Chapter 16: The Babe and a Deadpan Gaze

Sammy’s relaxation time and internal musings were interrupted by a ‘ping’ from Estara at the hand mirror. Sammy could already ‘feel’ the realm she was in and its distinct separation like a partition in her head, so she simply left it, to return to her throne room.

Nice. I have a throne room. Needs a cool name. The Reflective Throne? No…

She walked up the steps, back in her regalia at the same instant she appeared. As Sammy sat she was already pulling Estara’s mirror to her. Once again it showed the face of the servant, this time apparently sitting cross-legged (she guessed) on her bed.

Sammy smiled pleasantly. “Estara. It’s good to see you again.”

The servant girl smiled shyly in response. “And you as well, Your Majesty.” She blinked and looked away. “I meant to… apologize… about… before…”

Laughing, Sammy waved her hand dismissively. “Think nothing of it — as I said, the giddy intoxication was an effect caused by being touched by my spiritual presence and power. I wanted my Followers to feel happy. Perhaps you needed it.”

“Well, it did feel nice, but… I said I…” She trailed off and shook her head.

“That you loved me. Honestly, you should love your goddess. In a way that you can no other. You’ll pray to and worship me, yes? So this makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Oh. Well. Yes. Yes, it does, Your Majesty. Of course. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize, Estara.”

“Oh, right, sorry-” She clapped her hand to her mouth, embarrassed. It was clear she was restraining herself from also apologizing for apologizing again after being told not to apologize.

Sammy did a slow blink with a deadpan expression. What is this, South Canada?

“It’s. Alright. Estara.” Sammy had to keep herself from saying it through her teeth. “Anyway, I see you had a very busy day.”

Estara nodded, then blew air out of the side of her mouth in a sigh. “We have guests tomorrow, so cleaning and prep and so forth is blowing up the geese.”

“It’s what now? What geese?”

“Oh, it’s a saying, Your Majesty. Your pardon, it just means it's going to- to extremes.”

“Right. Because no one wants to get to the point that geese are exploding.”

Estara giggled, though she clearly was keeping it contained. “Precisely, Your Majesty.”

Gah, this makes me want a little sister.

“So, who are the guests, Estara?”

“The Marchioness herself! With retinue. Lord Carlisle is not even here but will be the day after tomorrow, that’s the word. They’re old friends.”

What the heck is a Marchioness over? Need to brush up on my feudal ranks, I guess.

“So this Marchioness is the ruler within these lands, then?”

“Yes, the Marchioness of Oldaster. The march, the borderland. One of them. We’re not really on the border — we’re about as far from it as Caneboro to the east.”

“Mmn, Caneboro. I have a Follower traveling there. Come to think… perhaps she can help you with this running away business. She has a lot of contacts in that city.”

Estara’s eyes lit up. “Really?! Oh, Your Majesty, I’d love to see a real city!”

Sammy grinned. “I’ll see to it, then. I imagine we’ll wait until these guests are gone.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Your Majesty. That will be a few days, at most. I’m unsure if the lord will leave or stay a while after.”

“Another thing: you can speak to me through prayer and worship in your mind. I can speak back to you as well. And I can begin with a ‘knock.’ Like so.”

She reached out psychically and touched Estara’s mind, who soon 'opened up.' In the mirror, Estara’s eyes closed. Sammy sent, “Yes. Like so. It requires focus, but as we do it more, it gets easier.”

“When I become more devoted to you,” Estara sent, with a strong energy of wonder and exultation.

Sammy was somewhat taken aback. Shit. I guess this is what it’s like to become a literal idol. Move over, Swift. “Yes,” she answered, though.

“I want to be devoted to you, Goddess! I would be your priestess if I could, but I know I am just a servant.”

Sammy had to cast aside an impulse for an awkward ‘we’re moving too fast, here’ speech. At least, she figured she needed to get out of a ‘mortal’ mindset about the relationships she was creating. And she’d just told Estara to love her. Hypocrite, much, Sammy?

She drew on her class once more, to mentally say, “In time you may well be granted your heart’s desire, young hopeful. One step at a time. I am nascent in this world, and my power and influence must grow. You will serve me, rest assured, and so you will have your chance to prove yourself worthy of more.”

In awe once more, smiling with her eyes closed, Estara sent, “Thank you, Your Majesty. I will serve you in any way I can.”

“Good,” Sammy said aloud. “Now, I wanted to check in, but I have other things to tend to. You will be able to rest soon?”

Estara had opened her eyes slowly when Sammy began speaking. To the question, she nodded, though also yawned. “Just a few things to do and then I can lay my head. I will pray before I do, Goddess.”

“Of course. Until next time.”

Estara opened her mouth, but instead prayed, “I love you, Goddess!”

Welp. I asked for this. “I love you as well, Estara. I will watch over you as well as I can.”

Sammy disconnected, hand going to her chin, propping it up on the chair arm as she thought about what she was causing in people. In truth, each had a slightly different view and relationship with her.

With Estara, it was starry-eyed celebrity adoration, it seemed. But it wasn’t at all difficult to think of her as a little sister. Family. She just wasn’t sure that would work.

5 Daily FE gained.

Well, it’s officially been 24 hours. I guess I did pretty okay for a day. Now we just gotta not fuck it up. I’d like to build on what I have a little. Enrich the core and work through them. Inevitably, I need them to work some of the expansion for me.

But there was something else she wanted to focus on, or at least try to. She closed her eyes and thought of nature. Swamps and jungles and isolated forests. The Southlands — at least her own mental image of it. That and the statue, the one of the goddess Redberry.

