After Six arrives and instantly starts fussing with the organization of the bar which I have apparently messed up in my time here, there’s only a few more to go.  Mark is next through the door, all sculpted muscles and smiles as he sees us and lets his guard slip away.  Then Ellin ambushes him with a kiss too, getting in early this time instead of at the end of their time together.

A risky play.  Mark comes back from half his lives pining for a love lost.  But I’m hardly the person who would be willing to stop Ellin from playing with fire like that.  Every life I live is me ticking up the counter on questionable choices I’ve made, and I see no reason to deny anyone else that fun.

Also, while Mark has a look of shocked panic for the first few seconds of the kiss, as soon as Ellin pushes him back and sweeps him into a half-carried pose, he leans into it with either passion or good humor.  I think I like this version of Ellin.  

This is also when Jules arrives.  The smooth black flesh of his core extending over the wooden railing of the library as he looks down on whatever is happening from where his door drops him off.  One by one, his tentacles slide over the railing and gently lift him over and down to the floor, skipping the stairs entirely.  I’m starting to feel like we should replace the stairs with another table or something, since I think I’m the only one who ever uses them.

“Good evening, good friends!”  Jules cheerfully greets us in his accent that places so much deep emphasis on the first vowel of each word.  “I see I am arriving late to the par-mmmphh!”  Jules is cut off as Ellin drops Mark like he’s over capacity ballast, and throws herself across the room onto Jules to give him a similar treatment.

Every bone in my artificial between made body wants to explode with laughter.  But I play it cool instead, leaning back on the bar, crossing my ankles in front of me as I lounge on the barstool and sip the cider that Six has just poured for me.  And as I watch our resident tentacled Frenchman get lavished with affection, Mark drags himself up with a groan, stumbles over while brushing off his toga, and sits next to me.

“Hey Luri.”  He says with the kind of voice you use when you’re intentionally badly hiding your amusement.  “How’s death?”

“It was boring at first but I think I’m warming up to it.”  I say, tipping my cup at the spectacle in front of us.

Mark gives Six a bright smile as the golem places a cup in front of him.  “Thanks Six.  Also good to see you both again.  And… yeah , what happened to Ellin?”

“She appears to be less inhibited than the last time we met.”  Six states.

“No kidding?”  Mark raises his eyebrows as Six gives him an unimpressed look.  “I mean, I hadn’t noticed.”  He continues unabated.  “But then, I was distracted when I came in.”  He tries to cover his grin with a sip of his drink, but then pulls the cup back and cocks an eyebrow at it.  “Huh.  What’s this?  It’s… interesting.”  Mark asks.

Six shifts slightly, which is more emotion than his body language normally shows.  “It is one of my attempts at creating a cider.  The equippable barrels do, in fact, return here with their contents intact.”  He points in his direct way to where he’s stacked the inventory barrels at the end of the bar’s shelving.  It adds a nice rustic look to the already rustic-as-anything Bastion’s.

“I know a merchant who’d love that.”  I muse.  “But also thank you Six, this is pretty good!”

“Thank you, Luri.”  The golem tips his head at me, only briefly flicking his eyes to watch Jules tumble past in a flail of limbs with Ellin barely holding on.  Their antics topple at least two chairs, and I wince even though I know that doesn’t hurt as much as it would if we were alive.  “Should we stop them?”

We all ignore Jules’ proclamation of “Someone help me!” As the two roil by.

“Offer them some cider.”  Mark suggests, trying some more of his drink and making a facial expression that says he doesn’t like it, but he won’t stop drinking it .  “Do we have snacks?  I wanna go take a table.  Not to rush us or anything, but I think Ellin’s about done with her romance assault, and… well, I don’t have as much time to share lives this round.”  He winces.

