1-13 R

Everything was quiet as the boar finally died, not even the slightest breeze stirring the air. My ragged breaths were silent. Even the echoes of my scream had died. There was just me, nearly doubled over as I pushed on the spear, and the corpse whose hot blood was dripping down my hands.

Then the clapping started.

It was slow at first, building up to a crescendo as I opened my eyes. The Fae stood ahead of me, a semicircle at the mouth of the ravine. Their mouths were open in predatory grins, teeth just a shade too pointed and perfect to be Human bared to the wind. Laughter started as they met my eyes, it and their voices bouncing around the circle.

“It seems our elder knew best, once again.”

“A tool it may be, but one with some use left in it.”

“To think that a weapon was all it needed to give us a proper show!”

“Such theatre, too. What a stage! Truly, the work of the Grower.”

“’tis a pity that it didn’t last. Mortal work crumbles all too quickly.”

“A repeat is in order, wouldn’t you say?”

“No need to hurry, my friends. Even tools cannot see constant use. Why, we wouldn’t want to break our new plaything just yet.”

That one wasn’t clapping. His – he looked distinctly masculine compared to the others – grin was tighter than the others, just quirked lips and appraising eyes. He was the one that had thrown the first spear when they took me and his voice had a depth to it the others lacked, something that made it feel more grounded.

Almost sadistic, even if there was no overt malice when they went on.

“We should let it claim its trophy, now. Then we should share our good fortune. It can hardly be the new sensation if we don’t let it be seen.”

He kept his eyes on me as the others looked away, words bouncing between them fast enough that I could barely follow that dissolved into a sibilant cascade of tittering laughter.

“Ooh, we should have a proper ball! A banquet! It’s been weeks!”

“Shall we invite the others of Ash?”

“Why limit ourselves?”

“And what of entertainment? A lacking ball simply won’t do.”

“One of my other pets has quite a talent for music. I know some scions of Summer that might loan us theirs for the proper atmosphere.”

“I bartered for a gaggle of Autumn’s rejects a handful of centuries ago. One broken philosopher for a cadre of mutes; they should suffice for proper service.”

“Spring will beg to come as soon as they hear. They could…”

The masculine one shook his head and the others fell silent with what might have been irritation flickering across their faces.

“Nay, an event such as theirs can come later. We wouldn’t want our prize soiled – a master’s product deserves some dignity. There’s no need to test the limits of our oaths when we have all the time across the worlds. If Spring is to come their tithe must be something more tangible. Delicacies and confections, perhaps art. There shan’t be time for something custom.”

“Oh! They could grovel!”

Just like that the emotion passed and they were smiling again, none stealing more than glances at me. All except the man who hadn’t looked away or blinked.

“It’s settled then. Do tell our lovely cousins that this will be the first of many, if you would.” He tapped a finger against his lower lip. Even from dozens of feet away I could hear it, an unnaturally loud clink. The sound of glass striking glass. “Let us begin in, say, six of Earth’s hours. I’ll prune our shrinking violet into something more presentable.”

A chorus of affirmatives rang out and most of them vanished, instantly. Only he stayed. His glowing eyes, the color of wet ashes, finally slid up to meet mine as his grin faded into something that I would’ve said was thoughtful, on a Human. On him, it was like he was deciding how best to take me apart and put me back together.

“Go on then, Seedling. Some traditions must be observed even among beasts and toys. You slew your foe, now claim your prize.”

I didn’t move.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was safe to.

They’d tried to kill me. Or at least, let loose things that were trying to kill me. One should have, would have, if they hadn’t stopped it. It didn’t matter that the scars had faded during the next chase; I could still feel the rocks digging into my back, the sizzling burn where its drool had hit me, that awful stench of rotten meat that wafted from its jaws. Even though my arm somehow moved normally I could still feel an echo of the pain from when every single bone in my shoulder splintered just from its weight.

It didn’t matter that they’d healed me between; I’d been unconscious. They weren’t nice. There was no way he was being serious, it had to be another joke or test. I hadn’t beaten them in anything, hadn’t done anything exceptional. I’d barely even survived this one; I’d probably even cheated when the Lady talked to me. People in fairy tales never got off easy from that and I was holding a spear that was in no way, shape, or form something I’d made.

So I just stood there poised to run, holding tight to the spear that was still embedded inside the boar’s corpse. He, apparently, found that funny.

