A Fortress of Pebbles

The curse was worse than it first seemed: not only did the ingested language stones convert their names to Ass-aba and Ass-adu whenever they spoke them, but upon passing anyone in the Spire hallways or the courtyard marketplace, cat-Styxx’s voice from nowhere announced “Behold, Ass-aba and Ass-adu, the chosen ones.”

Usually, the Fortress dwellers gave them a wide berth after this. Occasionally, they snickered from deep within their black robes. One woman, followed by three bone collectors taller than she was, bowed to them and murmured something in a harsh guttural language.

They spent an hour like this wandering the Fortress, looking for a way out. No doors were locked and nowhere was off limits – but nothing led to Earth. The doors they dared open led to places cloaked in darkness or mist, filled with the sounds of alien life that they weren’t quite ready to meet. The main gates, of course, were shut tight. And no one in the market would talk to them.

So they returned to their room defeated. From down the hallway, Aissaba could hear noises coming from cat-Styxx’s door – the sound of a woman’s occasional laughter and cat-Styxx’s low purr. Although she couldn’t make out his words, it was clear that he was quite the entertainer. She resisted the urge to creep closer and listen – mostly because she was certain that he would somehow know she was there, bursting forth with a prediction slip.

So they entered their own room instead, awash with light from pebbles embedded in Tassadu’s tub. The dance of shadow and light, the four poster bed, the ornate cuckoo clock – none of it felt as flattering or fancy as before. Behold, Ass-aba and Ass-adu, the chosen ones, it all seemed to say, as if everything here was meant to mock them.

“We could go on a rampage,” suggested Tassadu as he sank into his tub. “Then, they’d have to throw us out.”

Aissaba was busy trying to pry one of the pebbles from the tub with her bare hands. “You wanna try your talons on this?”

Tassadu plucked out the pebble as easily as if it were a berry on a vine and handed it to her. He didn’t bother to tell her that the chances of it being re-flashable were pretty low. She held it to her forehead as she returned to the shadows of her bed.

Cat-Styxx was there.

She gasped and took the pebble away involuntarily, which made him disappear.

“What?” said Tassadu.

As she placed the pebble back to her forehead, he reappeared – grinning and reading from a slip of paper. “Prediction,” he purred, “Aissaba will try to re-flash one of the decorative pebbles–”

She sank into the bed with a groan, just barely resisting the urge to chuck the pebble at the cuckoo clock.

“What?” Tassadu insisted.

At first, she was too angry to answer. Physical torture would have been preferable to this constant onslaught of cat-Styxx’s arrogance. The fact that he was, aside from his behavior, very attractive only made things worse. “It’s flashed with his personality model,” she muttered.

The pebble glowed reddish pink in her hand – not its true color, just a mind magic trick. The infuriating thing was that she had the urge to put it back to her forehead just to see the green of his eyes. Yet, if she could reflash it, she’d waste no time ripping her own mind to shreds to remove every trace of involuntary attraction that lurked there.

Water dripped on her, and she realized Tassadu had joined her at the bedside. “It’s flashed with a personality model, you say?” said Tassadu.

“Without a pebble of our own,” said Aissaba, glaring at him, “what does it matter?”

Then, to Aissaba’s amazement, he pulled a glowing blue pebble from behind her ear. “Ass-adu,” she breathed, “h-how did you do that?”

Before her eyes, Tassadu twirled the pebble in his talons, pushed it into his closed fist, and opened it to reveal that it had vanished. Then, he plucked it from his mouth. “It must be the blink-link with Orion,” he said. “When cat-Styxx told us to hand over the pebbles, I palmed one without thinking.”

“And then what?” she said. “He checked everywhere for hidden pebbles.”

“Not everywhere,” said Tassadu. The way his eyes shifted reminded Aissaba of how sometimes Orion’s did.

“Gross!” said Aissaba. “And you just pulled it out of your mouth!”

No matter how much Ass-adu insisted that this had been part of the trick – that it had never actually been in his mouth – she couldn’t get the idea out of her head. The same was true for the logistics of placing it into his “prison pocket” while being watched by bone soldiers and a seemingly omniscient cat. Imagining it made her grimace.

“Tell me it’s not the one with my mom inside,” groaned Aissaba.

He placed it to his forehead to check, then said, “If it helps, I rinsed it thoroughly in the tub just now.”

She shoved the decorative reddish pebble in his direction. “You do it. I’m not touching the other one.” A moment later, he handed back a pure gray mind pebble. When she placed it to her forehead, she saw that it was flashed with a copy of the TSO-duh and breathed a sigh of relief: the butt pebble wasn’t the one with her mom’s personality model inside.

“I’m going to use it to create a diversion–”

He snatched it away from her. “Ass-aba, I know what you’re going to do,” he said solemnly. “You’re going to try to make personality adjustments. Again.” Despite her protests, his grave expression remained etched like stone upon his scaly face. “It’s what you always do when you get like this.”

“Like what?” she demanded.

“You tell me,” he said. “Trapped? Helpless? I don’t know how you’re feeling if you won’t tell me.”

“If I want to make myself un-attracted to the man who’s torturing me, that’s my right,” she said, holding out her hand for the pebble. “Give it here.”

“You’re not supposed to,” said Tassadu, voice weaker than before. He could never stand up to her for long.

“That’s the other Fortress’s rule,” she said. “Your dad’s rule.”

“It’s a rule that exists because you almost killed yourself. Twice,” he said, voice almost a whisper now – like a dying candle. Still, it took her aback. He almost never talked about what happened during their thesis years. Neither of them did.

Her waiting hand trembled even as she said, “Give it.”

He made no eye contact as he placed it in her hand. Gently. Then, he returned to his tub and began working in silence with one of the other decorative pebbles. It was like he was alone in the room.