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disc_festAuthor: recessional
Title: Natural Complications
Characters and/or Pairing(s): Susan Sto Helit/Lobsang Ludd, Death, Ronnie Soak (Chaos), the Death of Rats, Time.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1915
Possible warnings and/or enticements - highlight to view (may contain spoilers): *None*
Summary: Death's granddaughter cannot possibly be pregnant. Literally.
Ronnie Soak (née Kaos, occasionally still Chaos, depending on how much the cosmos needed minding) did not anticipate finding his niece in his dairy when he returned from his morning rounds.
"Niece", in this case, stretched the point a bit, so far as titles went. Indeed, even "grand-niece" or "great-niece" (depending on the pedantry of the speaker) might have been more appropriate, but it still fell down on describing the precise nature of their relationship. But Ronnie had lived among humans more than long enough to feel adrift without a way of describing Susan Sto Helit, Death's granddaughter and coincidentally the Duchess of Sto Helit, and "niece" at least provided him with a reason not to dismiss her into a cloud of atoms and entropy when she was being tiresome.
He kept an eye on her, of course. Passed on the occasional bit of news to Death, who had become conscientious about stopping by. Granted, Death was often in Ankh-Morpork on business, so it wasn't out of his way, but Ronnie would admit he didn't mind.
So he kept an eye on Susan, here in the world, and particularly since she'd settled here and opened her own school. Seemed to be doing fairly well. Possibly romantically entangled (to use Death's careful phrase) with Time, the new one - nice enough lad, got things done, not nearly as much fun as his mother - but asking about that sort of thing got Susan doing her very best iceberg impression.
But by and large they avoided one another, having the sort of personalities that would grate faintly against one another until the world ended in a large crater and everyone else wondering what happened. So he didn't expect to open his door to see a furious and slightly dishevelled Susan sitting in his dairy with her arms crossed.
"You," she said in a low and dangerous voice, "need to bring my grandfather here. NOW."
Ronnie felt tempted to give her a ding about the ear and remind her not to try that on him, but something about her distracted him - caught his attention and held it. Something . . . different. Something new.
It took him a moment (ten to the twelfth power ticks, to be precise). But when he realized what it was, he threw his head back and Chaos laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Eventually, he also made an effort to catch Death's attention.
***
In the end, Lobsang realized there was no help for it: he would have to ask his mother.
He hated doing that. It made him feel a pest, and it also made him feel incompetent, neither of which were feelings he enjoyed at all. There turned out to be very little that he couldn't figure out himself, if he combined common sense with the innate sense of everything granted to him by his position as Time. However, part of that had always been because of Susan, and right now he couldn't find her.
To say that this unnerved him would be to speak far too mildly. Susan Sto Helit was never difficult to find. Mortal enough (and stubborn enough) to be firmly anchored in the world, while immortal enough to shout her often-exasperated presence like a beacon across creation, she had functioned as Lobsang's anchor, his perspective on time as it related mortal creatures, and even particular kinds of immortal ones. That was more than useful: it was very nearly essential, because otherwise, the absolute vastness of Everything That Was Or Could Be . . .
Well, it wasn't that it became too much. It just became too much to allow him to relate to Time the way mortal creatures did. This, his mother had explained, was a result of the fact that he was partially of the world. He could only see Everything; he couldn't position himself outside it and have it all make sense. It shouldn't interfere too much, she had said.
Except that now Susan had disappeared, and left Lobsang not only extremely worried, but also adrift in currents of time, and in serious danger of appearing at the precise wrong moment along the curve of her lifetime. He'd do it if he really had to, but that sort of thing always made such a mess that first he swallowed his pride and called out to his mother.
Words were a totally inefficient method of communication, so Lobsang didn't use them, and neither did his mother. She did, however, begin to laugh. She did not explain to him why she began to laugh, but she did, just before she -
Think of it as an expert putting their hands on those of the student and guiding each movement: that is, of course, a lie, but it is good enough for now. His mother showed him where and when in time and space, and then withdrew, still entirely too amused for Lobsang's taste.
