1 Oix 4385: SURPRISE!

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

This Morning's Nightmare

Chain Lightning woke me up and asked me, "Shouldn't you be heading back for Vheshrame?"

I stared around wildly. I was in the bandit queen's suite in their hideout. "Oh no! I'm still HERE? I need to get home! I'm going to be LATE WITH THE RENT!" I jumped out of bed and something stabbed me in the side. I looked down and one of my ribs was poking through.

"I told you not to talk!" Trust yelled at me. "I'm not going to keep healing you when you're just going to break yourself again!"

"But I have to get HOME!" I shoved the rib back inside and hobbled to the door. Mirhandrax, Nightbloom, Trust, Purrzhon, Void-Dancer, Tripriver, Studies-Too-Much and his Rassy friend were all waiting for me. They blew on terch-flutes and threw confetti into the air. "SURPRISE!" Tripriver wheeled a giant present to me with "WELCOME HOME DELIGHTED-TO-BE-DEVOURED" on its ribbon.

"But that's not my name ..." I said.

"That's all right." Kijji jumped out of the package and towered over me, a twenty-foot eight-legged fox with wings burning like two sheets of flame at his back. "These aren't your friends."

Everybody laughed and turned into silver birds or goat-people. The birds fluttered dizzyingly around my head while the goat-bipeds danced about me.

"AHHHHH everyone IS bonstables!" I shrieked in terror and tried to run away but Kijji caught my head in his mouth. "NOOO I don't want to be EATEN!"

Kijji giggled. "Oh I'm not going to eat you!" He wrapped his burning wings around me. "Yet! I'm going to cook you first!"

I writhed and choked on thick smoke as the flames got hotter and hotter until my fur sloughed off my body. Underneath, I was a bonstable.

"I didn't know she was one of us," Void-Dancer remarked.

"Anyone mind if I eat her anyway?" Kijji asked. They all shook their heads and shrugged. Kijji went back to cooking me to death. I woke up just as he finished.

Not Really a Surprise by Now

I threw off the light blanket and gasped for air. It was so steamy in the cloudnest that it felt like breathing water. Flokin burned like a bonfire in his sunlamp overhead. I peered around through the hazy air. A couple of ulgrane were preening their feathers. Mirhandrax was stripped down to a loincloth and brushing masses of shed fur from his chest. "Ugh Mirhandrax why didn't you wake me earlier it's afternoon ALREADY?"

"Sun lit a third of an hour ago." Mirhandrax brushed the fur on one arm. His undercoat came off in clumps.

"... really?" I looked up. Flokin seemed to shine even brighter.

He nodded.

I flopped against the too-hot bedroll. "That explains why I'm still tired."

But I couldn't sleep in the stifling heat and neither could anyone else. After everyone was roused (albeit groggy and ill-tempered) the ulgrane flew us down to the river. We all splashed around to cool off, even the ulgrane. It took some wheedling to get the ulgrane to fly us the rest of the way home and I had to promise to touch up their feathers again when we arrived because the heat-molt was making some of them look ragged already. But they did agree!

Home At Last

So we made it back to the city before nightfall! As soon as I'd fixed all the ulgrane's featherstyles I went straight to my landlord's to pay the rent so I wouldn't be late.

Then I went to the swimming hole because TOO HOT.

EVERYONE was there because TOO HOT. It was so crowded it wasn't even a great way to cool off although at least being in the water meant NO CLOTHES. There are people who wear clothes during hot Surprise which I do not understand. I wouldn't wear FUR if it wasn't attached.

I caught up with everyone while I was down there and told them all about our GREAT ADVENTURES like the plot by bonstables to take over the branch that we foiled by proving it didn't exist.

That's maybe not the best story from the trip. It is a funny one though!

Eventually the sun went out and it got a teensy bit less hot and I decided that since I was paying rent ANYWAY I might as well go home.

I didn't want to wake Glorious Blue in case she was home (she was working nights last month -- oh wait I mean in LAGE stupid Chirreb -- but I didn't know if she still was). So I didn't bring any light into the bedroom. As soon as I stepped inside, I slipped and skidded across the floor and slammed into the side of my bed. The floor was rimed with melting ice. "Ahhhhhhh Glory-Morey I LOVE you!" I rolled around happily on the blessedly cold floor. The whole room felt actually cool.