I set my glass down and lay a hand on his arm, which turns into a full hug as I hop off the stool and let my tail keep me upright.  I might be out of time because I got here too early, but just as bad is getting bad luck on your heartbeat count.  Saying any words of sympathy wouldn’t mean anything though; we’ve all sort of agreed that we can try to keep that to a minimum.  Sometimes, you just don’t have the time, and the best solution is to not burn heartbeats being remiss about how little time you have.

“It’s good to see you again.”  I tell Mark instead while Six stacks our preferred socialization cups on the counter and starts filling a pair of pitchers.  “Oh, that reminds me!  Did either of you put a bottle of poison under the counter here?”  The two men give me looks that would be equally inscrutable for an outsider, but that I can read plainly.  They have no idea.  “Cool, nevermind.”  I take the pile of cups and dance past where Jules has just thrown off Ellin so that I can claim the comfy chair before anyone else gets to it.

Six and Mark join me, with Six making a maneuver that seems like innocuous walking but actually puts him next to the chair made out of fragrant old wood from a dead world, which he loves, and always has to fight Ellin for.  Ellin arrives too late as she sees we’re gathering, and ends up with the basket seat, while Jules just plops himself down on the heavy cushion that we keep around.

I have a little over a subjective day left by the time everyone sits.  Not enough time really , but just enough heartbeats that I can be happy to see my friends.

“Well.  I see Ellin has experienced a journey of self discovery.”  Jules states as a pair of his manipulator tentacles dance across the table and begins pouring cider into the tall glass stein that he favors.  “Was anyone else aware of this, that perchance could have offered this poor wayward soul some form of warning ?”

“Honestly she moved a lot faster than I expected.”  Mark says with a casual shrug.  He gives the dried out coconut shell and the loopy plastic straw in front of him a grin, and dumps his more mundane cup into it before taking a refill.  “So hey, Ellin, what’s got you in a mood ?”

“It’s not a mood, it’s a change in perspective.”  Ellin says.  Though she still does the Ellin thing of swiping her thumb across her chin and tilting her head away, so I don’t think she’s changed that much.

Change is a constant friend to us.  You can’t live a life and not change.  You can’t.  Even if all you do is hide away from the world for seventy subjective years, you’re going to end up feeling like you’ve mastered the art of certain daily routines.  And when you come back here, you’re going to wonder, when you wake up, why your legs aren’t automatically moving to fetch water, and your arms to begin opening shutters to greet the morning alone.

After you’ve lived a dozen lives, each individual one can’t change you too much.  For me, I take too much with me into a new world to be moved easily.  In most worlds, all things have momentum, and that typically includes the minds and souls that dwell there.  It takes decades of routine to ingrain something in me, or singularly powerful moments to give me a revelation about who I am or want to be.  But when I want to change, I have the experience and will to shift myself on purpose fairly easily.

Part of being forever dying is that we can try things.  And part of being friends is that we stick together, even as we make those changes.  As we grow, in our own way.

Which is why I am, personally, very amused by Ellin’s latest shift in persona.  Because while Mark and Jules weren’t around for it, I  know that this isn’t new  for her.  Ellin has been this person before, felt this way before.  She knows it, just as well as I do.

A part of my make believe heart aches with a pang.  Because I know that she tried this before, tried to be more open with her love, tried to be the person she secretly wanted.  And she pushed herself back.  Retreated into the comfortable shell of a woman who was snarky, blunt, and dismissive, with only a few cracks showing her true nature as someone so easily flustered and eager to flirt with anyone she liked.

Ellin has lived through a tremendous quantity of pain.  We all have, really, but I don’t want to dismiss hers.  People she has loved have been lost to us here in the between; just fading from our eternal lives without a word.  Perhaps they couldn’t afford a proper door and never found Bastion’s again.  Perhaps they’re still living an immortal life and won’t be coming back for a long time.  Perhaps they just… aren’t here anymore, either.

We can’t know.  All Ellin knows is that people she opened herself up to have left her alone, and hurt.

