Page 133 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
Like humans, since The Real Beginning we had settled into our instinctual purposes. The natural purpose of the Brings was to clean the world. They delighted in pulling all that was filthy and damaging into their blobs to rub it about. The feeling was like nothing else to them.
The Brings moaned wetly and departed in blinks of six feet.
See chuckled, and I threw him a grin. The Brings got rather more from cleansing the world than delight, and they were showing no signs of relenting in their efforts. I could not blame them.
The monster who had been Princess Change approached next and curtsied. “My queen.” Her voice was disused, for aside from these gatherings, she only whispered and cooed to plants and soil.
Princess Change had no king, and she never would. Instead, ancients had married her to her single reason for being. To nature. The world had lost its Mother Nature long ago, and here we had been gifted a new one.
Mother Change moved through the world, tending to her flock with her power, and in this, the monster had found her peace. Whatever shock and pain she had felt over me ending her king’s immortality had quickly crumbled against the joy foundin her new purpose. She radiated with it, and the force tended to swirl the long skirt of her flowing gown more often than not. Her garden apron, of course, remained, and I had never seen her wear the bridal gown since the night of King Change’s death.
“I will return to my calling if there is nothing more,” she rasped.
I stepped forward and embraced the monster. “Only that I miss seeing you often, dear Change. If you were not so happy in soil and life, then none of us could part with you so often.”
She colored, and curtsied in lieu of answering.
My new baron was next.
Huckery padded over. “My queen, tonight my purpose has awakened in me.”
“And what is your purpose, Baron?” I murmured, feeling See listening.
We had theorized as to Huckery’s purpose for ten years, so I could easily forgive his curiosity.
He extended a foreleg. “My queen, I am the baron of beasts. With my brother werebeasts, I am called to tend and shepherd the living creatures of the world and see them take flight and form again.”
I would gloat to See later, for that had been a theory of mine that he had laughed at. “Huckery, this is a great calling, and you are magnificently and uniquely made to uphold your purpose. Go forth and return when you must and can.”
Candor dipped her head in my direction, then left with Huckery. They would split on their paths somewhere in the world, for Candor worked on humans, not beasts. She had already trained monsters into truth, and so she was free to do the same with other creatures. Humans did love to lie so—to themselves most of all.
Candor was a balm to a towering source of corruption and deceit that humans had never managed to figure outthemselves. The human leaders could no longer lie. They could not make hidden deals drenched in vested interest. Candor’s power simply would not allow them to.
So humans were faced with an unsettling experience, that of a leader who did what they said and for all the good and right reasons. What trust was growing in the world. And that trust spilled into community and families too.
Such wonders existed in a saved world.
Pawns flittered away in the scrape of a spear or a lumbering walk, all of them departing to uphold some or other effort to counter humans. How far we had come in ten years, and how much further we would go in another ten, and then ten hundred and ten times that number.
I turned to find that See was speaking in undertones to Has Been and Is.
He could be betraying me in some way. No doubt, if that was so, then the truth would be revealed in time. Then I would forgive him.
Just as he had forgiven me in time for killing his brother.
See was more likely checking in with the pawns. More and more, my prince consort was stepping into the role of Wellbeing Monitor. When not researching and testing the relationship between monsters and humans, he was either with me, or traveling around the globe to see how monsters fared.
I trailed up the stairs of my queendom, which was a far cry from the ruined building we had awakened in after Mother won the final battle. Humans and minions had done their worst to my home, and then blackness had done the rest.
Yes, monsters had awoken in ruins, all of us baffled and shocked, and then afraid to believe we had won.
I could only recall the warm candlelight of my mother, and then the shared heart of me and See. I recalled leaning back on him and feeling no fear, and then I was here, surrounded by my monsters again.
My queendom had healed rapidly. We had quickly found our feet.
And I could only fathom that Mother’s candlelight would occupy the world’s core forevermore, but really, I could not properly say. Perhaps I would go there one night once humans were settled and monstrous in their own right to glimpse what I could.
Or perhaps I would not, so that I might always imagine her there saving us.
