Divine Field Theory
Chapter 3
Unlike the celestial gods that Robin and their mentor studied, the terrestrial gods had an acute knowledge of humanity, and had developed a habit of dabbling in their affairs. They would intermittently come down from on high, typically claim some sort of aspect, or domain, and then gather a following of like-minded people. Sometimes the gods would give some of the people they formed bonds with a holy quest, or even start a full-fledged religion, but for the most part, the new god and their followers would simply become a part of the local political landscape. Robin had learned about the gods that had settled in Parm at some point, but had forgotten them almost as quickly. The terrestrial gods acted on a much more human timescale, and were much less predictable than the celestial gods, so they had never been able to get as good a grasp on how their interactions worked.
That sentiment went double for whatever happened when the lesser gods left.
It wasn’t a common occurrence, but it was possible for a terrestrial god to leave the human world in the same way that they appeared, which created some… unusual effects for their followers. This much Robin remembered from their history class. Elementals, selkie, kobolds, any of the fantastical or seemingly supernatural people of the world had at least one follower of a lost god in their family tree.
Some of these gods had forsaken their followers millennia ago, to the point that maybe one in five people were part ogre (many people loudly assumed that Robin themselves had some ogre in them owing to their height), but some were young enough that their gods still existed in recent memory, such as the Alias.
Having been forsaken just a few decades ago, the Alias were given the ability to change their appearance at will. This made them both harder to spot as a forsaken people, and the target of vast amounts of superstition, making it hard for Robin to remember how much they actually knew about the Alias, and how much was half-remembered fabrication.
Which was massively unfortunate, considering that they apparently were one now, and were not in any position to be asking for clarification.
They had re-learned how to walk after a couple tries and about ten minutes, but with their entire body absolutely refusing to maintain a concrete physical shape for more than a second, detailed actions like speaking or writing were temporarily off the table. So, Robin sat upstairs, with a stoic Rhubarb and a worrying Sedgley, while the three of them waited for evening.
~~~
Several hours earlier, Sedgley had laid out the plan to the two teens.
“Rhubarb, Robin, you’ll need to leave at seven. The shadows will be long, but the streetlights won’t yet have turned on. Robin, you can use your winter cloak to cover your face. Rhubarb, I assume you know the way to Gideon’s?”
Rhubarb nodded. Then, reading the confusion on Robin’s changing face, she explained. “My- Gideon is another Alias. He and I live on the edge of town with some others. It’ll be a good place to lay low while we figure out exactly what just happened.”
Robin desperately wanted to ask if it was really okay to impose like that, a sentiment that Sedgley had apparently anticipated. “Robin, listen. Do not worry about dropping in uninvited. Gideon has been a friend of mine for years, and if I know anything about him, he’ll just be glad to have someone new to cook for.”
Rhubarb turned to look at Robin, before cracking a smile that was honestly much more reassuring than it had any right to be. “Oh, yeah, the old man is pretty laid back. You two will get along fine, I’m sure.”
The new shapeshifter looked between the two of them, anxiety apparent in the way their face changed shape even more rapidly than it had been moments ago, before nodding their head and letting out a defeated sigh.
Or at least, they meant to do that.
The sigh came out much more forcefully than intended, as Robin had thought about exaggerating the sigh, their lungs had gotten smaller, forcing more air out. It wasn’t a verry significant change, but it was still deeply unsettling to feel, and Robin stumbled backwards, instinctively gasping in, to try and recover lost air. This, of course, caused their lungs to grow significantly, sucking in more air than they previously would have been able to hold.
Oddly enough, this process of stretching their ribcage out hurt, and Robin began full on hyperventilating. Their lungs oscillated wildly between slightly too large and slightly too small until they realized they couldn’t remember what breathing felt like before and that just made it worse and-
Rhubarb placed a hand firmly on their shoulder, pinning the panicking apprentice forcefully back into reality.
“Hey, listen, focus on me real quick, okay? Now, picture the set of your shoulders, your ribs, and your bones as fixed. Imagine your skeleton is a rock on the beach. The water flows over it, and the sand under it, but the rock doesn’t change, okay? The rock never changes shape.”