But now it seems she is healed enough to try it again.  Cycles of personality played out over so many lifetimes that we could easily lose count.  One day, maybe we’ll be so unrecognizable that we won’t be friends anymore.  But I somehow doubt it; I think it’s more likely we’ll find stable patterns.  Patterns stretching across eons, but patterns where we’re together.

“Oh good.”  Mark’s voice draws a dazed blink from me.  “You said something that gave Luri that look.”

“Oy!  I did not!”  Ellin protests instantly.  “‘S yer own fucking fault, somehow.”  Her muttered defense is halfhearted at best.

Mark turns to shake his head at Six.  “I’m not sure I’m fully buying into this more romantic version of Ellin.”  He says.

“You’ll get used to it.”  I tell him.

Halfway around the table, Ellin reclines like some kind of large and certainly predatory cat.  The noise she makes as she stretches is one of satisfaction, which I will never not find to be strange.  When we are remade here, it is without pain, and that includes aches in the joints and bones and muscles.  For Ellin to find stretching so satisfying, it makes me wonder if she spends some of her heartbeats after first waking in the between doing combat drills.  But even if that were the case, these bodies don’t tire , so I know her pleased half-moan is just affectation and theater anyway.

“Oy.  Well!”  Her clipped words draw me out of the idle shake of my head that I have going on.  “Who wants to get this started?”

“Get what started?”  Jules asks patiently.  “And are we not still waiting for Molly?  Or Tee-kun?  It has been so long since I’ve seen either of them…”

I shake my head.  “I haven’t seen Molly since I got here.  Didn’t Mark see her last time?”

Mark’s wistful frown hurts to see.  “That was thirty years ago, subjective.  I can’t remember everything.”

“Thirty?!”  Ellin bursts out.  “What happened to you ?”

He shrugs, somehow managing to make the timid gesture look handsome.  “Well, the world had a weird orbit, so more like… thirty six, thirty eight ‘standard’ years?  Bah, our language sucks for this.  We should invent words.  Anyway, car crash.”

“ Again ?”  The red triangles that form Jules expression shift to one of dismay.  “Mark…”

Even Six gets in on the chastisement.  “You must be more careful.  You could get hurt.”  The swell of our collective voices telling Mark to stop crashing cars goes still as we all turn to look at Six.  The golem’s utterly calm tone and cryptic gaze entirely at odds with the fact that he just told someone who can’t actually die that they need to ‘be careful’.

Scrunching up his face, Mark crosses his arms like a put out schoolchild.  “I didn’t come here to be bullied!”  He announces.

“Nah, you came here because of a car crash.”  Ellin twists the knife.  “But anyway , I hope Molls turns up, sure.  But the five of us made the bet, right?  So?  How’d it go ?”

We absolutely did not make it a bet.  I think all of us refrained from wagering anything, despite… did Ellin actually push for it?  I can’t remember.

The thing Mark said about it being thirty years is another issue.  We are all friends, and we know we will remain consistent in our eternal lives.  But there’s nothing magical about the between that lets us remember.  It isn’t just like yesterday that we show up here; we’re all carrying new scars from new lives and faded memories of each other from last time.

I still love these people.  And it does get easier the more lives you tuck away.

Still, while I don’t remember if Ellin is telling the truth or not, I do remember what we agreed on.  Because it was hugely influential in my life, one way or another.  

“I could start.”  Six says, settling his etched copper ceremonial basin on the table after taking a long pull of the cider he brought us.  “As I must plead no contest.  I was raised an orphan in this life.  My family’s village was burned shortly after my birth, and the adults put to the spear.”  He describes it like he’s talking about going grocery shopping.  While I know that Six is capable of a lot of deep compassion, even after all this time it throws me off when his voice sounds so placid as he describes things like this.  “I was found and partly cared for by a ranger, but he, too, was killed before I could speak properly.  After that, I lived as a slave, with no relevant parental figures that I could make the admission to.”

“Oof.  I’m sorry buddy.”  Ellin’s shoulder’s slump as she loses some of her verve.