But he could navigate, at least. Although he wasn't sure what Susan was doing in Chaos' dairy.
***
"And it didn't occur to you to tell me this?" Susan demanded, putting her hands on her hips and glaring death - so to speak - at her grandfather. Ronnie was still chuckling, off and on, as he occupied himself with various chores in and around the place. That didn't help.
I WAS NOT SURE, Death said, somewhat defensively. BESIDES, IT WAS ONLY A THEORY. I DID NOT WISH TO WORRY YOU UNDULY.
"Worry me unduly," Susan repeated, using a tone of voice intended to convey the full and total disgust she felt for this excuse. "Worry me unduly - Grandfather, did it ever occur to you - do you even - " She found herself inarticulate with fury, which did not often happen. She wondered if she could blame it on the same thing as she could apparently blame for everything else.
She glanced sideways. "And stop playing with that," she snapped, snatching the tiny lifetimer away from the Death of Rats. "And will the both of you," she said, including Ronnie in with the tiny hooded skeleton, "stop sniggering."
"Nope," said Ronnie, predictably. Equally predictably, the Death of Rats said, SQUEAK.
SUSAN, said her grandfather, in an extremely misguided and ill-thought-out attempt to be personable at exactly the wrong moment, BE REASONABLE. IT IS A TEMPORARY CONDITION.
Susan's hands went back to her hips. Her eyes narrowed. "I would like to see you," she said, through her teeth, "live nine months in the world. I really would - "
She had a great deal more to say, but stopped. The tiny blue-silver lights in the air, like blue glass shattered so small that the wind could make it fly, stopped her. Shouting at her grandfather was one thing; he deserved it, and there is a particular kind of family relationship which permits raised voices in the service of making a point.
Susan would rather have tried to swim the Ankh, however, than become a soppy cliché, the angry heroine out of a book shouting at the father and blaming him for everything. Or even getting close.
Instead, she folded her arms and waited as Lobsang finished manifesting, and took stock of the atmosphere.
He was self-evidently not stupid. They would not have been in this position if he were stupid, as the issue would not have arisen. (Regrettably, Susan heard Nanny Ogg's voice in the back of her head, supplying as the washerwoman said to the deacon.) It took him no time at all to fully understand that he had arrived at a moment of tension. "What have I missed?" he asked, both carefully and politely.
Death looked at Susan. Susan considered her words. The Death of Rats sniggered quietly and gave Lobsang a grinning thumbs-up.
Ronnie, being Ronnie, clapped Lobsang on the shoulder (sending him slightly off-balance), grinned and said, "Congratulations, monk."
Lobsang did not correct him, but did eye him warily. "For what?"
"Congratulations," Ronnie said expansively, as Susan hid her face in her hands (there being no point at all trying to stop him), "on becoming a father. I've heard cigars are generally the thing, at moments like this, but I won't have'em in the dairy, so have some ice-cream instead."
Susan appreciated that, although a number of expressions struggled for a moment across Lobsang's face, he didn't give a voice to a single one of them. Instead, he waited until he could say something intelligent, which turned out to be, "Is that why I can't find you anymore?"
Susan frowned at him. Death coughed, and then Susan frowned at him instead.
PROBABLY, Death said. THERE HAS ARISEN A . . . COMPLICATION.
"Yes," said Lobsang evenly, "I think I can follow the logic. It's not difficult to see where issues with occasionally being part of Death and creating life might arise."
THERE IS, Death began, AS I SAID TO SUSAN, A MATTER OF VOLITI -
"That's enough," Susan said, standing up. She glared at her grandfather. "The next time you have a theory about something like this and its effect on me," she snapped, "share it." Then she held out a hand to Lobsang who showed profound good judgement and took it, and stalked out of the dairy, completely ignoring Ronnie and the rat as she did so.
