The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually

[Philomena]

Summer 37, 470
MacLinny's Tavern, University District, Zeltiva
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Minnie arrived, and the tavern was not yet opened.

"Well, Mussy Lefting, you seem ter be excited, eh?"

Minnie started and looked hard at the tavern-man, "You recognize me?"

"Aye, sure. You come 'ere, usually, on Chattery Nights. Usually alone. Sometimes with Mussy Capinsal, who ne'er comes orterwise. You're summit wid th'university, and gave a lecture at the last Kena-Wright day, eh?"

"I didn't think… people even noticed…"

The man snorted, laughed, "Well, you're also a fine tipper, Mussy. You're 'ere after this Djedless Magician, eh?"

"Yessir!"

"I've nary idea how I ended up getting her, ter be honest. She showed me a few things, what fairly made me hairs stand on end! She orter be performing a' greater halls than this, wit' drunk students and floozies."

Minnie smiled, and shook her head, but blushed.

"Yer goner be wantin' summat for dinner?"

"Sure, maybe --"

"-- kelp fritters. I know. Be right up, I dunny have time for a fancy0plate, but some kelp fritters I can threw on while I prep the house, you know."

"Thank you."

She took a seat right up by the front, though off to the corner a bit, shy of being too close, too visible. MacLinny's did not even, per se, have a stage. Instead, the tables had just been crowded out of there corner closest to the hearth. The place, if it was a popular show, would turn into sweatier than a Loveless bed at a high summer swelter, for the crowd would huddle in a great mass towards this corner. Minnie had seen it so just a few weeks earlier, when a student of dance had performed something she said was patterned after a Ben'shira style, that involved her slowly, sinuously removing a series of veils that, to be blunt, had no other clothing underneath them. Noone had particularly been impressed with the accuracy of her research into the Ben'shira, who knew, but more than one person had been, clearly, impressed with what was underneath the veils. The Wave Guard, in the end, had been called in, which just turned it, for most of the guests, from a good show, to a jolly romp.

Minnie sat quietly for a few minutes, then finally took her wax tablet out, and a book on Abura. She was taking slow, careful notes on the shape of the harbor there.

"Oh, that's terribly wrong, I'm afraid."

The woman who had addressed her stood leaning against the back of Minnie's own chair. Minnie squealed and leapt, "What?"

"Abura, the harbor, it doesn't look like that. I've been there."

She turned half 'round. "You have… but… Captain Wright mapped it herself! I can't imagine…"

"Oh, I imagine he was right, more or less."

"What?"

"Captain Wright," a slight pause, "erm… she was right, more or less. I'm sure that, to be frank, she mapped it as accurately as possible. As it appeared to her."

"But then, this is what it looks!"

"No, no!"

"Has it changed?"

"No more than normal."

"Well, then it should be like this!"

"For the captain, sure."

"What do you mean?"

"Abura, the bay, the Akvatari there, they say that, a thousand years ago, the Akvatari came to their island, and there was no harbor. So one of them built the harbor, you know."

"Built it?"

Minnie was lost now, hopelessly caught in the second woman's speech. She was not a classical beauty by any means, but the exotic flatness of her face stretched over a delicate bonyness, the slightly off centered ness of her Almond milk eyes, and the taut energy of her small lipped mouth, gave her a certain cat-like prettiness that's imperfections entranced the eye, the slight dissonances of her appearance teasing the eye to try to work them out.

These features would have made her interesting - "worth a foreword glance and a sternward ogle" as the sailors might term it. But what made her truly shine, rather, was the effervescence she imbued into that body. She told stories almost like a dancer, a certain grace of feature, and expressiveness in the quick, darting gesticulations of her hands, her neck, her shoulders, and her mobile, quirking, rolling, puckering, smiling lips. The whole of the package fascinated, caught the eye, and lender a power to the woman's obvious gifts as a storyteller. Minnie had shut her tablet, and pushed a chair out for the woman, in a timidly inviting way. The woman circled round the table, courted and flirted with the chair, but did not sit.

