It was a Tuesday when the wiki reached one hundred percent.
At least, it was because Sable had let slip that the cartographer’s office was shut on Tuesdays, giving her the afternoon free to do whatever, but she hadn’t been in my thoughts enough recently for to have acted on the tidbit of information, because there were four other things on my plate and I could leave hers where it was. Either way, the wiki reaching one hundred percent on the sa day was a joke from the ga, and I couldn’t tell anymore what was just coincidence.
ESTA — WIKI COMPLETE
Classification: CONFIRD
Origin: Ga-native
Role: Post-canon — no script, no canonical purpose
Corruption ter: 31/100 — climbing
Relationship / Kai: 58
Mood: Present / Decided
Note: Establishnt phase complete — established character / nearing threshold
Thirty-one.
I spent so ti sitting with that number at the canal bench. Thirty-one was not a number that had achieved itself by chanics. There was no approach architecture, no flag manipulation, no relationship ter adjustnts. Eleven days of Crown mornings, conversations that wandered wherever, Esta’s mood calibrations becoming easier as she gathered more data about and it proved consistent.
Thirty-one was the sum of two people talking for eleven mornings at the sa corner table in the sa inn about the canal benches and Floor 7 and Vorn the person when not running his operation.
I put down my empty cup and returned to the Crown.
Esta was sitting where she normally sat. Map out and cup partially emptied, hands free of ink, lying flat on the table in front of her the way she sat when she was considering sothing she did not wish to share.
She looked up when I entered. No longer the routine calibration, but simply acknowledgent without difficulty.
"Wiki completed," I stated, taking a seat.
"What do you an?"
"It ans that the ga has enough docuntation to complete your file. You’ve been docunted." I hesitated. "It’s a post-canon event. When soone’s been here long enough for there to be sufficient data recorded."
Esta mulled that over in the manner she applied herself when sorting through information. "The ga is docunting ."
"The ga is now docunting all the individuals it cos across. The ga ceased its scripting so ti ago." I looked at her. "You’ll be Entry 006."
There was a shift in her face — not one of awkwardness, but rather the sort of reaction people experience when faced with a different type of fra. "And what did it say?"
"That you were straightforward. That you’re observant. Competent traveler. Protective baseline without being naïve about him."
I stopped myself. "That you think before you speak and that you an what you say when you do."
Esta fell silent for a beat. Eyes going from the table to again. "That sounds right."
"The wiki doesn’t lie."
Esta took her cup and drank. Then set it down, perfectly efficiently as always. "Vorn ca to visit ."
"I know. How’d it go?"
"Well." She said it plainly, the way she said anything important that didn’t require an explanation. "Complex in the sense that complicated things happen whenever two people who have gone through so kind of experience don’t see each other for a long ti. But well."
"He’s sorting himself out."
"He told ." She stared at , that look she gave things she was really looking at: beyond calibration, beyond assessnt. Just Esta paying absolute attention to sothing.
And I didn’t answer her.
"He didn’t give much detail," she continued. "Just a general idea, how you got through his stopping point and took what you needed and paid the price for it." Another pause. "He told you did it for so other person completely."
"I did."
"But it helped him."
"Appeared as though soone else might have had to do it anyway."
Esta stared at , long and hard. Sothing changed in the room; not drastically, nothing flashing on the screen telling this transition was taking place, but just that subtle shift that occurs when a conversation changes into sothing else and both parties are aware of it simultaneously.
The interface quietly adjusted itself.
ESTA — STATUS
Relationship / Kai: 67
Corruption ter: 38/100 — climbing
Mood: Present / Decided
Note: Threshold imminent — organic transition confird / no chanics engaged
Sixty-seven. Thirty-eight.
She got up. Not leaving — she moved her map aside and turned to with the straight-no-nonsense way she had when she already had her mind made up. "My room is upstairs."
The Wren’s Rest was two streets up from here. Eleven days in the Wren’s Rest.
"The Wren’s Rest," I said.
"I moved this morning," she said, holding my gaze. "Sena had a room."
I imagined Sena setting cups down without prompting, tilting her head at odd angles around rooms and never describing how it made sense in her mind.
"Of course she did," I said.
The room was on the second floor, at the end of the hallway, and was larger than mine. It was already arranged by Esta, who had occupied it for only approximately six hours, but it possessed the neat orderliness of soone who sets things right the first ti — the map spread neatly out upon the desk, the pack against the wall, with nothing lying about that wasn’t supposed to be there.
When the door closed behind us, she turned to look at again with that full attention that she paid everything else.
I walked across the room to kiss her.
