#still working on a title for this fic but eh we'll get there when we get there it's turning out way way longer than I intended haha | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fenmere · 1 year

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Sunspot Coffee and Tea

Against our promise to avoid writing for a bit while recovering from a minor burnout, I wrote something here tonight. It might have been therapeutic to do so, honestly.

It's a coffee shop AU self insert crossover fanfic of Wildow's Otherverse and the Sunspot Chronicles, titled "Sunspot Coffee and Tea". It takes place on this Earth, though. Descriptions of Others, Practicioners, Aware, and the Seal are from the work of Wildbow, A.K.A. John C. McCrae, and belong to him. We reference them here with love, and no intentions to make any profit from them, even if we stretch their intended canonical possibilities a bit. References to everything else not of this Earth, including Ktletaccete, beshakete, and `etekeyerrinwuf, are of the Sunspot Chronicles and belong to us, the Inmara. All the characters are headmates and therefore real people.

The Black Drop was a real coffee shop that was really like that, and we miss it. A lot.

We'll probably put this up on AO3 later. No warnings are necessary for this fic. It's 6093 words, light, hopefully cute, and totally self indulgent:

In Tanasbourne, Hillsboro, Oregon, in one of the strip malls there, there used to be an Insomnia Cafe next to a brewpub.

It’s still a cafe. Of a sorts. It was bought out a couple years ago, however, and has a new name. It’s called Sunspot Coffee and Tea.

There are some interesting things about this cafe, not the least of which is that they don’t accept money. How they manage to stay functioning without actually doing business is a total mystery to all of their neighbors and patrons, but if you want any sort of drink or pastry there, all you have to do is walk up to the counter and ask for it. Of course, the pastries have to be available, and it’s first come first serve for them. But they produce them quickly enough that if they’re out of something, you just have to wait thirty minutes or so. At most.

Before it became the Sunspot, it was like most cafes of its sort, especially in that neighborhood, attracting working class people who had at least some decent income. And that part of Tanasbourne wasn’t really known for being accessible to the less fortunate.

However, after it became known what their new mode of “business” was, people in need would take the MAX and the bus from all around to get a free meal, and they were quite welcome.

The clientele changed quite quickly, and this created something of a controversy in the neighborhood. Theories sprang up and circulated when efforts to bring the law down on them failed utterly. Stories about the mafia, or even more unbelievable things. One of the stories is true.

Eventually, things settled down, and everyone got used to the new culture and routines that the Sunspot brought to Tanasbourne.

I happen to know exactly how that all played out and why, but I’m not telling. I’ve taken oaths. I’ll give you hints in this story, though, because I think I can get away with it, and it’s kinda fun.

In any case, it was under these circumstances in that cafe that I got to watch a connection made that I had never expected to see. One that may well lead to the kind of quiet, sweet partnership that causes the world to glow just a little brighter at the ambient level, without most people quite knowing the source.

Of course, it started during a day when Eh, our boss and Senior Captain, was working the counter.

I was sitting at a table with Gesedege and Gnargrim, enjoying a round of Brekken’s tea while slowly discussing the intersections of public relations and security for the shop. Which is to say that we mostly sat, quiet, watching steam rise from our drinks, looking around at the guests and just soaking up the joy of seeing people rest who might not otherwise get to. And then, occasionally, one of us would take a sip or say a word or two, and the other two would nod or take sips as well.

And a new person walked in. Someone we’d never seen before. And I could tell by the way they entered the shop, they hadn’t yet heard about who and what we were. They hadn’t got the story yet. They probably thought this was a typical coffee shop.

They put on a double layer of masks before entering, which was good. Largely unnecessary in the Sunspot, but with covid still running rampant in the rest of the world, despite all the propaganda suggesting otherwise, their N95 disposable under a metallic hot pink mermaid print etsy number was a really wise idea. And it certainly put most of our guests at ease, even though they weren’t wearing masks anymore themselves.

But there were some smirks as this person reached into the pocket of their navy blue sleeveless cloak to pull out their card purse as they navigated through the tables and easy chairs to the counter. The long, black feather in their wide brimmed black wool hat bobbed as they went, boots squeaking on the wood floor.

Eh smiled as they looked up from a drink they were preparing for someone else.

And it was at that eye contact that the person realized they’d walked into something different.