"Indeed! The arms of the bay were not there, once, you know? There are some philosophers who would say they still are not. There was a mage and storyteller amongst the Akvatari, a woman named Sonsenen, who walked down to the shore, and a spun a web of magical force so thick and strong that it buzzed in the air. And she took the little group of her people, and she spun a story, her words so convincing, a story of the bay so rich and strong and true, that by the end, there the bay was!

Only, of course, it was only a story, the bay, and so everyone saw it just a bit differently, the way you imagine a character in a story. I may say, you know, 'Her auburn hair was like drops of sunlight filtered through the autumn leaves', and you might see it smooth like running water, and I may see it wild like fire and light, you know? That was just how the bay was, and just how it is today.

So your captain, she probably saw it just the way you drew it. When I saw it, I had… been sailing for three weeks through a horrible storm around the Desert Lands, a sirocco wind blowing my ship in… but I'm boring you!"

Indeed she wasn't, and a part of Minnie's mind - not with any particular cynicism, just with the interest of an academic - was fairly sure the woman KNEW she wasn't boring her, knew, in fact that Minnie was utterly rapt. This was the same part of her mind that mentioned quietly to the forebrain that this story was clearly utter cockabilly. Her forebrain shrugged back. In some sense, it didn't matter. It was a wonderful memory, false or not, and Minnie wrapped it up tightly in her mind to write down later.

"Nae, naught! What were the bay for you, then?"

"Well… if you insist…"

"I do."

"Well, when I came, the bay… had two broad arms like the boards of a book, with slender, rounded beaches, like a flesh of pages on each side."

Minnie frowned slightly. There was a fine line, she felt, between storytelling and manipulation, and Minnie began to grow suspicious the line was being crossed, that being a fairly obvious 'tell', from her own life. There is a difference between a story told as a gift to the listener, and one told to jerk the listener around. She began to suspect. This woman, perhaps, wanted something. In the abstract, perhaps, Minnie could have an intellectual argument that a story is a story, whatever the purpose of the story is. But at the gut level? Minnie's voice retracted, subconsciously, as she grew more cautious, her back straightened slightly.

"Ah. Peculiar."

The other woman frowned, a moment, then bloomed into a rueful, self-deprecating grin, and a slight shrug, "Well. Maybe not just like that." She plopped into the chair without an invitation, "I'm Nini, a pleasure to meet you. You're a doc?"

Minnie frowned, but softened a bit. The woman retracted, at least. Minnie remained tentative, but not colder than necessary, "Dr. Lefting, Department of Literature. You are… here for the show?"

The woman smiled, a queer little smile, "Oh, yes, certainly, and you?"

"Indeed. Its a strange idea, I hope it's good?"

"Indeed. You never know with these itinerant performers. Sometimes they're awful."

"You go to the shows often, then, Ms Nini? I've not seen you before."

"Maybe you just don't remember me."

"Oh no! I'd remember you!" the words popped out perhaps a TOUCH too fervently. Minnie blushed.

The woman smirked, and laughed, "Never be embarrassed to pay a compliment, I'm touched. You are a professor? Perhaps you just run in higher circles than me, I'm nobody special." There was a subtle slyness to the words.

Minnie didn't pick up on it, never the most observant when she's fascinated, "Oh, I doubt it. I love the gallery at the Theatre, and the little tavern shows, like this. Street theatre. Chanteuserie. Even Chattery. I have low taste, I guess."

"Or Djedless Magicians!"

"Or that!" Minnie laughed.

"How do you know, though?"

"Know what?"

"I mean, how do you think they can tell? If she's using magic, I mean, like, real magic."

"I heard she wears a djed shackle. And I know some of the students with an eye for Auristics will come, try to out her at a trick, you know."

"Ah! That'd be a lark if they saw through it, wouldn't it?"

"Hmm? You mean, like if they caught her cheating?"

"Indeed!"

Minnie shrugged, "Maybe… I'd rather she succeed. You know?"

"What do you mean?"

Minnie shrugged, "I dunno… I'm a literature professor, I'll bore you with my answer." She laughed, through her nasally voice.