“I know you have ears, toy, and your eyes clearly function. Perhaps your brain is yet to grow in? Or your tongue, for all it wagged earlier.” He tilted his head and laughed. It was a harsh sound, completely unlike the others. A cross between a crow choking on a piece of carrion and stones grinding together. The smile he put on after that was even creepier than what the other Fae had worn. “Time is limitless. My patience…”

I blinked. He was in front of me.

“…is not.”

I jerked back on reflex. There was only a moment of resistance before the spear followed with a wet shunk. Its tip sliced cleanly through the skull before tipping vaguely in the Faerie’s direction as I tried to scramble back and away. The second it did, the smile disappeared and he moved. A hand tore it from my grasp and flung it to the side where it sank several feet into the wall. Before I’d even started to process the frictional burning in my hands, his other was at my throat.

It wasn’t touching me. His fingers were almost three inches from my skin and just barely visible when I tried to look down. My neck wouldn’t move, though, and I could feel something cold and hard pressing down on my throat. Not forceful enough to hurt, but enough to make taking anything more than a shallow breath difficult.

The same invisible pressure was on my wrists, too. My skin was dimpling like it was being squeezed, but whatever was doing it couldn’t have been a hand. A looser hold, like the air itself was pressing in against me. Lighter than the vice at my throat, still not getting into anything I could call actual pain. Just discomfort and mounting anxiety that left me lightheaded as I felt myself lift from the ground to get to his eye level.

He let me hang there, gasping in just enough air to function, for a few long seconds before speaking.

“Now now, Seedling, don’t mistake tradition for restraint. You are mine and you will not forget that. Raise your hand at me again and you’ll beg for something as final as an ending.”

His eyes were glowing like the others had been. Unlike theirs, his weren’t completely static. For a single heartbeat colors swirled inside them, something magical that went beyond what I’d seen with the Sight. They felt achingly familiar, dredging up memories that made the fluttering thing that I could still feel watching through my eyes turn away. Whatever it was blurred through my mind too quickly to see, leaving nothing but those roiling colors and a wave of dejection and regret.

The Fae’s face twisted a few seconds before he dropped me. That much was clear even through the tears welling up alongside the foreign emotions that oozed from of the spot in my chest where my – my friend from the ritual had touched me.

I hit the ground with a puff of ash and sucked in as much air as I could. A wheezing fit and the accompanying burn in my throat and chest were what pulled me out of my own head and the cloying, cold, foreign depression. The ice slowly faded from my veins as the distance presence either calmed down or pulled back its feelings. When my eyes cleared up, I watched the last of my coughs send a cloud of dull silvery powder flying out.

There were no words or actions from the Faerie as I wiped my mouth off and tried to get my heartbeat back to something normal. He just stood there; feet planted squarely between the two pools of blood that had dripped from the boar. One came from the edges of the hole where one of my stakes had pierced it, the other dripped from its mouth and what had sprayed onto me. Not a single droplet of it, nor any speck of ash, had clung to his boots.

He didn’t even seem to have broken the crust of it on the ground.

From this angle on the ground, a single tusk was perfectly framed against the backdrop of the sky at the end of the ravine. It sparkled in the faint light, colorless and crystalline. Even transparent as it was, it had the faintest similarity to what had been behind the Faerie’s eyes. I screwed my eyes shut as soon as that registered but no rush of foreign emotions came through this time. My friend either didn’t care or wasn’t looking.

There was a long sigh and then a wet crunch followed by the sound of rending metal.

“A visual choice then? How novel. Shame that it was so predictable, though. Even a hollow mortal is wont to take glitter over substance, I suppose.”

There was a pause and a snap. Scraping and tapping and a sound like ripping paper overlapped softer words. They were almost nostalgic. “The material is…passable. A hollow remnant of a greater past laid low by violence; how fitting for a weapon’s first trophy. Perhaps your choice was adequate after all, Seedling, delayed though it was.”

I was starting to push myself up to my hands and knees, eyes still closed, when he added, “Now, with that done, it’s time to move on.”

He snapped his fingers, this clink closer to a rock being thrown into a window.

Reality twisted.