They probably hadn’t noticed the lack of a cash register or POS yet. They’d obviously missed the appearance of me and my compatriots, since they’d been absorbed in arranging their garments and fishing out their method of payment, and had glanced at the other guests. They’d just happened to look the other way as they passed our corner, which was right near the door.

If they’d seen us, they might have had the same reaction they were having at the sight of Eh.

Eh is tall. They tend to keep their height low enough that they don’t have to crouch while in the building, but their antlers will just miss scratching the ceiling when they straighten up from a task like decorating a mocha. Their tail has a tendency to fill the walkway from the kitchen to the front counter, and their wings will block the view of the front from the rest of the staff who are in the back. And through clever programming, they’ve managed to turn the outer skin of their body into a satiny dark purple that seems to be full of stars and nebulae and is somehow constantly rim lit, regardless of the actual lighting of their surroundings.

Most human beings, upon seeing that vision, will later describe it as having been like walking right into VRChat. Only, I’ve logged into VRChat, and nobody has yet been able to create an avatar of that detail and refinement.

“How may I help you?” Eh asked.

The newcomer looked around, clearly startled and worried, and caught the vision of Gnargrim, Gesedege, and myself holding our tea cups up in greeting.

If you look at my tumblr icon, you’ll know what I look like. I’m slightly smaller than Eh, and like to sit in my easy chair backward, resting arms and chin on the back.

Gnargrim, built like a cross between Eh and myself, also uses chairs in a similar way.

Gesedege, however, has taken to dressing like a human, and will stow their tail away in order to sit in a chair. But their muzzle, parabolic ears, and pair of horns tend to give away their origins as easily as Eh’s countenance.

Most new people at this point tend to freeze and gape, and it takes a certain amount of talking and coaching from the other guests to get them to relax and start to feel at home.

This person, however, scowled, brows knitting together above their mask, eyes squinting. They reached into their cloak to where a metal handled antique cane was hooked into an inside pocket and pulled it out with their right hand, clapping its point to the floor.

Gnargrim raised an eyebrow my direction.

We hadn’t seen this reaction before at all.

They whirled to speak to Eh, and asked, “Are we in the presence of Aware?” They lightly gestured at the other guests.

Eh opened their mouth for a moment, tongue and teeth glowing, pausing to think, before speaking, “Everyone here is aware of who we are, yes.”

The newcomer relaxed and bowed their head, then looked up and spoke more softly, “I’m sorry. My name is Anne. She/her. I’ve just moved down here from Washington, and didn’t realize a place like this was here. The Lord of Portland made no mention of the Sunspot, of course, but nobody else did either. I would have thought it would be recommended or warned about. Am I welcome here?”

Eh tilted their head, “Lord of Portland?”

Anne took a step back, and said, “Asterix. Right?”

Eh shook their head lightly, “I have never heard of them.”

“Him. How?” Anne corrected, then asked, tense. Then she shook herself out and stammered, “Sorry! Sorry. Please pardon my rudeness and short language. This feels like a very unusual situation and I’m finding it hard to mask.”

“You are wearing one,” Eh pointed out.

Anne looked around, then back at Eh and said, “I’m the only one here wearing one. Do you have a ward of protection up against pathogens?”

“You… could put it that way,” Eh said. “The air is heavily filtered and everyone here is personally protected with our technology. It should be safe for you to remove your mask here. If you wish to have your own personal protection, you’ll have to give us your consent to give it to you. It comes with side effects, however. You are also very welcome here. I am assured that this is considered a safe place to be, even though I have never heard of Asterix or a Lord of Portland.”

Anne hesitated midway through taking her hat off to remove her masks, then decided to proceed. Her long brown hair had a freshly trimmed sidecut, and her face was covered with a fine layer of stubble. Like many people in the Pacific Northwest, she didn’t wear any makeup, but she had earrings and an eyebrow piercing. Her glasses had little dragons sculpted into the sides of the rims.

She smiled hopefully as she put her masks into her pockets, cane hooked into the crook of her arm as she worked.

“Can I order a coffee?” Anne asked.

“You may have one,” Eh said. “I’d be more than happy to make it for you.”

Anne paused again, blinking, then asked, “How much is it?”

Eh smiled, “It is free to anyone who asks.”

“Even a twelve ounce decaf mocha?” Anne asked, gesturing at the drink that Eh had just finished up.

Eh nodded and said, “Yes. Even that.” Then they looked across the cafe and called the name, “Maxwell?”