Robin calmed down, first at the soothing baritone of the girl’s voice, but then at the words she was saying. With each inhale, their lungs changed shape less and less, until they could more or less keep their torso stable while they drew breath. A small part of their mind wanted to point out that that wasn’t necessarily true, a rock on the beach was almost constantly changing shape due to erosion, but the thought was quickly and unceremoniously thrown into the bottomless pit in the back of their head and forgotten.
Rhubarb gave them a quick pat on the shoulder, and another warm smile. “Alright, you’re going to want to practice that line of thought. It’s easiest if you treat your skeleton as totally unchangeable, otherwise you run into some… problems.” She took her hand away and turned to Sedgley. “Well then, what do we do for now?”
The wizard gave a heavy sigh, closing his eyes. “Well, I’ll give a cursory look through my on-hand library to see if I can find anything that might be relevant, but otherwise, I suppose we wait for seven.”
~~~
And so, Robin sat, trying very hard to get all of the bones in their fingers to stay the same size. They figured it might help to perform a familiar task, using their memory of how it had felt to try and get their hands back to their original shape. Their first thought was to try and disassemble a radial actuator they had been working on, but they really weren’t sure if it would be safe to touch any induced objects at the moment, so they settled for leafing through the pages of their favorite novel.
It was a story about a young farmhand, who had been called from her pastoral home to go on a grand quest and save the world. The story itself was fine enough, but Robin always found themselves drawn to it for the introduction. The opening hundred pages were dedicated to the hero’s life in her sleepy little village, growing food, brewing ale, and celebrating the summer solstice with her friends. It made Robin feel safe, whenever they read it.
It made them feel like home.
They had, of course, read through the book dozens of times by now, to the point that they were flipping the pages and recalling the story more than actually interpreting the words, but that was perfect for what they were trying to do. Their fingers remembered what it felt like to hold this book, the way they had to move to keep their hands comfortable, and by the time seven o’clock had arrived, they had calmed down enough to remember that this was not the end of the world, or of their life. This was only a change, and changes could be adapted to. With a cloth mask donned under their favorite long cloak, they were even fairly certain they could make the trip to this Gideon’s house without being noticed. If they kept their shoulders hunched, the flowing material would completely obfuscate their figure.
“Right, are we ready?” Rhubarb stepped up, slinging her sack, with her recently made purchase, over one shoulder.
Their certainty evaporated the moment that they stood up. First, the subtle ways their body had changed made themselves known again with familiar actions such as ‘standing’ and ‘walking’ which, while still mechanically identical to before, now required slightly more thought while they adjusted to their new walk cycle. Second, they realized that sometime in the past four hours, they had somehow become slightly shorter than Rhubarb, which they firmly filed away in the ‘think about later’ section of their brain.
For now, they gave a nod that they hoped was visible under their hood, and led the girl down the stairs, where both of them stepped into the night.
~~~
The streets were quiet, as the industrial district usually is at the end of Friday. The weekly Pin Race would have started at around the same time, with half the town showing up to cheer for their favored team, and the other half tagging along to enjoy themselves after a long day of work. An audible roar went up from the hippodrome while the two were crossing a street, causing Robin to trip on their now-slightly-shorter legs, and sprawl flat-out on the brickwork.
“Ope, you all right there?” Rhubarb offered a quick hand, and the two were across the street and into the smaller alleys of the north side.
“Yeah, I do suppose that it would take a lot of gettin’ used to, with the shifting and all. Me, I’ve never been any other way, so I don’t suppose I’d know. You holding up okay?”
Robin, entirely unsure how to answer that question, and also unable to speak, gave a shrug.
Rhubarb didn’t seem to mind the lack of a response, however. “You do seem to be adjusting very well, so far. I get the sense that a lot of people would have completely lost it in your situation.”
At that, Robin gave a quick, high-pitched ‘ehh’ sound. Having distanced themselves from the panic-inducing skeletal shuffle, and somewhat come to terms with the new appearance, or lack thereof, they had settled into the idea that the change really wasn’t all so bad as Rhubarb and the Wizard made it out to be. And after the time it would take to get used to ‘shifting,’ as Rhubarb had called it, the ability to change their appearance on a whim was a massive boon.