"You tried to step outside time, didn't you," Lobsang said, with a wry sort of cheerfulness that Susan decided she could live with.
"I did not enjoy explaining the gesture to the parents in question, no," Susan replied.
"What was your grandfather about to say?" Lobsang asked, and Susan sighed.
"Oh, something about how if I were really that attached to being a little bit immortal, this wouldn't have happened in the first place. But Ronnie's been more than tiresome enough for today."
Lobsang said nothing, but nodded. Susan looked down, and realized she still had the tiny lifetimer in one hand. She passed it to him. "Here," she said. "I think we'll hold onto this for now."
Lobsang examined it, and Susan's mouth twitched at the look of bemusement that flicked across his face as he glanced where the name should be. The space was currently occupied by ?????
"The name will fill in when we give her one," Susan told him.
"Her?"
Susan sighed. "According to grandfather."
They walked through the streets arm in arm after that, and nobody noticed them at all.
***
YOU COULD HAVE BEEN MORE HELPFUL, Death said to Chaos, frowning, inasmuch as a skull can frown, and filling his voice with all the frownness that his skull couldn't contain.
"What," said Chaos blithely, pouring Death more tea, "you mean stopped antagonising her and attracting significant portions of her irritation so she could work herself up to properly explode at you?"
Death paused and considered that. AH, he said.
Chaos patted him on the shoulder. "I'll keep a closer eye on her, though," he went on, sitting back with his own mug. "Some of the undead and otherwise unliving can be as thick as bricks around here, and one or two of them might decide it's a good time to look for payback." He sipped meditatively at his tea. "Only once, though, I think."
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats, grinning in a particularly unpleasant way.
INDEED, Death agreed, and tried not to worry.
***
In a castle of glass, whose oodleplexes of rooms each contained a perfect moment, Time smiled smugly to herself, and waited for the opportunity to add several more.
recessionalTitle: Natural Complications
Characters and/or Pairing(s): Susan Sto Helit/Lobsang Ludd, Death, Ronnie Soak (Chaos), the Death of Rats, Time.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1915
Possible warnings and/or enticements - highlight to view (may contain spoilers): *None*
Summary: Death's granddaughter cannot possibly be pregnant. Literally.
Ronnie Soak (née Kaos, occasionally still Chaos, depending on how much the cosmos needed minding) did not anticipate finding his niece in his dairy when he returned from his morning rounds.
"Niece", in this case, stretched the point a bit, so far as titles went. Indeed, even "grand-niece" or "great-niece" (depending on the pedantry of the speaker) might have been more appropriate, but it still fell down on describing the precise nature of their relationship. But Ronnie had lived among humans more than long enough to feel adrift without a way of describing Susan Sto Helit, Death's granddaughter and coincidentally the Duchess of Sto Helit, and "niece" at least provided him with a reason not to dismiss her into a cloud of atoms and entropy when she was being tiresome.
He kept an eye on her, of course. Passed on the occasional bit of news to Death, who had become conscientious about stopping by. Granted, Death was often in Ankh-Morpork on business, so it wasn't out of his way, but Ronnie would admit he didn't mind.
So he kept an eye on Susan, here in the world, and particularly since she'd settled here and opened her own school. Seemed to be doing fairly well. Possibly romantically entangled (to use Death's careful phrase) with Time, the new one - nice enough lad, got things done, not nearly as much fun as his mother - but asking about that sort of thing got Susan doing her very best iceberg impression.
But by and large they avoided one another, having the sort of personalities that would grate faintly against one another until the world ended in a large crater and everyone else wondering what happened. So he didn't expect to open his door to see a furious and slightly dishevelled Susan sitting in his dairy with her arms crossed.
"You," she said in a low and dangerous voice, "need to bring my grandfather here. NOW."