A man in an orange knit skull cap and a blue puffy jacket got up from his seat and wandered over to get his drink, thanking Eh and nodding to Anne before sitting down again. Anne’s eye followed the checkered handkerchief that hung from Maxwell’s left back pocket. She didn’t seem to have any strong emotional reaction. It seemed like a reflexive look followed but a decision to be satisfied with it.

Then she looked at the line of big pride flags along the wall, and smiled back at Maxwell, nodding.

“OK. Please let me know if anything is expected from me. I’d like to be a good guest,” Anne said. “I would very much like to have a decaff twelve ounce mocha, with no whip cream. And, do you have pastries?”

Eh nodded, then gestured to the case to Anne’s left, which held all the available pastries.

Anne bent to look, leaning on her cane.

“Are those cheese danishes?” she asked.

“They are!” Eh replied.

“I’d like one of those.”

“Certainly!” As Eh began to work on Anne’s mocha, they reached over with a foot and slid the back door of the case open. And then they did one of our little tricks, turning their extended hind limb into a tendril with a hand on the end of it and used it to select one of the danishes and pull it out of the case to put on a plate.

Anne watched this with an intense curiosity, completely unalarmed.

It was obvious that the other guests who were still watching were impressed with her reactions, but they also largely started to turn their attention away. To them, she might as well have been a regular at that point.

Not to us, though. She was behaving somewhat strangely. She was speaking of things that were established to her, such as the Lord of Portland, that we knew nothing about. I could see in Eh’s eyes that they were avidly intent on learning more. And I made a note to ask Morde to look into it if Eh did not.

It looked like Anne was about to ask another question when Eh beat her to the punch, “So, what brings you to Tannasbourne?”

“Ah, my girlfriend,” Anne said. “I’ve moved in with her.”

“Oh! Wonderful!” Eh said.

“Of course, what with Practice and the Seal, now I’ve got business here, too,” Anne said, a little less brightly, in a humorously onerous tone as if Eh should know what that meant.

Eh nodded absently but didn’t say anything, letting Anne think what she might think for the moment.

“How long have you been here?” Anne asked. There wasn’t anyone behind her, so she felt like she could stand and chat.

Which suited Eh just fine. Eh replied, “We arrived about eight years ago, and set up shop two years ago, after the pandemic hit the cafe that was here particularly hard.”

“And, if you don’t mind me asking again, you don’t know the Lord of Portland?” Anne asked. “How is that?”

“Well,” Eh said amiably. “We didn’t know that there was one, to begin with, if you’re really not talking about the Mayor.”

“I’m really not,” Anne said. “That’s kind of amazing.”

“Is he kind of like Emperor Norton?” Eh asked, referring to Joshua Abraham Norton of San Francisco, who had declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. We knew about him from one of our regulars.

Anne turned her head sideways slowly and drawled out, “nooooo? Not really. Though, I think Emperor Norton might have been a Practitioner.” She said that with an emphasis that gave me visions of both italics and a capital letter. “Asterix is an Animus,” she explained. “A surprisingly strong one, too, for his origins.”

“An Animus?” Eh asked, clearly dawdling on Anne’s drink to maintain the excuse to do something while talking.

Anne didn’t seem to mind, but she did sway side to side on her feet a bit, still leaning on her cane. I had to admit, even though her back was turned to me I was still watching her expressions via our surveillance channel. Really Gnargrim’s job, but I was very curious about her. As were we all. She looked like she was trying to concentrate. Not frustrated, but maybe confused.

I’ve been studying human expression pretty avidly, so I’m fairly confident about that. But I could have been wrong.

“An Animus,” Anne confirmed. “You know. An Other that is a manifestation of an idea or common emotion?”

“Oh!” Eh exclaimed, stirring chocolate into the shot before pouring the foamed milk into the cup. “We do know one of those, but it didn’t follow us here. It was afraid there might be others like it, and it didn’t want to encroach.”

“OK, so you do know what a Lord is?”

“No,” Eh said. “We really don’t.”

“But, you’re Other and you know what an Animus is, and you’re here.”

Eh held up a claw with one hand, and the milk pitcher in the other, “I am friends with a thing that can be described by your definition of Animus, yes. But that’s not our word for it, though. And I’m not sure what you mean by ‘Other’. That sounded like it had a weight to it and a context that I don’t know about.”

“But you’re not human,” Anne said.

Eh shook their head, then began to pour the milk into Anne’s cup.

“So you must be Other,” she concluded.

