A Shady Date
“I talk about a topic and then you talk about a topic. That way we could both be max-honest… about stuff.”
“Fine.”
She was quiet and thoughtful for a few seconds, watching the trees blur past.
“Before I met you, I lived on the Corpse God Citadel,” she began. “A ruin of an Earth punched apart by the Wormwood Star in a dimension so dead the stars didn’t even shine right. Home of the Frontenachii High Court, built by Empress Aconia and her delver party companions. My parents, Arrennia and Quintus, were functionally decorative. Dad was in Omnithornia. Mom was playing politics in the Inner Circle and leading the Second Fleet.”
I nodded. “You told me this already, I think.”
“Yeah. I was raised by servants. Kobold nannies, mostly. Old pradavarian women contracted to feed me, dress me, teach me to read. They were scared of me, obviously, because I was a Frontenachii Prima spawnling.”
She picked at the window seal with a blunted claw.
“The Citadel was… vast. Miles of corridors, dimensional bubbles, Builder shipyards, fabrication halls, hoards. Millions of prad kobolds and gun units scurrying around maintaining the systems. I used to spy on them with an artifact I stole from one of the hoard rooms.”
“What kind?”
“A cloak of the Deep. It pushed my basic Deep-diving skills further, allowing me to sink into the sideways shadow-dimension. It allowed me to move unseen across the entire Citadel. To listen in on conversations, to sit by kobolds and low ranking Commanders without them noticing me.”
“Sounds… pretty lonely.”
“Incredibly so,” she confirmed. “Sometimes the Empress summoned me for administrative duties. Bleh. T’was… Lots of boring paperwork. Memorizing Colony lists and resource allocations. Aconia was nice at times, patient and cool for the most part… Pretty much a bossy CEO running an interdimensional corporation. And… I was the intern being groomed for middle management.”
I navigated a tight curve, heading to the ocean shore.
“Then I found Aunt Zexxia,” Shady continued. “You know that part. My turn for a question.”
I nodded.
“Tell me about your Ash self!” Shady shamelessly stole my question.
“What specifically?”
“Okay, so like… earlier in the shower, you pointed out that it bothers you that I take charge and girlhandle you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So like, what truly makes my current Ashy tick?” She eyed me with glowing silver orbs. “Like… What strong opinions does Ashcroft Julian Clifford wield? What hill are you willing to die on? ‘Cause, you know, sometimes I look at you and I see… a maniac crashing warships into moons… and other times you simply seem to… go with the flow. Like a leaf on a river. A very tired leaf. A leaf I just want to smoosh endlessly and boss about.”
“A leaf?” I repeated flatly.
“A sexy leaf,” she amended. “But still a leaf. Where’s the pushback? Where’s mah opinionated Ash?”
“Behind the leaf Ash.” I stated. “Because some Wendigo split my mind into frontend and backend.”
“Soul,” she clarified. “I tore your soul in half. Wendigo hooks don’t grab at the flesh-meats of the mind. They hook onto your soul and steal information. I blessed you with a soul firewall.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Getting off topic!” She insisted. “Strong opinions! Come on! Throw them at me.”
“You want strong opinions? Here’s one. Pineapple belongs on pizza.”
“Weak opening. One outta ten. Try harder.”
“I’m serious. Hawaiian pizza is top tier comfort food and everyone arguing against it is performing a personality they saw on the internet. Fight me.”
“Noted. Next. Current non-leaf Ash. Gibs backend deets. No frontend vaguery!”
“Vaguery isn’t a word.”
“S’ totally a word in Omnithornia. Like thingery. Or dingery.”
“What the fuck is dingery?”
“A strikingly unique plot. Or a striking, catchy thing. You are mah dingery,” she poked my chest with a long claw, speaking in a Valley girl accent.
“I see.”
We crested a hill and the Pacific ocean came into view, gray-blue and endless. Azure waves chewed at rocky outcropping islands covered in pines and the yellow sandy and rocky beach.
