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There was a special sort of awkward silence reserved for hospital waiting rooms, funerals, and family reunions where everyone despised one another.
At the moment, Nomura thought the atmosphere in the central rotunda of her museum was a solid three, but growing closer to a two with every passing second. Bular was growling and pacing impatiently, as Stricklander calmly graded papers, seemingly ambivalent to the giant menace wearing a hole through the marble floor. Strickler was was always impossibly smug, and that confidence and Gunmar’s own trust granted him a certain level of safety the likes of which Nomura had never known.
She was making herself scarce accordingly.
Stricklander clicked his pen a few times and chuckled softly at some unknown brat’s homework. Bular spun on him, shoulders squared and smelling of violence. Nomura wasn’t a child, she didn’t flinch outwardly or let her fear extend past her skin, but she felt the terror inside, roiling uncomfortably.
She was going to murder Solveig for being so late, for keeping them up until witching hour on a work night and leaving them alone with a restless monster. The daydreams of violence were pointless, Solveig was “too important to their plans” to kill, but it passed the time and distracted her from the fact that Bular was on the verge of committing a real murder right in front of her.
“What are you doing?” he growled, and Strickler looked up, mock surprise on his face like he’d just forgotten Bular was there.
“Working. Some of us have jobs you know. We have to keep all this running, keep you fed, not all of us can live in the sewers all day.” He clicked his pen idly and bent his head back over his work.
Nomura decided to make some butter tea, on the grounds that they would all be the better for it and it might keep Strickler’s mouth shut. She personally thought it wouldn’t be bad if Bular took him down a peg by ripping a few limbs off, but she’d already had to repaint over one set of blood stains this month. Besides, he served an important purpose as a buffer between Bular and the rest of them.
Bular grunted. “What’s the point? Soon my father will rise and none of your human will matter.”
“And he’ll still need us to manage the world of daylight, won’t he?” Strickler smiled amiably, “Besides, I happen to enjoy my work. Children are the future, aren’t they?”
Ugh, not this again. Nomura didn’t mind humans in the most general sense; she had very nice conversations with the lady at the grocery store and could probably name most of her employees, but human children were difficult, impulsive, and entirely unappreciative of the fine arts. Strickler’s fondness for them and dedication to dragging classes of them to her museum every year was baffling. College students, maybe. She enjoyed college students, they were stupid and jaded and intelligent enough. High schoolers, on the other hand, were intolerable.
She might have groaned a little because Bular and Strickler glanced her way. She busied herself checking the time, and sent Solveig another text detailing exactly how Bular was probably going to dismember her if she did not arrive right now .
Unfortunately the damage was done, Stricklander, insufferable bastard that he was, smirked, “Don’t you agree, Nomura? I know you so enjoy our little adventures into education, and you truly impressed my last class of freshmen with that lecture on phallic imagery in ancient art.”
Bular snorted and turned on her, and she held her ground carefully, tried to show no fear. He was like the goblins… you just had to know how to deal with him.
“They were fourteen year olds,” Nomura pointed out, and was unable to keep the acid out of her voice, “They like drawing obscene images on things and giggling to each other. I don’t mean to question your teaching,” She did. “But they didn’t demonstrate much charm or intellectual capacity me. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
They’d left greasy little smudges on all the glass, and poked each other in the sides the entire time, and the halls smelled of body spray after they’d left. Strickler had the dumb smile of a human parent who was well aware that their off-spring was utterly idiotic but insisted on excusing it, but there was an edge to his fondness that reminded Nomura of her old neighbour who kept hamsters, and would sigh wearily and affectionately as they inevitably ran into walls and accidentally killed themselves.
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Strickler said in his high and mighty teacher voice. Nomura could see him writing the distinctive curve of a C on the paper in his lap. “Not all of them are the next Napoleon, I’ll admit, but children are full of potential. You can see it, coiled up within them. They haven’t had a chance to be disappointing yet. They’re just starting to become who they are, and if you’re careful you can pick out the ones who will be marvelous.” He patted his sheaf of double spaced, MLA format essays. “And if you’re lucky, you can show them how to be.”
His words rung familiar in Nomura’s ears, like echoes of a long forgotten nursery rhyme.