“So,” Eh carefully waved the pitcher to create a rosette on the top of mocha. “Other, in this context, means not human? Such as an alien, yes? I’m assuming you wouldn’t call a cat or a bird an Other.” Eh was managing to verbally put that capital letter on that word, just like Anne had been doing.

“No?” Anne said cautiously, putting a question to it in uncertainty. Then she asked more firmly, “What do you mean by ‘alien’?”

Eh glanced at Maxwell with a bit of a smirk, and said, “You know, like in 3rd Rock from the Sun.” We’d all watched that show on recommendation from our eldest regular.

Anne straightened up and did the backward step again, blinking.

Eh offered her her drink.

She squinted at them long and hard, then turned to my trio and did the same to us. I noticed that her pupils glowed a bright pink. Which is not something I’ve seen outside of our own Network before.

“You’re not Other,” she muttered.

“We’re not?” Eh asked.

“You don’t look like Others through my sight,” she replied.

“Interesting.”

“So, you’re aliens? Is that what you meant by ‘arrive’?” she asked.

“Ktletaccete,” Eh said. “Our word for aliens is ‘beshakete’, or Outsiders. And to you, we are Outsiders, yes. But we call ourselves Ktletaccete. It’s fascinating that you don’t detect us as Other, though. What does that mean, exactly?”

“You all have strong Selves like humans typically do. The spirits react to you as if you do, and you might be able to Practice, if you’re not doing it already,” Anne said. “You absolutely don’t resemble any of the Others I know about. My sight is particularly attuned to that kind of thing.”

Several of the guests were paying attention again.

“I think I need to sit down,” Anne said. “But, can we keep talking?”

Eh nodded, saying “Certainly.” And then commanded a chair to form from one of the bins, graphene colored clay crawling out of what people often took for a trash receptacle and slithering across the floor to shape itself into a seat particularly suited to Anne’s height and shape. Eh gestured at it.

Anne watched this and then pointed at the chair, stating, “That’s not Practice.”

“Ninite clay,” Eh said. “It’s part of how we got here.”

Anne experimentally sat down in the chair, and then looked surprised at how comfortable it was. It molded itself to her body and adjusted itself to her needs as best it could without the neural link.

Watching, Eh said, “The nanites are also how we provide protection against pathogens for those who consent.”

“Can they replicate?” she asked, with a tone of nervousness in her voice, moving as if considering standing up again.

“Yes,” Eh said. “But not without explicit command.”

“I thought that wasn’t possible!” Anne exclaimed. “I remember reading on Wikipedia…”

“The prevailing theory is that our Animus helped us make them,” Eh said. “If it is an Animus.”

“Oh.”

“Can you tell me what you mean by ‘Practice’?”

Anne took a sip of her mocha and raised her eyebrows in appreciation, “Magic. Through vows to keep true to one's word and uphold the old pacts, humanity can command the spirits to do work. Move energies. Alter reality a bit. Summon Others. Travel places. That sort of thing. Magic.” Then she looked startled with herself, and looked back fearfully at the other guests.

Maxwell grinned and waved back at her.

“Wait,” she hissed, turning back to Eh. “If you’re aliens and you don’t know about Others and the Practice and all that, then, what about everyone else here? Are they all aliens too? In disguise? Please tell me they are.”

“No, sorry. We cater to humans,” Eh said.

“Oh, shit,” Anne said, looking up at the corners of the room.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I just said a whole lot of too much,” she shrank into her seat with dread.

Eh settled onto their haunches and leaned on the counter with their elbows, lowering their head with deference and concern, “That sounds bad. What are the consequences? Can we help somehow?”

Anne glanced at the other guests again, most of whom were now watching with various looks of surprise, concern, and enlightenment. Some of them were clearly putting two and two together for the first time regarding things we still had no clue about. Others seemed to be familiar with what Anne was saying, and maybe displaying concern for her. And the rest might have been hearing about this all for the first time.

Anne slumped and looked down at the floor, “I’m gonna take a big hit. I don’t know that there is anything you can do. I’m responsible for what everyone knows now.”

“Don’t sweat it, Anne,” Maxwell called from his seat. “We all know they’re aliens, right?” He looked around at the rest of the room, and was met with nods. “I don’t think anything you’ve said has really changed any lives here. Except maybe theirs, you know?” He gestured at Eh and the rest of us. “But, I bet you the Kletachitay don’t fall under the protection of the Seal, right?” He pronounced our people’s name with a distinctly West Coast accent. Most people around here did.