Ronnie felt tempted to give her a ding about the ear and remind her not to try that on him, but something about her distracted him - caught his attention and held it. Something . . . different. Something new.
It took him a moment (ten to the twelfth power ticks, to be precise). But when he realized what it was, he threw his head back and Chaos laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Eventually, he also made an effort to catch Death's attention.
In the end, Lobsang realized there was no help for it: he would have to ask his mother.
He hated doing that. It made him feel a pest, and it also made him feel incompetent, neither of which were feelings he enjoyed at all. There turned out to be very little that he couldn't figure out himself, if he combined common sense with the innate sense of everything granted to him by his position as Time. However, part of that had always been because of Susan, and right now he couldn't find her.
To say that this unnerved him would be to speak far too mildly. Susan Sto Helit was never difficult to find. Mortal enough (and stubborn enough) to be firmly anchored in the world, while immortal enough to shout her often-exasperated presence like a beacon across creation, she had functioned as Lobsang's anchor, his perspective on time as it related mortal creatures, and even particular kinds of immortal ones. That was more than useful: it was very nearly essential, because otherwise, the absolute vastness of Everything That Was Or Could Be . . .
Well, it wasn't that it became too much. It just became too much to allow him to relate to Time the way mortal creatures did. This, his mother had explained, was a result of the fact that he was partially of the world. He could only see Everything; he couldn't position himself outside it and have it all make sense. It shouldn't interfere too much, she had said.
Except that now Susan had disappeared, and left Lobsang not only extremely worried, but also adrift in currents of time, and in serious danger of appearing at the precise wrong moment along the curve of her lifetime. He'd do it if he really had to, but that sort of thing always made such a mess that first he swallowed his pride and called out to his mother.
Words were a totally inefficient method of communication, so Lobsang didn't use them, and neither did his mother. She did, however, begin to laugh. She did not explain to him why she began to laugh, but she did, just before she -
Think of it as an expert putting their hands on those of the student and guiding each movement: that is, of course, a lie, but it is good enough for now. His mother showed him where and when in time and space, and then withdrew, still entirely too amused for Lobsang's taste.
But he could navigate, at least. Although he wasn't sure what Susan was doing in Chaos' dairy.
"And it didn't occur to you to tell me this?" Susan demanded, putting her hands on her hips and glaring death - so to speak - at her grandfather. Ronnie was still chuckling, off and on, as he occupied himself with various chores in and around the place. That didn't help.
I WAS NOT SURE, Death said, somewhat defensively. BESIDES, IT WAS ONLY A THEORY. I DID NOT WISH TO WORRY YOU UNDULY.
"Worry me unduly," Susan repeated, using a tone of voice intended to convey the full and total disgust she felt for this excuse. "Worry me unduly - Grandfather, did it ever occur to you - do you even - " She found herself inarticulate with fury, which did not often happen. She wondered if she could blame it on the same thing as she could apparently blame for everything else.
She glanced sideways. "And stop playing with that," she snapped, snatching the tiny lifetimer away from the Death of Rats. "And will the both of you," she said, including Ronnie in with the tiny hooded skeleton, "stop sniggering."
"Nope," said Ronnie, predictably. Equally predictably, the Death of Rats said, SQUEAK.
SUSAN, said her grandfather, in an extremely misguided and ill-thought-out attempt to be personable at exactly the wrong moment, BE REASONABLE. IT IS A TEMPORARY CONDITION.
Susan's hands went back to her hips. Her eyes narrowed. "I would like to see you," she said, through her teeth, "live nine months in the world. I really would - "
She had a great deal more to say, but stopped. The tiny blue-silver lights in the air, like blue glass shattered so small that the wind could make it fly, stopped her. Shouting at her grandfather was one thing; he deserved it, and there is a particular kind of family relationship which permits raised voices in the service of making a point.
Susan would rather have tried to swim the Ankh, however, than become a soppy cliché, the angry heroine out of a book shouting at the father and blaming him for everything. Or even getting close.
