♪It’s eight – oh -three and the clock did not go off,♪
Jasprosesprite^2 did not need to let another line of the ditty pound through her head to decide it was horrible, infantile – but it was the voices that declared it that made her pause before thinking to examine anything else.
There were a lot of voices. Children’s voices.
♪and the clock did not go off,♪
There were two, three things to note without moving. There was something insider her besides fluff. Large. Moving. She was being held down – more likely up – against an upright piano, arms stretched wide against the top. There were two faces, costumed, staring at her opened mouth.
Four things. There was nothing in her hand, and there should have been. It was a juju hunt, and she’d just taken a break after recovering her quarry, a quick nap in what seemed to be a dark dressing room trailer. And by the emptiness of her hand – that could be very past tense. The Giant’s Ring, as she had dubbed it, was gone. Her latest attempt at atonement had obviously gone sideways.
“I’m ok, just a little numb,” The voice that came from her mouth, barely louder than the music, wasn’t hers. She would have defined it as ‘black’, but with Carapaces on Earth C actually being black, the designation would be disputed, “I can finish the show.” Shortly the boring song stopped, the music going from ‘stalling loop’ to upbeat, and whatever skit was continued.
Numb. Oh no. Oh no oh no. It was happening again. It was alarming how frequently the human reaction to seeing a human-size doll as to remove it’s stuffing and wear it as clothing. A costume. And something her sprite physiology did not permit. It was supposed to be stuffing in there – which was great when she wanted to look like she was enjoying food and drink…
The other costumes, as she caught glimpses as her wearer hopped around … they were poor imitations of sprites that had to be a Jadesprite. And there was a poor excuse for Davepetasprite^2’s wings and coat. The… wide horned one. It was definitely a gymnasium ceiling….
This was a school assembly. A Fricking. Religious. School assembly. Where the frack was Separation of Church and State on Earth C? And what did the zealots think sprites were? Some sort of angels bringing good news?
No, criticism later. The guy inside her was starting to wince a lot. That… that probably meant his skin was gone by now. Digested into fluff. Which wouldn’t hurt on it’s own – one mercy of the process – but he was still trying to dance. Which meant, besides a mercy killing, all Jasprose could do was try and float the slightest but, to remove weight from his feet.
“-the furthest ring!” it was the fake Jadesprite shouting, and everybody turned towards her. Her hands held up the Giant’s Ring. Frack. They wouldn’t – and while Jasprosesprite couldn’t hear the actor’s public discussion of what the furthest ring most certainly wasn’t, she definitely saw the wristband-sized ring slipping onto the actors… well, you think it would be forearm, perhaps her wrist, but quickly the actor grew huge enough for the finger to match the ring.
Of course they gave the Jadesprite the one-trick space juju. Thankfully, the actor was practiced enough with it that she knelt as she grew, meaning she towered over the child-filled stands rather than sent the rafters tumbling down on them. This time.
Jasprose’s personal Geromy was starting to realize he was losing control inside her, limbs dissolving … and he was realizing it. At least while he panicked, he didn’t draw attention to himself by screaming or anything. Jasprose tried to keep up whatever dance he had been doing – not knowing what else to do, focusing on some attempt to move. He… he deserved some last words. But there was nobody to say them to. Just another character in the background that nobody even noticed floating around.
Until a large hand came for him. The Jadesprite actor had easily grabbed up Jasprose, and with the sudden pressure, her mouth snapped shut. “Well. That was the end of the last words idea” Jasprose could finally speak – and the fact she could do so immediately showed how far gone her occupant had been.
And she finally heard what they were saying, “Jakrose what should they do?”
An Jasprose laughed in response. Working herself up. As evil a laugh as she could muster, “They shouldn’t mess with The Gods’ Toys.” Pretenses broken, Jasprose bent backwards threading between the loosely curled fingers of the temporary giant’s hand, with no pretense of mimicking bones she didn’t have.
The actor let out a ting gasp, trying first to pull her stuck fingers apart, then yanking Jasprose off with the other hand, trying to smush the foreign object in her palm like a bug.
Nobody in the stands could quite see what she was doing so they all just looked confused at the giant woman’s swatting. But when she suddenly shrunk to normal size, 10 meters up in the air, to fall to the floor with a crunch – there was a wave of alarm. More when the followed the path of her fall back up.
“Jakrose” floated mid-air, starting to flash painfully, the wrist-sized ring somehow wrapped around its waist.
“I said. You shouldn’t mess with the God’s Toys. Jasprosesprite-squared shouldn’t really even do it.” She floated easily down towards one of the teachers, frozen in place, letting her get a good look at the ring, showing that her cloth was not just pushed through it, but looped around. “And Jasprosesprite-squared guided those Gods to the Furthest ring. I knew the darkness and light, and lost both. Should I stand for these lies?” She twisted slowly, full length, to face the actors.
“Jadesprite” was still down, bleeding, by the look of it. The remaining two, gone to help her, caught her gaze. They started ripping off their sprite costumes as fast as they could manage.
“And you all,” Jasprose placed her chin on the shoulder of another teacher, picked at random, before letting her legs curl up and around to hang on either side of his neck, “would be better studying math than some fake history. At the moment, the Gods are occupied with other things than generic blessings.”
Extracting herself, she finally floated over to the Jadesprite, and after a quick mental calculation, opened a fenestrated wall beneath her, allowing her to fall onto a hospital bed beneath. No reason for more accidental deaths, if it could be helped. The two remaining actors, in underwear, looked at her fearfully. She waved them in, and as soon as they were a thousand miles away the fenestrated wall disappeared.
“You all can clean this mess up.”
For a moment, another fenestrated wall appeared, huge, showing some cold mountain peak, and then it and Jasprose were gone.
___
Am I really trying to work a dream out as fiction? Yes.
Incidentally, https://archiveofourown.org/works/20334604 just posted and it’s not discouraging.
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