Posting Bills on Jellynet
Subconsciously transmitted soul level personal ads transmitted via peer to peer, human to human internet powered by implants in the brain stem and the strange pairings that emerge from their usage. Base the story in the city you know most intimately.
It was cheap. It had no carrier feeds. It drastically reduced the volume of people who had no way to understand what life was like for other people.
People on Jellynet were almost 100% more likely to be civil, understanding, generous, polite, and just basically nice to their fellow human being.
The right wing hated it instantly.
But even then, instantly was too late. It was everywhere. Anyone could by a wire hat off anyone selling them on just about any corner. You could even get baby models for parents, so they knew exactly what their child found upsetting.
It was easy.
And that should have been the first warning.
Jellynet was a whirlwind of creativity. Like minds fissioned with instant access to each other. Ideas came to fruition in less time than it took via traditional channels.
And then, just as the world was becoming a better place, the adverts came.
They came to the shared dreamscape(you could certainly sleep in the wire hat. It was eminently comfortable), where groups of heroes regularly fought of nightmares and strange structures came and went like mist.
This one was a gigantic tub of washing powder.
Dreamers around it stared at it for a while, and then went elsewhere to have some fun before they awoke.
Melanie thought no more about it. Someone dreamed up bright orange bubble chairs that floated from a fountain and she’d spent most of her night touring the dreamscape in it. She went through her little routine in absolute private, taking off the wire hat to visit the loo and have a shower and pick her face and brush her teeth. All before putting the hat back on.
Some people, she knew, never took the hat off. She’d installed TMI filters, anyway. She didn’t need to know who was jacking off or who was on their period. She didn’t want to know, either.
Breakfast came with a monumental flash of a brand of cornflakes she never liked. Her disgust echoed around five of her neighbours. Weird. She got on with her day.
In realspace, she was just Melanie Tyler, checkout chick. In dreamspace… well, there was another reason she took the hat off. In her afternoons, she was writing a book, inspired by her dreams. She had to stay off Jellyspace, lest her daydreams be suborned by someone else into a new thing. Her Jellynet friends wished her well and that was enough for her.
Brisbane was cleaner, since the Jellynet hit. Even the weeds in the cracks on the pavement were vanishing.
Except dandelions. People liked them.
It wasn’t a long walk between her flats and the Queen Street Mall, nor from there to the shop where she worked. And in the early morning, Brisbane was a quiet place.
It was easy to believe that she was alone in the world, if not for the gentle hum of Jellynet in her head. Distant Americans were ending their days. The New Zealanders were already at work. A pair of hoons were approaching. They were thinking it might be funny to remind her that she was just a girl and girls existed for men.
Except Jellynet informed them in instants that that sort of thing was not nice and made them feel bad about it.
The guy on the passenger side ended up yelling, “You’re looking wonderful! Have a great day!” out his window without ever knowing precisely why.
Melanie grinned and skipped the rest of the way to work. Another day of stocking shelves, asking if the customer had Fly Buys, stuffing bags with purchases and otherwise earning her keep.
She was halfway through first shift when another one struck. It was for an artists she’d never hear, let alone heard of, but the music itself was a persistent and annoying ear-worm.
Then someone started replacing the words. New images rippled around. Someone turned it into a minecraft fid. Someone else turned it into a Star Trek fid.
It was the last time anyone tried putting advertising onto Jellynet.
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Didn’t We Already Fix That?!
A recurrence.
(#00240)
“Hey, check this out,” the fellow queuer passed over a pamphlet.
It was the immunoflu update, naming the diseases that the adjusted virus would protect the infected from.
A pointing finger indicated the anomaly. “What the heck is measles?”
“I know, right? That’s like… some weird human name or something.”
“Yes, but viruses have taxonomic names,” she argued. “For something to have a common name, it has to be around for hundreds of years. That just doesn’t happen any more.”
At which point, debate sprung up amongst her neighbouring queuers.
“I heard there was an anti-immuno deep-time colony. The viruses mutated and bred into this super-virus.”
“I heard it was just a regular deep-time colony from before they made the old viruses extinct.”
“I heard it was a string-runner? Trying to make a weapon? It killed them, of course.”
“I heard someone dropped through a space-time anomaly and skipped five hundred years.”
They all stared at the last speculator.
“Like that could possibly happen,” she scoffed.
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Challenge #00237: Pressed Seconds
Perpetual springtime.
Ellie had been hired to clean the garden. That alone made little sense to her, but this was Isinglass City, where the richest and the Eternals lived. Those who had the most time and the most money spent both in fascinating ways.
There was a definite border to Isinglass City. Nothing ugly was permitted to exist, there. Not even the average was permitted to exist. It was like a giant play-park with no rides.
And even inside Isinglass City, there were the Estates. High-walled fondants of architecture, preserved under glass -no- plasma barriers in perfect soap-bubbles.
