There is a pause. A long one, like the one held in a hush before a kettle's first breath. Then a voice, very soft and shaped by sorrow, rises like a thread from tangled yarn. “Countess Whisperbane says I’ll never get to be my own boss.”
“Other people can never decide whether you’ll be a boss. That’s for you to decide.” Eileen says, folding her hands like a teacher giving a gentle scolding over tea. “Countess Whisperbane doesn’t know a hushing thing about business if she’s teaching you that. If I had to guess, this countess sounds a lot more like a meddling middle manager. And let me tell you, you’ll meet a lot of those on your road to personal success.”
The little wibbler turns, the snakes shifting with her. She glances back toward the broken mirror which peeks through from the other room, her voice a little stronger now, not confident exactly, but poised as if preparing to start a conversation she had already had. Like someone trying to sound like they belong in a boardroom because they practice their skill at night and therefore sound pretty great.
“Yeah, but... the compendium... literally says that using mirrors to practice your sales pitch on ectoplasmic synergy is, like, one of the best ways to start building a phantompreneur mindset. That’s how you get rich. That’s how you scale. But the countess says that leaning on that kind of strategy means I’ve got limited downline potential, which could totally mess up my scalable soul targeting residuals.”
She pauses, brow furrowing, snakes twitching as if confused by her own explanation. “And I couldn’t find anything about that in the UCAP, but like... all the nobles say, the countess has the best closing skills, so…”
Eileen nods slowly, as if any of that made sense. “Is that why the mirror was destroyed in the bathroom?”
“Uhh... yeah. That was step one in the Banshee Breakthrough coaching program, that the countess had me sign up for. It’s... it’s like this whole thing about letting go of physical items that are, um, anchoring your emotional revenue ceiling. Or whatever. It’s supposed to make your growth funnel grow faster.”
Suddenly, the woman drops no warning, no gasp, no sign of fear. Just a downward motion, deliberate and yet strange. Eileen reacts out of habit more than thought, catching her awkwardly around the legs. It’s not a proper catch though, but it’s enough to guide the woman sideways towards the cushions so she can let go, dropping her legs with a soft thump. Thereby allowing the little wibbler to immediately begin rooting through the cushions with intent.
While Eileen follows tentatively after, hands hovering politely as if waiting to see whether she still needed help. But the wibbler clearly wasn't in distress. The wibblers movements instead were swift and determined like someone chasing a thought that might escape if not grabbed quick enough.
“Well. Alright then, little wibbler.” Eileen says gently, as if nothing about this change is unusual.
Several seconds pass. The girl rummages deeper, until at last there’s a small, triumphant sound, a sort of muffled hah and she draws out a cloak, the color of midnight, heavy-hooded and deep in its folds. Without hesitation, she swings it around her shoulders, layering it right over the bathrobe. The too-large cloak settling with eerie precision, like it remembers her. Like it had been waiting, patient and sure, for exactly this moment.
Only then does she turn, facing Eileen directly for the first time. Her entire head having disappeared into the dark folds of the hood, and with it, the snakes. Even the air seems to hush around her, holding its breath. Until Eileen’s voice comes soft and steady, the same way one might ask a tulip its name before watering it. “What’s your name then, my dear? Let’s start with that.
“Xozo. My name is Xozo.” Eileen nods, a smile blooming slowly across her face like something fragrant and pale unfolding in morning light. “That’s a very pretty name.”
“Would you mind if I asked you more about this coaching program? I would be delighted to hear what neat things the youth get up to.”
Xozo looks away, her hood turning toward the hole Eileen had come in through. For a moment she is quiet. Then she looks back, her voice smaller now, but still trying to sound official. “You aren’t here to take me away?”
Eileen shakes her head, gentle and slow, the kind of motion made for rocking cradles and calming cats. “No, little... munchkin. I was on my way to speak with the Dawkith Lorth. I need to bring their knowledge up to the standards of modern child rearing. They are severely lacking and in need of updating. But I stopped on my way when I heard some... gentle noises from inside, I came to investigate.”