Instead, she folded her arms and waited as Lobsang finished manifesting, and took stock of the atmosphere.
He was self-evidently not stupid. They would not have been in this position if he were stupid, as the issue would not have arisen. (Regrettably, Susan heard Nanny Ogg's voice in the back of her head, supplying as the washerwoman said to the deacon.) It took him no time at all to fully understand that he had arrived at a moment of tension. "What have I missed?" he asked, both carefully and politely.
Death looked at Susan. Susan considered her words. The Death of Rats sniggered quietly and gave Lobsang a grinning thumbs-up.
Ronnie, being Ronnie, clapped Lobsang on the shoulder (sending him slightly off-balance), grinned and said, "Congratulations, monk."
Lobsang did not correct him, but did eye him warily. "For what?"
"Congratulations," Ronnie said expansively, as Susan hid her face in her hands (there being no point at all trying to stop him), "on becoming a father. I've heard cigars are generally the thing, at moments like this, but I won't have'em in the dairy, so have some ice-cream instead."
Susan appreciated that, although a number of expressions struggled for a moment across Lobsang's face, he didn't give a voice to a single one of them. Instead, he waited until he could say something intelligent, which turned out to be, "Is that why I can't find you anymore?"
Susan frowned at him. Death coughed, and then Susan frowned at him instead.
PROBABLY, Death said. THERE HAS ARISEN A . . . COMPLICATION.
"Yes," said Lobsang evenly, "I think I can follow the logic. It's not difficult to see where issues with occasionally being part of Death and creating life might arise."
THERE IS, Death began, AS I SAID TO SUSAN, A MATTER OF VOLITI -
"That's enough," Susan said, standing up. She glared at her grandfather. "The next time you have a theory about something like this and its effect on me," she snapped, "share it." Then she held out a hand to Lobsang who showed profound good judgement and took it, and stalked out of the dairy, completely ignoring Ronnie and the rat as she did so.
"You tried to step outside time, didn't you," Lobsang said, with a wry sort of cheerfulness that Susan decided she could live with.
"I did not enjoy explaining the gesture to the parents in question, no," Susan replied.
"What was your grandfather about to say?" Lobsang asked, and Susan sighed.
"Oh, something about how if I were really that attached to being a little bit immortal, this wouldn't have happened in the first place. But Ronnie's been more than tiresome enough for today."
Lobsang said nothing, but nodded. Susan looked down, and realized she still had the tiny lifetimer in one hand. She passed it to him. "Here," she said. "I think we'll hold onto this for now."
Lobsang examined it, and Susan's mouth twitched at the look of bemusement that flicked across his face as he glanced where the name should be. The space was currently occupied by ?????
"The name will fill in when we give her one," Susan told him.
"Her?"
Susan sighed. "According to grandfather."
They walked through the streets arm in arm after that, and nobody noticed them at all.
YOU COULD HAVE BEEN MORE HELPFUL, Death said to Chaos, frowning, inasmuch as a skull can frown, and filling his voice with all the frownness that his skull couldn't contain.
"What," said Chaos blithely, pouring Death more tea, "you mean stopped antagonising her and attracting significant portions of her irritation so she could work herself up to properly explode at you?"
Death paused and considered that. AH, he said.
Chaos patted him on the shoulder. "I'll keep a closer eye on her, though," he went on, sitting back with his own mug. "Some of the undead and otherwise unliving can be as thick as bricks around here, and one or two of them might decide it's a good time to look for payback." He sipped meditatively at his tea. "Only once, though, I think."
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats, grinning in a particularly unpleasant way.
INDEED, Death agreed, and tried not to worry.
In a castle of glass, whose oodleplexes of rooms each contained a perfect moment, Time smiled smugly to herself, and waited for the opportunity to add several more.
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Date: 2011-07-30 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 08:55 pm (UTC)