Piece of Mind

**Juniper has a one-sided conversation with the Six-Eyed Doe.**

## Synopsis

Juniper is in his room after the ordeal at Darili Irid, packing up his things in preparation to live in the locus's bottle. Valencia steps in to talk to him, assuring him that she is not holding a devil, and says that he did well with Grakhuil. She gives Juniper advance notice of Grak's complicated romantic feelings towards him, as Juniper intended to have Grak move into the botle with him. Juniper reveals that he offered to be Grak's krinrael, which Valencia heard about from Bethel.

Juniper asks for Valencia's personal advice on the matter. Valencia is confused, as she was under the impression that Juniper hated her for her intervention in the relationship between himself and Fenn. Juniper admits that he did hate her, but it was temporary, and that the party should be willing to give each oher second chances. Valencia's ***Loyalty*** increases to level 27 upon hearing him say this. Valencia's advice is to find Grak someone else or wait until the Dungeon Master provides someone, as meeting Jorge from Uniquities is how she got over Juniper.

The conversation moves to the subject of Jorge. Juniper admits that Jorge is a good person, and that his dislike of him partly stems from his possessive feelings towards Valencia. Valencia says that Jorge is the best person she ever met, and that his flaws are comparatively less bad than other peoples'. Juniper brings up something Valencia said once, about him struggling against his flaws being beautiful to her, but he misremembers the statement as being that his flaws were beautiful. Valencia's take on what Juniper is doing for Grak is that Juniper is acting as a source of comfort, when being the protector is what comes more naturally to him.

Juniper brings up the fact that in the doomed timeline, Valencia and Jorge were happy together. Valencia expresses a worry that she tends to fixate on the first thing that she comes across, which Amaryllis had brought up at some point. Juniper tells her not to feel bound by the knowledge of a single future, and to be careful about fixating in general if it gets in the way of her happiness. Valencia thanks Juniper for talking to her and giving her things to think about, and Juniper proposes that at some point he and Jorge should meet.

Juniper finishes his preparations to move into the locus's bottle and goes down accompanied by Grak and Solace. He finds the tree house in the bottle to be a pleasant change of pace from the ostentatious rooms that Bethel likes to make. He requests that Solace stays in the tree house while he's staying there, as Juniper needs Solace's help to get in and out of the bottle. Grak also stays in the tree house around to help Solace tend to the domain when Juniper isn't around, and as part of an informal suicide watch determined between Juniper and Solace.

The Six-Eyed Doe approaches Juniper, and they go for a walk together. Juniper begins an extended monologue with the locus, working out various things on his mind while the Doe emotes back. He asks if he can think of the Doe as female instead of inanimate and if he should explain references the Doe may not understand—the Doe gestures a yes to the first question and a no to the second. Juniper says that he wishes he could have saved Fenn, and that he imagines her making jokes during silences in conversations with the rest of the party. He talks about not looking forward to the conversation with Grak about Grak's feelings, part of the reason being that he doesn't reciprocate due to Grak's male presentation. He wonders aloud if Amaryllis wearing Pallida's hairpin would cause a buffer overflow, then moves the topic back to the conversation with Grak. He talks about his feelings of possessiveness towards the women in his party, and his negative feelings about those feelings.

Moving on from personal matters to things in Aerb, Juniper says that Fel Seed comes from these feelings of possessiveness as well as other dark thoughts he had in his life. Looking around at the landscape in the bottle, he finds it beautiful, and he expresses this thought to the Doe and talks about the demiplanes that he loved to design in his campaigns. Upon saying that the bottle's environment matches his idealised microworlds, Juniper sees a notification that the Doe's ***Loyalty*** increased to level 8. He wonders aloud why this happened at that particular time.

Juniper shares some of Amaryllis's theories about companions and the Narrative. Her main idea is that each companion relates to Juniper according to some aspect—Bethel expressing Juniper's desire to hurt people, Valencia being the ideal kind of girl that Juniper would want to protect, Raven's mannerisms being a reprise of Maddie's, Grak having to do either with Juniper's suicide attempts or with Juniper's dissatisfaction with his rural home on Earth, Amaryllis teaching Juniper that it's okay to just remain friends, and Fenn showing that imperfect people need and deserve love too. Juniper says that according to this line of thinking, the Doe, by his guess, represents whimsy and ineffable things.

Juniper wonders out loud about what the game layer's loyalty meter means. His theory is that he gets at least some points from personal growth or self-expression of new things to his companions. He talks about the artistic side of worldbuilding, netting another ***Loyalty*** increase to level 9, and how the Zorish Isles exemplify that aspect of creation. Explicitly stating that he just does not want to explain magical things yields another increase in ***Loyalty*** to level 10, unlocking the ***Companion Passive: Six-Eyed***, a companion passive that enables an extra degree of flexibility in non-standard uses of systems being deemed reasonable. Juniper guesses that the Dungeon Master's judgement factors into what is considered reasonable. He decides to write it down for Amaryllis, as the party has no access to the game manual and the description text of companion passive is one of the few things that expose game mechanics.