A burst of unnamable colors flashed behind my eyelids while the ground wavered and vibrated. For an eternal instant the world itself seemed to crush in around me, stretching and pulling me into shapes that weren’t physically possible. Then I snapped back. The ground shifted. I collapsed again, my muscles like jelly and my stomach lurching. Even with my cheek flat on a cool, smooth floor it felt like I was spinning.

When I twitched in an attempt to move I noticed the change under me. This felt level, closer to a floor than the bottom of a dirty ravine. The only grit was what had already been clinging to my cheek, and as I flailed around – in what had to be an undignified way – I realized there were no bumps or rocks anywhere. Once I got my eyes open and blinked away the grit, I saw an expanse of deep brown shot through with rings of lighter tan as it spread out.

Wood.

An entire floor that seemed to be carved from a single smooth block of it, no boards or joins. Just a smooth expanse of its grain, each ring thicker than I was tall and flowing uninterrupted into the next. The smaller striations I’d seen at first were lighter colored, fading away when I looked at something further than a few feet away and blending into the overall tone of the room. The floor turned into the far wall without any change, though it was as uniform a color as anything here; a rich, unblemished mahogany.

There was a door in the middle of the wall, the grain on the wood running at a different angle. The table next to it though, matched the walls. It looked like it had been grown straight out of the wall. The stool in front of it was the same shade as the lighter striations but disconnected. Above the table was a wide mirror that, from here, just showed the ceiling. It was an exact match for the floor, save for the four spiraling cages that hung down from it. In between the lattice of thin wooden strands that made up each was a white crystal that glowed with a faint, cool light. Somehow, they didn’t crisscross the room with shadows.

I didn’t think too hard about how there was no way the crystal could’ve fit through the holes in the lattice. It was hardly the weirdest thing I’d dealt with lately, especially since I’d literally just been teleported here. Or something like that.

If it was teleportation, it sucked.

The side of the door that didn’t have the table had a few pegs sticking out of the wall at head height. Nothing else I could see stood out from here. Looking around would probably be a good idea, but there was a door. If I could just get to it…

As soon as my arms were steady enough, I pushed myself to my feet. Then I took a few wobbly steps forward and froze. My entire body locked into place. My lips sealed shut even as I tried to scream.

“You didn’t think I was gone, did you? Are you really so simple that you would think something absent just because you could not immediately see it? Even the Flower you spawned from had more wit.”

He had one hand on his hip as he strolled into view. Only my eyes moved to track him as his other hand went to his chin. When I felt the pressure fade around my mouth, I swallowed. That was it.

“Still not speaking? Perhaps the flaw is deeper, then. I do hope that the Lady didn’t take your tongue as a trinket. Such would be her right, of course, but I do so hate damaged goods.”

He lazily swung his right hand toward me as he stopped directly in front of the door.

“Open up then, let’s have a look and see.”

His fingers twitched fractionally closer together and then fingers that weren’t there dug into my cheeks. Cold and hard, they pushed against my jaw until my muscles suddenly went limp and my mouth opened. They settled there as more invisible digits dove inside. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even twitch as more than could possibly fit just – just appeared inside. They tasted like smoke and felt like glass. Four slid along my gums, one felt along and then under my tongue. Four more latched on and began to pull it around when that one disappeared, while what felt like an entire hand peeled my lips back as far as they could go. Two poked my tonsils then slid down my throat to what had to be the very base of my tongue, pushing and prodding in a way that should have made me throw up.

Through it all, he just stood there. One hand outstretched, a bored expression on his face with just the slightest tilt to his head as he looked and did – did whatever this was. The ice was back in my veins now, the anxiety that spawned it entirely mine as my eyes started to fill with more tears than I could blink away.

A finger wiped them away as they fell, the drops glistening in the spot of air that felt like a glass digit, before falling to the ground. Seeing that just made me cry more, even once the fingers pulled away and my throat was clear. The hold on the outside and the mocking tenderness stayed as the tapping started. A single hard click as something poked into each tooth, one by one. For what felt like forever.

When it hit my last molar, everything vanished but the lingering taste, the tears, and the shaking that started the second he stopped holding me completely still. I was still being propped up, but now I could vibrate. At least above the neck.

He waited for me to stop coughing, only frowning slightly when I spit a glob of ashy paste onto the floor. I had no idea where it had come from.

“Are you quite done?”

This time, I nodded. Shakily.

