| John is doing better. He's relieved to be away from you, away from his father, and to be able to pretend for a little while that he doesn't have responsibilities waiting for him back at home. He enjoys the physical feeling of the tropical sea breeze and the sound of the waves. He thinks maybe he could live in a place like this. He's grateful to have friends. He looks at the grubs and decides against them. It might be worth all of it, to be here, he thinks. | Rose is second-guessing everything. She doesn't think Jade is capable of guile, but wonders if the entire vacation is a scheme. Of course, it is, but the layers are not nearly as complex as she imagines. She offers a joke and a clever observation, and they laugh. She makes a literary allusion, and they don't get it, but chuckle awkwardly anyway. This is more endearing than annoying. She tries a grub and finds the texture strange. What does it all mean, she thinks. What is the goal, here? | Dave is struggling. He finds Jade attractive, and thinks he'd like to flirt more but also that it's too awkward in front of the other two. It's the sort of adolescent drama that bores you to fucking tears. Yet, from behind his shades, his eyes watch for attack, scanning all about. What a fascinating instinct. He's freaked out about the grubs, but that's just parochialism, and he's trying not to show his uneasiness. Don't blow it, he thinks. I have to be okay with this. | Jade is over the moon to have her friends over. She's trying desperately to be a good hostess, and has put together, with Feferi's help, some favorite foods for them to roast over the flames – puffed gelatin sweets, sliced pineapple and jackfruit and watermelon, calamari, halloumi cheese, and fresh witchetty grubs. She enjoys mixing and matching the sweet and savory, chatting up a storm, and throwing bits of roasted morsels to the First Guardian lying nearby. I wish this night could last forever, she thinks. |
You'd think your reasons would be obvious. You're trying to help them bond, encourage them to work together. Sburb won't be successful if its players are a bunch of strangers. Everything you've been doing is in service to the Game.
That includes monitoring your fellow gods, whom you can keep track of just as you can mortals. Right now:
There's a lot going on. There always is.
Anyway, the Game. And its players, young humans, laughing at each other's jokes and getting bits of marshmallow everywhere. None boast innate psychic powers. None of them have had to care for monsters that, in turn, cared for them. None of them have ever killed another human.
| John is excited to tell Rose about Dave's surrealist comic, as if she hadn't heard of it already. | Rose already knows about the comic, and enjoys it, but is playing ignorant just to hear John's excitement. | Dave is exaggerating his creative prowess of image manipulation – and trying, desperately, to come off as ironic. | Jade is thinking of referential jokes she can drop, to show that of course she reads Dave's comic. |
At first, you planned so carefully to mold them, like you molded the Earth, as they matured, but something went sideways, didn't it? They aren't nearly cutthroat enough, not by half.
| John dares Dave to try a grub. | Rose wonders whether Jade has ever questioned – let alone defied – the gods. | Dave dares John right back. | Jade lets the First Guardian lick melted candy off her fingers. |
And you. You've grown soft too, haven't you?