Most changelings had three childhoods. She'd had four childhoods, but like most of her brethren she can’t remember the first one.
The first memory she has is of the Darklands, of Gunmar’s nursery, of the pain of a body adjusting to the dark magic coursing through it. She can remember the wriggly voice of the head caretaker whispering promises in her ear. “Gunmar chose every one of you, to make you something more than you would have been. He saved you, for his sake. Children have the most potential, and you will be marvelous.”
She bit her tongue, bit back disgust and hatred. Then she remembered that Strickler was a child there once too, and a measure of reluctant sympathy seeped in. He cannot help being what he was made to be, any more than she can. Stones know they’ve all tried hard enough.
They don’t watch much TV as a rule, it can be… a corrupting influence, but she’s well versed in current events, and after a few centuries she knows how a cult works. She knows how a childhood of fear and violence twists a person, makes them something unsalvageable, and it’s not like anyone has ever tried to salvage them in the first place. They’ve never had a chance, Strickler included.
Besides, she knows the laws of nature. Everything wants to make more of itself. Even Gunmar hadn’t been satisfied with his wayward halfling children, or the full troll soldiers he nurtured. He’d wanted more, and that was why they had Bular to deal with.
Stricklander could still be less sanctimonious about his weird complexes though.
“You have issues,” she informed him, because it was what was expected. Bular chuckled, and breathed a little easier.
“You traded breath with Kanjigar’s son, in broad moonlight, then tried to stab him in the neck.” Stricklander pointed out, because he was incapable of letting anything lie. It was going to get him killed one of these days, and when it did she was going to laugh.
Nomura’s eyes narrowed, and she contemplated saying several ill-advised somethings, about Strickler’s own romantic mishaps or his clear obsession with the young Trollhunter or his weird power grabs, or the fact that he kept feeding Bular pizza delivery men from the next city over.
She decided against it, and retreated to make herself a cup of something hot. Tea, eggnog, microwaved vodka, she was open to options.
She could hear Bular and Strickler arguing as she left. Maybe, if she was very lucky, one of them would be dead by the time she got back.
They were all Gunmar’s children, but that didn’t mean family events had to be bloodless.
Children had potential , Gunmar’s eye! Sure, they had potential, in their own sticky, obnoxious way, but if Strickler was their role model she didn’t have high hopes for their futures. The Trollhunter was dead meat, and the rest were dull at best.
When Solveig arrived, looking annoyingly cheerful, Nomura handed her a glass of ginger tea and told her to go take a walk at noon. The troll taunt lost some weight when traded between changelings and unlike Otto or Gladys Solveig wasn’t soft enough to take it to heart.
“I got the stone,” she said, and added in an raspy undertone, “
Gunmar will rise again.
”
“I’m sure he will,” Nomura groused, “against all the odds, might I add. We’re all so, so fucked up.”
Solveig blinked twice. “That’s not news, Nomura.”
“No, I guess not. Well, go in. I’m not facing them again. If you’re lucky, Stricklander will tell you about his high schoolers.”
The other changeling backed away quickly. “I actually have to be somewhere, for work in an hour. You take it. Give Stricklander my regards!” She fled into the night, pausing to put down Nomura’s mug before she left, which was kind by changeling standards. Nomura considered pursuing her, but she had no illusions about how that would end. Solveig’s human form was tiny, but her true shape was anything but. In a contest of strength it could only go one way. Her best bet for revenge was to rat Solveig out to Stricklander and hope she got chastised for her disrespect.
She finished her drink, scooped up the briefcase that presumably contained the foundation stone needed, and went back to face her superiors.
While Bular was crowing over the stone she leaned over Strickler’s shoulder and made a face,
“‘ The ancient romans were good at winning battles because they had the best battling strategies and stuff, ’” she read in disbelief, “Fascinating. I can see your influence showing through already.”
Strickler shrugged, “Some of them have more potential than others, I’ll admit. Now, I do believe we have a civilization to help topple?” He offered her an arm, always the gentleman even when he was being an absolute git.
Nomura took it, if only so she wouldn’t have to face Bular alone. They had to stick together. (Except when they didn’t. It was complicated. Most things were.)