"No, no! Come, don't be a tease!"

"Well… I dunno… I guess… well, I mean, its a trick, right? Either its magic, or its something she's doing that looks like magic, and… I dunno. I suppose… I mean, its like the rest of us. Like everyone does that, don't they? Conjuring a version of themselves up for an audience. I like the idea of her succeeding. I like the idea that one can be extraordinary simply by trying very hard, if that makes sense. Its like fiction - if it makes you believe, that means its better. If you see through it… well, then its sad. You feel sorry. You wish you could fix it."

"Like illusions."

"Sure… I suppose. I hadn't thought of it that way. If you believe a thing, if a thing presents itself so truthfully that you cannot tell it is an illusion, then… well, the memory of it is just as real as if it had not been an illusion. Illusion isn't less than fact, then, it just take skill. Fact only takes luck to have on your side. Illusion takes a gift, I guess. I've never had it."

The woman smiled, shrugged. Minnie's kelp fritters arrived at the table. The other woman frowned, reaching down into her own bag as the old tavern-man delivered the food. She came back up once he was gone, with a meat pie in her hand.

"Those are kelp, hmm?"

"Indeed."

"Is it good?"

Minnie frowned. It was funny, the question, at some level… she'd never really thought about it. They were familiar. They were simple.

"I suppose so. You are not from here?"

Nini laughed, "Oh, I've just never had it frittered."

"You're welcome… to try one?"

Nini reached a slender hand, and took the nearest and bit it. She frowned, chewing it slowly. "Greasy."

"When I…" Minnie stopped. She'd been about to tell about being a girl. About the way kelp fritters were there third-day dinner, the richest of the week, how they'd fought over who got to lick the oily drippings out of the bottom of the serving bowls. Of how Lanie would snitch them and stuff them down her shirt, and Minnie would laugh at her and call her Fritterteats. How Lanie would laugh and strut about the streets playing at being a trollop.

But she didn't. She wouldn't. She never told those stories. Ever. And the fact that she almost had shocked her, made her feel almost sick.

Nini frowned, "You alright, doc?"

"I… yes, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm fine. Yes. Greasy. Yes."

Nini frowned, thoughtfully, looking at Minnie in a way that made Minnie uncomfortable. The crowd was beginning to filter in by now, and this slowed their conversation naturally, for this was a college crowd, and not at all quiet. They larked about, there was pinching of buttocks, shouts and jokes, catcalls, orders of kelp beer and cakes. The shuffling of tables.

"Have to love students, eh Doc?" Nini said ruefully.

"Oh yes, of course!" Minnie missed the emotional cue, for she was watching the crowd intently, "Yes, you do…" Minnie hated and loved students all at once - no not hated. Never hated. Was frightened of them, perhaps, frustrated by them. But never really hated.

"Well, raucous anyway. Hopefully this magician is good."

"I hope so. The crowd is getting bigger than I thought."

The time grew closer. Minnie ordered her new acquaintance a drink to be polite. She refused it, and it sat, forlornly between them - Minnie never drank anything stronger than tea. Finally, the tavern man threaded through the crowd - this was the sign. The crowd grew tight around the empty space, and hoots and catcalls grew as thick as butter-fat. One man, unceremoniously took the forlorn beer, drank it and sat on top of Minnie's table.

"Gentlemen! Ladies!"

The tavern-man spoke, and the crowd quieted.

"Friends, ye dinny come 'ere to hear me yab. you come 'ere for a show, eh?"

The crowd hotted and whooped.

"Right, 'en! Now, there ain't ter be no trouble, and no touching, so I won't ave nae breaking o'er the line! Right then. I present ter you, the fabulous and talented Djedless Magician: The Great Mezzanine!"

Nini smiled, and leaned over by Minnie's ear, "Yes, well, that's my cue, I hope you'll excuse me, doc."

And she stood, and walked toward the the center of the empty stage. Minnies eyes went wide, and she blushed. Her? All this time?x

[Philomena]

To say that the platform was a stage would be an exaggeration, after all, and in the end, the whole affair had something of the feeling of an intimate salon, only filled with half drunken students instead of stuffy academics. The crowd stamped their feet.