I’m in the middle of leaning over to wrap Six in a sideways hug when Jules asks, “What form of slavery?  If you don’t mind.”

“Chattel.”  Six answers against my arm.  He and Jules have been making an anthropological study of slavery across worlds.  “No room for progression or release.  The world was in decline, and I suspect will be dead soon.”  He does not shrug, but he does give my arm a small pat with one of his grey hands.  “No one will miss it.  But regardless, while I will tell stories later, for now, I have lost the gamble.”

“We didn’t actually  bet anything.”  I remind him.  “Also I’m sorry Six.  I hope your next run is better.”

“Well, mine went great.”  Ellin says, the tall woman almost pouting as she tugs on one of her horns, eyes angled upward away from the table.  “An’ I now feel like an ass about it.  Told my parents early, didn’t believe me.  Because of course.  Pulled a few aura layer and [Strength]  tricks.  Talked to a psych.  Eventually they just accepted it.  Good people, both of them.  And since I didn’t have much to fight that life, I just spent some time helping them live their best lives.”  She shrugs.  “Got stabbed anyway.”

“You get stabbed in every life !”  I blurt out.  “I forgot to ask this last time.   Are you going for an achievement for getting stabbed twenty lives in a row?!”  I need to know.  I can’t live in the dark anymore.  It’s been bothering me for a whole lifetime.

Of course, now is the time Ellin chooses to learn discretion.  She just gives me an almost flirtatious smile - or maybe an actually  flirtatious smile - and then turns to Mark.  “What about you, muscles?  Any luck?”

Mark hums through his drink, and swallows as he thumps the mostly empty coconut shell back down.  “Oh!  Uh, no.”  He shakes his head.  “They called me a kin-touched, which led to a whole trial, and attempted execution, and… a lot of stuff happened.  Not a bad life.  Actually it was a Big Adventure, really.  But my parents weren’t part of it.  What about you Jules?  How’d our actual resident tentacle monster do at being called a monster?”

“…I refuse to let you shame me when I say that things went spectacularly.”  Jules says.  “My surrogate family were accepting and understanding.  I had a pleasant life, when things weren’t chaotic.”

“Isn’t that always the case?”  I give a coy laugh into my drink.  “It’s like road trips.  Long stretches of nothing, and every now and then someone like Mark shows up.”

“I wasn’t even driving!”  My friend tries to defend himself.

Jules’ manipulator tentacles weave a circular array around him in amusement.  “Ah, yes, the great condition of life.  Things are either happening or they are not.  And for myself, much of my life was not.  It was… a good break.  A time to learn a little, and to understand a bit more of myself.  My greatest regret is simply that the world had no active magic, and no science beyond glassblowing, so my ability to pursue the academic arts was somewhat limited.”  He gives a many armed shrug.  “And that is me.  Which leaves…”

“Just me.”  I sigh.  “Bad.”  I say bluntly.  “I don’t… know if I should talk about it.”

“Hey hey!  We’re here to talk, aren’t we?”  Ellin pushes, leaning forward on the table’s felt surface.  “Don’t hold back on us now!  Last time I was here, I told you all about shitting myself to death!”

Mark chokes on his drink, and Six has to pat him on the back.  “Oh fuck, stop saying that.  I thought thirty years would be enough to forget…”

I give him a sad smile and a shake of my head, trying to keep my tail from flicking in hidden amusement behind my chair too much.  “I just don’t want Jules to feel bad about it.”

“Luri.”  Jules says my name like it’s somewhere between an admonishment and a command.  “I’ve been with you for so many deaths, I know you would never hold me in hostility for some attempt gone wrong.  And you are poised as you so often are, as if your last life hurt you.  Share with us, as you know will help you, as it always does.”

It’s so easy to forget that Jules has spent so many lives writing poetry that he sometimes defaults to speaking like a narrator, without even noticing.  I know it’s more a nervous habit of his, and that he prefers the personality of nobility that he cultivates, but I still find it soothing when he just snaps off declarations like this.

