Memory 13: "We're all Monsters here"

[wontforbidtherain]

Aphra is in a workroom, and the Yith in Trumbull’s body is describing a magical ritual. What Aphra knows by rote, the Yith clearly knows as a science. She describes how to modify a ritual to make a weaker, non-permanent bond between the participants.

Aphra, Caleb, Charlie and Audrey are all in the ritual, and Aphra looks into the Yith’s inner self. It is couched in the metaphor of blood as a river, but Trumbull’s body has something alien and predatory in it — the Yith’s mind. Aphra gets a sense how the alien mind fits into a human body, and how adaptable it truly is. The Yith looks back at the humans in the connection, seeing how their minds fit their bodies. Aphra picks up that the Yith was startled by something it found.

When they break the ritual, the Yith stares at Audrey and says that she appears perfectly sane. The Yith then reveals that Audrey is ‘dust-blooded’ — while she is mostly a typical human(a person of the air), one of her ancestors was a person of the rock. Which are called the Mad Ones Under the Earth. The Yith figures Audrey’s ancestor was an experiment, and it was unusual that they survived, and it was no more than five generations back, and quite likely non-consensual.

The Yith talks more about the people of the rock. The madness isn’t hereditary (and the Yith knows about DNA even if it hasn’t entered the popular lexicon), but that the magics they study (turning their forms into energy and back) are detrimental to the mind, and it has become so much a part of their culture that the entire adult population is affected to some degree.

The Yith wonders if Audrey’s aptitude for magic might be a result of tampering, and Aphra does note Audrey is a natural relative to herself and Charlie. Aphra reassures her that they look out for each other, talk about anything odd, and that they will also keep an eye out for troublesome relatives. Caleb also jokes that he and Audrey should have kids, because children of water, air and rock would terrify everyone. (Apparently at some point, Caleb and Aphra’s grandfather had suggested it, presumably without knowing Audrey’s heritage.) Aphra tells him that their mother would have words with both him and their grandfather about manners.

Audrey asks the Yith for a story. It comes up that the Yith’s immortality is due to body-swapping with the younger generations, which they do to preserve memories best stored in a brain, like the taste of a salt cake. But the Yith tells a story about an alien race who communicate by fungal symbionts that bioluminesce, that had to communicate only in writing for millennia after the symbionts died out.

Caleb reflects after Trumbull leaves that there’s a reason out people only spend a few hours with a Yith; they are arrogant as all hell. Aphra checks in with Audrey, who tries to reassure her, but is a bit spooked by the revelation as well. They talk about how reliable reports are and Audrey notes that some of the relative she knew about before were also pretty nasty. Audrey notes that at least her new relatives didn’t put any duty on her the way her family did, and Aphra notes that duty isn’t bad. Audrey asks if Aphra is going to have kids (with the implication that it was a family duty), and Aphra isn’t sure.

Cat will be upset that she accidentally outed a friend, even if the magical stuff she learned was really useful. Also something about contacting her family that she doesn't remember yet.