Chapter Text
Pallis wandered the human world and found two human children playing some version of “the floor is lava” in a playground. By their rules, one child couldn’t be tagged as long as that child remained elevated and out of reach like a star, while the other acted like waves of lava around the playhouse. One short side of the rectangular playhouse opened to a slide, the other short side to the monkey bars, the third to steps, the fourth closed off. The lava-child counted down from ten, as the star-child wasn’t moving from the center, “and just walking around the same spot is against the rules,” and the lava-child ascended the steps of the entrance and crowded it so it should have been impossible to pass.
The star-child bolted for the slide, causing the lava-child to shriek and scurry down the stairs and over to the bottom of the slide, then hurry back when the star-child backed up towards the monkey bars. The lava-child counted down from five because “the monkey bars are still part of the playhouse” even though there wasn’t another elevated area for several yards around. The lava-child jumped up to tap the star-child’s foot as the star-child’s body dangled from the bars, and announced that a win. The star-child groaned in defeat and dropped down. By their rules, the star-child became the new lava-child and the previous lava-child to become a star-child.
“New rules,” said the new star-child. “No counting down. Every step is a new safety spot. And both my feet should be on the ground, for more than ten seconds, for you to catch me and make me ‘it’ again. Oh, and you’re not allowed to climb the stairs. That’s not part of the volcano this time.”
The new lava-child slouched forward, deflating with discouragement, but didn’t have the imagination to say that this was unfair and not at any fun at all. Pallis wished that he could find more fear in the new star-child that inspired such unfair terms, or something else in the new lava-child that could become a virtue, but there was none.
He was interested in the threads that wove between them, that pulsed with push and pull. The bonds between the tellers, the thought, the word, the imagination made a permeable rind around the playground and through a tesseracted sphere of the playground. He recognized this as the same stuff that had been missing between the human world and The West, not exactly the same, but close enough to give hope to Fear*.
*
He sought other samples, and found it made into matter with video game consoles and lucid dreams vivid enough to make thought into matter (at least, within the rind). He found wreaths of it that braided and dissipated as a scientist tried to explain to a layperson why a scientific theory is more consistent than a scientific fact, let alone a layperson’s conjecture that they called a theory. He found it radiating from a ballerina, painting romance into the eyes of a dance partner she hated, hatred that the audience must not be allowed to see; and then, backstage, when she told her family that it was fun to be a star but she knew it couldn’t be her life. Dancers had such short careers, from a business standpoint ballet shouldn’t exist, and she had always wanted to be in advertising agencies like all of them. She might have told them a story, she might have told them—and herself—a lie. Some part of almost everybody knew it, and they all played along.
He found it in a dungeon that contained three people, all of whom were free to leave at a word, and certainly had the imagination to do so, so it wasn’t a real dungeon.
Finally, he saw it in himself. Pallis wasn’t a creator, not like the Father Goddess of the West, but he could bridge the sundering with everything he’d learned. More than a bridge? It wouldn’t be a rind like a citrus, or the water tension of a dew-drop, but a chrysalis.
He could, he thought he could, he did not. Those within the broken, empty shell of The West found a way to bridge the Sundering first. And then there had come the downfall of an evil overlord, and the changing of names, and wars, and therapists. All the therapists.
One day after all that, King Clarene and Pallis encountered each other at the library. It was a surprise for both of them, as neither often went to the library, and had thought the other an equally rare visitor.
“What are you doing?” The Clarene asked, but the meaning beneath the words was closer to: Why aren’t you dancing at the clubs in the City? Leave this place alone and don’t annoy me with your presence.
When The Dierne heard the words of The Clarene, however, he took the meaning as that of enquiry rather than strong suggestion let alone instruction. He answered, “I got Polarity published at the vanity press next to the library, but the Bookkeepers won’t stock it here because it’s not something you read silently between the aisles. Do you know anybody who’s interested in joining a gaming group?”