It's really, really confusing. Avedan is somewhere between wanting to learn more about the internal history present in the dreams, and wanting to understand why they're being so - insistent. He suspects it has something to do with malfunctioning servants, but all of his are working just fine. He checked. Twice. So - maybe someone else's aren't working properly? Or something? He doesn't know, there's zero precedent for eerily vivid and consistent dreams. Avedan tries talking to someone about it, exactly once. They immediately think he's having reoccurring nightmares.
But they're not nightmares. Well. Okay, some of them are, one of the more memorable ones included desperately clutching a woman's hand, begging her to stay with him, just keep breathing, to stay alive. She didn't. If it'd been with someone he knew, he might have thought it was just a simple nightmare. But, no. He's never seen her before in his life. Only his dreams, and not all that often, either. Because there are others, with - happier memories attached to them.
He's started to notice patterns. In - consistent people, consistent places, and most interestingly, consistent personalities. He's pretty sure it's not his subconscious being uncreative (if it were that, he would be naked at work or something) but the bizarre internal consistency his dreams are exhibiting.
It's hard, to figure out if there's a timeline to it all. But there is one thing that's consistent: a city. He does a quick bit of research, finds the city's name (Lapis), and after a bit more research is confronted with the dream's reasonable level of fidelity. As in, it's nearly the same, with exception to what he suspects is construction. And he's never been to Lapis in his life. Just what is going on? He can only think of one way to find out, and that way involves packing up his bags, handing them off to a well-maintained servant, and then heading off to Lapis.
She had it all right, in some places - more recent construction doesn't match, but the places where she remembers something other than what's there are consistently recent construction.
It's weird.
And that's when she gets mobbed by parrots.
But before he manages to get a word out, the parrots decide he's worth being mobbed, too. The only thing he can say is, "Ack!"
She sits on her horse, covered in parrots, and looks at Avedan.
"Do you know what's going on?"
"They don't seem to be attacking," he observes. "Or if they are, I suppose they might just be excessively terrible at it."
"I suppose one of us could go where they're leading - they seem to be aiming us in the same direction - and the other could decline to be dragged and wait for a while and, if the first doesn't return in a timely manner, mention this to whatever Lapis has in the way of public order keepers?"
Up until Avedan approaches it at the parrots' urging, of course, at which point the door flings open wide to reveal a very excited-looking golem made of iron - not solid, but arranged in twisted bars to make more surface area for instructions, so it's possible to see glimpses of the room beyond through its torso.
"Welcome back!" it says brightly.
"Yes! You've found them after all? I have letters for both of you," says the golem, and it rummages through some papers and comes up with four envelopes. There are two sets of handwriting, each of which says on one envelope "*bel*" and "*dan*" on the other. The golem points out the "*dan*" envelopes. "These are for you and the others are for - is it milord or milady now?"
Sylvi's letter reads:
"Hello.
I genuinely hope this letter finds you well. I'm fairly certain you're quite confused, but rest assured, nothing terrible or creepy is happening. This is, in fact, good news. I'll start with the fact that I know you will find most comforting - death, at least for the two of us, is not the final end. Just a return to square one. Annoying, but not permanent.
My name is Kidan, I'm - well, it's sort of complicated, and difficult to explain without sounding like a creep. I've been married to the same person three separate times, reincarnated at least twice now. Since you're reading this, you'll be the third known reincarnation. Hi. No, don't worry, I'm not going to expect a fourth marriage, especially since it's likely that by this point I've also reincarnated. The 'me' running around will not have any idea of who you are, or what's going on, until he (or possibly she) finds the similar letters of explanation. Perhaps he or she's already found them, in which case - my dear, you will never have anything to fear from me.
We have notes for you. Things that we left half-done or projects that were important enough to want our reincarnations to get back to work on. You don't have to, there is nothing either of us could or would do to force your hand, but I think the projects themselves will interest you and the new me, both. Beluna was working on immortality, for example. My notes will be less useful than your predecessors, but I'm happy to give you them anyway. This is meant to be a simple opener, the more detailed accounts will be back where the golem that gave you this letter is. We kept obsessive notes. I think you'll like those, too.
Well. It's - tempting to write my more personal feelings, but - I think you'll get a reasonable idea of them, if you haven't already. You're the most amazing person I've ever met (in two lifetimes, even!) and I hope that we manage to find each other again. Because who else will I incite massive social changes for the better of all humanity with? It'd get boring doing it on my own.
With love,
Kidan"
Avedan is staring at his own letter.
"What."
Aydanci ------------- Kidan --- you
Alymbel -- Akibel --- me! ----- find this one if you haven't yet!
