Arthur’s Twin: Side Story

“I think that’s about it for the lunch rush.” Arthur dumped out the remainder of some now-stale tea into the sink drain, a bit dismayed at the waste. “I can probably teach you to play Archi now if you want. At least what I know of the game. I still don’t think I’ve scored more than a march and a half on Zuni yet.”

“I think Zuni might be good at it,” Lily said. “Really good, I mean. The other old people won’t play him.”

“I guess that makes me feel better,” Arthur said.

“It probably shouldn’t. I’m pretty sure you’re still really bad.” Lily grabbed a rag, wetted it, and started wiping down the counter. “But I think we should wait on the game. Look back there.”

Arthur craned his head, and sure enough there was a customer in the shop, sitting as far back from the windows as he could, head in his hands.

“Is he… sad?” Arthur whispered.

“It looks like it.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person be sad in public here before.”

“It doesn’t happen often.”

Arthur looked at the snake, hopeful that he would snap out of it of his own accord. He didn’t.

“Is it possible he’s just asleep?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, no,” the demon said, to nobody in particular. “What do I do?”

“I don’t think he’s asleep.” Lily pushed the side of Arthur’s hip towards the end of the counter, and the mournful customer. “You should probably go.”

“And do what?” Arthur hissed. “I’m not a cleric.”

“No, but you are here, right? And he’s sad. Give him advice.”

“Why don’t you give him advice?”

“Because I’m a child, Arthur. I don’t know how to give advice to an adult. Besides you, but you barely count and don’t know anything.”

She has a point.

Arthur made his way awkwardly towards the table, glancing back at Lily to find she had already gone deep into her table-wiping-and-ignoring-awkwardness mode. Anti-buoyed by her lack of support, he took the last few steps to close the gap. To the snake’s credit, he snapped to attention as soon as Arthur came close, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Oh. Sorry,” the snake said. “I forgot where I was for a moment there.”

“It’s no problem. You weren’t bothering anybody.” Arthur looked at the other seat at the table. “You want company?”

“I couldn’t make you do that,” the Snake said. “They aren’t your problems. No reason for you to get involved.”

“I can though. I’m happy to help.”

“You have no obligations here. It’s fine.”

“Man, look.” Arthur sat down anyway, deciding to run what Lily called the outsider maneuver intentionally for the first time. “You’ve noticed I’m some kind of weird non-demon thing, right?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but yes.” The snake nodded. “A big pink pig monkey, or something.”

“Yeah. You got it. That means I’m not from here. And where I’m from, we help those we find in distress.” Arthur was lying, a bit. Crying and yelling in a coffee shop was as likely to get you kicked out as anything else. But it could have been like what Arthur was about to do, if the right people were working, and he liked that version better. “So just do me a favor and let me help. Or else I’ll be in trouble.”

“With who?”

Arthur said the first thing he could think of. “The care bears.”

The snake nodded like it wasn’t a completely bonkers thing to say, then suddenly dropped his head to the table again.

“Can’t.”

Arthur looked at Lily, who shrugged. He motioned at her to come over. She shook her head no with a jerky kind of desperate enthusiasm. He motioned again, trying to summon whatever authority he could to get her to come help. She had already turned back to shop-work, and pretended not to see him as she swept the floor with all the focus and myopic directionality of a space telescope.

Arthur couldn’t think of a good response. He decided to go with a bad one.

“Can too,” Arthur said.

The snake looked up suddenly. “You can’t just counter me with that. We aren’t children.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Stop that,” the snake laughed, despite himself. “I’m a businessman. You are too, aren’t you? Be dignified.”

“He doesn’t know what that is,” Lily yelled. “He’s some kind of alien. You should just humor him.”

“I can’t!” the snake yelled. “It’s personal.”

Lily finally broke, striding up to the table.

“Look,” she said. “You think I don’t get it? The offworlder calls you over, says hey-let-me-help-you-for-no-reason. You say no. He does it anyway. You let him just so you can get away, right? And then a few days later, you go hide in a literal hole in the ground, and there’s the offworlder, filled with magic from who knows where, and he drags you out of the hole by your feet. There’s no stopping this guy. Trust me, I know.”

“That didn’t happen,” the snake businessman said in disbelief.

“It did.” Arthur nodded. “Also, I didn’t drag you out by your feet, Lily. You weren’t conscious at the time.”

“This is all beside the point,” Lily said. “What’s your name again?”

“Styga.”

“Styga, he has his teeth in you now. We all go through it. It’s weird. But if you don’t let him help you now, he’s going to go home and fret, which I’ll then have to watch. And then he’s going to help you anyway, somehow. It’s inevitable. So just let him help, okay? Save us all some time.”

Lily ducked into the storeroom without waiting for a response, and suddenly, they were alone.

“She’s a bit terrifying.” Styga looked in the direction Lily had gone with admiration. “Like a bodyguard made of feathers. What do you pay her?”

“Not enough.”

“I bet. Well, fine, then.” The snake sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “It’s like this.”

—

Arthur listened and listened as the snake laid out his tale.

Styga had only been in the city for a few months, having come from the capital for some business. What was supposed to be a simple trip turned into a longer-term assignment helping with some obscure part of improving the city’s foot traffic Arthur didn’t understand. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the crux of the snake’s problem. Styga seemed to think he was pretty good at it, at least, and had it well in hand.

The problem was only tangentially related to the job. In the course of his work, he had discovered something. A secret lying in wait in the city, something he would have never found otherwise, something that on discovery had knocked him so thoroughly off-balance that he might very well never recover.