A small seaside diner with a sign reading “DRIFTWOOD ALLY’S - DOGS WELCOME!” sat at the bottom of the slope.
“Right then,” I said. “Strong opinions. Hrm. Backend Ash… thinks the entire concept of a five-year plan is a scam invented by people terrified of admitting they have no control over anything. About as pointless as the goals people make on New Years, like attending the gym.”
“The only five year plan I know about was made by Soviet Omnids in the 1950s,” Shady commented.
“What? There are Soviet Omnids?” I raised an eyebrow. “Did they fight the Nazi Omnids in World War Two and win?”
“Yes. Learned all ‘bout it in Mr. Yamamoto’s history class at Skyfall.”
I fell silent, contemplating the bewildering narrative parallels between the human Earth and an Earth inhabited by Shady-sized cryptids.
“Ashy!” She swatted me playfully. “Quit derailing me. Tell me more about your inner self, damn it!”
“Aight.” I yawned. “Inner-self Ash thinks the most important skill a person can have isn’t intelligence or strength… It’s the ability to sit in a room full of people more powerful than you and still say ‘no’ when they’re wrong.”
Shady tilted her head at me.
“And… I am also of a firm opinion that engineering isn’t simply about building things.”
“Oh?”
“It’s about understanding constraints. Every circuit, every system, every machine is a… negotiation between what you want and what physics will let you get away with. And I’m good at that negotiation. It’s the one thing the pills and the therapy and the years of being told I was crazy couldn’t rob from me.”
“Dasss guud! Keep going!” Shady bobbed, eyes glowing bright.
“I think most people are cowards. I include myself in this. The difference is I’m aware of it and I choose to do scary things anyway. Bravery… is your knees shaking so hard you can barely stand and then standing anyway because someone has to. I guess… I am a thrill seeker deep down. Defeating Nexxali with a Tommy gun felt awesome.”
My Wendigo girlfriend nodded, feathers fluttering.
“I think loyalty is the most underrated virtue on the planet. Anyone who betrays a friend deserves to eat cold soup for the rest of their life. And… Music is the closest thing to magic that humans ever invented and the fact that we figured out how to make strangers cry with vibrating air is the single most impressive accomplishment of our species. Although, I could rant about the accomplishments of humanity all day long, if you let me.”
Shady smiled softly at me, eyes mooning up.
“And I think the Frontenachii are the most pathetically sad civilization in the multiverse because they had immortality, dimensional travel, and enough power to reshape reality, and the best thing they could come up with was torturing people in boxes. A species incapable of inventing pizza, bubble tea, or horror movies is fundamentally broken on a creative level. And I think the reason I often keep going with the flow, as you put it, is because I learned a long time ago that the people around me need to feel like they’re driving. They need to feel powerful and in control. And my job, MY specific skill, is to make sure the car goes where it needs to go at times… without anyone even noticing I adjusted the steering.”
I turned to face her fully.
“I’m not a leaf, Shady. I’m the river.”
Shady’s jaw opened slightly, rows of white teeth gleaming, violet-red tongue out. The violet-blue freckles on her cheeks flickered like a loading screen.
“Eeeee,” she whispered.
“Too much?”
“No, no… that was great.” She put a hand to her chest. “I like that. Okkay. I take back the leaf thing. You’re… like a really aggressive, opinionated river. With rapids. And rocks shaped like middle fingers.”
“Thank you.”
“A river of AUDACITY!”
“I’ll take it.”
She let out a fang-baring belly laugh that fogged up the windshield.
“Are you going to be a dog today all day?” I asked, glancing at the rearview mirror reflection which displayed the good omen of doom Shady panting in my passenger seat.
“Yes.”
“Why not masquerade as Commander Xandria?”
“Eh.” She shrugged. “Being seen as a dog by humans is funnier. Also it annoys you.”
“Is your job annoying me? Pretty sure that’s not how nice relationships work.”
“My job is…” Shady chewed on the answer. “Ashy. I’m… hungry. And not for steakses. You know that, right? Me being a dog around you makes you a little bit afraid, which in turn makes me less starved and hangry. Not like deathly afraid… but just a bit afraid that people will think that you’re…”
“Insane, because I’ll look like I’m talking to a dog.” I finished for her.
