Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
The comfort of her allotted room exceeded Etelka’s expectations. Luc really was a prince! She didn’t think it a factual statement, but that one time she had gone to Buckminster Palace with her dear, late father, when he was the short-lived Technicsminister, and the Empress wished to hear his views on the Hydrangeum Refraction Process, they were given rooms, overlooking Deadhelm Park, looking out over fields with domesticated elk roaming and wirey oak groves.
That was in 1876, in April, when the grass had just become fully green and the leaves had popped on the oaks. The room smelled of old must and tobacco, and the bed was uneven enough that no fairytale girl–as she was in those old innocent days–could feel a damned pea, no matter how many bears were there threatening her.
She was no stranger to showers. Baba Yaga’s Hut had a small cylindrical spritsing room attached to the lavatory. In an aerial world where water was a commodity, and more importantly weighed very heavily, they could not afford to lift more water than necessary.
Here, in Luc’s tiny underground kingdom, she was impressed and her experience was exceeded. The floor was marble, throughout. A room, rectangular with a cutout for the bath. A rug….carpet in the middle of the floor at the foot of the bed: a finely threaded Parsian one portraying a mountain scene, an ancient castle–she was sure she knew the one–even obscured by motif and style.
She would test the bed in a moment or two.
The bath…a tub with feet.. (There was a shower as well, but that didn’t matter at the moment.) It was almost as if Luc had been reading her mind. Is he reading my mind. The implants that she didn’t quite understand, might allow that. Luc and Nila could read each other’s thoughts and the elevator seemed to read Luc’s as well.
It wasn’t gilt as crass nuovo rico merchants were want to do, to make themselves look wealthy; the metalwork was simple brass, the tub enamel white, but it looked freshly installed. The water was hot.
***
Etelka lay in the tub without even a shift, her hair floating like blue tendrils of seaweed around her head. She smelled like some soapy ooze that came from a spout next to the water knobs, roses and honeysuckle. It wasn’t quite right. Like rose and honeysuckle imagined by someone who had never experienced them. It would have to do.
What of Pool? Blackwood Aristophanes Pool, mother from Muskovy…father not known to her? Etelka ran through her memories of him, blowing suds away from her nose every few minutes. Is it Pool? That dark moment years ago, when dear Attila met Pool at her door, chasing Nila…
She racked her mind and memory. She couldn’t find anything that gave him up as a…as Luc called him…’a synthetic’.
I could do a talk…for the Empirical Society, if they will have me back….,
Then there’s Luc…
And poor Nila…
Ion Fyr 