The dreams are real memories, the two of you will get on famously once you have any idea who each other are, and I really really hope that we continue to have good luck with the gender matchup (so far Dans have been male and don't care about partner gender and Bels all like boys but Kib also was one). (If you are so fortunate: kiss 'em on the back of the neck when you are done being a prude, it's great.) Servants retain their understanding of who we are incarnation to incarnation, and personalities are the same but faces and other details change.
We have left you some cash, some servants, and some notes on some projects you can pick up if they still sound good whenever you are. I was doing immortality but obviously if you're reading this I haven't managed it. (Reincarnation is better than you'd expect but it does have the seriously annoying memory loss problem - if you manage to live long enough the memories will all filter in, just out of order and with all the intervening degradation over time.)
Sorry about the parrots. Maybe you'll think of something more dignified, but I have this rather arrogant suspicion that when you get to know whoever I am now you'll think it's well worth the inconvenience to be sure you found him or her.
Love thrice,
Lu
"Yeah, she, uh, warned me about you being a prude. This is so bizarre. And you really don't look like the - people in the dreams. I mean, I guess you talk like them? Except less old-fashioned and... yeah. And I don't look like the one memory I have of, I think it was Aly, looking in a mirror..."
Sylvi has left her wooden horse standing outside the building and runs a finger along the book spines. "I brought some food, although the honey's clever."
"Of course, milady. It was your idea."
Sylvi giggles.
"What does it mean to have earned a forty point five? I only have a snippet about it - the number and how happy I was and - I don't know what pronouns to use for these people - anyway, it was only a minute and then it went into a bit about Aly and then a different, regular dream. What did the number mean?"
"... Basically that she had managed to make it to the top of my - his? priorities and importance scale. As in, literally everything else was less important. Actually, looking at the numbers most of it wasn't out of love, though that was there and was a factor, but - she was competent, good at what she did, pointed it in a good direction and got things done. Essentially, she was his priority because he respected and trusted her to - I suppose the best terminology is be his greatest ally and that either one of them would handle things in the other's absence."
"Aaaaand they have 'not bothered' to put in a spare bed besides the double in the living quarters, to accommodate you being a prude, but there is a big pillow we can put down the middle of the one bed in case that helps. Lu says to go ahead and let you sleep on the floor if you insist on sleeping on the floor and that you will get over it 'after about a week or when he's had the right dreams, whichever comes first'." Pause. "And apparently I'm three for three on talking in my sleep without noticing until I wind up sharing a room - but you shouldn't have any trouble sleeping through it? This is so weird..."
".... Apparently I'm supposed to ask you what you would do with one wish from something that was not purposely trying to screw you over?"
Sylvi snorts. "Well, I'd want to give it some real thought, if I only got one, but the first thing that comes to mind if I can't just make myself omnipotent and cheat that way is that it'd be swell if Lu's research on immortality had panned out, although we might have to come up with a way to slow down population growth or find more places to put people if it got widespread. I would also accept the ability to imbue servants with healing powers. I can make shines really fast with the right automaton setup, I could cover an entire continent in swarms of 'em in my lifetime even working alone, it'd be even better if the wish-granter would let me make that a generally available power - the question really ought to specify scale of wish, definitely the first thing I'd check for would be the availability of general purpose omnipotence."
He realizes what he's doing, and then blinks. "... That explains the note. Okay then. Uh. I like your answer, it's a good answer."
"I'm very complicated, milady," says Charp.
"But did some local-ish infrastructure servantmaking. And Lu took breaks from immortality for the same sort of thing. Lapis is probably such a big and well-developed city half because Aly happened to be brought up here and it was a convenient rendezvous for us again later and therefore it benefits from pilot programs..."
Is she going pink? She is going a little pink.
"Parrots live a long time, I think we'd still be able to control them once we figured out what they were after even if in some life unaccountably we weren't trained as servantmakers, and they attract a lot less attention to our cache - we have a lot of money, apparently - than having Charp comb the world for us would. But if we think of something better then that'd be good."
"Well, parrots can still get sick, I imagine they wanted redundancy in case the one and only leftover parrot met with misfortune. They really wanted us to meet. And Lu too, she got parroted," page page, "and went and found Kidan by herself, he was too busy to check out Lapis which did not have any slavery in it just because he was having dreams, apparently."
"During the - interim between reincarnations. He was - very focused on eradicating something after his wife died. Oh, I - got that too, that was also depressing. My original thought was that he'd been cheating on her with Kib, and Kib got jealous and killed her or something, and Aydanci was very upset by this fact. But - nope. It's much less dramatic and sounds like something I would actually do."