“Good. Your meat, as it were, is entirely intact. No hex, oath, or enchantment binds you from speaking. Silence is not a choice anymore, Seedling. Speak, or I will be quite cross.”

Fae didn’t lie. I think. The way he was looking at me – as if I was a phone he was deciding to keep or throw away – cooperating sounded like the best option. My voice rasped as I said, “I…”

My mouth froze again. It wasn’t like when the Lady had done it; I could feel the pressure holding me in place. With her, my movements had just failed to make a sound at all.

“That’s enough. It would have been a shame to have exchanged what I did for a tool even more defective than I expected.” He twirled his hand and my head unfroze again. “Now, I have a list of ground rules. You will be playing at being civilized, here. That means you must know your place. Do you understand?”

I only got halfway through a nod and opening my mouth before the pressure returned after a dismissive flick of his hand.

“Do not speak further. I have no interest in listening to you beg or plead; knowing that you can still speak is enough. In fact, you will not speak to your betters unless prompted. Conversations with other servants had best serve a purpose, if in earshot of one of the Firstborn. Your image reflects on my own and I do not stand for imperfection.”

Again, the grip loosened just enough to nod.

“You will refer to me as Master. My compatriots with stake in your existence will share this address. Others of the Courts are to be referred to solely as Firstborn, regardless of any claims otherwise. Ash does not play into the petty games of the vain, and our servants shall be no exception.”

He gave a long sigh when he saw the way my eyes flicked, then added, “If, by some twist of the Weave, you encounter another august personage such as the esteemed Lady of Sighing Boughs, then you will use their Name, or simply their titles. Barring specific knowledge, Highborn will suffice.”

When he saw me relax his eyes shifted to something back and to my right. He tapped the fingers of his left hand against his hip, staccato beats of glass-on-glass ringing out as he did.

“You will do as you are told, when you are told. The Grower must have built you well enough to understand that, at least. My orders are supreme, then your other Masters. Then other Firstborn of Ash, then those of the other courts. Other personal servants and those with duties to the House come last. The only allowance you have, until you have proven your worth, is to preserve yourself. I will not have my possessions damaged unduly, whether by their own hands or others’. Is this understood?”

My mouth went dry, the instinctive, nervous swallow as my mind ran wild nearly choking me.

“Good. Remember: disobedience will be punished.”

I did not like his tone there. Or the way he started tilting his head slowly, shifting angles every fifteen seconds as he stood and stared.

“If you have even an ounce of intelligence that wasn’t baked into your brain, you should know what we planned. You, Seedling, are to be the centerpiece of our little soiree, the new gem in our possession just waiting to be polished. Obviously, your current state will not do. Those rags are a crime, draped across a masterwork as they are.”

He twirled his hand and met my eyes. That was when it struck me that he hadn’t blinked, not once.

“Now, I need to see what I’m working with. Strip.”

I was halfway through a nod when I froze of my own volition. It took that long for what he’d said to actually register through the racing thoughts about what the Fae did in the real stories that Grandpa had in that dark office.

He wanted me to…?

“What? I –”

The words were out before I could stop myself. I didn’t even have time to stiffen before the pressure bore down on me again, cold and overbearing. This time, it came with more hands, one on each limb.

It felt like the wall of a deep cave had grabbed me as the Faerie gave a sigh longer than anyone with actual lungs could’ve sustained, shaking his head the whole time. He started to walk around me, circling.

“Not even five minutes and you’ve already broken the rules. Mortals never learn, it seems, and I must do everything myself.”

He flicked his wrist just before passing out of sight behind me. The hands, squeezing just on the edge of pain, pulled. My legs slid to the side and my arms flew up until I made an X. The hands rippled against my skin and then copies of them, from full appendages to individual fingers, slid out of each. Some rushed outward, to my extremities while others went inward, tracing cool trails and goosebumps behind them as they began to squeeze and pull.

The first visual change was in my own hands. I felt one settle in against each and interlace with my fingers in a dark mimicry of affection. My fingers began to snap backwards and forwards, each movement pushing the boundary of what should have hurt before it relaxed. They moved in sync like something was testing their range of motion even while I watched my nails clean out and align themselves into perfect half-moons.

