“...Sure,” Louise said. “Whatever I need to know. We have time, right? This could save Titania time, since she was going to train me, and it is true I would rather not walk around in my nightgown.”
After she said that, Desmond reached behind his back, and when his hands came into Jeremiah and Louise’s view again, they were holding a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. The trio decided to walk to a flatter, shorter boulder in the area so that Louise could use that as a drawing surface. She got down on her knees, set the materials she would use in front of her, and then steadily began to draw.
The first thing she knew was that she would use Anthill Animations’ art style for her full-body portrait. She was not very good at drawing realistically, so she figured that if she wanted a good idea for how she wanted to visualize herself, it should be in a form that she could make look good on paper. After she finished her outlines, she sketched in long pants, simplistic shoes, and her favorite knitted coat on herself, among other features, and when she finished her drawing, she held it up and was pleased with how it looked. Yes, she thought, this is absolutely how I would appear in one of Jeremiah’s cartoons! She imagined her cartoon self walking by Jeremiah’s side in a painted forest, and suddenly, the same kind of warmth she felt when she underwent the bearing procedure with Titania grew inside her and enveloped her. This warmth lasted for about five seconds, then as quickly as it began, it subsided.
She looked at her drawing again; she noticed that her hands on her own body looked different than they did just a little moment ago. She took a closer look at her right hand and found that it only had four fingers instead of five, and her skin was so smooth that there were not even creases on her palms. She stood up, looked down, and saw that she was wearing the outfit she had drawn, but her shoes were much more round than the pair she had worn outside the Dust Realm. She turned around to see her friends, and they both were gawking at her in amazement.
“Louise!” Jeremiah said. “Ya look more like me now! Oh, joy!”
Desmond chuckled. “I’ll be! It’s like you have transformed into a cartoon character, Louise,” he said. “I was not aware that such a thing could happen.”
Louise held up her drawing so that her friends could see it. “Do I look just like this? But in color?” she asked.
Desmond and Jeremiah both nodded. “Oh, yes, you do,” Desmond said. “And you know what? It suits you.”
Louise’s mind began to race. She wondered to what extent she had become like a cartoon. She remembered all the slapstick gags she had seen in Anthill’s cartoons: Farmer Rancher could jump very high in the air when he was agitated. Little Rat Scrappy could lift things much heavier than himself, including frying pans and flower vases, to protect himself from his enemies. Then there was Mothman, who could morph his body into different sizes and shapes practically however and whenever he wished. And there was no need to get started on the various characters’ abilities to survive many dangerous things like dynamite, avalanches, bear attacks, gun shots, and falls from high places.
“Jeremiah? If I look more like you now, could it be that I AM more like you now? Could I do anything you could do now?” Louise asked.
Jeremiah shrugged. “Potentially,” he said. “Ya’d just have ta learn how, ya know.”
“Right,” she said. She gestured at herself. “With this done,” she added, “we can now go find out what is weighing Desmond down.” She chuckled. She suddenly felt lighter and a little more energetic than she usually did.
“Yeah. Let’s go,” Desmond said, more chipper now than he was before. The three set off in a different direction than the one Louise or Desmond came from, and they trekked through flowery fields and around mounds of rock until they came across an especially odd-looking stone formation: it was shaped like a curved arch, and moss grew only on its sides in long, dangling strands. The stone arch was smooth, and its slopes were low enough for people to walk on it. Jeremiah tilted his head when he saw this stone arch, and he quickly bounded over to stand on top of the arch. He looked in a few directions, then he shouted a triumphant “AH-HAH!” He bounded back over to Desmond and Louise, who had stopped walking to watch the jackalope.
“I found a clue!” Jeremiah said to his human pals. He gave his direct attention to Desmond, then said to him, “Ya didn’t tell me you were married! Who’s your wife? Do they know about the Yarzemme?”
“...Excuse me? My wife?” Desmond responded.
“Yeah! Your nudedyu!” Jeremiah pointed at the arch while still staring at Desmond. “That big stone arch over there is actually a linking bridge! A tsute-taro! It leads to someone else’s soul, your special someone’s soul! How is your relationship with your wife, Desmond?”