Nini rose, and stepped in front of the students, dressed in the unremarkable clothes she had chatted with Minnie in: a pair of simple cotton trousers, and a white blouse, "Zeltivans! Children of the sea and the mind… and… University students mostly, right?"

The crowd in the stupid way of crowds hooted their approval at being mentioned. Minnie frowned, still unsure of whether she was startled, offended, or hurt. Or embarrassed, perhaps. She gnawed on her words of the morning, trying to discern the possibility that she may have said something offensive.

"Worshippers of Knowledge. Truth. Logic. Is that what your professors teach you? Truth. The one true thing, the fact, hmm?"

She grinned a cat-in-the-butter smile, almost wicked if it were not so charming.

"My dears, I am here to upend all that."

"Put the shackles on! Put the shackles on!" this from the man sitting on Minnie's tables, with a lascivious grin.

Minnie mused thoughtfully. The woman was peculiar to watch, this Nini. She was distinctive, unusual. Graceful. All these things Minnie had noted when she say with the woman. She had meant it hone she said that she would have remembered her in a stage performance. But performing! She changed, the grace intensifying into a whirling charm. Minnie watched her with the subtle appreciation of one fascinated by, but incapable of physical attraction. It was subtle, but very real - the woman had a control over her own physicality that augmented her movements. In a way, it was very like storytelling. She leaned back and forth, not simply conveying beauty - but a very specific sort of beauty, coy and playful, and childlike - the coquette, in her way. But, without the veneer of attraction the pfoessionalism of this was both clear and impressive, weaving a subtle prologue. Laying out the character: Mezzanine, the queer and whimsical foreign creature. Love me, love me, do not take me seriously.

"Shackles! Oh, my friend…" she pouted her lip just slightly, and dropped her brow only a fraction of a millimeter, flexing just one, just a single one of the muscles of cheek that would suggest a smile. Just the slightest reminder that she was only teasing. She wagged a long, pale finger, the nail a fiery shade of painted red, "Shackles? Not on our first date!"

The crowd hooted and roared. Minnie found herself wondering if the show would change if the audience differed. The gesticulations, the sauciness and flirtatiousness combined with a sense of smallness and delicacy appealed so precisely a group of half-intoxicated, love-drunk college students, it seemed like a study. She would have made a good storyteller, indeed. Minnie's mind wandered wondering how she would act if she did a show for the professors.

Nini set her blue-painted fingernails to her hips. Minnie started, and found her voice shouting in a nasal squeak, "They were red!"

Nini cocked a head, and turned to face the professor, with a queer half-grin, "Oh, you do not like blue?" She balled her hands up, and uncurled them and they were red again, "I do apologize, my good doctor."

Minnie bushed, and stared, stammered a bit, "Oh, I… no, the blue is… I don't prefer the red…"

The crowd laughed at Minnie, and clapped approval at the trick of the paint. Nini smiled, and nodded, "Yes, yes, of course, of course not, you… are a Qalayan, perhaps? A different blue, something more like your lady's eyes?"

She balled the left hand up agin, stepping to Minnie's table, to bow - incidentally, the analytical part of Minnie's mind noticed, revealing just the subtle curvature of her breasts to the students that gathered in to see. She uncurled the fingers, one by one on her left hand, and the turned to a shining, pearly-pale blue… deep, deep, and beautiful, if a touch pale.

"But… that is a bit light, hmm…" and the woman flexed her knuckles in a slow sinuous wave, the color deepening, richening as Minnie stared, then looked up, her mouth slightly open.

"Magic." Minnie murmured

Nini laughed, and stood arching her back just slightly to make her belly appear more slender, her chest a little flatter and younger - looking more closely now, Minnie noticed the woman was older than she presented herself, giving the air of being just more than a child, but the finer lines of her muscles in her neck, the way her powder lay upon the corners of her eyes, belying perhaps a subtle deception in this.