He had come back into sight, on my other side, when the fingers had started moving as a whole instead of individually. His eyes, stern and impassive, met mine. The same movement from earlier was there, the same ephemeral colors dancing inside. This time, they came with something in my peripheral vision. A single, disembodied hand holding each of mine. Crystal the color of a wet firepit, dirty and decayed, all color faded out and cast under a grey pall. They were pressed against my hands in a way that made my stomach churn.

The Sight, unbidden, sprang up and I could see light roiling beneath my skin. Where it touched the visible hands, and nowhere else, it leached into them, the colors painfully vivid compared to the abyss of darkness that was the hands.

He took another step and broke eye contact. The Sight, along with the hands, faded back to invisibility.

The ones on my arms had begun to bend my hands at the wrist. Then my elbow started to act like the fingers had. The eerie sync they were in was broken when my right arm twisted just far enough for whatever had been messed up in the elbow to click. The other one kept moving, but that one stopped. It was like they were testing range of motion without hurting me.

Could he hurt me, could any of them? Nothing they’d done on their own had actually done anything I could think of as being actual harm, not directly. Maybe…

My shoes popping off knocked my thoughts off track. The hands tickled but I couldn’t even twitch as they started giving my toes the same treatment as my fingers. It felt dirty, the exasperated stare on his face making it worse. I had to be off the ground with how my ankles started to move.

The angle I’d been frozen at left me a choice between staring at him, the wall, or the ceiling. I chose the ceiling. The immobility, the dread, the building numbness – it was like when the wolf-thing had pinned me down. Everything had faded away and I’d just stopped caring, then. But it just wouldn’t come now, even when I willed it. I wished I could just pass out, or sink down into the warm embrace of whatever was inside me until this was over.

Either would work.

My concentration shattered before I could even start trying to do either.

They were tugging on the hem of my pants.

A second later my sleeves joined them. He’d said to strip, I knew that. But was he really going to…?

A second tug did nothing. They pulled, but the fabric was held tight against me. My shirt, though, started to ride up. The air was colder than it should have been as it brushed against my stomach. The hands that followed it were colder still. When they slipped up under my sleeves, even while the shirt kept sliding up, the panic overpowered everything else.

Even my reflexes didn’t work. I couldn’t flinch, couldn’t shake, couldn’t pull back or push him away. He wasn’t even touching me himself and he looked so bored, like this, all of this, was just a chore for him. That made it worse. He was doing all of this and he didn’t even care that his impossible, invisible hands were going places they should not be.

He’d made it clear he didn’t think of me as a person, but…

A snap rang out. The button on my pants pulled free and I started crying again. Everything blurred out as the tears overflowed. That was all the physical response I could give. My screams were only in my head, going out to an audience of one. That one rustled softly, vague pulses of sympathy, confusion, and understanding radiating from it.

The hands paused on my shoulders in a mockery of a massage.

The next yank moved my pants a couple of inches. The zipper was still done so they snagged at my hips, riding uncomfortably low but stopping no matter how hard he pulled. The groping limbs moved off my shoulders, most pairs going down as one went up my neck, keeping pace with the rise of my shirt. All of it moved agonizingly, horrifyingly, degradingly slowly. Like time didn’t matter.

What was happening – it was all too soft. Too gentle. It was a perversion of intimacy, scenes from my romance novels and fantasies I’d had for years playing out in the worst possible way. The hands that I’d imagined as being warm felt like cold rock as they traced along my cheekbones and cradled my face. Others slid through my hair and untangled knots, not in the loving way I longed for, but more as a methodical chore. The sensations overlapped as he cupped my chest, the brown blur through my tears turning red as my shirt blocked out the wall.

Hands settled around my hips and started tugging at the belt loops on my jeans. They still refused to budge.

This wasn’t – it was too many hands. Too cold. Too hard. He wasn’t someone I’d grown to love, just someone that was hurting me. It wasn’t what I wanted, wasn’t how I wanted, wasn’t….

All I wanted was for it to stop. To push him away, make him stop, to run. Fight, scream, pass out – literally anything that wasn’t being frozen here as a helpless audience that had to feel everything as it happened.

Through the connection in my chest I could feel that distant presence start to shift. I didn’t know what it was going to do. Maybe it didn’t even know. But it was reaching out anyway. I didn’t get to see what would happen because I felt something different.

Pain.

The hands had tugged at my pants, again. This time, they shifted. The zipper caught on my flesh. Not for long, not even too roughly, but enough to pinch.

