>>5336584Reaching up to rub the bridge of your nose with both thumb and forefinger, you find that none of those three things are as you once knew them; your fingers clank against a ridge of armored chitin, a soft plastic sound of shell-on-shell clattering through the dead silence of a room waiting with bated breath.
“We need warm bodies to deal with what we’re looking at.” You say aloud, more to yourself than anyone present until you sweep your gaze across the table. “I need to know which of your Dream Daughters you think would be willing to help out in the real. With the way my powers have evolved, I think I can make enough Spiritus Shells for them to help us deal with these issues en masse.”
“It might be a little strange to go to them one by one, Darling.” Francine chimes in, leaning back in her chair as you watch the numbers crunch behind her sharpened eyes. “Perhaps a communal offer would be more efficient. Something like a-”
“Message board! We could make a post!” Amara says, suddenly. “A Dreamscape post for everybody, all at once!”
“GG, you think you could hook us all together and slap together a Scandinavian Icefucking forum post to get everybody on board?” Rath asks, feet on the table as she swivels on her bony rear to fix your girlfriend with an arched eyebrow, to which she replies with a mirrored expression and a quirked smile.
“Oh, I’ve cut my teeth on many a Peruvian Seal-clubbing board, in my time.” Gina replies, which prompts a laugh from both Neesons and a thoroughly bewildered back-and-forth glance from your resident physician. Ignoring…whatever it is that they’re referencing, you fix your eyes solidly on the kind-hearted artisan down the table from you.
“Julia, when I have a better idea of who’s willing and able to help us out, could you-?”
“I’d b-be happy to help m-make them feel at home.” She replies with as warm a smile as you’ve come to expect, but it’s one that could never get old—a sentiment Dorian seems to share, his own warm smile fixed on his fellow Artisan’s cheek from the seat adjacent.
Response to your…forum post, you guess?...is swift enough that you and Julia find yourselves at one end of the massive living room in short order, hunched over a freshly-spawned table that’s littered with enough raw chitin to outfit a small army.
Which, it turns out, is precisely what you’re doing.
“Okay, so just making sure I made enough, lemme take it from the top.” You sigh, eyes wandering to the ceiling as you count down on your fingers. “Carmen, Zuè, Sval, Zahira, Madame Yurei, Penny, Hera, the six Sororitas kids, Cheruem, and…shit, who am I forgetting? I’m missing at least one, aren’t I?”
“SIlvis.” Julia patiently reminds you, the steel-hard chitin going soft and pliable under the sculptress’s skin-bare fingertips. “And I th-think this should be plenty.”
(Continued)