She chose not to mention the disguised state of the hallway outside, in case Xozo was unaware of it. “So... like... you’re not? A phantompreneur boss with a growth mindset?” Xozo asks, the question filling her voice with optimism.
Eileen smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling with fondness, even if she does not understand Xozo's play. “No, I am not, Xozo. My name is Eileen. Or Grandmother Eileen. Or Gran Gran. Or sometimes Miss Taffy. But why don’t you tell me all about it on our way to find the Dawkith Lorth?”
Xozo nods quickly, the hood bobbing over her face. Then, with the sudden energy only sixteen-year-olds and startled goats possess, she grabs Eileen’s hand and scrambles up the tunnel. With Eileen managing to keep her footing, barely, pulled along like a kite tied to a determined squirrel with an acorn in its mouth.
At the top, Xozo bursts into the open, bumps into a potted plant with a surprised grunt, and tumbles to the floor in a cloak-wrapped heap. Eileen manages to follows well enough but she catches herself on a brass wall lamp that shifts but does not fall.
“Are you all right, Xozo?” she wheezes, watching the girl scramble to her feet, as snakes some of which have fallen out of the hood blink and adjust as if waking from a nap.
Until Xozo readjusts the hood. “I mean. I’ve been better,” snaps Xozo, giving the nearby potted plant a swift, frustrated kick. The plant wobbling dangerously until it trembles, holding its ground.
“But no matter how many requests I make, the staff just never stop leaving these stupid potted plants outside the entrance to my home. I get it, alright? Everyone keeps saying the shattered sun calendar can’t be wrong, but how many freaking times do the dread cogs have to spin and shatter before anyone finally admits that things are breaking down in here?”
She lets out a sharp huff, the kind that fogs the air and leaves behind a tension only half-exhaled. Then she turns back to Eileen, rubbing one sleeve across her nose in a gesture that flickers between irritation and apology. “Ahhh. Sorry. You said Dawkith Lorth?”
Eileen nods once, patient as moonlight. “I’ve never heard of anyone like that in this blasted, soul-wretched place,” Xozo mutters. “But if anyone can help you, the Ebony Quills can. Follow me.”
With one step and a sharp, deliberate kick, Xozo strikes the ornate door... carved from some lordly old tree, proud in its polish. The lock gives with a sound like splintered pride, and the door slumps backward, half off its hinges, destined to stay unlocked for the foreseeable future.
Then she shoulders both sides open. The hinges crying out like startled geese.
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Without turning back, Xozo strides through like a gust grown opinionated. Rugs wrinkle. A tapestry exhales. Shadows scurry, indignant and ruffled. While Eileen follows, unhurried. Her shoes whispering across the stone, a hush behind the storm. The air isn’t magical, exactly. But something in it has changed. Less stillness now. More heartbeat.
For the little wibbler... the munchkin, the soft-eyed thing with too many questions... has vanished. In her place stands someone louder, unbuttoned, untamed. A version with sharp corners and no apology.
It was the kind of change that only the elderly could really appreciate. A small, crooked smile crossing her face. The kind you give a fox you raised from a kit, when it bares its teeth for the first time and remembers what they’re for.
Then Xozo grabs her hand. Fast. Hot. All at once.
Eileen stumbles a step. The smile slipping loose like an undone button.
In its place, a soft crease of worry, blooms slow and green across her brow, like lichen finding home on old stone.
The hallway ahead stretches longer than it should, lit by thin violet lamps that don’t hum so much as remember humming. Not that Xozo seems to pay much attention, her brisk steps set with unknown purpose, her cloak swishing in tune. Creating the kind of ambiance that allows Xozo to pull Eileen along by the hand, her just barely able to keep the pace.
Until they round the next corner wherein they immediately slow. Not forcefully. Just... curiously. For a spice cart has rolled into view on its own. Small, metal, and just barely dignified, like a chariot built for a condiment board, but made out spare parts from the attic.
