#bering and wells exchange
The monthslong @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange season continues, with yet another part of my protracted gift to @lady-adventuress . Myka and Helena’s circus mission is thisclose to being accomplished, but they have to play out the string while they wait for the arrival of what should enable them to pack away their clown outfits and depart the big top, no worse for wear. Emphasis on “should.” In any case, I’m almost done here. All that’s left after this is fallout and cleanup… what happens in this part will make it pretty clear how awkward some of that might be. Comparatively, any difficulties in part 1,part 2,part 3,part 4, and part 5 were mere bagatelles.
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“And now,” Helena says, sounding vindictively pleased with herself for having reminded Myka of the stumbling and bumbling that loom in her near future, “at the very least we can complete one part of our mission.”
As if by magic, the static bag Claudia had specially constructed for the stick appears in Helena’s hand—she must have pilfered it from Myka’s suitcase while she was pointedly not participating in the Farnsworth call—and, grasping it tight in her fist, she approaches the artifact with gleefully murderous intent.
“No, no, no,” Myka says, leaping to stay her hand.
Helena flaps the bag at Myka, as if wafting neutralization in her direction might do some good. “What is it now?”
It’s going to be trouble, what Myka’s about to say, but she says it anyway: “Ethics again.”
“Whose? Yours? A moral standard that for some reason forbids neutralizing an artifact until we have its facsimile to hand?”
“Notmine,” Myka says, knowing she sounds defensive. “A moral standard that forbids hurting someone unless—okay, until—absolutely necessary.”
Helena’s mouth moves; it’s not quite a sneer, but enough of one to show that she understands Myka’s objection, as well as her defensiveness: neutralizing the stick will most likely negatively affect Nina’s ability to juggle. Myka braces herself. Helena says, “For all we know, the artifact is hurting her now. As you pointed out, we don’t know the downside.” Well. That wasn’t what Myka had expected. But then Helena snaps back to true with, “And yet I’m hardly surprised that you want to remain in her good graces.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. She wouldn’t know it was our fault.”
“You would know,” Helena says, and that’s a flick of knife. “You wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye.”
Welcome back to the circus, and I don’t mean just what happens under the big top. When last we saw them, Myka and Helena were in conversation with a clown, who seemed to be about to… whammy them? Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, the manifest mission may be to find a slapstick, but of course any such seeking can lead to other sorts of discoveries. Some of those happened in part 1,part 2,part 3, and part 4; some are yet to come. (My own manifest mission with regard to the @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange , which continues to be the completion of a gift for @lady-adventuress , has itself led to other discoveries. The fact that I can’t get anything done in a timely fashion sadly isn’t one of them, as that’s been clear for years.)
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A slapstick—could it be anything but the slapstick?—is right there in Nina’s hand.
Myka has to bring to bear every bit of training she’s ever undergone to refrain from producing an overly revealing bodily response.
She dares a glance at Helena, whose expression seems not quite as schooled… but her widened eyes and raised brows could reasonably be read as confusion, or even trepidation, about the strangely shaped stick.
Nina gestures with it, swinging it back and forth—Myka shrinks away, as does Helena, and Nina pouts, like she might just be offended enough to use it to club them both. “Come on! You know what this is, right?”
Myka doesn’t dare answer, lest she give away their need for it.
Helena, apparently unencumbered by that sort of care, says an enviably deadpan “No.”
Begun in blustery, bare winter, finished with trees in full leaf… the forbearance of @lady-adventuress in the face of my extended timeline for this @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange offering should be celebrated with more gifts that I for one have the ability to give. At long last, this clownish circus reaches its somewhat lengthy conclusion (which is of course not an ending in any real sense, given that the Bering and Wells story is, as we know, endless). I refer you to part 1,part 2,part 3,part 4,part 5, and part 6 for details as to how we got here. The incident that occurred at the end of part 6 was pretty important: an artifact instigated a moment of, shall we say, unexpected intimacy between Myka and Helena, leaving Myka more than a little shook…
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Go through the motions.
That’s what Myka tells herself when she has no idea what to do. It usually works.
But now she has a problem: What… what are the motions?
She should start with standing up.
No, she’s already standing. Bad start.
Maybe sitting down?
Success.
She’s gone through one motion.
But that’s as far as she gets, for even though her body might still work, her brain betrays her: she’s overtaken by the ghost of Helena’s soft swift mouth, its fit, followed fast by her own body’s decisive answering rise… “Quit flashing back,” she tells herself, out loud.