She kissed with the sa directness, with no show of anything but the simple act of doing what needed doing. Her hands moved up my face, and held like Mira didn’t, with a steady grip. I felt her breath against my cheek as it ca from her nose, long and deliberate; and then less deliberate when she realized that I had gotten a grip on her hair and was pulling her close.
She paused enough to talk. "I don’t do anything half-assed."
"I’ve noticed."
"Good."
We each stripped our jackets off, and she began to undo her shirt, efficiently stripping away the laces as if she were stripping away map creases — thodically, purposefully, and before I could even figure out what she was doing, I had her shirt off, too. She was standing in the light streaming from the room’s single lamp, and I spent a mont because it was worth spending a mont.
She was lean without being muscular like Rin; instead, she was tall and long-legged, the body of an experienced walker who didn’t care much about distance. Her corruption ter was sitting at forty-one in the corner of my vision, but I simply filed it away without pausing because there is looking and seeing and there is acting.
She made to undo my belt without preamble, and I managed to get a hold of her waist and walk her back towards the bed, where she sat down without resistance, looking up at with those direct eyes.
"You’ve been thinking about this," she stated. No question needed.
"You’ve been sitting at the sa table for eleven mornings," I responded. "So have you."
Her lips parted — the ghost smile she gave before, but this ti it was different, it was real. The smile stayed brief, but it was one of those rare monts when she actually smiled. "Fair enough."
I started to undress her by taking off her boots, then her pants, and she was bare down there, watching , waiting patiently, which seed to co easier to people like her — not pretending that things were going to be done quickly and easily, but knowing that if it was worth doing, then patience would follow.
I put my hand between her thighs, and I found out how ready she already was for — her body wet and warm beneath my touch, making sounds that weren’t anything like her speaking voice.
"There," she said, which ant here, in terms of geography, not anything else.
I used two of my fingers inside of her, and she panted sharply through her nose, and her hips shifted against my hand, deliberate and focused like always, taking what she needed the sa way she did with everything. She grabbed my wrist, holding in place — not stopping, but grounding.
"More," she said.
And I obliged her. Twisted my fingers and pressed against the place that made her breathing unsteady, working it until she clutched harder onto my wrist and squeezed her thighs shut and let out a noise that erged from beyond the place in her body that thinks before speaking.
She ca with her eyes wide open, watching the whole ti, which is entirely the kind of Esta move she’d make — completely there while it was happening, not distracted by thoughts of any other place or ti than right here. Short burst, carefully controlled until she couldn’t anymore.
She looked at after. "Good," she said, the sa way she had about talking to Vorn, aning the sa thing: good, and no need for anything else.
I got rid of my clothes and she shifted back on the bed, and I did likewise, getting into position by myself this ti, doing it carefully because it wasn’t just about having patience, but about making sure it was done right, just as Rin had done.
I entered her and she took it with a long, deep exhalation, her eyes remaining open, and I began moving and the slow beca quick.
Rin had been different in the way that she was quiet; she held herself in control, even when she was reacting, her sounds coming from a place that I couldn’t reach. This woman was different in that the sound she made ca only when I hit the spot that did it, but then she said sothing, sothing I wouldn’t say out loud downstairs, and so I filed it away as useful information.
Her hands found their way to my back, firm pressure, active rather than passive — the unspoken guidance through which she provided locational information, such as tools exchanged from hand to hand. Here. Useful.
I complied.
She ca the second ti more forcefully than the first, the disciplined beginning abandoned quicker, her back lifting two inches from the mattress and her grip tightening on my back as she made an uncontrolled noise.
And I went with her and it was a while before we got the hang of being in a room again.
She laid next to afterward, without pulling away, without faking it — just there, present, the way she was present at the table downstairs. Her breathing was steadying. The lamp light in the afternoon was behaving like it normally did.
Eventually, she told , "Wiki has an entry on ."
"Entry 006," I clarified.
"What is it saying now?"
I checked. It had updated while we weren’t paying attention, as always.
ESTA — WIKI UPDATED
Corruption ter: 47/100 — climbing
Relationship / Kai: 89
Mood: Settled / Present
Note: Threshold crossed — dynamic established / organic progression confird / no chanics engaged
"Settled, and present," I told her.
Esta thought about that for a mont. "That is correct," she replied.
Without bothering to get up, she took the map off the table by stretching out her arm — long arms, after all, don’t have to stretch very far — and unfurled it, studying it under the light of the lamp.
I looked up at the ceiling.
Forty-seven corruption. Eighty-nine relationship. Vorn’s sister, recorded as Entry 006 in a wiki that had stopped following the script and started recording reality instead.
The ga kept track.
The city was carrying on its afternoon business outside. Sowhere just two streets further south, Sena was putting cups down, making choices and not providing explanations for her thod.
I closed my eyes.
Okay.
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