Quoted By:
"Holy shit, she had to have been— she wouldn't fucking shut up about it. She's a <span class="mu-i">queen.</span> She has <span class="mu-i">royal blood.</span> She's better than all of you peons, blah blah blah." Madrigal's doing a funny Lottie-ish voice, though it isn't very good. "Now? I haven't heard a peep about that. And I've been sick, sure." (You think Pat's the one with her snake. Something about Madrigal feeling weird if she handles it too much.) "So maybe I missed some. But shit, at the rate she... and now there's all this <span class="mu-i">hero</span> stuff. What the fuck is that? She's not a <span class="mu-i">hero.</span>"
"She..." You jab your fingers into your pockets. "Um, she saved my life."
"Uh-huh," Madrigal says.
"And she— she went off trying to save you from being kidnapped? I think she felt responsible for it. She brought all these people, and they tried really hard, and..." This is a distortion of the truth, to say the least, but you don't feel like getting into it. "Um, by the way, you know that Pat shot me, right? I-In the head? ...While kidnapping you?"
There's a pause, which Madrigal fills with tubeworm-squishing noises. "Yeah."
"...Um, and you're... cool with that?"
"Well, we've made a deal." She pauses again. "Sorry you got shot, Bug Man. At least you're okay now?"
You're genuinely unsure how to respond to this. "...Could you stop calling me Bug Man?"
"Are you made of something else now?"
Or to that. "I-I-I guess... goo? Please don't call me Goo Man."
"You got it," Madrigal says, "Bug Man."
-
When you heard there was a region called Hell out here, you had thought the locals were being melodramatic. Not so. The ground is boiling. The steam is boiling and/or poisonous. The terrain is flaky and gnarled and grey, except for the worms, which are gory shades of red or orange and uniformly phallic. You are out here without any protective gear whatsoever, a decision made by Pat, who said all businesslike that gooiform bodies didn't need it. You kind of hate that you haven't been needing it. You are not dead, and neither hot nor tired, though you do yearn to get out of here as fast as possible.
Then you start thinking about Madrigal again— not in a weird way, she's just hiking near you, and also you were possessing her body three days ago. The thought of which tends to override whatever else you were thinking about. This time it's mostly about how Madrigal would react if you ever told her, and if she'd believe you if you said it was grossly unpleasant, and you wanted to get out of her skin as fast as possible, and if she'd prefer it being unpleasant vs. it being pleasant, which would be undisputably creepier, you think, but maybe less offensive, and on and on— stuff like that. Also about the odds of her finding out, which seem... large, considering how many people found out, Ellery and that guy Monty and whoever, but maybe you could stall it out? Or hole up in Lottie's head while the news broke? At least you might have a while before it—
(4/5)