Rhubarb noted the mixed feelings, but didn’t respond to them, instead continuing her stubborn quest to make small-talk with someone who quite literally could not return the favor.
“Yeah, it definitely takes some getting used to. I remember my first day on a ship and phew, I musta looked wors’n a cat on ice, for how I was slippin’ ‘n’ stumblin’ around.”
“Hmm,” said Robin, in a way that implied they had just been presented with new information.
Rhubarb picked up on the implication of their grunt.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been working down at the docks for maybe a year now, there’s always pay for an extra pair of hands down there. Especially since the Roaches lost their feeding grounds. See, used to be they only came up once a year, in one particular town, but recently…”
~~~
“…so yeah, I’ve always thought that having twelve months in a year would make a lot more sense than our current- oh, here we are!”
Robin stopped short, nearly walking directly into the larger girl’s back. They had left the streetlights of Parm behind some time ago and had been walking up a steep incline for maybe five minutes, leaving the apprentice panting, and the dockworker no worse for wear. As Rhubarb walked directly on, Robin stopped to catch both their breath, and a quick glimpse of their surroundings.
The house was built on a patch of ground that was slightly less steep than its surroundings. Hidden behind a small copse of trees, it seemed to be on the larger side, a bit bigger than Robin and Sedgley’s home, although the surroundings made it seem smaller. A warm light shone from inside two of the windows, and out front, perhaps the beefiest person Robin had ever seen sat hunched over a small fire, roasting some type of meat on spits.
If Rhubarb was beefy, then Gideon was Beefy, having a large potbelly and arms that looked like they could crush a tree. The only spot on his body that seemed to be hairless was the top of his head, which stood in stark contrast to his curly black beard. He was currently giving his undivided attention to the turning of each spit over the fire, as without looking up from his task, he called out.
“You have a reason you’ve come back three hours late, and with an unexpected guest?”
Rhubarb changed course, heading towards the walking boulder. “that’s a bit of a story, see, I guess you could say that they’re new to the family? They need somewhere to lay low while they figure some stuff out.”
The man gave Robin a sidelong glance, then another, much more scrutinizing look finally taking his focus off the task at hand. A long sigh pushed the top hairs in his beard up slightly.
“…Rhu, mind telling me how Sedgley Whittenacre’s apprentice stopped being human?”
Rhubarb gave a very awkward chuckle. “weeell, remember how you told me not to touch any of the items I was buying without gloves on?”
Another sigh, longer and deeper than the first. “Well, I hope you know you’ll be sleeping in Milly’s room while I set the drawing room up with a bed.”
Rhubarb deflated somewhat, but didn’t complain as the huge man shifted his attention back to Robin.
“Well I’m not one to turn away someone needing help. The name’s Gideon Banks, and you have a place to stay here for as long as you need. I’m also sure Rhubarb could give you the rundown on your new body starting tomorrow.”
At this, Rhubarb perked up a bit. “Oh, well I was hoping to go down to Tosche’s tomorrow…”
Gideon gave her a sideye to that could cut steel, and Rhubarb immediately put their hands up, “just a thought, sorry.”
Robin was still busy trying to figure out what being in the ‘family’ entailed, but a hissing and spitting sound arose from the fire at just that moment, saving everyone from the tense moment.
Gideon in question cursed, turning back to the singed meat. “She’ll also show you to her room to set your stuff down, I hope you’re both okay with crispy pork for the night.”
Robin nodded and made what they hoped was a reassuring sound, before walking over to Rhubarb, and into the house.
It was just about as spacious on the inside as it was on the outside, as is the custom for houses. An open space with hallways branching in three directions -one each to the left and right, and a third to the front that seemed to lead to a kitchen- lay directly inside the door. The first thing that struck Robin was the decoration; someone had clearly taken an obscene amount of time to carve intricate patterns into the wall. Winding floral patterns extended from the top corner of each doorframe, stretching up and out across the open wall, leaving a space on the ceiling with a much less naturalistic design, a series of interlocking circles that looked almost like gears.
Rhubarb moved directly toward the kitchen, pointing haphazardly to a table at the left of the door as she moved.
