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A
Is it better, Scribe Elder Ho-Tan wonders, one ear taking the words of the council and transferring them to paper without really listening, is it better to have loved and lost or have never loved at all?
Is it better to have known?
Wise Elder Vex is talking while very carefully not meeting the eye of Chief Elder Choop. Things have ... changed since the pipple fruit incident. Certain people aren’t talking to each other as much, or looking at each other as much, and Trevor is stuck in a major sulk and refuses to respond to anything with more than an indignant wibble.
Was it better to have felt it? For one moment, to have known, with utter and desperate certainty, that suddenly things were right. That his body was the way it should be, that his mind was flying, that he was there: a Scribe, and Elder and a lady ... three things he’s always secretly coveted, three things finally achieved.
Wise Elder Vex is looking at him strangely, and Ho-Tan ducks his head, suddenly glad for the curtain of hair that hides the view.
B
Trevor is the one most likely to understand him, but Ho-Tan doesn’t even know where to start with a conversation and ends up stuttering into an awkward silence. Chief Elder Choop is ignoring him completely, but then Choop has his own reasons for not wanting to talk about the pipple fruit. He maintains a determined silence on the whole subject, and as a result nobody else brings it up either.
Lord Elder Pressley gives him the eye a few times while drunk. Wise Elder Vex hems and haws and evades the subject. Both of them are a little more ... cautious around him.
Ho-Tan wonders, idly, whether he would respond differently if he were still a lady. He knows Elder Pressley would flirt outrageously, and Elder Vex would flirt incompetently. He thinks, sometimes, that he might even respond to Wise Elder Vex. Get a little flirty in response. He’s always admired Vex, as much as he’s worshiped Choop, grateful for both of them for accepting him onto the council.
He’s never been fond of Lord Elder Pressley. Not since the man lost the scrolls.
C
“Come down to the Fields tonight.” Ho-Tan jumps as Vice-Elder Flowers is suddenly behind him, a bland happy smile on his face, his voice relaxed and eager. “You’ll enjoy it.”
“I don’t know...” Ho-Tan grimaces and turns away. Sitting among cavorting, beautiful and most likely naked bodies doesn’t sound hugely appealing at the moment.
“There’s music, dancing, even a BBQ. It’ll be good for you.”
Ho-Tan raises his eyebrows at that, starting to weaken a little at the thought of free food. “I – well – I have some records to be archiving, really, and you know ... the robes ...”
“You can keep your robes on, not everyone takes them off.” Flowers gives him a wide grin. “Either way, we’d love to see you. You’re a very beautiful woman.”
Ho-Tan scowls, “You mean I was a very beautiful woman...”
“Do I?”
Ho-Tan shoots him a glance, not sure if Flowers is teasing him, but all he sees is a bland happy smile in return.
D
The field is full of people. Most of them are naked. But some of them aren’t. He doesn't feel out of place.
The BBQ tastes amazing.
Ho-Tan doesn’t cast off all his robes. Not all at once. But he’s happy to loosen the outer layers, to tug off the clinging fabric until he’s sitting in just his shirt and a strange silky sarong-type thing someone gave him round about the time he started dancing. He feels happy, strangely at peace, and drops to lie down, staring up at the blue clear sky.
“This is amazing...” he murmurs.
“You see what can be achieved with only love, acceptance, friends, good music, and marijuana?” Elder Flowers says from somewhere next to him.
“Do you think we’ll ever find another pipple tree?” Ho-Tan asks a little desperately.
“Yonderland is a wide and wonderful place.” Flowers responds, and three minutes later he starts to snore.
E
By the time the BBQ has died down to ashes in the cold dark grass, he’s lost his shirt as well. Flowers gives him a wide and somewhat awkwardly lingering hug before handing him across a small strip of material. It’s a bikini top, large yellow blooming flowers to match the pattern on his sarong, and Ho-Tan looks at it dubiously.
“Won’t it ... won’t it look a bit silly?”
“Sillier than Chief Elder Choop?”
“Ah, yes. Good point. I suppose...” he wants to wear it, desperately, but part of him doesn’t want to be reminded of the time when he was perfect, when his body was beautiful and his. He hesitates, and Vice-Elder Flowers picks the scrap of material up and clips it efficiently behind his back, tugging and straightening it over his chest.
“How – how does it look?”
“Beautiful.”
“You think everything looks beautiful.” Ho-Tan grumbles.
“Everything does.”
F
The sun is rising by the time he slopes home, the sarong swishing around his ankles, his robes clutched furtively to his chest, the feel of the grass between his toes and over his skin. He’s got a lot to think about, and for the first time since the pipple fruit he actually feels he can think about it. It doesn’t slide out of his mind, furtive and embarrassed, just sits, big and brazen and naked, right in the front of his thoughts.
Yonderland is, as Flowers said, a wide and wonderful place. There might not be any more pipple trees, but there are wizards, and charms and enchantments and magic. There are secret caves and wishing wells. Rituals and dark arts. At the very least, there’s probably a curse somewhere that would do it.
Scribe Elder Ho-Tan looks down at his bikini top and smiles.