Which is good, because its so delightful that Eileen finally finds the strength to put her foot down. Not yanking them to halt, just anchoring them to the moment instead.
Peering down into the cart, Eileen finds dozens of tiny jars rattling gently as the cart slowly glides past, many of the labels are half-faded and written in a dozen alphabets.. some looping, some blocky. One even looks like it was inscribed using embroidery floss. A few of the jars glow themselves but many more of them are dull, where as the contents, nearly in all of them, glow faintly in shades that shouldn’t exist on the spice spectrum: dream-orange, patience-blue, a bitter green that looks faintly of time borrowed to late.
Fascinated Eileen begins to lean in and the jars respond in kind with a whisper, not all at once, but in a kind of soft sequence, like a seasoned ministry choir warming up.
“Just a pinch.”
“Too much is just enough.”
“You’re flavoring for something else.”
“Someone has oversalted the memory again.”
“Marinate before metamorphosis.”
“You call that a rub?”
“Forgiveness simmers. Regret burns.”
Xozo grabs this one and tucks it into the folds of her cloak like it’s routine for her. Eileen raises an eyebrow but the jars keep to the soft sequence of their choir.
“Your palate lacks closure.”
“Salt your endings.”
"..."
“Emergency garnish,” Xozo mutters. “Don’t worry. They don’t mind.”
The cart gives what can only be described as a polite rattle and without any fanfare disappears through a swinging door on the side of the hallway, that Eileen was not convinced hadn't been there before. But before she can ask, she finds herself being tugged forward again, though a new hallway this one filled with a new smell in the air, cumin, daffodils and plant fiber with something clay like mixed in for good measure.
It is a scent that she ruminates upon until she finds it is overtaken by a blast of steam. Followed by a loud clatter of pans and then unmistakable hum of food being made far too quickly. Wherein Eileen finds that Xozo has pulled them into a packed industrial kitchen.
The room is enormous and far too loud. Steam hisses from silver pipes that vanish into the ceiling like roots growing upward. Metal prep tables stretch in long rows like pews in a temple, and over all of it, dozens of brightly colored penguins rush back and forth, flippers tucked in and heads held high.
Each penguin wearing a chef hat, tailored and decorated with such care that Eileen feels a bit underdressed just looking at them. Tiny forks, stitched gold filigree, a ribbon shaped like a flaming spoon. Their ranks are clearly important, though the system itself is mysterious and likely known only to the birds. Still, the way they move together in patterns, in waves, in a rhythm, it feels almost sacred.
But what the penguins do not do is chatter. Instead they whistle in clearly coded tones, with the occasional trill for additional purpose. Their motion is constant and efficient, a storm of color and intent and like their rhythm, they never collide. Even as Eileen watches one leap off a cart of cream cheeses, somersault midair, and land squarely atop a teetering stack of teacups without a single chip from anyone nearby.
And yet for Eileen the star is actually Xozo, who slows down among them. Her pace dampening, her shoulders tucked inward. She is walking now more softly, feet shifting from big strides to careful steps. Still her voice carries weight and she doesn’t mind shouting. “We need something plump and fresh!” Xozo calls out, her voice raised over the clatter of knives and bubbling vats.
“Preferably uncooked. So no baking, roasting, grilling, broiling, frying, boiling, or steaming. Even poaching can be dangerous. Ideally, it should be something just hovering between death states. And it needs a naturally shiny surface.”
Eileen thinks for only a moment. The kitchen hums around her, full of whistling penguins and a sliver of trilling noise. “What about drunken shrimp?” she suggests helpfully.
Xozo opens her mouth as if to respond, but before the words arrive, Eileen is already moving. With a firm, purposeful motion, she shoulders her way past a pair of whistling penguins in deep purple hats. Their argument ceasing instantly, mid-whistle, as she brushes past them with the confidence of a woman who has seen too many knife accidents in her life to let this one happen without intervention.