As soon as the pain hit the hands vanished. So did whatever had been holding me up. I crumpled up as I hit the ground and that hurt too. It didn’t matter though; I could move.

I managed a single deep breath before I started screaming. The tears exploded out even heavier than they’d been before now that I had conscious control again, dripping down onto my arms as I curled up into as tight of a ball as I could manage. It hurt more as I dug my nails into my arms, but that was good. Something else to focus on.

If they were digging into one spot and I wasn’t moving any more than what the shaking from my sobbing screams caused, then I couldn’t scratch. My arms, my chest, my face; everything felt dirty. He’d touched me and…

When I had to stop to breathe, he tried to say something. I just sucked in air and screamed louder, drowning him out. I didn’t want to hear him; even the brief snippet of his voice made my skin crawl as I tried to scoot away. The wood was too smooth to scrape even my exposed skin as I did that.

I was almost disappointed about that.

I didn’t stop screaming until I tasted blood and the throbbing in my throat became nearly debilitating. Any sound I managed to make after that was too quiet to drown him out as I rushed to pull my shirt back down all the way. Then I was just blinking away the stinging that came from running out of tears.

“Are you done?”

His voice felt hollow. The glow in his eyes was dimmer and his skin looked like it had cracked, slightly. Imperfect. He’d been standing in front of me, almost at the door, but when he saw me actively looking at him, he sat down. It wasn’t as undignified as collapsing, but it was very close.

Good. I had no idea what had hurt him, but he deserved it and worse.

I wanted to turn away and ignore him. Just looking made me start to shake again. It – it felt like a bad idea to do that, though. The only working part of my brain reminded me that something worse could’ve happened, and that it would happen if I upset him or another Faerie enough. There was literally nothing I could do to stop them, not on my own. If I did something risky and it didn’t work, if something like this happened again and didn’t get stopped, I would break badly enough that there’d be no coming back.

So I sat up, slowly. Tugged my jeans back up as high as I could and redid the button, pulled my shirt down further, and hugged my knees. Then I just stared at him.

I flinched when he moved his hands, half expecting more of the invisible ones. Instead both of the physical ones were held out to his sides, palms up and angled at me. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like he had tremors running up and down his arms, off-sync and vibrating through his entire body. It took him what had to be at least a minute to speak. His voice was cold and distinctly unfriendly, the indifferent tone long gone. There was no warmth or kindness to it, just a thin and brittle air of condescension.

“It appears, Seedling, that I have erred.”

There was another minute of complete silence before he realized I wasn’t going to say anything to him.

“Clearly, what a hollow shell like you considers to be harmful is more complex than expected. Make no mistake, you are mine. But this Court – myself included – is bound by our agreement all the same. This punishment appears to have crossed an unspoken line in a way that infringed upon our oath. It will not happen again.”

He looked down his nose at me and sniffed. Affronted.

“What you clearly fear will not happen. Even were your origin entirely different, I would not sully myself. Even the highest of mortals are beneath my notice in such matters.”

The shaking was slowing down, his features molding themselves back to perfection.

“Inconvenient as it is to owe an owned tool, my impatience has made it a necessity. You have my word that, for so long as I possess you, this shall not be allowed to happen again. It will not occur by my hand, nor those of my cabal. You will be barred from the touch of others, and, should I fail to prevent it, my full attention will turn to punishing the offender to your satisfaction. I swear it on my being as a child of the Jewel-in-Repose and a scion of the Court of Ash.”

The words were bitter, practically spat at me, but they hung in the air. A thread of magic snaked from his torso toward me, glimmering in an indescribable rainbow. I shrank back from it, but it didn’t hurt as it touched me. It didn’t feel like anything, really, as it sank into me and faded away into just the faintest connection between us. The second-brightest of dozens of threads that raced out from me when I strained my eyes to look.

The only other thing it left behind was a foreign, calming, certainty that the Faerie couldn’t break that promise.

That didn’t do anything for the way my skin crawled when I saw him, or the urge to scrub myself raw. It still looked like he was mentally undressing me; that he wouldn’t touch me was hardly any relief.

“Another servant will arrive soon to prepare you; it would be best to clean yourself beforehand. Until then, reconsider what you value most. Even a beast should know that comfort is second to safety. If you fail to impress others when presented – the consequences are yours and yours alone.”