"I haven't gotten any farther than that with the theory, I've been working on apparatus to give me enough shines to test complicated questions with because it takes a lot of miniscule ones in various colors to assemble into anything much even if the big shine is window-sized. Lenses to shrink and project program sets and resize a light source into however big I need it for what kind of shine I want. I'm pretty sure that you can't get shines to obey instructions that don't all fit on them, no 'go slide over this entire giant list of things and remember it all'."
"That makes sense, considering. Hmm. Could be good for communication, give them little spaces to travel underground or something and let them pass tiny messages around in hollow tubes - that'd be safer than flying messengers, and rely less on good weather conditions. Or ground messengers, those have to deal with things in the way."
"I'm going to make a quick grocery trip. I'm basically just going to move in here straight away, all my projects are shines and I brought all the equipment that isn't literally made out of easily reproduced sunshine, I don't even need to notify a landlord. Do you want me to pick up anything? I think Kidan liked pears?"
"He is," agrees Aydanci, smiling a little.
The bird sits on his knee instead.
"...Left wing out."
The bird extends his left wing. And preens it.
"Fold up -"
The wing folds.
"I doooon't think you know all the instructions this bird got, although what contingency has him stuck on me in particular I can't begin to tell you."
"All kinds of - stuff. Learn servantmaking, like my teacher isn't on my case about that enough while I'm awake - I like hers better, it's always the same lady, just in one dream Aly's seven and in another she's twelve and then she's eight, you know. Read books, which oddly enough don't collapse like a handful of wet sand when I wake up - I mean, I haven't found copies of the books in real life, but I can still more or less remember them as having plots and content, at least whatever part I dream through. Puppet a little scooter to get around. That's how I got the idea for the chair, actually, although it's a golem."
Kib suddenly squints at Aydanci.
"And - was there - a solar eclipse, when Aly was - twenty-three? - and if there was one where were you?"
There's something sort of bitter, in that statement. She caught the pox, shortly after. (Fuck the pox. If she had to die, if she had to be taken from him with nothing he could do to help her, let it have been a death actually fucking worthy of her.)
Kib swallows, and pets the magpie on his knee.
"One to start, one who can already read and wants to servantmake for any reason better than 'you can make a lot of money at it'...?"
He pets the magpie. Pet pet.
He smiles. It is not a nice smile, it's the smile of a man who is systematically eradicating several large-scale, deadly diseases because one of them happened to kill his wife. A man who is currently winning against aforementioned deadly diseases.
"Well, at any rate after a while we'll have a breeding population and can have them get busy making more parrots, in case we live to be a hundred and twenty but not longer than that and this batch's lifespan won't cut it. And then the trapper need no longer concern himself with my parrot obsession."
Lu is not particularly pleased to have to contemplate there being a next time around. But her work isn't going anywhere.
"You know," muses Kidan, "I wonder - how are we going to get them to breed? Lock two of them together in a room? Order them? That seems weird, I think that's probably weird."
"Yep. That's us, the parrot dormitory monitors," she giggles. Her parrot is starting to becalm. She pets it. "These are prettier than the kind Kib and Aydanci left, those gray ones. But it's still a pity about the cats getting at them, that would've been cheaper if we'd just bred the grays."
"Ooh, yes. Although I don't want them to actually hurt the cats. They might belong to somebody. Who, one, would be upset about the cats, and two, might follow the parrots home and figure out the door mechanism and get at the cache. I suppose Charp could also guard the parrots, but I don't want the neighbors wondering about the unattended golem on the roof."
"Let's not upset any cat owners," he agrees. His parrot's calmed enough to tolerate petting, and he takes advantage of this fact. "Uh - make them incapable of hurting living creatures. Might doom a few parrots to horrific death by cat, which I would feel bad about, but it's the smarter decision."
He gets up. And he goes and finds the bathroom, and proceeds to have the coldest shower. Begone, awkward sex dreams, maybe later you'll be fun, but right now it's really kind of more than he ever wanted to know about how marital relations with the - woman currently sharing a bed with him would go. Thanks, awkward sex dreams. Thanks.
When the coldest shower is done, he very seriously contemplates sleeping on the floor when he comes back. How's Sylvi doing, anyway, he really hopes he didn't bother her with the - squeak.
She's still speaking random words that cannot possibly all be drawn from the same dream, especially one as coherent as a previous-incarnation memory, but she's saying them differently.
"Tree," she - says. "Violins."
"It wasn't a - distractable amount of discomfort." She shakes her head. "I don't remember the part where Aly died but I remember Kib writing about it, just a snippet - and I'm afraid I'm going to get to it and it'll turn out Aly could've held on if she really tried and just didn't want to anymore."