“And that’s bad?” She tilted her head sideways like a dog trying to comprehend a complex human concept.
“I… don’t like being seen as an insane loner,” I stated. “I already endured far too much of that as a kid.”
“Ashy,” Shady reached out with a dark, long-limbed hand. “You’re not insane. I’m here with you. Forever. I’m not going away ever again. You’ve got me as your Prima-Sword gal… And Galateya as our Hearth Keeper Shield and… Nexxy and Sage as our Knights. You’ve got great human friends too at your side. I’ve met Dax and read his mind. He’s a fantastically trustworthy human, one fully on your side. You’re definitely not alone. The dog holofractal glamour is part of my Shuck heritage and is handy because it pretty much erases me from human memories and fucks with… Scruts who are visually tracking deviations from orbital warships. Admiral Collette isn’t a blunt knob like Evely. If her watchers spot a lonely human walking around with a happy Wendigo on a beach near Cascade, they might send down some annoying Green Knights to investigate it. I don’t want that kind of attention to mess up our date. It’s safer for me to be a dog in public.”
“Okay.” I sighed. “Although, I’m getting the distinctive feeling that your entire dog glamour strategy is parasitic embarrassment farming.”
“Lighten up, Ashykins. Think of it as… ‘symbiotic cringe harvesting.’”
“You know what? If you’re going to harvest my cringe, I’m harvesting your cringe too.”
“Go ahead.” The Wendigo girl stuck her violet-tinted tongue out at me. “Make me suffer. Embarrass me. In fact, I dare you to cringe me up as much as possible. An out-cringe challenge!”
Something clicked in my head.
A younger Shady constantly messing with me, challenging me to beat her at the most ridiculous games she invented. Pretending to be a dog in town, being over the top silly just to embarrass me.
This too was a game to her.A grand game of a pretend-rawd Wendigo and her human best friend that would hopefully lead us to… personal wish fulfilment through the Netherweave Fold effect.
“Do you feed on your own embarrassment and fear too?” I asked.
“Take a guess.” She grinned at me.
I parked the car, stared at the gravel lot of Driftwood Ally’s and killed the engine.
The diner was a converted fishing shack, salt-bleached wood and rope railings, with a patio overlooking the beach. A hand-painted sign by the entrance showed a golden retriever in a chef’s hat.
“Alright, ground rules,” I said, unbuckling.
Shady’s ears rotated toward me.
“Rule one,” I said. “You walk on all fours if you’re going to be a dog.”
“Pfft. Obviously.”
“Rule two. No licking strangers.”
“Define strangers.”
“Everyone except me.”
“Boring, acceptable.”
“Rule three. If someone asks your breed… you’re a Newfoundland-Irish Wolfhound mix.”
“Ooh, dog-lore. Fancy. That’s more of a rule for you though, dogs don’t talk.”
“Rule four.” I held up four fingers. “You sit when I tell you to sit. You stay when I tell you to stay. You heel when I tell you to heel and offer paw when asked for a handshake. You’re a thoroughbred, well trained dog, not a mongrel I found in the street.”
Her silver eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “You’re giving me dog commands?”
“You chose to be a dog today. Congratulations. You get the dog experience. Full package. No refunds.”
“I could eat you.”
“I’d reincarnate.” I tapped my Lazarus bracelet. “And then Galateya would freeze you solid for fifty thousand years. You’d emerge onto an squid-ruled Earth and weep on the beach upon seeing a giant statue of me half-buried in the sand.”
“Gah!” Shady gasped dramatically, ears tilting back. “You monster! Quit blowing up my dreams of a million chill dates with your terrible Planet of the Apes fanfiction!”
“Apes? I said squids! With grabby tentacles! And no fear of Wendigos!”
“What are you scaring me with exactly? Planet of the Squids hentai?”
Both of us started giggling and then broke out into hearty laughter.