castle to withdraw.
Just to be certain she hadn’t overlooked her body, Lady Neku checked the first bedroom again, walking along each wall in turn and opening every wardrobe. The castle knew she was looking because wardrobes started to appear that she’d never even seen before. Needless to say, all were empty.
The castle could imitate marble and manage a very good approximation of granite—which seemed to be constructed from the glue it used to stick itself to the slopes of their mountain—but what Schloss Omga really liked was mother of pearl. Neku imagined this was because it had originally been a snail. Although, obviously enough, it had only been a snail in the sense that her ancestors had been human.
They were talking a very long time back. Certainly pre-Cenoarchean, if not actually pre-Cenoproterozoic.
All of the wardrobes that appeared out of her walls were made from mother of pearl, many extruded into intricate rococo shapes that Lady Neku recognised from the library. Either the castle had remembered how to do this stuff, or she was being shown work that no one had seen for generations.
Art had been the topic of the only real conversation she and the castle ever had, though that talk had been rather one-sided. Mostly because few of the castle’s thoughts seemed to make sense. Half a million years glitched between humanity’s first flint blade and its first image, on a cave wall. Before pictures had been beads and before beads, pigments to make colour. This indicated a conceptual lag between technology and art that reflected a slowness in the species to understand the importance of symbolic thought. Which was, apparently, the basis for all sentient behavioural organisation.
At this point the castle had paused. Which was Lady Neku’s cue to think of something intelligent to say. So she’d wondered, What’s flint? And the conversation had been over. Personally, she thought it impressive she’d known what a human was…Humans were fugees, unless it was the other way round.
“These are wild,” said Lady Neku, running her fingers across a pair of flying babies holding a heart pierced by an arrow. Not to mention, kitsch and hyper-clichéd . Although Lady Neku refrained from saying this. The castle could be sensitive about such comments.
Having examined all the alcoves, cupboards, and wardrobes, Lady Neku climbed inside the largest, so the castle could impress her with its false back and spiral stairs up to an entire floor that waited empty and anxious. Lady Neku knew this, having been shown the wardrobe before. Its style and the winding stairs had an organic smoothness that spoke of her family’s very earliest years at the end of the world.
It wasn’t really the end of the world, of course…That would be when the planet turned to cinder and the last wisps of atmosphere burned off, as the seas would do first, given time. Meanwhile, six over-worlds kept the sun at bay and protected the planet as best they could.
Six families owned the off-world habitats, the biggest of which was High Strange, belonging to her family, the Katchatka. And a mesh of sky ropes held a mantle of silver gauze in place exactly a hundred kilometers above the world’s surface.
Her brother Petro, who was oldest, said the ropes were alien and no one knew what the mantle around the planet was meant to do. Antonio disagreed, because Antonio always disagreed with Petro. It was Nico, the youngest of her brothers, who took Lady Neku’s question seriously. He said the gossamer ate charged particles and the ropes created a magnetic field, which was why it was bad that their bit of sky had ripped.
Lady Neku had a theory about this. Mind you, she had a theory about everything and she was aware her body was still missing. She was merely avoiding panic and trying to approach the matter in a grown-up fashion. Lady Neku’s theory said the earliest styles of furniture were fluid and organic because this reflected confidence in the
Just to be certain she hadn’t overlooked her body, Lady Neku checked the first bedroom again, walking along each wall in turn and opening every wardrobe. The castle knew she was looking because wardrobes started to appear that she’d never even seen before. Needless to say, all were empty.
The castle could imitate marble and manage a very good approximation of granite—which seemed to be constructed from the glue it used to stick itself to the slopes of their mountain—but what Schloss Omga really liked was mother of pearl. Neku imagined this was because it had originally been a snail. Although, obviously enough, it had only been a snail in the sense that her ancestors had been human.
They were talking a very long time back. Certainly pre-Cenoarchean, if not actually pre-Cenoproterozoic.
All of the wardrobes that appeared out of her walls were made from mother of pearl, many extruded into intricate rococo shapes that Lady Neku recognised from the library. Either the castle had remembered how to do this stuff, or she was being shown work that no one had seen for generations.
Art had been the topic of the only real conversation she and the castle ever had, though that talk had been rather one-sided. Mostly because few of the castle’s thoughts seemed to make sense. Half a million years glitched between humanity’s first flint blade and its first image, on a cave wall. Before pictures had been beads and before beads, pigments to make colour. This indicated a conceptual lag between technology and art that reflected a slowness in the species to understand the importance of symbolic thought. Which was, apparently, the basis for all sentient behavioural organisation.
At this point the castle had paused. Which was Lady Neku’s cue to think of something intelligent to say. So she’d wondered, What’s flint? And the conversation had been over. Personally, she thought it impressive she’d known what a human was…Humans were fugees, unless it was the other way round.
“These are wild,” said Lady Neku, running her fingers across a pair of flying babies holding a heart pierced by an arrow. Not to mention, kitsch and hyper-clichéd . Although Lady Neku refrained from saying this. The castle could be sensitive about such comments.
Having examined all the alcoves, cupboards, and wardrobes, Lady Neku climbed inside the largest, so the castle could impress her with its false back and spiral stairs up to an entire floor that waited empty and anxious. Lady Neku knew this, having been shown the wardrobe before. Its style and the winding stairs had an organic smoothness that spoke of her family’s very earliest years at the end of the world.
It wasn’t really the end of the world, of course…That would be when the planet turned to cinder and the last wisps of atmosphere burned off, as the seas would do first, given time. Meanwhile, six over-worlds kept the sun at bay and protected the planet as best they could.
Six families owned the off-world habitats, the biggest of which was High Strange, belonging to her family, the Katchatka. And a mesh of sky ropes held a mantle of silver gauze in place exactly a hundred kilometers above the world’s surface.
Her brother Petro, who was oldest, said the ropes were alien and no one knew what the mantle around the planet was meant to do. Antonio disagreed, because Antonio always disagreed with Petro. It was Nico, the youngest of her brothers, who took Lady Neku’s question seriously. He said the gossamer ate charged particles and the ropes created a magnetic field, which was why it was bad that their bit of sky had ripped.
Lady Neku had a theory about this. Mind you, she had a theory about everything and she was aware her body was still missing. She was merely avoiding panic and trying to approach the matter in a grown-up fashion. Lady Neku’s theory said the earliest styles of furniture were fluid and organic because this reflected confidence in the
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