Quoted By:
>Dream.
You are sitting at a table in the Better Than Nothing. You are in the seat you were in before, surrounded by the people you were surrounded with, but the atmosphere is different: you are not an interloper to be humored and patronized, but a trusted friend being lauded— deservedly— for her bravery and boldness and skill. You are a Courtier as you <span class="mu-g">a</span>lways have been and your hair is braided down your back.
At present Lucky is mid-toast of you, though several other toasts have preceded this, and the firewater-feedback loop is already in full swing. As such Lucky's words about your bravery and boldness and skill seem to you and the rest of the table to be the most profound and moving ever spoken, and you and Hatch are near tears by the time all the canteens are raised and tapped together and sipped from. You are thus caught unprepared when the cry for 'SPEECH!' arises, which quickly becomes a table-banging chant, until you sniffle and step unsteadily onto your chair and look down onto the expectant faces of your comrades.
You do not know what to say. You have been waiting for this moment for years— years of clawing up the hierarchy, of scrabbling for recognition when you're tiny and girlish or not girlish enough— and now it has arrived, and you do not know what to say. You are rapidly turning crimson.
Your eyes scan the table and land on Jesse's. He nods and smiles and says <span class="mu-i">Go on, Charlie, give a speech— or can't you?</span> You couldn't turn crimson any harder so you fume and make a rude gesture at him, and he smiles harder, and you turn in a huff and deliver an off-the-cuff ramble about heroism and stomping out evil where you find it and <span class="mu-i">true</span> companionship. It is not very good, but nobody cares, and you sit down again to light applause.
>[ID: 13/13]
<span class="mu-i">So you *can* speak, Charlie,</span> Jesse says, and when you look back up at him there's something knowing in his eyes. You realize then that the two of you share a secret. <span class="mu-i">Can I get you a drink?</span>
He takes a tiny vial out of his pocket and shakes a few droplets from it into his canteen, then into yours. The firewater inside begins to smell of <span class="mu-r">d</span>amp earth. You down it as soon as he pulls away, and he does the same, and the floor cracks under your chair. You fall...
[And are jostled and banged about and, finally, lifted. You do not wake.]
...and the motion is such that the world blurs before you, and you find yourself elsewhere. You are supine on a stone altar. Jesse stands above you, his body painted in <span class="mu-r">s</span>pirals; he is wielding a tortoiseshell-handled knife. Your shirt is pulled up over your abdomen.
<span class="mu-i">Relax, Charlie,</span> he says. <span class="mu-i">It will all be over soon.</span>
What? you say. The world?
(1/2)
