Page 123 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
No matter what, buying such things in such large quantities would be a little hard to explain to my friends. I had to disentangle myself from them soon.
“I kind of want to get another tattoo,” Wren mused, staring wistfully at a booth where a female Object Summoner was commanding dozens of needles to dip themselves in bottles of ink and prick the arm of her current customer over andover, forming a black glob that looked like a slowly-crystallizing hummingbird.
I eyed her in surprise. “I didn’t know you already had one.”
“I have two, actually.” Wren smirked. “But they’re not in any place you would ever see them.”
Emelle and I exchanged quick, purse-lipped glances, but I recovered quickly.
“Well, what’s one more then? I say go for it.”
“You think?” Wren’s eyes had snapped back to the Object Summoner’s booth of jerking, bobbing needles.
“Oh, for sure.” I nodded, perhaps a bit too vehemently. “You can never have too many snakes or crows on your ass, or whatever—”
“Skulls,” Wren interrupted. “Snake and crowskulls. And I like your spirit today, Rayna. I think I’ll add a jaguar skull today.”
She patted me on the shoulder, cracked her knuckles in an outward motion, and dove through the crowd in a streak of feather-black hair.
One friend successfully preoccupied. Two more to go.
“What were you thinking about getting this year, Gil?” I asked as the three of us resumed a slow trek down the rows of carts and tents, the heat of hundreds of bodies and magic slowly blossoming into a sticky bubble around us. I had a simple satchel slung around my neck today, and the rough fabric of the strap was already digging sweat into my skin.
Gileon’s brow had furrowed at my question.
“I… I can’t remember, actually. Do you, Nuisance?”
The rhinoceros beetle buzzed something into his ear, shelled wings whirring.
“No, it wasn’t a new pair of underwear.” He scratched his head. “No, not that either. It was something important.”
I frowned up at him. Last year, he’d gotten Wren a bouquet of needles, which I’d thought might have indicated some kind of romantic affection between them. I still didn’t know whether their relationship was more than friendly or not, but I did feel like I knew Gileon’s heart—big and always focused on other people.
He looked so sad now at the realization that he couldn’t remember what he’d wanted to get today, his lip trembling, eyes glassing over, that I didn’t feel a shred of guilt for funneling an opening in my blockade toward him and slinking into his mind to try to help him out.
Whoa.
My consciousness blinked against the blinding expanse of white leather that was Gileon’s mind.
His walls were straight edged, perfectly uniform, and… padded, like bricks made of cushions from the most pristine of sofas.
When I whirled this way and that, it was to find that neither a gate nor Gileon’s consciousness were anywhere in sight.
What the hell? I hadn’t been in too many minds, but this was… strange, to say the least.
I didn’t have time to dwell too hard on the phenomenon, though, as a faint, familiar voice echoed overhead.
If only I had the right kind of pan,
I’d bake her into a pie
and feed her to the…
If only I had the right kind of pan,
I’d bake her into a pie
and feed her to the…
