She-Swine

"You're mad! And more than the fashionable amount of 'mad'!" Sianna cried, tail flailing as she stalked between racks, from one end of the storage room to the other. "The cup positively runneth over with 'mad'!"

"You're overselling me a bit, I think." Ylsa tapped her lips, clicked her tongue, and waved her hand flippantly. "Or underselling me. Either way, I think you're missing the mark! And the opportunity!"

The room was lit by a dim gout of lambent light, filtering through racks, casting a pale glow over their faces. Olive sat at a cramped trestle table in the corner, its aged grain crazed with notches, little messages. 'Fuck the Furies!' one said, imaginatively. 'Cock' said another, just as daring, next to a detailed rendering. So many veins, she giggled, scratching wavy notches around it, making stink lines. 

It made a decent distraction from... everything. From her body, Frey, whoever the 'Matriarch' was. It was a regency, she remembered, but the King she'd written was Arlan Theo, a just man who trusted judicious advisors. She didn't write in any Matriarchs!

The fuzzy smell of mothballs, the eggshell walls, the racks of boxes, the deathly light, they brought her back to her element, made an oasis in the typhoon that was her absurd reality. It reminded her of the hours, the days, going over inventories, ledgers, pitching ideas on how to sell new vaping flavors in an obscure room so that her bosses could assume the credit and build their reputations. 

Bristle, too big for the low stools about the table, leaned back in a shadowy corner, yawning, rubbing his eyes. Olive noted a few bald patches, pink scrapes along his mottled coat. He didn't seem to mind, of course, nor did he seem too interested in the conversation at hand. 

The sleeper sprawled out between two bare racks, twitching sporadically as voices pitched, her hair a white flurry about her head, like driven snow. 

"Opportunity, yes! The opportunity to remove our heads from our shoulders!" Sianna mimed a cleaver with a hand, running it across her downy neck and drooping her head, sticking out her barbed tongue. Olive snorted. "Might well ask us to ground Patron! Or joust the sun!"

"Patron's on notice, but no use worrying about him, yet," Ylsa said, crossing her arms as she leaned against a rack. "And I'm not asking you to stab a star, I'm simply suggesting that we reappropriate some property from a prominent somebody."

Sianna skidded to a stop, then snorted. "Two can play at poetry. There once was a lady in purple, who thought she could go and--" Her ears feathered. "And..."

"Run us in circles?" Olive offered, a thin smile spreading into her cheeks.

"Yes, circles!" Sianna grinned a feline grin, ears up. "First you show up, out of nothing. Then you bring us a threadbare escape plan, and from there you try to hornswoggle us into this harebrained scheme to cross the most powerful woman in creation!"

Ylsa's expression slanted. "That doesn't sound like a circle to me..."

Olive raised her hand. "So, um... just to back things up a bit..." She pinched an ear. "Who exactly... is the Matriarch?" The question galled, even as it slid from her tongue. It was one thing to be trapped in her juvenile world, but quite another to be completely clueless about its main players. 

Sianna and Bristle gaped at her, eyes broad and incredulous. Even the sleeper grunted in what seemed a bemused manner before turning onto her side. 

Only Ylsa was unphased. "She'd have us think she's a goddess. Hardly. More a sad, lonely woman, with her sad, shallow puppets, doing sad, shallow things..." She said, voice low, dimming as the words came. Her eyes seemed far away, like distant, violet flames. 

"She's the power behind the throne," Sianna began, her tone grim. "The wolven plague, the massacre at the burrows, the Scarlet Night. She bent every king, emperor, and baron to her will, or left them broken in the wheel to rot. She shattered the Plains, ruined their coalition. That's where the Black Canyon comes from, a rotten scar cleaving them in two." She shuddered, ears bowed, shaking her head. "Queen Nymia has the crown, but Alys Nightshade put it there, and she could take it whenever she pleased."

Olive blanched. I don't remember a 'Nymia'! "Alys Nightshade?" She echoed, swallowing. "B-but wasn't she supposed to be just and wise and compassionate and--" Perfect?

Sianna snorted. "Once, maybe. A thousand years ago."

Olive's jaw slacked, but she forced it shut, flushing at her tusks. "A thousand years?!" Her snout trembled, gears turning in her mind. No, no that didn't track. Alys was immortal, she achieved it at the climax of her story, but nothing else lined up. Not her reputation, not her monopoly of her power, not even the aesthetics of the world itself. She'd seen the cityscape, the horses, the scale armour. They were all coherent with what she remembered sketching and brainstorming, basing it off of medieval aesthetics. If it had been a thousand years, why had there been no forward progress? No airships, no railways, no space program?!