Glorious Blue rolled over in her bed. "Welcome home," she mumbled. "Now go to sleep."

So I did.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Welcome back home! And wow, you have a really thoughtful roomie, or maybe she needed the ice so she could get some sleep.

How long does Hot Surprise last, anyway?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

It's the same as every other month, twenty-seven days. Except with SCORCHING.

She does it 'cause we share a room but it's still GREAT when she's home and has cley.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Wow, 27 days of sweltering heat! That's going to be hard on the fur.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Yeah it's not a bad month for furstyling in that way but I'll be just as glad not to be working!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

If they were bonstables all along wouldn't they really be your friends anyway?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

If they'd been bonstables all along they'd still be the same people but I don't think they'd really be my *friends*. Or ever been my friends! I'm glad this was just a nightmare.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

As a creature of a species that is generally known for not having any fur and actually being relatively good at doing extended work in sweltering heat, I can tell you, it STILL is NO FUN. Do you all sweat all over your body? That helps. Do you have any very very very cheap very strong alcohol? Could you spont a bottle of alcohol (not necessarily the kind you can drink, you just want something that EVAPORATES FAST) so you can splash it on your fur and it will evaporate, cooling you?? Of course, you'll want something that disappears quickly so you don't smell like a drunk or like cleaning solution...

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Also! Try styling your fur in lighter colors that reflect the light off of you rather than darker colors that absorb the heat! But I suppose you knew that, right? Or do the details of how that work happen differently in your world?

[terrana.livejournal.com]

Actually, removing the fur entirely and then employing a bit of Illusidor to make it still appear to be present might be workable. Delight probably even knows the spells.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

What a terrible idea! She'll get sunburn. Also fur is protective in lots of ways! And people can see through illusidor!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Also, I've an idea for a way of cooling a room which MIGHT require more nouns and verbs, and maybe be more complex (not sure), but would PROBABLY require less power. Instead of brute forcing "this place has to be cold, there is lots of ice and stuff in this room", why not be more interested in moving air and the temperature of air around? IE, move hot air to a place where you can radiate heat away, actually heating up a small part of the outside of your house, and TRANSFERRING the heat from the inside to the outside by having it all get pushed to the outside and have the newly cooled air (ie, it threw off its heat to elsewhere) come back in?

This is how we figured out how to cool things at will in my world, both in things like ice boxes or whole rooms or buildings. It's all about moving the heat away, radiating it from where you don't want it to where you want it. Even the thing I mentioned with sweat works the same way -- the heat gets trapped in the evaporating liquid and goes away from you.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I don't think heat works the way you think it does or at least it doesn't in *my* universe. There are Mutoc Airador spells for cooling rooms that work better than making ice but Glorious Blue isn't that good with Airador and she know lots of Aquador spells for her job already.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

It would have more Ruloc Airador. Here's a question though: do creatures cool themselves by sweating or panting their tongues? That works the same way as what I am talking about -- moving heat around from where you don't want it to where you want it. If they DO actually do that, than enough of what I said might be true that you could be on to some way of doing this more easily!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

At least, as best as I can surmise, it would be more Ruloc Airador?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

...Or maybe Ruloc Pyrador??

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

There's a spell that swaps heat that uses pyrador. You could use it to swap the heat of this ice cube with the air in your room, or something.

Actually making tons of ice is probably easier though.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

So it would be Ruloc Pyrador to move lots of heat in the room to outside the room?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Ruloc or Mutoc Pyrador, yeah. Possibly you'd need both; I'd have to check the spellbook again to be sure.

Creoc and Destroc would directly make it hotter or colder -- it would probably be *easier* (spells to do it would be less complex) but the 'swap heats' version at least moved more heat around than any reasonable-powered fire spell would create or destroy.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

So a Ruloc Pyrador to move all the heat outside would, for the power, create longer lasting coolness more easily than destroc pyrador?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I don't know about longer lasting, but it'd affect a larger area for the same power.