Chapter Five: Coffee and the Paper
Written by Jeff
The heavy wooden door creaked and shuddered, scraping against the floor planks before jarring open, causing the man pushing it to lurch forward and kick a spray of snow across the threshold. He closed the door behind him swiftly, trying to keep any more of the blizzard from getting in. Not a single one of the roughly dozen men and women sitting inside the rustic wooden lodge gave him the slightest notice as he entered, though the bartender did look up from the glass he was rinsing and eye him over. As the man in the doorway brushed small piles of snow from his shoulders, he eventually caught the attention of one of the patrons who was slouched over at the bar.
“Ahoy, outlander. Don’t suppose you’ve brought the papers with you?”
Finnegan unzipped his parka, walked up to the man, and pulled up the stool next to him, hanging his coat on the hook beneath the counter.
“Papers are a little hard to come by these days, but I’m sure you know that.”
“I don’t know anything!” said the man. “Haven’t gotten any news from the outside world in damn near two years! We might as well be the last bastion of civilization for all I know.”
Finnegan chuckled. “Two years, huh? I take it you don’t get too many travelers up here anymore.”
“That would be a fair assumption,” said the bartender. “Our beacon stopped sending and receiving transmissions as soon as the Shift began. You’re maybe the fifth outlander that’s come in here since.”
“Five people in four years?” Finnegan wondered aloud. “You didn’t seem too surprised to see me come in.”
“Nothing much surprises us anymore,” said the bartender. “Up here, we try not to dwell on things we can’t control.”
“Things are changing in these parts,” said Finnegan, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them for warmth. “The storm is building, and the snow is piling up awfully high, even for the Northern Plateaus.”
The bartender gave him a sour look. “We try not to dwell on things we can’t control.”
“Ok, so you don’t have any papers,” continued the man sitting at the bar. “But clearly you’ve come from someplace else, someplace where news actually spreads. Tell me what’s happening out there and the first round is on me.”
Several of the other bar patrons grumbled audibly at this, and one with his head down buried in the creases of his arms mumbled, “None of us want to hear it, Anji.”
Finnegan turned to the curious man at his side. Anji flinched back when he caught sight of the outlander front-on: Two prosthetic eyes mechanically dilating to adjust to the low light of the bar, a series of deep scars running like topographical canyons across his cheeks. He took off his hat and placed it on the bar, releasing a stream of silver hair down to the tops of his shoulders. Finnegan could see his appearance startled the man, and tried to soften his tone and posture.
“You...you Iso?” Anji stuttered.
“I was. Organization’s not quite so organized anymore. The Central Isles aren’t exactly saving the world with bureaucracy these days, if you know what I mean. After the Shift, I found that I was able to do a lot more good on my own than I was answering to paper pushers. Central’s more interested in keeping the barriers intact around the capital than they are trying to figure out a solution to needing the barriers at all. If they had their way, all the Isorropia units would be relegated to capital security. I’m not particularly interested in policing the last vestiges of a broken status quo. I’m still interested in balance.”
“So you’re trying to figure out what’s happening? With the columns?”
Finnegan smiled and turned his head away, knowing that most people didn’t enjoy eye contact with him for too long. “I am. But that’s a big project that’s going to require a lot more effort than I can put forth by myself. I’m here trying to make sense of another order of business, but it’s closely related. I’d be happy to tell you everything I know about what’s happening in the south, if you can help with me with the information I’m after. Name’s Finnegan. Anji, was it?”
The man nodded affirmatively and signaled to the bartender for two fresh glasses. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m trying to find the Irapa,” said Finnegan. “I need someone who can act as a guide and help put me in contact with them.”
Anji and the bartender gave each other a sideward glance.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Anji. “Not anymore.”
“Anything is possible if you put your mind to it,” Finnegan smirked. “I’d be happy to make it worth anyone’s while.”
“You can offer us all the newspapers and outlander treasure in the world; doesn’t make your request any more do-able. First, there’s the question of whether or not they’re even still around. Second, if the Irapa don’t want to be found, there isn’t anyone who can find them. It’s like chasing the tail of a rainbow.”
“They’re gone,” mumbled the man with his head buried in his arms. “They’re gone...”