She rose slightly out of her seat to turn and look at him.

He nodded solemnly, with an inclination of encouragement, gesturing with his drink. Then, when he was sure she took that sentiment, he turned to relax back down into his own chair.

“It’s probably true,” someone else said.

Anne visibly relaxed and grinned nervously at Eh.

“Tell you what,” Eh said. “If you want to keep having this conversation in private, we can arrange that. If it would be better for you. We have our own secrets. We understand. But I would also like to learn more about this Lord of Portland, and maybe I should meet him at some point?”

Anne nodded.

Eh smiled, “There are a couple of ways we could do this. We do have a back office, which we could use, if you like. Or – well – we don’t really have hours, but it’s usually super quiet around 4 am. Sometimes we don’t have guests here at that time. But that’s not guaranteed. Or, you could consent to a neural terminal, and we could meet over the Network, if that’s not likely to mess with your, uh… You do Practice, right? Would your spirits reject the nanites?”

Anne’s eyes went wide as she took in a breath and held it, looking up at a corner of the room in thought. She looked fearfully back at Eh and said, “I don’t know. I’m kind of afraid to try. Um. Yes, I Practice. Yes. Um.” She glanced around the room again. “Through a bit of a loophole I can tell you about later.”

“A loophole?”

“Later.”

“OK.”

While they were having this part of the discussion, I witnessed yet another thing that was unprecedented to us.

Maxwell gave several of his fellow guests meaningful looks and exchanged nods. Then, some of them got up and spoke very quietly to other guests. And as Anne and Eh negotiated how they might talk in private, the presumably human guests of the Sunspot cafe began to gather their things and file out of the shop. Some of them waved to Eh or to me, Gnargrim, and Gesedege.

Eh looked just as surprised and bewildered as I did, and Anne noticed, so she looked back at the rest of the cafe to see what was happening.

“Don’t worry, Anne,” Maxwell said. “We’ve got your back. We’ll keep as much Innocence as we have left for you. Might come in handy, right?”

Anne looked utterly flabberghasted.

“After all,” he explained. “You’re family.” Then he gestured at the trans pride flag with his paper cup, and smirked.

He tugged the fold of his hat as he passed me, uttering my honorific, “m’Drah.”

Maxwell’s one of my favorites, but he surprised the hell out of me that day.

Anne stared at the flag for a few seconds then looked at the door closing behind Maxwell’s back, eyes brimming with tears.

“I never thought I’d find a replacement for the Black Drop,” Anne said in the now emptied shop. “I thought that was an era that was gone forever.” She heaved out a couple of silent laughs, shaking her head. “But this place. How do you – ?” She trailed off, apparently unable to complete the question.

Eh brought themself back from their own bewilderment and replied, “We have some secrets we’re not going to divulge to even you. At least, not until our Council can agree to it. It looks like we could convene one right now, though.”

“Let’s go a bit more slowly than that,” Anne said, shakily.

“Sure.”

“Um,” Anne said. “I’m not exactly human, myself. I mean, I’m human enough now that I can Practice. Gaining a human enough Self was… a neat trick. I’m not sure I can explain it without giving you a whole education on the different kinds of Others and how Practice under the Seal works, though. Let’s just say that I’m old enough and experienced enough that I’m absolutely mortified that I was that careless. Bewildered, in fact.”

“Was the Black Drop -” Eh started to ask.

“A coffee shop where I came from,” Anne replied. “They weren’t like this. I knew only a few Others and Practitioners from there, but you couldn’t talk about that stuff in their lobby. You could talk about everything else, though. You could talk openly and loudly about your weirdest special interests, about being plural, or what it meant to you to be queer, and no one would bat an eye. And they called me family the first day I walked in the door, too. We had to chase the occasional bigot out a few times, but it was home in a way that no home ever was, you know?”

“I’ve heard Maxwell say something like that about the Sunspot,” Eh said. “But I don’t really know? I can’t. I can approximate from my own experiences, but I’m not human or Other, as you describe it. I didn’t grow up in this world.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Anne said, finally trying her danish. She gestured with it, “This is phenomenal!”

“Thank you.”

“You really should meet with the Lord of Portland, though,” Anne said. “I think I can arrange that. I’m really surprised he hasn’t reached out to you. Maybe he doesn’t know you’re here for some reason? But he should. By virtue of his station, a place like this should be known to him. Your presence should be felt.”

