Rytius Records (Substack Edition), Ch. 14

Chapter 14. Assembly

14. Assembly

Carnation had Rytius at a table with Floweria Giddens, the baker, and D-Man Furness, the blacksmith, a married couple of recordkeepers with deep roots in Eo, on both their families’ sides. Hunnybunny Henry, a language arts teacher and modern dancer, and her boyfriend Wascal Chase, stem teacher, were Speculative Historians, but that’s only because her parents had been social-science teachers who knew Tellem personally. They came to most of the games anyway, and had presented more than a few of their own. And then there was the lovely Vinilla Breem and her 11-year-old daughter Light. Light was the youngest ever to play the game, and her first presentation had been on cartoon tricksters, and particularly the relationship between Anansi and Bugs Bunny. Rytius still hadn’t told anyone about the letter to his brother or the prince and the Tower of Records. It was past breakfast and before lunch but, aside from the whiskey, he had so far only slurped at a smoothie—a calming potion with carrot, celery, pineapple, cucumber, beet, and kale—putting off bringing it up, and he ran a dumb hydraulics quasi experiment whereby he measured how long it took the fluid to rise to the top of the straw as all the ice, pulverized into smoothie grain fluid dust, defrosted and turned back to water. Almost everybody in the hall was finished eating, and just sort of picking at bones and licking spoons clean.