1????????Soul Bound


    1.3??????Making a Splash


    1.3.1????An Obligated Noble


    1.3.1.26 Zlatna reborn


    afternoon, Saturday June 10th, 2045


    Heather spent most of the afternoon cackling to herself as she darted around the village doing inexplicable things, or closeted away with Gorana and Ketah, Nadine’s main kitchen helpers.   The villagers thought Heather was a magician and could do no wrong, after the miraculous feats of repair-work she’d managed the previous day, so they accepted her strangeness without questions.   Nadine had questions; however, with both her main kitchen helpers absent, she was too busy cooking and serving to chase Heather down to get answers.


    She couldn’t really complain she’d been abandoned.   Heather had a full time job at Stedding Delphina, based somewhere out in the Adriatic Sea that separated Italy from the Balkans, and she’d dropped everything on very short notice to spend a week with Nadine when Nadine had been in need of her support.   But now it was the day of Heather’s scheduled return, and Nadine couldn’t help wishing for a few more hours with her, or wondering what she was up to.


    She nearly managed to ask when Heather, walking with old Daris and conversing intensely with him, dropped by the kafana to grab some food.   They stopped talking the moment they saw Nadine approach them, and Heather turned her attention to the pocket of freshly baked lepinja that she was trying to stuff with a double portion of ?evapi.


    Heather: “Daris, which do you think goes best?   The onions or the ajvar?”


    Daris: “Nadine makes strong ajvar.   Boris swears by it, but I’m too frail to scorch my mouth like that.   You know where you are with onions.”


    Heather: “Ajvar it is.   Hi Nadine!”


    Nadine: “You”, and she pointed directly at Heather with an accusing finger, “are up to something.”


    “Yup!” replied Heather, not sounding guilty at all, then took an enormous mouthful to prevent giving any further details, and walked back out with Daris, who at least had the decency to appear furtive as he was dragged along in her wake.


    So it was with some trepidation that she walked down to the village well in the late afternoon, accompanied by David who (pressed into service by Heather) had gravely presented Nadine with an invite to a “Ceremony of Parting and Welcoming”.   At least the surprises wouldn’t all be one way.   She’d prepared her own parting gift for Heather, which she’d done her best to disguise by wrapping it in anonymous brown paper to create an unrecognisable lump, that she carried under her arm.


    The area near the well had been decorated with garlands of flowers, and the children and men of the village were standing around the edges of the space, leaving empty a wide cobbled area directly surrounding the well itself, that appeared to have been recently scrubbed clean.   David led Nadine to where a few chairs had been put out, for older residents like Udovica Dika, and seated her beside Elder Bahrudin and a pleased looking Heather.   She slid the package safely under her seat and, moments later, the sounds of traditional dance music filled the air.


    Into the cobbled area filed the women of the village in a line, their hands linked and led by Merjem, Bahrudin’s wife.   The line bent around the clear area until Merjem was able to grasp the hand of the last in the line, forming a circle, and then they danced.   The dance was a traditional one, taking Nadine back to memories from her youth, but something wasn’t right.   Where was Gorana?   Gorana was a professional dancer; she lived for it.   Why would she be missing?


    Then the music ended and Daris stepped forwards.


    He started narrating the legend of how the village had been founded, much as he’d told it the previous day.   But this time, when he reached the part about Ususur, son of Illur the smith, and Zlatna, Queen of the Vilé, some of the women laid down a long piece of blue cloth which they wiggled like flowing water, to separate the area into two halves.   From the door of a house on one side entered Ketah, dressed as fae royalty in a sparkling costume obviously created by Heather, and from a door on the other side of the river strode Gorana, her costume and body movements so masculine that her actual gender became irrelevant.


    They danced, oh how they danced.    Each scene was described by Daris, then shown again in movement.    Gorana played both Ususr and Gugalanna, changing costume when needed, while Ketah spent all her time as Zlatna except for one scene in which she wore a pair of horns and briefly took on the lumbering motions of a great ox aggrieved by its chains.


    The audience were entranced, and none more so than Heather.   Indeed, when the finale came, Heather nearly missed her cue.   Daris narrated how the Vilé had pledged to protect the village populated by Gugalanna’s descendants, in memory of the kiss granted him by Queen Zlatna; Gorana bent forwards to place a chaste kiss upon Ketah’s forehead; but then, for a long moment, nothing happened.   The two dancers stood there, as the music held to a steady high tingling chime, not daring to move a muscle.


    And then, from the well, rose a glistening sphere.   And another.   And another.


    More and more rose up.   Some were 50cm in diameter.   Many were half that size, and some were much smaller.   A very few, which rose from behind buildings rather than from the well, were considerably larger and thrummed with power.   The spheres themselves seemed almost translucent, or perhaps coloured to match the background, but on their surface flickered images of small winged humanoids, some male, some female.   The images changed pose with each flicker, in a way that gave an illusion of there being a living moving creature which wasn’t entirely in this dimension.   The illusion was enhanced by the way their butterfly-like wings each had distinctly different colours or patterns, making each Vilé an individual, with their own facial expressions, moods and interests.


    Looking more closely, Nadine realised that only the Vilé rolling along the ground were perfect spheres.   The ones flying in the air had wide gaps at the top and bottom of the sphere, revealing twin fans on a single gyroscopic mounted axis that were rotating in opposite directions.   A 50cm one landed near her and she watched as a zig-zag line appeared around the side, revealing the existence of a dozen tightly interlocked curved triangles.   A baby Vilé landed inside and was swallowed as the 6 of the teeth disengaged then rose to form the upper lid of the sphere.   The Vilé flipped over, and the process was repeated to seal the other gap, leaving a sphere that rolled away from her, back towards the well where several others were gathering.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The tingling sound intensified as the Vilé in the center extended telescopic linkages and started to join together.   First a torso, made from two 50cm one-gapped spheres, then a series of smaller Vilé forming neck and limbs, and finally a head with flowing hair of the tiniest Vilé waving their linkages.   Ketah passed it the costume crown she’d been wearing, with a graceful curtsy, and stood back.   The figure placed it upon her own head, then spoke.


