Raizen tilted his head. Barely. Just enough to bring his mouth closer to the pocket without making it obvious.
"Explain." he whispered in a firm tone.
The words were barely audible - a breath shaped into syllables, aid downward, masked by the noise of the casino and soone at the close-by table arguing about a bet.
The lizard’s head was still above the pocket’s edge. Its eyes hadn’t left Saffi.
"Her balance is wrong," it said. Then it shifted its weight on Raizen’s chest, one tiny foot slipping on the fabric. It caught itself, readjusted with exaggerated dignity, and continued as if nothing had happened. "Completely, embarrassingly wrong. I could see it from inside your pocket, and I was asleep."
"What do you an, her balance -"
"I an," the lizard said, with the patience of sothing that had been explaining obvious things to inferior beings before, "that her mind is doing all the work and her body is just... There. Hanging around, like a decorative fence around a city under siege."
It paused, glanced down at the pocket it was standing in. Got briefly distracted by how warm the fabric was against its feet. Its eyes half-closed for a mont. Then it snapped back.
"Oh, oh. Where was I?"
"Her balance...?" Raizen hissed.
"Right. Yes. Don’t rush ." The spikes on its head rose and fell - a nervous tic, or a thinking tic, or both. "Her mind handles Eon insanely well. Genuinely impressive, actually - not that I’d tell her that, she looks like the type who’d get insufferable about it." The lizard squinted at Saffi. "But her body can’t distribute any of it. The pathways aren’t there. It’s like -"
It searched for the right comparison. Its tail flicked.
"- it’s like strapping a war drum to a twig. You can bang it all you want. The twig will snap."
"How do you know this?" Raizen mumbled, but the mumble ca out louder than intended.
Saffi raised her eyes from her food.
"Hm?" She looked at Raizen, head tilted, chopsticks suspended. "Did you ask sothing?"
Raizen’s face attempted a casual look. It achieved sothing closer to a man who’d just sat on sothing sharp and was pretending he hadn’t.
"No-" he said. "Just... Um... Talking to myself."
He picked up his chopsticks, took a bite and chewed with exaggerated normalcy.
Saffi’s eyes lingered on him for a mont. The analytical focus activated, assessed, and - rcifully - filed the interaction under "Raizen just being weird".
From the pocket, the lizard had not stopped talking.
"- and ANOTHER thing, I don’t appreciate being shushed. I was mid-diagnosis! Do you shush your physicians? Do you shush the person telling you your house is on fire? No. You listen. You say "thank you, wise and observant entity, for your invaluable-""
"How. Do. You. Know." Raizen whispered, each word pressed through his teeth.
The lizard reared up to its full height - which, from the pocket, ant its head rose approximately one additional centiter above the fabric’s edge.
"Because I can SEE it, you insufferable little dunglewart."
The insult was delivered with such genuine contempt that Raizen almost flinched. The lizard wasn’t performing outrage. It was genuienly, authentically outraged.
"I see Eon, dummy" it continued. "Not the way you see it - flickering around like a dog chasing its tail every ti soone does a stupid trick. I see all of it. The structure. The flow. The architecture. Every living creature in this room is radiating Eon right now, and most of them look like - like maps drawn by drunk babies. Smudged, sloppy. Yours, by the way -"
It glanced up at Raizen. The pale gold eyes narrowed.
"- yours is an atrocity. I’ve never seen anything so tangled in my -" It stopped. Frowned, sohow. Its small head apparently could make it frown. "- in however long I’ve been alive. We’ll co back to that, don’t let forget."
"I really wish you’d forget..." Raizen whispered, disguised as a simple sigh.
The lizard turned back toward Saffi. Watched her lift her chopsticks. "The point is," it said, lowering its voice to sothing that resembled a whisper, "that one has a mind like a vault and a body like wet parchnt. If she tries to channel Eon the normal way, she’ll hit a wall every single ti. Not because she’s lacking. Because she’s lopsided."
It paused. Its attention drifted to the steam rising from Raizen’s bowl. The tiny nostrils flared. The pupils widened.
"What is that sll?"
"Focus."
"I am focused. I’m focused on two things simultaneously, which is more than you’ve managed in -"
"The bottleneck" Raizen whispered. "Is there a way around it?"
The lizard blinked. Pulled its attention back from the food with visible effort.
"Of course there is" it said. "There are always ways around things. But she’d need to -"
It stopped. Its head tilted sharply. Its eyes locked onto sothing across the room - the roulette wheel, spinning, the wooden ball bouncing between carved slots. The lizard watched it with sudden, total fascination. Its pupils tracked the ball. Left, right, left -
"Are those - is that a tiny wooden ball going around a circle? Why is it doing that? What happens when it stops? I want to see it stop. Is it going to stop soon?"
"You were telling about Saffi."
"Who?"
"The girl. Wet parchnt body? The one you were just talking about?"
"Ohhhh, yes. Her." The lizard tore its gaze from the roulette wheel with the physical effort of a child being pulled away from a window display. "She needs a different path. Not the standard one - the standard path requires balance she doesn’t have. She needs sothing that uses the mind as the primary channel. Sothing that bypasses the body entirely."
The tiny mouth pressed into a flat line. An expression of rebellion.
"Sothing that bypasses the body...?"
"Of course, then she won’t be able to use Eon for physical reinforcent or anything like that, but she can use it in amazing ways. She’s built for sothing specific, but she just hasn’t figured out what yet. And those two lumbering guffnuts certainly aren’t helping her find it."
Guffnuts. Another one. Raizen was going to need a dictionary sooon.
The lizard dropped back into the pocket. The ranting energy drained away. Raizen sat there. Food getting cold. Mind running.
Built for sothing specific. A different path. One that bypasses the body entirely and runs through the mind. Did sothing like that even exist? And if the lizard knew about it, what else did it know? What else was it misplacing, or half-rembering, or deliberately not saying?
The food had cooled but was still good. He focused on the flavours, trying to be present.
Across the table, Kenzo had finished. He sat back, arms behind his head, eyes closed, wearing the satisfied expression of a man who had eaten more than the right amount. Saffi was nearly done.
Atman was still eating. Slowly. Savouring. But between bites, Raizen caught him glancing sideways. Not at the food. Not at Kenzo or Saffi.
At Raizen.
Quick looks. The kind that were designed to seem accidental... But weren’t.
Atman set his chopsticks down, picked up his cup and took a long sip.
Then he shifted on the bench. A casual movent - adjusting his position, stretching his legs. He stepped over Kenzo’s outstretched feet and settled on Raizen’s side of the table. Close. Closer than the seating arrangent required.
"Good food, right?" Atman said.
"Yeah. Really good."
"The woman who runs this place used to cook for a trade convoy. Fifteen years on the road, can you believe that? The girl – miss – I was talking to was actually her daughter."
"That explains a lot."
Small talk. Filling the empty space before the real conversation began. Raizen could feel it - the way Atman’s words were placeholders, the way his body language was slowly angling inward, creating a pocket of space between the two of them that excluded the rest of the table.
Kenzo’s eyes were still closed. Saffi was watching the roulette wheel across the room.
Atman leaned in.
His mouth ca close to Raizen’s ear.
"So," Atman said. His voice was low. "Did you have enough thinking ti?"
Raizen’s eyes slowly moved to the side, towards Atman’s face.
"...Are you going to join the Silent Hand?"
User Comments
0 comments from readers