If Isinglass City was a play park, the Estates were enormous sculptures set with jewels.
At least her uniform was pressed and clean.
She arrived by the underground tunnel, and didn’t even see the garden until such time as a small staff had ‘fixed’ her every last physical detail. In the event that the Eternal who owned this place saw her, she would not offend their eye.
Ellie was given a sort of duster attached to a hose and pushed out of a small door and into what must have been the garden. It was like no garden the world had ever seen, nor likely ever would again. It was a fabricated springtime. Literally.
The cherry trees were made of muslin. The blossoms, chintz. The very grass was a giant terrycloth rug. The roses were eternally blooming velvet. and every bush held blooms of a different colour. This was a spring meant to last forever.
A garden that never grew. For an owner who never aged.
Ellie got to furious dusting, lest she be fired on her first day. Part of her catalogued everything. There was even a jewelry spider set decoratively in a web made of tulle.
And there she was. The Eternal. She was one of the Relics, from before Temporetain™ had been invented. Anyone who could afford to be Eternal now did so before they needed vanity surgery.
She, too, was a work of art. Her last surgeon had sculpted her perfectly. Except, perhaps, the lips. They were pulled so tight across her perfect face that they were almost ready to snap.
She strode barefoot across her toweling lawn, confident in the knowledge that nothing in her fabric garden would hurt her. Not even the padded robot noodling across the green expanse, eternally vacuuming the least speck of dust out of the spotless, plush and padded expanse.
Ellie worked harder. Worried that this Eternal had somehow taken offense, regardless of Ellie’s efforts.
She didn’t look up. She just concentrated on vacuuming the already spotless canvas leaves. Making sure she got every last square micron cleaner than clean.
“You’re rather prettier than the average maid,” said the Eternal.
And no others were here, so Ellie knew the Eternal was talking to her. “Thank you, m’m.”
“Do you sing?”
“It’s my job to clean the garden, m’m.” Not a denial. Not a confirmation. Just the facts as she was assigned them.
“Sing. Anything.”
Ellie, still cleaning, sang the song her mother put her baby sibs to sleep with.
This did not impress the Eternal. “Needs work.”
Ellie watched her journey to the bar and pour herself a drink. A mocktail. Of course. Alcohol damaged the liver. Eternals dreaded any variety of damage; because in order to heal, they had to spend time off the Temporetain™.
“Tell me,” the Eternal shouted. “How would you like to live forever?”
Forever didn’t seem worth it to Ellie. But rather than offend, she said, “It’s my job to clean the garden, m’m.”
“They don’t hire me for the screen, any more,” said the Eternal as she sauntered to a (of course) padded lawn chair and arranged herself in it. “I make my money from spotting pretty little things like you… and sponsoring them on the way up. Fame, fortune. Medical cover for your relatives. All of them.”
Ellie paused, just for a moment. Medical cover. It was expensive to be poor. It cost a fortune to be poor and sick.
“Yes, I knew that would get you. Your kind are all the same. It’s all family first until you realize you don’t need them any more.”
Ellie felt nauseated at the very idea of not needing family. Then she realized. This woman had outlasted anyone who was close to her.
How could she stand to be that alone and that old?
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Challenge #00236: Weighty Problems
Heavy the head which wears the crown. Heavier still the corset laced improperly.
Valeria had practiced for this. There had been fittings and rehearsals and an entire day getting used to the weight of the crown for this ceremony. She’d be knighting all day. And, for proper pomp and circumstance, all formalities had to be observed.
Including the ritual underwear.
Valeria, as royal crown of Eass, was not permitted to dress herself and, owing to the complexities of the full royal regalia, she could not feed herself, either.
She stood, arms akimbo, while three maids fussed with the petticoats and undershirts and lacings, while a fourth fed her intermittent mouthfuls of breakfast and made certain nothing spilled. She was not even permitted to rearrange her generous breasts herself.
Which inevitably lead to disaster.
Her usual body-servant had a cold, and her junior was unpracticed, and worse, only had little green apples herself whilst Valeria was ‘blessed’ with prize-winning melons. The naive little creature saw no reason to adjust Valeria’s person and went straight on with the lacing.
And every time she opened her mouth, her breakfaster fed her.
And a Queen could not speak with her mouth full.
They got all the way to the ceremonial ruff before something vital went 'ping’ and the entire left side of the edifice of her ceremonial robes slumped visibly.
“Oops,” said the apple-breasted lesser idiot.
The Duchess of the Wardrobe sighed as she entered. “Undo the lot and start again. I’ll inform our knights to be that they shall wait on your majesty’s pleasure and you–” she pointed out the young maid, “–make certain that everything heavy is supported.”
Well. This made everything an hour longer than it had to be.
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