“Wait,” Arthur said. “This is about a girl? Really?”

“Not a girl. An adult demon. A beautiful adult demon.” The snake sighed. “As far as I know, the most beautiful one in the entire world.”

“And you can’t talk to her about it? Aren’t you… old?” Arthur asked. The snake cast Arthur a slightly offended glare, and he backtracked as quickly as he could. “I mean old enough to have learned to handle this kind of thing.”

“I was, Arthur. I really was. She knocked that capability right out of me. You should see her. She reads books about infrastructure.” The snake man cradled his forehead in his hands. “Gods, she knows so much about infrastructure design. She understands what I do. Do you know how many people understand what I do?”

“Two?”

The snake was momentarily stunned. “That’s actually not a bad guess. It’s beside the point though.”

“Can’t you just, you know, jump into it? Blurt it all out? It’s like jumping into a cold swimming pool. If you just do it, you can’t take it back. And then it’s over, one way or another.”

“I’ve tried that. And it’s the oddest thing. I freeze. It’s not anxiety, Arthur. I’m just incapable of doing it. And I can’t have anyone talk to her for me, of course.”

“Why? I’d do it.”

“Because I’m not fifteen years old, Arthur. I’m a grown demon. You can’t just reveal to another grown demon that you never learned to do romance in an adult way. It’s pathetic.”

“I wouldn’t say pathetic.”

“I would,” Styga said.

Lily poked her head out of the storeroom. “I think it’s kind of sweet.”

“Be that as it may, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m leaving in a few months. Four at the most.” He groaned. “We even spend time together. The other day we strolled, Arthur. I had dozens of chances. I just simply can’t move past that step.”

“I… Lily, do you have a solution for this?” Arthur asked.

“No. Not off the top of my head,” Lily said.

“And you can’t give her a note or something?” Arthur offered.

“Absolutely not. I’d die of shame,” Styga said.

“Hmm.” Arthur sat there, considering his options. He wasn’t absolutely obligated to help, obviously, but he felt for this adult. He even kind of understood how something like this could happen. It was a minor miracle when he talked to Mizu that first time, even if he made a fool of himself doing it. By forcing him to, Milo and Rhodia had set the whole thing off. A week later, and it would have been much harder. “I don’t know. I feel for you, but I don’t know what to do.”

And at that moment, the door opened. A wind elemental woman, beautiful enough in her way, walked through the door.

“There you are. I looked all over, you know. Pico is trying to find us.” She noticed Arthur sitting at the table and seemed to pick up some of the weird vibe. “What’s going on here?”

The snake opened his mouth to say, came up blank, and sputtered out trying to come up with a good excuse.

“He was helping me,” Arthur said. “I don’t understand foot traffic very well. He was trying to help me understand where it comes from. You know. Around the city.”

“Oh.” She looked surprised. “That’s a complex subject. And you were trying to do this over lunch?”

“Well, you know. If someone asks for help, you try.” Styga shrugged. “Did it help?”

“It helped me understand that I can’t understand it,” Arthur said. “But maybe you could help later?”

“Next time I come in.” Styga looked at Arthur helplessly. “Maybe we can find the solution then.”

“That’s Styga,” the woman said, smiling. “Always helping.”

She crossed the room, grabbed the snake’s hand, and dragged him up out of his chair. “Now come on, you. I’m too excited to wait any longer. I think they’re going to let you build the extension to that road. Right up to the wall.”

“No.” Styga was shocked. “I thought they said no. They didn’t understand why they needed it.”

“Well, I convinced them.” The woman looked proud even as she dragged Styga towards the door. “I told them you had to have it or the whole trip would be a waste and they understood that. Good, right?”

As Arthur watched the helpless snake get dragged towards the door, he was suddenly hit by a twinge of suspicion. Something else was going on here, something the snake had not told him.

But he has to know, right? He couldn’t have missed it that badly.

Against his better judgment, Arthur decided to take a big risk on Styga’s behalf.

“You two are fun. How long have you been seeing each other?”

Styga turned his head in shock, his face twisting into a mask of embarrassment, anger, and despair that almost immediately dissipated as the wind elemental turned, smiled, and responded.

“A week! A whole week today. I thought he was never going to make a move, and then he asked me on a stroll.” She hugged into Styga’s arm affectionately. “It’s been so busy that we’ve hardly been able to see each other outside of work since. But a whole week, and you’re the first one to ask me about it.”

“You look happy,” Arthur said.

“I am.” She smiled and grinned like a loon. “Do you know how rare it is to find someone who knows about roads? I mean, really knows how they should go? I think I got the only one. Now come on, Styga. We need to get down there now before they change their minds.”

The door closed behind the two as Arthur heaved a sigh of relief. The big gamble had paid off.

“That was honestly impressive.” Lily’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I hadn’t figured that out. I’m not sure how anyone could, through all the talk about roads. How did you?”

“It was when she was dragging his arm. I saw that, and I thought, this snake clearly isn’t in control of the situation. And if he wasn’t in control then…”

“Then maybe he didn’t know everything that was happening. Smart.” Lily narrowed her eyes even more. “Maybe too smart. Are you the real Arthur? Or has he been replaced?”

“No. It’s just, you know.” Arthur pulled a small sweet biscuit from the batch he had made earlier that day and munched on it. “I just figured that I never know what’s going on with Mizu. She has to tell me. And I knew I couldn’t be the only one like that.”

“Huh,” Lily said, looking at the door.  “So he’s kind of like your twin. Funny. You’d never know by looking at him.”