Desmond looked very uneased at this point. After a pause, he said, “Jeremiah, I have no wife. I have never married anybody in my life.”
Jeremiah now looked concerned. “Why is there a linking bridge in your soul-terrain, then?” he asked.
Desmond rubbed the back of his head. “It never occurred to me that that boulder could be a soul-bridge, Jeremiah. To be honest with you, I do not know much about those sorts of things. Can you tell me about how a bridge like that forms, Jeremiah?”
Jeremiah nodded. “Linking bridges manifest in two soul terrains at once when two human selves become linked. If we cross the bridge over there, it will look like a different bridge in the other soul-terrain, but I’d assure you it would be the same bridge in the other terrain as it is in this one. It is one bridge with two forms. And in case ya didn’t know…” Now Jeremiah looked more cross. “Since humans are rather ignorant about this kind of matter these days, two selves, and two souls by extension, become linked right when they begin sex. Ya oughta know these kinds of things when you’re associated with the Dust Realm and you are seekin’ a spouse.”
Desmond was shocked, and Louise also shocked because she had not expected Jeremiah to ever talk about such things. Anthill Animation’s productions were supposed to be suitable for all audiences to watch. Then again, Jeremiah of the Dust Realm had proved to be different in some ways than the animated Jeremiah was so far. Who knew what else would come out of the jackalope’s mouth?
On the other hand, Desmond became upset after his period of shock ended. Louise turned her attention to Desmond, who was looking down. After a little moment, Desmond said out loud, but partly to himself, “I… Am linked… To a woman I’m not married to.”
Louise and Jeremiah were both shocked to hear that. “You’re WHAT?” Jeremiah asked Desmond with a raised voice.
Desmond straightened his posture and fixed his gaze on Jeremiah. “Her name is Valorie Summers,” Desmond said solemnly. “She is someone I work with at Louise’s studio. We have known each other at more than a surface level for a few years now, and she isn’t the most pleasant person to interact with, but…” He closed his eyes and calmed down a little bit. “I became special to her. And there is something about her that makes me feel… alright. I love her, but she knows nothing about the Dust Realm, and maybe that is why Lord Roberis refuses to help me these days. Perhaps he saw the soul-bridge, found that meant I was tethered to someone outside the Coalition, and became upset at me. To be fair, though, nobody warned me that this would happen if I did what I did.”
Jeremiah, with arms crossed and a tapping foot, said to Desmond, “Ya may not have gone through a ceremony with this woman, but like it or not, you are essentially married ta her forever now, ‘til death do ya two apart. Understand?”
Desmond just stared at Jeremiah. He seemed unsure of how to respond, yet his eyes glistened with sorrow. Noticing this, Louise decided to gently say to Jeremiah, “Hey, I think you shouldn’t be so hard on Desmond. It may be common sense to you, but it isn’t common sense to us humans, among other things. I did not know that this kind of thing could happen to people. Most of us do not have that kind of knowledge. We have ‘learnin’ ta do,’ after all.” She couldn’t help but smile when she said that last sentence.
Jeremiah immediately softened his face and held his hands together in front of his chest. “Right,” he said. “Pardon me. These times are different from the ones the lords knew, so of course my common sense is not yours.” Then he looked a little sad. “All of your old knowledge is fading away as ya all acquire new knowledge…”
“Oh! No, it can’t be that,” Louise said. “Not just that. It must be… Um… Well, as we allow certain things to exist, we disallow other things to exist. If we cannot see it in a test tube, we presume that we cannot see it at all, and we only believe in what we see with our bare eyes and feel on our skin. I, myself, am not sure if there is anything more than what I saw in, ah, my world, in my own world, and I used to think it was more likely that there wasn't, but now… Well, there is this whole other world here with its own laws of nature, and that is that. So it is not that old knowledge is getting replaced with new knowledge, it is that, to be frank, tradition is getting usurped by science, and in the process, less and less people in future generations get to know the old knowledge that turns out to be useful.”