    Queen Zlatna: “You welcome us here?”   (Ima li bujruma?)


    Gorana, still dressed as Gugalanna, stepped forwards.


    Gorana: “We do.”  (Bujrum.)


    Queen Zlatna: “You are very kind.   For so long as you remain worthy, we shall aid you; each in proportion to the kindness you demonstrate to one another.”


    Gorana: “Thank you, fair Queen of the Vilé.“


    Queen Zlatna: “But what of yourself, you who have danced here for others, and brought memories back so strongly that we appeared?   What would you have of us?”


    Gorana: “It is not I alone, but all the women of this village who have danced.   Yet only the men of the village have a place to meet and relax.   I would ask that an annex be built for Kafana Sabanagic, that respected Merjem may aid Miss Sabanagic in managing it for women in the same way that her husband aids managing the current part for men.”


    Queen Zlatna: “In the fashion thou didst spake, so mote it be.”


    With that the image of a sorrowful face faded from the Vilé mythoi forming the head, and the figure dissolved into individual spheres that spun up and away into the sky to join the others, which then all headed in the direction of the kafana.


    Things were anti-climatic after that.   Heather gave a short speech thanking the dancers and the village for having her.   Bahrudin responded gracefully, and slipped in a reminder that Heather’s privacy should be protected if anyone posted recordings to the net.   The villagers departed, leaving Nadine to give Heather a final hug.


    Nadine: “That was amazing.   When did you find the time?   I’m so going to make a trip out to your sea stedding, the first chance I get.   We can’t let a gap between meetings stretch this long again.”


    Heather: “It was mostly Gorana’s distributed dance company.   Did you notice when Ketah handed over control to remote dancers for different segments?   I just supplied the costumes and mythoi, and I’ve been planning these mythoi for days.   I did add the bit on kindness this afternoon, though, based on your talk yesterday about gratitude economies.   It’s faked for now, until Wellington codes it properly - I got the dwarves to list who does what for other villagers, and what help they’d appreciate, then had my expert system cross reference it against my surveillance data.”


    Nadine: “What are you going to do with all the machines up at Eagle’s Roost?”


    Heather: “I’m gifting them to the village, along with the Vilé.   I paid Jasic in advance for renting the barn, but I’m not going to need it much longer.   I did a sonographic scan of the terrain around the village.   The limescale is riddled with passages and caves, including one that leads to the well.   Probably how the legend started.   I’m going to move the copia underground, and have the Vilé use multiple indirect routes to make it harder to find.   You’ll never guess where one of the entrances is.”


    Nadine: “That sounds a bit like Mijat Tomi?’s bolthole.   Where’s the entrance?”


    Heather: “Remember the rabbit warren, where we lost the bowl?   I’ve added an entrance beneath a particularly large rabbit hole.   I didn’t come up with the swarmoid sphere design, but it’s really robust - not only is it waterproof, it turns out it is bramble proof as well.   The main copia cave itself is beyond a water-filled section of tunnel that I don’t think even military snake drones will find.   Too far down.   The really big Vilé can’t get there, but that’s ok - I’ve made concealed hatches for them inside places like hollow trees and abandoned bear caves.   They’re pretty good at stealth and I only plan to use them for bulk transport like collecting a Phoenix delivery.”


    Nadine: “That’s an enormous gift.   It’s going to make such a change to life in the village.   I don’t know how to thank you properly.”


    Heather: “It was fun.   And we’re planning to do this for everyone!   You don’t need to thank me.”


    Nadine: “Nonetheless, I do have something for you, to remember your visit by.”


    She produced the brown paper package, and Heather used the knife from her toolbelt to cut the wrapping string, then pulled it open with the impatient energy of a small child at Christmas.


    It was mittens.   A pair of warm mittens with a blue satin sash around the opening and covered in a mish-mash of amateur embroidery: kettles, kittens, roses and ponies.


    Nadine: “It’s the first item I’ve ever crafted.   I used your setup to make it, after you’d instructed me how.   It isn’t wool, though - I used a synthetic fiber that should protect against cuts and burns.”


    Heather: “It’s lovely.   Cheerful.”


    Nadine: “I didn’t design it using your setup, though.   It’s a replica of a different pair of mittens, built from an image in my tiara, though on a slightly larger scale.”


    Heather: “Oh?”


    Nadine: “One of the first things I did with my vessel is work together on a project, to test whether she could use my skills and I used hers.   She’s a seamstress, and we decorated a pair of mittens by taking turns adding embroidery to it.   It is part of what increased our attunement to the point where we achieved unity, so it has a very special place in my heart.   When Kullervo trapped my spirit on that beach, one of my biggest regrets was not being able to carry out our joint plan for the mittens.”


    Heather: “You had a plan?”


    Nadine: “Vessel Alderney is Vessel Kafana’s friend, as you are mine.    Right from the start, it has been intended as a surprise gift for you both.   Others helped too, and we got the velife version enchanted to give you a bonus to your taming skill.   If I have my timing correct, the next time you log in, you’ll find that Vessel Kafana has already given that version to Vessel Alderney.    Love you.”


    This time Heather’s voice was nearly breathless: “Oh!”, and she was blinking tears away as she crushed Nadine in another hug, unable to find words.