"Magic? Perhaps, perhaps, but not the sort you are thinking my friends."

She turned back to the crowd, "Yes, we'd best get that out of the way quickly. Is there an Aurist here, this evening? An Aurist, an Aurist… this is a university town, there must be one!"

"Rowan! Old Man Rowan!" The call came up from several voices in the crowd, and a man was pushed toward the front, begrudgingly, a small, quiet-faced man, with heavy wide eyes, and a good, square, Zeltivan physiognomy. Minnie recognized him, vaguely. An East Wing student.

"Rowan! Rowan! Come on, catch her at it, old man!"

Nini smiled, just a quirk of her lips, and and her eyes narrowed just slightly, just the shadow of a hair.

"Rowan, hmm? Rowan. Tell, me, Mr. Rowan, you are an aurist?"

The man spoke very softly, the habitual softness of the serious scholar. Minnie liked him for that, and found herself smiling at him encouragingly, in a slightly motherly way.

"I am something of an Aurist, yes, Ms Mezzanine."

"Do call me Mezza, the whole name sounds so formal! Now… yes, lets get this out of the way. You shall check me. You shall be able to see if I am using some form of magic, no?"

He nodded modestly, "Unless you are a master of hiding it, I believe I should likely sense something."

"And have you seen anything so far, friend?"

"No, indeed, but I was, perhaps not looking."

The crowd laughed and roared, and Nini pouted prettily, "I have bored the young gentleman! Very well, don't let me keep you, then!"

HE stammered, and blushed, "Oh, no, I only mean… yes… never mind."

She grinned and smiled, "Let us start simply then. A 'shackle' as your friend so coarsely put it…"

Mezza reached into her shirt, and reached about, making quite a show of looking around her shirt, as the crowd laughed and shouted.

"Take it off!" one fellow bellowed, "Make it easier to look about yourself, 'en!"

A fresh gale of laughter approached. But Nini made a playfully naive face.

"Off? What… an ingenious idea…"

And she began undoing the buttons, slowly, smiling blithely, and looking at no one in particular. The crowd went wild catcalling, and hooting. The old bartender looked on nervously - this was a university establishment, and perhaps not entirely respectable, but it wasn't a place for nudie-shows either, and he wouldn't have it. In the true art of one who knows how to duo a shirt well, Nini kept the blouse buttons close to their holes, revealing, now and then, just a flash of bare skin beneath, just the palest hint at flesh. She reached the last button, and with a flourish tossed it off her shoulders, revealing a red blouse, impossibly crisp and well-ironed, with a neck collar a little higher than the discarded white blouse had been. Overtop hung a slender silver chain, with a pendant on the end - an ornate inverted triangle with a red stone embedded in the center. The sheer logistics of the maneuver confused Minnie - if the shirt had been underneath the other, hhow had she not seen it when the woman bent over showing her her bust? And how exactly had the high collar fit inside the low one? She had just watched the shirt falling, abut somehow couldn't quite discern even the visual of it. It was as if it simply was not there… and then was.

The crowd struggled between disappointment and being abjectly impressed. Ninie waited for a lull and said, "Yes, thank your for the suggestion, here it was, all the time."

And she took the chain from off her neck, handing the pendant, forward, "Mr. Rowan, will you take this?"

Rowan took it in his hand, his face as red as the magician's shirt. He held the pendant only a moment, however, before dropping it in shock, "My djed! It's draining me!"

She laughed, softly, "First time with a shackle, darling?" she leaned forward half-purring the words playfully, "The first time in shackles is always a special even in a boys life."

The crowd laughed and clapped, perhaps as much for the woman bending over to pick it up again as for the little repartee. She lid it back around her neck.

"But, we are getting distracted, Mr. Rowan - you'll accept, this is a real shackle?"

"Y… yes."

She nodded triumphantly, and placed it back around her neck, then lifted her fingernails to her lips, looking playfully at Minnie. She licked each one, one by one, and the polish on them was gone, they were left clean and natural and clear. Then turned, with a smirk to Rowan, "Anything strange?"