*In a D&D session with Reimer, Maddie, Tiff, Tom, Craig, and Arthur, Reimer asks what counts as a chair for the purpose of a spell that creates chairs valued under 25 gp. Juniper says that he can apply an 'I-know-it-when-I-see-it' standard as he usually does. On the other hand, there are a number of options for an in-story explanation of the spell's restrictions. These include a voice in a character's head declaring what does and doesn't count as a chair, or collective memetic space, or a Platonic realm, or a (not-so-simple) definition of a chair.*

*The conversation becomes sidetracked about the definition of a chair, and about whether or not a hotdog counts as a sandwich. Arthur walks into the room and gets the gaming group back on track by asking if everyone's character is still standing in front of the count.*

The new ability does not seem to be one that directly helps the locus. In fact, unlike the other passives, it applies to Juniper rather than the companion. Juniper finishes the conversation with the Doe and walks over to Grak and Solace, who had been having a pleasant conversation in the meantime. Solace is happy about people other than Amaryllis and Valencia coming down, and impishly suggests that Juniper give Valencia more of a chance. Solace has Grak help her prepare dinner and Juniper tend to his plants.

After the three of them eat dinner, Solace retires to bed, giving Grak and Juniper a chance to talk alone. The two play Ranks as is customary between them. Grak says that Solace offered to be his krinrael, which he had accepted. Juniper attempts to be 'megi', meaning forthright and blunt, and asks if Grak has feelings for him. Grak reprimands him for his incorrect application of the concept, as questions are not asked while being 'megi'. Juniper then states that he has no romantic nor sexual feelings towards Grak, which Grak knows, but appreciates. Grak explains how romantic and sexual feelings occur in dwarves, and that what he feels for Juniper is 'rilirin', a sense of wistfulness for something not there, and an emotion not wholly unpleasant. He feels that Juniper has done enough, and is happy with Solace. The pair finish the game of ranks and go to bed.

## Featured characters

* Juniper Smith
* Valencia the Red
* Grakhuil Leadbraids
* Bethel *(mentioned only)*
* Fenn Greenglass *(mentioned only)*
* Dungeon Master *(mentioned only)*
* Jorge Mascar *(mentioned only)*
* Amaryllis Penndraig *(mentioned only)*
* Oorang Solace
* Six-Eyed Doe
* Pallida Sade *(mentioned only)*
* Arthur Reimer *(flashback only)*
* Maddie *(flashback only)*
* Tiffany Archer *(flashback only)*
* Thomas Clint *(flashback only)*
* Craig *(flashback only)*
* Arthur Blum *(flashback only)*

## Quotes

“Everyone has dark, ugly parts to them. I’ve seen them in everyone I’ve met. It’s just how people are. Jorge’s dark parts are only a little dark, and his ugly parts are only faintly unattractive.”

“You said my flaws were beautiful, back when we first met.”

“No. I said that it was beautiful to see you struggle against those flaws.”

—**Valencia** sees flaws in **Juniper** and others.
“Your profane texts didn’t hold any clues?”

—**Solace** asks about the Second Empire's research texts.
“That’s where Fel Seed comes from. When I was drawing up this great and terrible villain, he was every dark thought I’d ever had. I would think about the times that I wanted to hurt people, and I would think, ‘What if I felt like that all the time? What if I could enact that pain with impunity, with no one to challenge me?’ And it just sort of went from there. The City of a Thousand Brides was a crystallization of the same kinds of feelings I have about Jorge and Valencia.”

—**Juniper** talks to the Doe.
“The Zorish Isles. They were one of those things that would have needed a lot of backfilling. I was sitting in my bathtub and imagining the tips of my fingers as islands jutting up from the water, and when I had it in my mind’s eye, my fingers blown up to ludicrous scale, and the people and life on the islands ignorant of the reality, it seemed so perfect and right. I tried to write up backstory for them, but everything I wrote seemed to diminish them, save for those explanations that raised more questions than they answered. Maybe that’s what it is for me, the sense of seeking as an elemental part of creation. Eventually I turn to filling things out, but that never gives the same satisfaction, it’s just going through a checklist of plate tectonics and biomes. Satisfying, maybe, but not as satisfying. I want the floating islands to drift over the land, and they’ve got to have some explanation, but sometimes it seems better to just say, ‘it’s magic, I don’t have to explain shit’.”

—**Juniper** earns his tenth loyalty level from the Doe.
“Diegetic. Derived from diegesis. It basically means ‘in-story’.”

“It’s Juniper’s favorite word.”

“No. His favorite word is egregious. It was on the bingo sheet.”

—**Tiff**, **Tom**, and **Craig** banter about Juniper's DMing.
“Grak, would you do me the honor of being my sous chef? Juniper needs to be a dedicated pupil and tend to his plants.”

—**Solace**, content in her element.
“I will find someone, I’m sure. In the meantime, I can sleep with Solace. It is enough that you made yourself uncomfortable while trying to help me.”

—**Grak** does not need Juniper to do anything more for him at the moment.
## Notes

* Juniper muses that the bottle is probably inspired by his Small Worlds campaign (see Timeline).
* The list of Groglir words that Juniper and Grak use with each other consists of the following:
	+ krin, krinrael: see krinrael
	+ megi, mɛgi: forthright, blunt, and true to one’s self, especially to a peer when social standing is forfeit
	+ ‘horny’: Anglish loan word
	+ agkrioglian, ɑ gkriɔglɪɑn: a dwarf who makes their home ‘outside’, typically used to refer to those raised with imperial customs, cultures, and values
	+ rilirin, ɹilirin: wistfulness for something that never was, nostalgia for times and places not lived-in

### Continuity notes

* Valencia's mention of Juniper struggling against his flaws is a callback to Chapter 77, Lies and Damned Lies.

### Real-world references

* Sapir-Whorf refers to linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that a language speaker's cognition is affected and limited by the language's structure.
* A smeerp is a rabbit by another name, as per TVTropes.
* The I know it when I see it test is a reference to a 1964 United States Supreme Court case.