She approaches a younger penguin in a sky blue hat with no stars, no embroidery, just a plain cotton cap worn a little too far back on its head. It holds a knife wrong, flipper curled dangerously close to the blade. “No! Not like that!” shouts Eileen, more out of instinct than anger.
Grabbing the knife she takes it out of the flippers grasp and turns it, showing the proper grip. “Like this. Gentle and even. Rock the blade back and forth. Let momentum do the work. The blade wants to help you, dear. Let it.”
The penguin chirps, something soft and happy, not a whistle, not a trill. Eileen smiles and pats its head lovingly before returning the knife, which it accepts with great reverence as if given the most precious of gifts. A small joy to see until Eileen turns around to find the two purple-hatted penguins staring at her in silence.
Unbothered, Eileen straightens her shawl. “We have to take care of our youth,” she says in her patently parenting style.
While flickering blue letters appear overhead. 1 Blue and 3 White Motes.
There is a long pause. Then one of the penguins waddles forward and silently hands her a slip of red paper. It is thick, glossy, and covered in an elegant white script that curls like vines. Eileen frowns down at it. She cannot read a single letter.
Xozo peers over her shoulder. “Oh wow. That’s a priority requisition order.” she says. “I don’t know what it says, but I do know who handles the supply chain in this section.”
Eileen nods and offers a small wave to the purple chef hat penguins, who whistle back in what sounds like a coordinated farewell. Then she and Xozo head toward the back of the kitchen, passing beneath an arch made of hanging ladles and softly clinking wind chimes shaped like grinning dumplings.
Beyond the double doors, the space opens wide and echoing, an enormous chamber with the hush of a warehouse and the weight of a cathedral. Here, even silence arrives twice, the second time softer, as if echoing itself.
The light is a dim, aquatic blue. Cool on the skin and dream-shaped. Eileen thinks of the aquarium tunnels like in the capital... of schools of silver fish and the hush of water above your head. Or the feeling just before waking, when a dream begins to slip its name.
At the far end, three portals hover in the quiet. All blue, though one leans toward turquoise, one toward navy, and one flickers like static caught inside water. They breathe, each of them... slow and rhythmic as though some invisible lung draws air from beyond.
Until Eileen watches something happening closer to her, its Xozo, stepping just ahead, to hand the red slip to a towering golem whose skin looks carved from cooled fire basalt shot through with old memory. Its eyes are quartz, glowing gentle as lanterns in snow.
The golem says nothing. Only nods as it takes the note, eyes flickering once like lamps checking their own glow. Then it turns and lumbers down an aisle with thunder-soft steps... deliberate, almost meditative.
Eileen watches it go. Her eyes trail after the great basalt back until they catch onto something else... a glint of motion, a quiet echo. She turns slightly and sees a tall panel of darkened glass along the far wall. Her reflection lives there. Almost.
It mimics her well enough, her posture, the drape of her shawl, even the faint tilt of her head. But the eyes are closed. Not in sleep. Just… closed. Peaceful, perhaps. Or waiting for something she has not yet done.
Unsure of what to make of it, she does not speak or gesture to it. Instead she turns her only gaze back to the space where the golem had gone. But it is no longer there.
Her attention jerks gently to the right, drawn by motion and sound. The golem has returned, trundling into view once more, a creaking hand truck trailing behind like an obedient beast.
And on that cart, a bright blue drum, the kind once used for rain or resin or syrupy things better left in stories. Its lid replaced with something stranger. Not quite metal, not quite membrane. Shiny, shifting, not still.
Inside, something wriggles. Or many somethings. For whatever is inside is too fast to count, too deliberate to dismiss. And yet also far too wet for any comfortability.
Eileen forgets the reflection. Forgets the aisle. Her thoughts unsure if its something worth forgetting or remembering. “Oh wow,” Xozo murmurs, peering into the drum with quiet satisfaction. “This’ll do it.”