Rowan frowned hard, cogitating, in silence a moment. Minnie assumed he was doing some sort of magic, though her handles on the specifics were weak. Clearly, something related to sensing other magics. Or something. Finally he spoke, again.

"No… personal magic, no… not that I can see."

The crowd clapped with applause. She smiled cat-grinned, and bowed to the audience. Rowan still frowned. As the crowd grew quiet he piped in, "Divine Magic."

The crowd grew still. Intriguing.

"But then... If I had some divine magic, how would you know?"

He frowned, "Well… with a great deal more advanced aurist, perhaps. As it stands… just the mark."

She smiled coyly, made a step closer, "Yes, there is that, isn't there? Even if I were marked with the Goddess of Illusions, I could not really cover up my own mark, now could I?"

He frowns, backs up just slightly, "No… no, to my understanding… no…"

"But then…" she stepped very close, now, so close she bent herself to the retreating curve of his chest, just an inch between the two of them. "Then, you would have to examine… all the places a mark might be on my… skin… hmm?"

Rowan blushed a red that spoke of an impending aneurysm from the force of blood flowing to his face, "I… I suppose, yes…"

She backed up suddenly, and made a shocked face, "I had heard the students could be eager, but you, sir, are a lecher! And in a public barroom!"

The crowd hollered and stomped their feet, laughing.

"Come on, lady!" one lass shouted, "Let us all check you at once! No tricks!" This started a new gale of laughter.

She looked with a playfully chiding face at the crowd. "No, no, no, no. It must be someone who is not distracted by my… feminine wiles." she winked.

The crowd roared its dismay at this, until one man shouted out, with a cruel humor, "Spinster Lefting! She can do it! She wouldn't look twice at a naked Ranuri!"
x

[Philomena]

Minnie blanched, pale. Of course she'd followed the show, closely, amused, and fascinated by how quickly the woman had taken the strings of this handsome, and seemingly intelligent young mage, had smiled and laughed even at the ribald laughs of the rest of the crowd. She had melted quietly into her spot. The story in the show, it was a good story. She had begun to feel that if, perhaps, she could watch it long enough she would understand, know how such a story is written, a story written with subtle gestures, clever ruses, and quirks of the lip and brow. What she did not expect was to be made a character.

Her reputation, however, clearly preceded and consumed her in this regard. The crowd knew her, recognized her as Minnie Lefting, the prudish old doctor of the West Wing, and nothing would make this whole dirty joke funnier after all than to ground it in their own dirty jokes. The crowd clapped and laughed looking at her, as she darted her eyes in search of an exit. A man behind her gripped the ladder-back of her chair, lifting it with a jerk, so that Minnie found herself stumbling forward onto the little stage itself, Nini wore a wide grin, but her eyes looked at Minnie with a sharp, frowning incisiveness, the look of a woman reevaluating a plan.

"Doctor… Lefting. Welcome to the stage!"

The crowd whooped and laughed at this.

"I trust this is your first experience as a performer.

Minnie opened her lips, cringing, her eyes ranging the crowd, but no sound came out. The crowd laughed again.

"Thassit!" cried a cruder boy, "Show the doctor your tits 'en!"

The crowd rumbled at this - the boy was breaking the rules! There is a subtle balance of energy in the flirtation between an individual and a crowd, a tension that must be maintained. It made a dangerous moment, because the moment the performance became simply titillation, rather than flirtation, it would likely fall apart, even in her terror, Minnie felt this, and felt more than this, that she was not interested in being on the stage if it turned into something crass. She looked up worriedly at Nini, who smiled bemusedly, the look one in a tight spot, but who has been in a tight spot before.

"A tablecloth? Master Hosteler." Nini intoned, then affected an artificial blush, "Rather a large one if you don't mind." She winked and the crowd laughed. The old barkeep was flustered now, and not sure he liked the tenor this was taking. Minnie blushed harder, and looked in a panic at him. Please. Get. The damn. Tablecloth. So I can sit back down. The barkeep began to raise a finger to object, and Minnie panicked. Over the back of a chair, one of women in the crowd had a laid a light, linen summer cloak. Minnie snatched it up, quickly - it was wide skirted, and long, and Minnie unfolded it, held it up in front of Nini - only the cloak had to be held wide, and she was so short, that the straight top-hem of the impromptu curtain she held up reached to just below the point of decency.

