Page 78 of Guiding Reason
“This is where it happens,” said Kashana, gesturing at the tall ceilings where dolls were mounted.
Those are just like Sen’s books,Taros thought, even as he could barely decide what to admire first. Dolls filled the floor as well, a force of frozen limbs and colorful clothes. There were so many of them, stacked ten deep, wide as the room itself. It was an army of elegance.
“It’s—it’s breathtaking, Designer Kashana.”
“No. It’s Kashana. My name is what I do. I need no title. I am the work.”
Taros flushed. “Yes, Kashana.”
“Take off your clothes. They are not right for you.”
“M-me? You want me to get undressed?” Taros looked at Hyran, who shrugged.
“Yes, you. You seek. Something that isn’t like all the other things, something that is you, a skin not the one you were born with, and yet your skin. I need to see to match you with what already belongs to you.”
Oh, fuck. Taros stripped faster than he had ever stripped, dropping his combat pants where he stood. Kashana and his designers watched. When he was naked—and just a tiny bit visibly excited about all of it—Kashana took him in. It was not an appraisal of lust or anything so physical. Kashana measured him with his eyes, and Taros could almost feel it.
“The blue scale dress,” Kashana said.
“Yes, it’s the one,” the designer on the left said.
“Yes, it’s him,” the designer on the right said.
“You will give it life. Come.”
Kashana vanished into the forest of dolls all around them, and Taros followed. Hyran and the designers didn’t. It was a mazealmost, much like the memorial garden but so full of color, so lively.All these designs, I’ve never seen them worn. They look like one of a kind, like art, not like clothes at all.
“Kashana, these are all…they are extravagant.”
“They are waiting. The dolls are their coffins. They can only live if they are given a body.”
“Oh. Yes. I see.”
Kashana stopped. “This is the one. This is you, Taros of Argentea’s Team Three.”
Kashana pointed out a dress, and Taros was glad it was a dress. It had been crafted of dozens upon dozens of diamond-shaped pieces of cloth, one layered atop the other, blue around the neckline, deep and beckoning dreams like the sky just before heavy rainfall, then fading like a drop of dye in water. The train was white scales, pearlescent and beautiful, reflective, gleaming.
“T-this is for me? You want me to try it on?”
“I do. We will wrap it for you, package it so it doesn’t get damaged before it’s time. I should be lucky to watch how this fades in a fight. You are a panoplian, rare and offensive in your defensive nature. I think this dress will hold long in any fight. My price for it is but to see you wear it once.”
Taros nodded and hurried to comply. Kashana helped him, and before long, the blue scale dress was off the doll and on Taros.
“It fits perfectly,” he said.
Kashana made an amused sound. “Of course it fits. Come. You get a moment in the mirror with it.”
He led onward through the dolls until they reached the wall. Upon Kashana’s touch, it mirrored over, and Taros gasped. The blue matched his hair. He hated that he’d braided it to bruise Hyran’s ass, but there was nothing to do there. Still, Taros loved the dress the instant he saw it on himself, loved it like he hadnever loved an inanimate object. And a lot more than a good amount of people.
Kashana came up behind him, closing his arms around Taros, and running his fingers along the scales. “It’s perfect. It breathes with you. It suits you so well.”
Before he knew what was happening, Kashana had spun him on the spot, had reached up to guide his head, and without hesitation, he pressed his lips to Taros’s own, who was almost too stunned to enjoy this, almost. The kiss deepened, needy, urgent.
It might have been the best or the worst kiss Taros had ever had. After, he wasn’t sure anymore, couldn’t tell at all. The sensation, much like the first time putting on the blue scale dress, faded all too quickly, and they broke apart.
“Kashana…” Taros’s voice sounded rough to his own ears.
“There you are.” Hyran walked along the wall toward them, Taros’s clothes in hand and the two designers in tow. “They say they need you to change again so they can wrap it.
