VELVETEEN vs. Extinction #4
If the crowd had been making noise before, they exploded now, going absolutely wild as the skylight slid slowly open and the saurian himself descended through it on his floating platform.
His wife was with him, as always, her feathers groomed and styled meticulously.
Females all over the city would be going to the salon the next day to request pale imitations of her timeless look.
The children had been stowed with the stage manager, watching from the wings.
In that, they were united with Tag. Velveteen glanced over.
There was her male-friend, clapping wildly, crest fully extended.
Oh, how she loved that terrible nerd. She returned her focus to Doctor Darwin, the male to whom it currently properly belonged, and waited for his transport to bring him to the stage.
Once he landed, he would shake hands with the mayor, and then her part in this performance would begin in earnest. All she had to do was not throw up on the stage.
She could handle that. Almost certainly.
There was a commotion from the audience.
She turned again, and saw the familiar, bright red form of Victory Anna forcing her way through the crowd, Sparkler following daintily behind.
The people around them protested and pushed back, but the two heroines continued forcing their way through.
Seeing that they had her attention, Victory Anna waved vigorously and shouted, “Something’s gone off on a reality-wide scale! ”
Velveteen blinked. If anyone would notice when something went wrong with reality, she trusted it to be Victory Anna. The other female had lost not one but two realities, and believed that losing a third would show a certain inherent lack of character.
The mayor tightened his grip on Velveteen, teeth bared as he said, “You are not running off on some petty act of heroism when you’re about to receive the biggest honor we have to offer you. If you try, I’ll see your license revoked.”
“Yes, sir,” she agreed, and didn’t move.
Which meant she was perfectly placed when spheres of glittery frozen snow began raining down from above, bursting across the stage in a wild swirl of holiday cheer and broken glass.
Someone screamed. Velveteen pulled away from the mirror and spun, ready to fight whoever was leading this assault—but there was no one there.
Glitter filled the air, becoming a cloying, choking cloud. The stage fell away, as did the sound of the confused crowd. Velveteen kept spinning, trying to follow her predator’s instincts to a target. Instead, she found the smell of…peppermint? And hot cocoa? And the distant sound of sleigh bells?
The glitter began dropping out of the air, and Velveteen found herself facing three soft, squishy-looking bipeds.
They had flat faces, and strange weeds growing from their heads.
One, topped in golden weeds, was halfway feathered, her body apparently caught mid-transformation between proper saurian and whatever the other two were meant to be.
All three of them were watching her. One held more glass balls filled with glitter, one in either hand; the other was empty-handed and narrow-eyed, and Velveteen had the immediate impression that she was somehow in charge of whatever was happening here.
“You make a lovely lizard,” she said, neutrally.
“Thank you, I think,” said Velveteen. “Who the hell are you, and why have you abducted me? I was about to meet with Doctor Darwin.”
“You were about to publicly endorse his version of the world on a national television broadcast, pulling the belief of millions into line,” said the female with the empty hands. “No, thank you. This has gone on quite long enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
The half-transformed female coughed. “Vel, honey—your Doctor Darwin used you, and the power you channel and clarify, to transform the world into something he thought might be nicer to live in. For him, anyway. Not for all the rest of us. And it’s spreading.
Before too long, it’ll be everywhere, and we’ll lose what it doesn’t contain. ”
“Like what?” asked Velveteen.
The female with the glass balls in her hands stepped to the side, revealing a large glass box. Velveteen stalked closer, trying to get a look inside, and the soft bipeds moved to let her, keeping a sensible distance between them.
There was another soft biped inside. This one was male, and oddly familiar, even though she had never seen him before. She cocked her head, looking at him first through one eye and then through the other. Finally, she looked up and focused on the woman with the empty hands. “Who is this?”
“His name was Tad,” said the woman. “He also went by ‘Tag.’ He used to fight with you. Maybe he loved you. Maybe you loved him. But there was an accident while things were still very new between you, and he died. So the Princess put him in a glass coffin to wait until you were ready to give him true love’s kiss and bring him back.
Only seems that in Doctor Darwin’s version of things, your Tag wouldn’t have been hurt, so he’s still up and around.
This solidifies, our Tag gets deleted. Not transformed, replaced. ”
“Oh,” said Velveteen. She wanted to tell them they were being ridiculous, that none of this was real, but they were familiar somehow, weren’t they?
They looked like creatures out of a children’s storybook, and they were shaped like friends at the same time, like people she wanted to trust and believe.
And this…soft mammalian Tag, he was familiar, too, wasn’t he?
Even what they described matched a nightmare she’d been having on and off since their first date, when it had been way too early for her to be getting that intensely attached to someone.
It all made sense. And she didn’t want it to, because if they were telling the truth, the world was a lie. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Tell me I can,” said the female with the glass balls. “Tell me you don’t care if I break things, and give me permission to be selfish. I’m not strong enough on my own. I haven’t been selfish in a long, long time. But I want my world, and my friends, and the things that belong to me.”
“What does selfishness have to do with any of that?”
The female smiled, sadly. “See, my Vel would know. She would protest that I can’t be selfish without endangering my connection to my holiday, and I’d say I know, and she’d still try to talk me out of it, because no one knows what happens to a Spirit of the Season who goes counter to what they were made for.
But I do know what happens, and I’ve already talked to Aurora, and she’s agreed that I’ve been generous enough to do something just for me.
He was my friend first. I introduced you. I want him back.”
“Don’t you want to know the truth?” asked the half-transformed female.
“I do,” said Vel, looking down at the biped who looked almost like her lover, and nothing like him at all. “If this isn’t the way the world is supposed to be, I want to know.”
“So make your Christmas wish,” said the female with the glass balls. “Wish for what you want, and let go of what you think you owe.”
“What’s a Christmas—never mind.” Vel shook her head. “I don’t need to know. I wish the world were the way it’s supposed to be, and not whatever’s been done to it.”
The female threw both her glass balls at the ground, and they struck with a vast shattering sound, filling the air with glitter once again. This time, it burned. Velveteen coughed and choked, collapsing across the glass box as she gasped for air.
When the glitter cleared, she was in a small, round, cathedral-ceilinged room with stained glass walls, draped across Tag’s coffin. A crack ran down the center, but he appeared undisturbed. She sat up, hastily feeling herself. No feathers; warm skin; hair. Mammal.
The relief was so all-consuming that she started to laugh, slumping against the coffin. She was still laughing when the Princess came sweeping in. She was back to her normal self, dressed in a dark purple ball gown trimmed with black lace and white crystal snowflakes; she had been crying.
Velveteen sat up. “Cara? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Jacqueline,” she replied. “I can’t find her.”
Velveteen blinked. “Who?” she asked.
The Princess blinked back. “Well, honey…I don’t rightly know,” she said, and silence fell.