Still, I have to take a breath before speaking.  And before I even get to that, I tap a finger against my goblet.  “We should have had Mark mix up something alcoholic and possibly corrosive for this.”  I say.  And then give in as the others stare me down.  “Fine.  Told my parents, got called a liar, tried to do the Ellin and Jules thing to prove it, and one of them doubled down on calling me a liar.  Beat me half to death.”  I take a breath, and remember that the pain is well behind me now, and that the body in the between doesn’t hurt.  “This was when I was, what, eight?  Tried to run, since it’s not too hard to make it alone, but the world had an weirdly competent civil protection force, and they kept returning me to my ‘family’, and they kept breaking my arms.  Then I reached the age of majority and ended up thrown out anyway.  Oh!  Biological depression, too!”  I try to laugh, and it comes out a little bit forced.  “You know what’s weird, though?  I got a message here when I came back for making people’s lives better.”  My cheeks are wet, and I realize I’m crying, though I don’t really remember starting.

I also don’t know when Six and Mark moved closer to me, standing out of their chairs to wrap me in a double hug.  I consider making an only partly joking comment about how they should kiss, but the words die in my chest.

“So…” Ellin says more slowly and drawn out than I’ve ever heard her pronounce a word before.  “Does this mean me and Jules win?”

“Mark, Six, continue offering our friend comfort.  I am going to strangle Ellin.”  Jules says conversationally, the triangles of his face shifting to a multi pointed scowl.

And that is enough to make me laugh.  The noise is abrupt enough that it surprises Mark, though Six keeps his arms around my shoulders.  His skin feels nice on mine, which is about what I expect from the way the golem has built himself.  But soon enough, my laughter stabilizes as something less broken and sudden, and more like what my ancient heart has been trying to find.

Amusement at the irony of life.

“You know what else?”  I ask with a grin on my face.  “I actually opened all my messages this time, without having a breakdown.”

Mark perks up, stepping back and tapping his chair in with his foot.  “Progress!  Soon you’ll be helping me figure out how to sort perks!”  He claims.  He is wrong, but he claims it anyway.

I make a wave that I assume will be interpreted however he wants, no matter what I do.  “There weren’t that many.  But I got gifted a thing for picking up books from worlds .”

The others brighten up, especially Jules and Six.  “Do you mean…” the inky black mass of tentacles leans forward over the table, almost knocking his archaic stein over and spilling his cider into the void.

“Book club is revitalized!”  I tell them with as much energy as I can dredge up.  Which, it turns out, is a lot.  “And this time I’m not yelling that at a random stranger.”

“Wait, what?”  Mark gives me an adorable look of confusion.

I settle back in my chair with a smile to explain, while the others work on making themselves comfortable again.  Taking seats, or grabbing different drinks.  Mark goes off to mix some dire concoction, Six drags out rope from his inventory to start putting together a hammock again, Jules takes some time to check on his miniature tree from last life.

And I find that I have more strength than I thought.

Maybe it really is just the effects of waking up without a cloud of fog in my brain, and a hundred pains from old wounds.  This body is mine , built to take the bits of every body I’ve ever liked, and I love it.  Love being in it, and love sharing it.  And there’s a lot of value to that, as I am reminded in a slow bloom every time I return to the between.

And maybe it’s just that my friends are here, and supportive, and the pain that it’s so easy to get lost in feels farther away when they’re wrapped around me, or talking to each other and filling Bastion’s with warmth and false-life.

Or maybe it’s that I’m ancient beyond what any of my lived worlds think a single person can experience.  And I am starting to find that I have enough weight to shake off even the worst lives.

Behind me, there is the sound of a door opening, and behind the bar Mark calls out a greeting to a new stranger, while I settle in with some of my friends to prepare to tell deeper small stories of our lives.  To listen to them open messages and see what they achieved, to share small fragments of eternity together.

I like this.

And I’m feeling much better now.