The crowd roared again. Nini's cat's-mouth grin crawled back over her small, white teeth. Things were under her control again now.

"My assistant, it would seem, will need a chair to stand upon?" she looked to Rowan, who was subtly trying to retreat back into the crowd, mortified. He nodded, though, obediently, and took a chair, trundling back to the front. Minnie scooted it forward to leave as little of a corner to hide from view as possible. This was insane. The thought crossed her mind just she stood atop the chair, holding the curtain up.

"Boo!" shouted the crowd, "Put the curtain lower again!"

Minnie, blushed, staring at the woman, who in a laughing business like way was now bending to unlace her boots. Minnie's own back stood exposed to the crowd, something the magician clearly picked up on as well.

"Strange birds you university students! A minute ago you would have given your eye teeth stare at a woman's arse, and I present you, now with Dr. Lefting's, and you all complain!"

The crowd roared at this, then cheered as two boots rose above the level of the curtain, pinched delicately in one of Nini's hands, to drop to the surface of the stage.

"Shoes? Laviku's Nuts, take off something better 'en that!" a voice followed.

Nini looked up at Minnie and winked - she already had her fingers at the catch of her skirt the wink of a fellow. Of a colluder. She dropped the skirt in a business like way, then lifted it to hang over the edge of the curtain. The crowd champed and pushed forward, Rowan pushing back one fellow who attempted playfully to lift a corner of the curtain with his foot. In response, Nini who had now removed her red blouse as well, poked bare shoulders out from one corner of the curtain, to look at Rowan, with playful gratitude, "Oh, my hero, protecting my dignity!"

Rowan looked at her pretty, bare shoulders perhaps… just a moment longer than was proper, and then turned away blushing.

After another moment - the woman had a remarkable speed in undressing that left Minnie a bit speechless, Nini looked up at Minnie, naked as a new-born gull, but for the silver djed shackle, now hanging… in a place Minnie quickly looked away from.

"Right then, Dr. Lefting? Can you see alright? Or shall we ask Mr. Rowan for help with the inspection?"

The crowd laughed, and Minnie blushed and stammered, "I'm fine."

"Any marks then?"

"No, ma'am,"

"Tut! That wasn't carefully enough. Look careful, you know. She capered slight behind the curtain through a variety of ridiculous poses, and Minnie wondered if the silhouette was visible through the thing linen. "Any marks?"

"Some… some freckles…"

The crowd laughed hard, "Where they at, Doc?"

Minnie turned beet red, and Nini, looking up winked at her.

"Right then, we're all satisfied?" As she spoke, Nini leaned against the back wall and fussed with her hair, and Minnie saw it - under a roll of her hair just at the base of her neck, tightly furled, and dyed just the color of her hair, and visible only for a flash - a little bundle of cloth. She frowned involuntarily, and Nini quirked into another feline grin, and winked, raising a conspiratorial finger to her lips.

"S-s-s-satisfied."

"Right, good, then!"

And before Minnie could protest, the woman's fingers took the linen with a quick jerk, and it fell. But just as it fell, a dress tumbled down around her body, somehow, from the little bundle. The whirl of the linen and the fall of the fabric, and a little haze of blue smoke that came with a poof as the dress began falling made it difficult for the eye to follow the exact mechanics, but… yes, one way or the other, Minnie had seen through a trick. She was half-proud, and half-disappointed.

The crowd was cheering its approval.

"A hand for my lovely assistant, Dr. Lefting, hmm, dears?"

The crowd cheered, and Nini took Minnie's hand and shook it good-humoredly, leaning forward to murmur in her ear.

"There, Dr. Lefting. Now you're part of the fiction, hmm? After all, even I'm not perfect without a bit of help."

And she winked.
x