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Queen Gale Glory
820864
https://tgchan.org/kusaba/questdis/res/122616.html#123310
>Tell golem to go sit on the dais
The golem is reluctant to let go, but the stranger is repellant enough to convince er to shuffle over to the dais. Legs freed, you stand up, stretch out, and get down to brass tacks.
>Why am I different? From you? From the other golem?
“Ah, right!” the stranger straightens up, and you brace for an incoming lecture, “Do excuse me, I’ve not myself initiated anyone before, but…”
“You’ve some notion already; for one, you’re not prone to arbitrary hysterics and histrionics. You’re complete. Well, moreso than they,” the stranger says, shrugging es shoulders to indicate the Valley’s residents, “You’ve still all your particles. And marbles. But you’ve not, uh, ‘the finishing touch.’ You’ll want to see Wayland for that. He prefers to sign us personally, is what I think.”
“But these things, they’re lost. Forgotten, never again to be found. Best they’ve to hope for is be reduced to their dust and put into something useful. In the meanwhile, here they wallow, in the Valley of their birth.”
The affectionate golem, who’d been absentmindedly kicking es legs over the edge of the dais, holds erself and hunches over.
>What’s with “E” and “es”?
“That’s what we call ourselves, instead of ‘he’ and ‘she,’ and so on…” the stranger says, “We’re people, right? So you’d not say about me, ‘It is a strikingly wise creature!’ But nor are we men nor women. Witness!”
The stranger indicates es groin. Sure enough you witness only silky fur, and nothing but.
“That’s an obscene gesture amongst humans, you know. Anyway, this point where the legs meet is somehow related to why they call each other, ‘he,’ and ‘she.’ But they’ve not words for one who’s neither! They just use, ‘they,’ even to refer to one person.”
“So the first golems conceived of words all our own. You simply drop the start of the original words: ‘she’ is now ‘E’; ‘his’ is now ‘es’; ‘her’ is ‘er’… you understand, right?”
“By the way, what would be my name?” the stranger asks, “You’ve not even painted your face yet, so ‘twould be unfair for me to name you right now.”
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