“Could it be possible that someone we’ve done business with covered that without telling us how it all works?” Eh asked. “Kind of like how we operate here legally?”

“Maybe,” Anne said. “Also, you’re not Others and you’re not Practitioners, so you technically don’t fall under his rule. It’s just that you don’t really belong here, either. How did you get here?”

“Oh, that’s a long story,” Eh said. “But I think I can summarize it intelligibly.”

“I’ll try to understand it,“ Anne said.

They were both so much more relaxed now, and my Crew mates and I fell still to let them continue talking as if we weren’t even there. Eh never gave any indication we should leave, though, so we did stay and watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eh so at ease with anyone before, honestly. I’ve known them through… so many lifetimes. I wondered what was different about Anne. Something was obviously clicking between them now. The speed with which they responded to each other picked up.

“One of our people, with help from `efeje`e, our Animus or whatever it is, figured out how to warp space/time and transport a vessel over hundreds of thousands of lightyears without aging significantly inside it,” Eh said, as if this was nothing more than discovering and developing a new Art. “We let her leave the original Sunspot on her own journey, with a Tunnel aboard so we could keep communication. And she’s been jumping around from star to star, exploring the galaxy since. And she’s been collecting a bit of a crew for herself in the process. But, um… That’s several novels worth of story. Anyway, she’s gotten pretty good at sneaking onto and off of inhabited planets without being noticed.”

Anne dropped her jaw and squinted, shaking her head, and said, “This sounds just like any science fiction story.”

“It feels like one, yeah,” Eh agreed. “The idea that we can bend space/time like that is phenomenal. After hundreds of millennia of evolution and development, you’d have thought we’d have discovered it sooner, if it was that possible. But, it did take help from `efeje`e, you know. And our agreement with it was also unprecedented.”

“So, maybe your warp drive was a kind of Practice?” Anne asked.

Eh shrugged, “Maybe.”

“But, wait,” Anne tore her danish in half and gestured with part of it. The chair had a cup holder when she needed it. “How did you get here, if you didn’t go with your explorer?”

“The Tunnel,” Eh said. “We can send consciousnesses through it. Everyone here is what we call Crew. We ascended long ago, our original bodies dying, and now live in the Network created by our nanites. When Molly told us about this planet, a few of us decided to transfer over and stay here. She dropped off a bin of nanites and we started making a new home here, as quietly as we could. But it became apparent humanity could use a little help, and our local Council decided to start being a bit more overt.” Eh gestured at the cafe in demonstration.

“And you’re doing this,” Anne gestured at the cafe herself, “without the help of Practice? I don’t even see Glamour at work.”

“As far as I know, yes,” Eh said. “Though, it seems Maxwell is aware of Practice, at least.”

“You’ve definitely cultivated a clientele full of Aware,” Anne remarked. “Which I supposed shouldn’t be at all surprising. You’re a bunch of extraterrestrials giving away food for free. Of course you’re going to attract the Aware. They need people like you. And they have a tendency to take weirdness like this in a certain kind of stride, because weirdness is part of what made them Aware. And if you haven’t even been visited by witch hunters, then someone’s gotta be covering for you.”

“Kinda figures, I guess,” Eh said.

Anne looked at Eh for a while, danish in one hand, drink in the other, then asked, “You look a lot like someone’s idea of a dragon.”

“I’ve been told that, yes,” Eh said. “We think this is what Ktletaccete looked like before we took to the stars and started tinkering with our genetics and life itself. Our oldest language hints at a shape like this, and it’s what felt right to me when I decided to stop being how I was born.”

“That sounds a little like something I’m familiar with,” Anne said, before taking a bite of the last of her danish.

Eh inclined their head, twitching it in the direction of that particular flag, “we’re family?”

Anne swallowed and looked at the flag, “You have trans people in your culture, too? Assigned gender?”

“Ah,” I couldn’t help myself from vocalizing, and Anne glanced at me. I grinned back, and nodded at Eh.

“Not the Sunspot. Or, the `etekeyerrinwuf,” Eh said. “We made sure our new world, our own Exodus Ship, didn’t have assigned gender. But Fenmere, Gesedege, Gnargrim, and I were all born on a ship that did. Or something close enough to it that it’s basically the same thing. We didn’t have the word ‘trans’, obviously. But, again, close enough. We weren’t able to end dysphoria by ending gender, though. Even with technological interventions before birth, eugenics even, as abhorrent as it is, we can’t stop some people from being born with the need for physical change. Sometimes it develops later in life, too. It’s better to accommodate it when it becomes known. Anyway, I digress. We have an understanding with your transgender people. We get it. It’s ultimately why we’re here.”