"Give or take a few hundred." Ylsa shrugged, the words terse. 

"Where do you come from, anyway?" Bristle asked, an ear cocked. "Everyone knows these things."

"I'm not everyone!" Olive squealed, rubbing her eyes. "I-I'm..." From the good ol' US of A! Home of the heart attack, land of the spent ammo casings! Yeah, that'll sell. She would need to try and tell someone else eventually, she knew. Maybe even them, but... later. When they weren't liable to pinch her into a straitjacket. "I'm from a village to the east, just this side of the Plains." She said, tapping her fingers. "America. You've probably never heard of it..."

Seed the truth in the lie. Makes harvesting easier. 

"America?" Bristle rolled the word around on his tongue. "Am-Er-Ick-Aaaaa! Sounds nice. I like it!"

"Don't say that to a commie," Olive told him, smirking. 

"Commie?" Bristle tasted that word, too. "Comm-Ee! Sounds fun. I like it!"

"Is that a venereal disease?" Sianna asked, head tilted to a side.

Olive snorted. "Sort of."

"I take it you didn't see a lot of foreigners in America?" Ylsa asked, a brow cocked. 

God, I could make so many jokes out of that, she thought, with a twitch of her eyelid. "We mostly kept to ourselves. Unless we needed oil."

"Huh." Ylsa tapped her cheek. "I didn't know Porcenes had holdings inside Yor. Let alone Porcenes who needed a surfeit of oil, of all things..."

"I-it's a part of our culture! We burn lanterns all day and night, in case the sun ever goes out!" Olive told her, with a twitchy smile. "We passed it down from generation to generation! Yeah, it's stupid, but so are most traditions, if we're being fair!"

"She has a point," Sianna said, with a shrug, before turning back to Ylsa with a mighty flick of her ear. "But I'm not letting you run away from this! How exactly did you picture this going? That we'd be so grateful for your help that we'd agree to a suicide mission as thanks?!"

Ylsa blinked. "That's about what I was hoping for, yes." She admitted, with a cavalier shrug.

Bristle guffawed, the sound making the sleeper lurch. "She's honest, at least."

"And you haven't even asked what I want us to steal!" Ylsa pointed out, wagging her finger. "For all you know, it's a flower in her garden."

Sianna rolled her eyes. "Fine. What do you want us to steal?"

Ylsa pinched her lips. "My contact called it the 'Implement'. It's... a powerful dagger that can cut through time and space..."

Sianna simply sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and shook her head, tail shaking in time.

Olive scoffed. "So... how does that even work? Like, how do you cut time? Does it cut like fabric? Carrots?" What the fuck is my life, now?

"I don't know for sure. I just have it on good authority that it works, and can reshape certain foundations of the world itself." Ylsa said with a wave, as if they were background details.

Olive felt a jolt in her chest, and leaned forward.

Sianna's tail spun. "Yes, and who better to help you acquire this valuable, life-changing, world-rending piece than four people you met in a prison cell?" She asked, ears drawn back, a dubious twist to her lips. 

"Four people with unique qualifications, and due motivations!" Ylsa pointed out, stepping closer.

"Yes, an entrepreneur, a berserker Lupene, a Porcene who clearly needs a warm drink and a bed, and a somnambulist! What a team!" Sianna grumbled, throwing up a haughty hand. "No thanks! I think not!"

"You think I don't know how wild this sounds? Hitting the Jewel, stealing a weapon that can cut through reality, defying the most powerful woman in the world?! Yes, it's mad! It gargles madness! But--"

"Can it open the way to other realities?" Olive asked, her eyes broad, fingernails digging into her stool. 

Ylsa smacked her lips, a smile blooming. "If what my contact has told me is anywhere near correct... yes."

Olive stood, a windfall at her back, a fire in her chest. It all resolved in that one moment: her aloofness, her ennui, her shock. All snapping into a razor edge of focus, determination. Here it was, at her fingertips, delivered as if by post. A way home. Back to normalcy, away from her snout, ridicule, cloudy eyes...

"Then I'm in!" She declared, beaming broad, not caring that her tusks were front and prominent. "I can do 'mad'!"