Risky, but I need to know more and I need allies. Or at least godly acquaintances. I need to enter their world. A solitary deity might be the best to start.

“Redberry,” she prayed in her head, “Can you hear me? Will you answer me?”

There was nothing.

“I am the Goddess Samantha, the Goddess of Mirrors. I call on you, Redberry — for council, or friendship, or simply peace. We have a mutual enemy in the Dominion, that would see us all removed. I have the capacity for intelligence in their lands.”

Nothing.

Sammy sighed. Could she not hear, or did she just not care? Or was too shy?

“Okay, look, Redberry: I’m dead-ass new and I don’t know shit about this world. I’m not a spirit, I didn’t up-jump as a native, or grow from a System squeezed-out turd, or however the hell that works. I’m bewildered, scared, and alone. I don’t know any gods. Will you help me? Or just talk to me?”

She felt a presence fill her mind, like blossoming flowers and the sting of poison ivy, like a predatory cat ripping out a throat and a mother fox nursing her young. The endless expanses, the unknown, unseen groves deep in nowhere — these were Redberry.

“You’re a curious one,” a voice resounded, feminine and virulently god-like in the echo of power it affected, enough to make Sammy shiver. “Redberry answers the child lost and afraid in the wilderness. Though you are not helpless. Perhaps you should enjoy your solitude while you can.”

Sammy was glad she didn’t have to speak with her mouth, as she might’ve squeaked instead of spoken. “Thank you for answering me, Redberry. Unfortunately, the System mandates I acquire Followers to survive, so I’m not sure solitude is an option.”

“The punishment is merely isolation for aeons before dissolution. More than anyone could ask for.”

“I don’t think I want that, personally. You would?”

“I would accept it. I don’t strive to avoid it any longer, yet avoidance happens all the same. Even when I answer so few, they pray. Some oaths still hold on to me, though I tire of them.” There was true weariness in the words, too, and the tinge of something like bored despair.

Sammy wasn’t entirely sure what to make of her, but at least she seemed reasonable. “Do you… take visitors in your realm? I’d love to meet you…”

The goddess seemed exasperated. “Did you not surmise I prefer isolation? Distrust outsiders?”

“I know. I was just asking. Apologies.”

There was such an exceptionally long pause, Sammy thought maybe she’d ‘hung up’. Then there was a great sigh. “What are your domains? Swear you will speak the truth about them, tell me all of them, then speak them.”

Sammy paused with some caution, but it didn’t sound like it was terribly manipulative. “I swear I will speak the truth about my domains and all of them to you.” She paused, expecting a System message, but none came. “Mirrors. That’s literally it.”

“You are an entirely nascent deity, then. A babe.”

“Yeah… I just had my first 24-hour period.”

“You are as trusting as a babe as well. I suggest you stop being. Naivety only begets betrayal and sorrow, and all innocence finds corruption. This is the natural order.”

“Are you always so dreary, Red?”

“Yes. Red?” The query was not in puzzlement but in mild admonition, like ‘Really?’. “You would have airs of such familiarity with me? You truly are curious.”

Sammy felt a call, a pull within her, which she knew to be an invitation. She took it immediately.

Between two blinks she was in a massive swamp, eerie and frightening and beautiful all at once, all manner of plant life sprouting from waters and islands alike as far as she could see in the density of it and the fog. White will-o-wisps hovered over the surfaces and stranger hints of things teased this way and that — mysterious life undulating under the swampy soup, an orchestra of insects and frogs singing in the distance, a furred thing crawling up a tree.

Round stone disks led across the water to a massive, drooping tree that dwarfed everything else in sight, and even its trunk was blocked by the mass of leaves, which were every variety of leaf one could imagine in shape and size overgrown — though they were mostly green, radiating like summer despite the prevalent gloom.

Awed, Sammy took the steps, knowing them to lead to Redberry. Shapes in the water stirred, and she saw reptilian eyes, but she controlled her instinctive fear. They did not attack her.

She had to pass through the leaves, which did not move exactly but seemed to facilitate her passage, even as they still brushed across her.

Inside the canopy was like another world of life, flowers and mushrooms and weeds overgrown. Butterflies and actual little fairies were amongst it. She saw a ring of them dancing joyfully on top of a giant mushroom, hand-in-hand, singing something or other. On the branches above, figures of incredibly life-like wood were sitting, that of nude feminine forms like trees grown into women — then she saw one smile at her. Another moved their head. Dryads or nymphs!

At the base of the tree was a throne made out of the roots, carving itself into all manner of varying woods, yet still somehow part of the tree and alive. At its back sprouted a mass of red berry vines, thick enough to be bushes.

Seated on the throne was Redberry, a form something like the dryads but more powerful and mature in beauty, while her nudity was hidden somewhat by overgrowths of leaves and vines made into decorative displays, pale green, shining skin heavily evident, as if dew clinging to leaves. Her hair was an enormous mass of jet black strewn and interwoven thickly with vines, leaves, flowers, and berries. Gazing from behind heavy, dark-painted eyelids were watery shimmering pools like the blurred reflections of nature seen on the jungle river.

One thing marred the majesty: a wound, right between her eyes, a diagonal red gash from the forehead to the cheek, like a recent scar.

She was a contrast to all the merriment and color around her. Her face was sapped of joy, cast in natural melancholy, seemingly. A winter queen stuck in the midst of summer.

“The lost child comes,” that rich, powerful, not-very-interested voice intoned, “but I question her honesty at being afraid. For she grasps at everything like a babe lusty for life, eager to touch the glow of power with no regard that it could burn her. If you call me Red, I should call you Moth.”

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