Anne, apparently, was stuck on the first few words of Eh’s explanation, “Can - can I ask? How old are you?”

Eh smirked, but I wondered if Anne would read it as a smirk. Anne was too focused on the subject of her question to be bewildered by Ktletaccete expressions like a lot of other Earthly people often are, though.

“Do you want to know my age by my own personal years experienced? Or from your perspective, taking into account relativity?” Eh asked back.

Anne grimaced, “Let’s go with years you’ve experienced.”

Eh titled their head and looked at the ceiling as if to calculate. I knew this was a hard thing to answer for a Ktletaccete of our age. I don’t like thinking about my own age, myself. It kind of defies memory. Causes a kind of dysphoria itself. I could see Eh’s face twitch as they settled on an answer.

“I’m going to give you an estimate,” Eh said. “Calculated in your years, but for my experience. And really rounded off. At a certain point, the thousands digit means as much as the ones digit.”

Anne looked what I’ve come to discern as incredulous.

“Two hundred and some millennia,” Eh said. “Maybe thirty? Maybe fifty? It gets squidgy.”

Anne blinked and deflected internalizing that with an observation, “You use English vernacular like you were born here.”

“We’ve been here eight years, and we live in trillions of tiny machines that can house the consciousnesses of millions of us,” Eh said. “Our ability to translate and learn your language is… enhanced.”

“Two hundred thousand years?” Anne asked, back on the topic.

“Yes,” Eh said. “More or less. Mostly more.”

“Well,” she said. “At least you’re not embarrassingly older than me. Just a smidge, though. A bit of a smidge. Like a civilization or two. Well, technically, it’s off the other end, and there weren’t civilizations back then, so…”

Eh drew their head back and raised their lure in surprise, asking, “How does that work? If you’ll excuse me for asking. How does a human live that long? I thought your civilizations were less than a few thousand years old at this point. You only had your industrial revolution two hundred years ago or so. Your computer technology is less than a century old.”

Anne grinned, licked the icing off her fingers one at a time, and then rubbed her hand dry on her cloak as she stood up. She held out her hand as if to offer a handshake to Eh, and said, “Former Primordial Goddess of Hospitality and present trans girl, Anne Other Problem, at your service. Welcome to Earth, I guess!”

Eh straightened up and sloughed off a considerable amount of nanite clay, reconfiguring their body to be about the same size of a human, but otherwise the same shape as before. The excess clay oozed toward the large bin in the back, reverting to its graphene color almost immediately. Then they stepped around the counter to stand before Anne and took her hand to shake it.

“My name is Eh.Though, that’s really a title. My name is Yenfiri. My pronouns are they/them. Former Senior Captain and Founding Crew of the `etekeyerrinwuf, revolutionary, trans enby as you’d say, and co-Artisan of Sunspot Tea and Coffee,” Eh said. “And it is a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you.”

“I don’t have anywhere near the power I used to have,” Anne said. “But I’ll do my best to step back into my old role for you. Your customers… Or, I guess they’re your guests? Their actions speak very well for you and what you’ve done for them. We need places like this. But let’s try not to make too many waves. I think you’re in a more fragile position than you realize.”

“You’re our hostess,” Eh said, glancing at me.

I nodded. The Council would accept this. We had a habit of still treating Eh like Captain, anyway.

Eh concluded, “We’ll follow your lead.”

“Asterix might want you to pretend to be human from now on,” Anne said. “It might be for the best if you did, honestly. But that might also depend on what kind of protections you don’t know you have.”

Eh grimaced, “If it comes to that, we can comply. But it will hurt. Some of us will have to front more than others. Whatever it takes to do what’s safe, though.”

Anne nodded, “Let’s go see the Lord and find out what he has to say.”

“Sounds good.”

And nodding and waving to us, they walked out the door, just like that. Though, before they took their third step beyond the threshold, Eh had changed shape to their human disguise, which looked remarkably like Yenfiri had before their body had died. Just a different species, obviously.

#Sunspot Chronicles #Otherverse #crossover fanfiction #self insert #coffee shop au #selves insert really

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