“I need to get these plates set up, I hope to not have to deal with Gideon’s improvisational cooking after tonight. You can drop your stuff in my room, down the hall, up the stairs, first on the left.”
Robin simply gave a grunt of affirmation before heading to follow Rhubarb’s instructions. The room was small and simple, with a bed, dresser, desk, and some open floorspace that they unceremoniously dropped their one packed bag into before their growling stomach led them back towards the kitchen.
~~~
A few minutes later, they found themselves back in the kitchen, setting a table for seven alongside Rhubarb and Gideon in silence. Despite the girl’s complaining, the plate of pork laid in the center actually seemed quite appetizing. It was accompanied by baked potatoes, which were in turn laid out with butter and a wide array of seasonings. Robin, having not eaten since their lunch break, which no longer felt like an event of the current epoch, or even the current reality, sat down and began to tuck in as quickly as they could manage.
Gideon chuckled softly. “Guess it has been a tumultuous day, eh? Well, the others should be here any minute.”
Robin barely heard him, as the unique combination of the very long day they had had and the novel experience of a new mouth that seemed to be more perceptive of textures than their previous setup provided the perfect storm for eating slightly-singed pork to take up the entirety of their forebrain. They closed their eyes, their hearing unfocused, and they rolled the small sliver of meat around in their mouth, appreciating the heat, texture, and flavor in turn as they poked and prodded it with their tongue.
It was perhaps five minutes later when Robin opened their eyes to see four new people had sat at the table and were staring warily at her.
They swallowed, putting down their silverware and waving lightly at the newcomers.
Rhubarb coughed and spoke up. “Yes, well, this is Robin Slater, they’ll be staying with us for a time. Would you all care to introduce yourselves?”
The first to speak up was a man who looked in his mid-thirties, with chestnut-brown hair down to his shoulders and a slight bit of stubble on his chin. He spoke with a strange eloquence, making each word will-pronounced and distinct. “My name is Rost, nice to meet you.”
To Rost’s left sat a short man with blonde hair, skinny to the point of being wiry, and with his hair tied up into an uncomfortable-looking bun. He flashed a wide smile at Robin while he spoke. “I’m Seth, and this here is Rem, we’ve both been hoping to have a new guest in, so we’re looking forward to living with you!”
Rem, in turn, simply gave a quick nod at Robin. She was slightly shorter than Rhubarb, and just as wide, though seemed to have more fat than muscle when compared to the other girl. With dark skin and darker hair, she seemed to look the complete opposite of Seth, but she was evidently content to let the man introduce her, as she didn’t say a word herself. Instead, she looked across the table, towards the last person Robin hadn’t met.
Said person was notably short and almost unhealthily gaunt, with unruly black hair covering most of their face. They took a few deep breaths, in and out, steeling themselves and scrunching up their face, before saying quicky, “my name is Ash!” As they spoke, their jawline seemed to distort, and they fell into the same fort of facial disarray that Robin was in, though it lasted only a second. After a few more breaths to calm themselves, Ash took an enthusiastic bite of their pork.
Gideon, seated at the head of the table, patted Ash on the back reassuringly before turning to Robin. “Well, now that you’re fully introduced, I can say welcome to the Banks! As I mentioned, Rhubarb will be responsible for showing you around. Also, while you’re obviously free to travel where you will, I wouldn’t recommend leaving the tree line outside until you’ve better learned how to school your expression.”
“Yeah, maybe I can teach Ash about some of that at the same time. Heck, we could have them able to talk and keep a straight face at the same time within a week, I’m sure.” Rhubarb said.
Ash groaned, their face distorting once again. “I keep telling you, it’s hard!”
From there, the conversation became much more lighthearted, with each of the six residents mentioning features of their day, recent happenings, or whatever was on their minds. Though unable to contribute, Robin fell easily into the rhythm of the conversation, laughing and making small ‘mhm’s at the appropriate times, and by the end of the night, they felt more relaxed than they had in the previous day, or even week. Something about the easy banter, from people they had never met before, made them feel safe, and happy, and warm.
It made them feel like home.
Go back to the first chapter here, or read the next chapter of the story whenever I get around to writing it!