Jeremiah nodded. “Thank ya for bein’ willin’ ta learn, both of ya,” he said. “I appreciate that.” Then he snapped back to his usual upbeat attitude with a vigorous shake of his head. “But we must get back to the current issue. We now know that part of what makes this soul-terrain a heavy one, what with all the boulders, is the influence of another soul. With the marriage bond comes implied permission from the spouse ta let their soul-terrain be explored, so I would like for us ta go there, see the nature of this person, so to speak, and then I can see if Desmond is a proper partner for our cause or not, ‘cuz if this other person is not so pleasant, Desmond would be incapable of giving his all in battle, what with his self-force being occupied by Roberis and this other human.”
“Wait, what?” Louise said. “The self-force of Desmond is ‘occupied’ by that Dust lord and… HER?”
Jeremiah nodded. “Soul-linking is much like Bearing, ya two. Whoever links their soul to another person’s soul gets to share their zaizia with the spouse, and the spouse gets to share their zaizia with, well, their spouse. Their magic becomes one.” He expressed concern. “Ya may be familiar with the concept of a ‘draining relationship.’ This is a literal thing in the Yarzemme. It happens when a person takes and takes, but never gives back…”
Desmond suddenly flinched as if he had a great thought. “That’s it,” he said while he stared into the distance. “That’s why I have not felt completely satisfied with our relationship. My relationship with my figurative spouse, that is. I’ve done more for her than she has done for me, and I do not recall the last time she has done anything for me besides, well, grant me her own kind of comfort.” Once again, he became saddened. “I do love her, though. She knows nothing about the Dust Realm, and I do not wish to tell her anything. I have remained with her because I feel that she loves me, too. She’s just not very good at expressing her love for me, I suspect.”
“If she loves you at all, that is,” Jeremiah said matter-of-factly, “which we can figure out if we enter her soul-terrain.”
“Wouldn’t it be… invasive if the three of us entered Valorie’s soul-terrain without advance notice?” Louise asked Jeremiah.
Jeremiah cocked his head at Louise. “She would have brought this upon herself,” Jeremiah said. “By having sex with Desmond, who is affiliated with the Dust Realm, she has opened herself up to the influences of other Dustities and their activities, whether she would like that or not. Ya can stay out of her soul-terrain, if that is what you would rather do, but I must carry out this investigation because whatever the character of this woman is like WILL influence the strength of Desmond’s character, for better or for worse, and if it is for worse, he should not come with us ta battle Oberon and others who are like him.”
“Or I can just tell you what Valorie is like, since she is my co-worker,” Louise said, who was bothered once again by how not kid-appropriately Jeremiah spoke. “She does seem pretty full of herself, if her newspaper interviews have anything to show about her. I heard that she can be prickly with other Heads in our studio and that she teases people, but we put up with her because she is a famous actress and she has become indispensable to Anthill Animations… Um, Summers is her maiden name, right?
“Right,” Desmond said to Louise. “She is also not married. We have not discussed marriage yet, nor would we think we should become fiances, since that might get frowned upon by Tim Miller. My job position is above hers, you know, but that has not stopped us, nor do I think this revelation would stop us. What would be the use? The damage has been done. Roberis may not favor me anymore because the damage itself may be sapping away my self-force. I see now what I need to do to make things better between me and Roberis, but can I do it?”
“...Do what?” Louise asked Desmond.
“Have my lover give more than she takes,” Desmond responded.
Jeremiah and Louise were silent for a moment, then Louise said to the jackalope, “I know it is important that we get to know more about… Valorie before we take Desmond with us, and it would be very awkward to ask Valorie about any of this or anything to do with it in the world I came from, so while it may be an invasion of privacy to look into Valorie’s soul-terrain, I’d say that Desmond has the right to do it anyway as Valorie’s figurative spouse, and I would have to be told what is over there, anyway, but then again, being told about what is there may not be as bad as going there myself… I wouldn’t know the etiquette. I’d say I would be bothered if strangers came into my soul-terrain, so… Jeremiah, you can go with Desmond over the soul-bridge, and I shall wait right beside it as you perform your investigation. Does that sound good to you?”
Jeremiah nodded. “That could work out,” he said. So Louise sat down in the grass while Desmond and Jeremiah headed to the right side of the bridge in their point of view, and Louise watched them cross it. The pair gradually turned invisible after they passed the middle of the bridge and were completely out of Louise’s view by the time the pair finished crossing.