Anji and the bartender both gave Finnegan a look and a little tilt of the head in the drunk man’s direction that seemed to say: Listen to him. He knows. Finnegan decided to move on to the next order of business.
“Fine, no one will take me to the Irapa. I figured that might be a long shot anyway. The other thing I’m interested in is a girl, no older than sixteen. I reckon she’s one of the four other outlanders that came through here recently.”
Until this point, the bar hadn’t been particularly loud or lively, but all conversation inside dimmed when the words left Finnegan’s lips, letting him know for certain that despite their nonchalance at his entrance, everyone was keenly interested in his presence. The bartender, scowling, put both of his forearms onto the bar and leaned in towards Finnegan’s face.
“That’s a bit of a sensitive subject, stranger.”
Finnegan pulled his face even closer. “I’m sure it is. And now you’ve got your very own Iso soldier in here willing to do something about it, if there’s something that needs to be done.”
“We didn’t know,” the drunk man sobbed.
“What’s your name, friend?” asked Finnegan, turning to the hunched and deflated body. The man didn’t respond, only mumbling out the same words he had said before.
“That’s Yura,” said the bartender. “Don’t mind him, he’s taking the current state of things a bit harder than the rest of us. As you can see, he’s well into his cups.”
“I won’t mind him,” said Finnegan, “but I’m also not going to pretend that you don’t know a whole lot more about this girl than you feel inclined to share. I came a long way to talk with you folks, and I would prefer we had a nice, civilized conversation. But if you two aren’t interested in an amicable exchange of information, I’m going to go ahead and get that information out of Yura here in whatever fashion I deem the most efficient.”
Finnegan didn’t necessarily speak in a threatening tone, but the words he said - coming from an Iso officer that looked the way he did - were enough to break through whatever tenuous wall Anji and the bartender were attempting to erect.
“She came in last month,” sighed Anji. The bartender shot him a disappointed look, but kept his mouth shut. “She asked for the same thing as you: she wanted a guide to find the Irapa. Even though the storm hadn’t started up yet, we gave her the same answer you got: finding the Irapa is no simple task. But Yura over there was willing to try, if the price was right and her expectations were in check. She didn’t have anything with her worth the trade, so she left, saying she’d be back. We figured we’d never see her again. Three days later she comes busting through the door, big grin, saying she’s got something worth trading, and that we should come outside and have a look. We go out to see, curious what she’s on about, and there’s a dead ursua king just lying in the snow. Even stranger, the whole thing seemed to already be half-roasted up, like she pulled it early off the spit.” Anji relayed this as if the information was incredibly impressive, but Finnegan didn’t react in any sort of way that conveyed he properly understood its gravity. The bartender chimed in to clear up any confusion.
“You know what an ursua is, right?”
“Never seen one in person,” said Finnegan, “but yeah, in general, I know what an ursua is. They’re like big, slick northern bears that live half in and out of the water.”
“You have any idea how big an ursua king is?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“If it were standing up on two legs, it’s head would probably be cramped against the ceiling.”
Finnegan craned his head up. The lodge was two stories with an A-frame roof, likely over 10 meters tall. He realized that it’s hard to properly imagine a beast six times taller than yourself without a little forced perspective.
“Ok, yeah, that’s pretty damn big,” Finnegan admitted. “How’d she say she killed it?”
“Oh, she made no pretense of having killed it herself,” said Anji. “Her beast did it.”
Finnegan’s eyes narrowed. “You see this thing yourself?”
“Never forget something like that. Strangest thing I ever seen: Looked like a squid with long arms covered in blue light, no taller than my waist. Cruddy metal box over its head, like a little kid in a big hat. Next to the ursua king, it was no bigger than its claw, but it had managed to drag the thing all the way back from its lair like it weighed nothing at all. We couldn’t believe either one of ‘em could have taken down such a huge animal, but she was pretty insistent that her beast was able to rise and meet any challenge put in front of it.”
From behind them, one of the women drinking at a table spoke up, and Finnegan spun around to face her.
“I didn’t believe for a second that those two puny things had what it took to kill an ursua king, and I said so, though I should have kept my mouth shut. I said something like, ‘You think we’re going to believe your weird pet killed that?’ and boy, she got angry. It was like her eyes went all dark and fierce, and that beast of hers started to grow. The heat coming off it was unreal, building up beneath its blue skin like a bonfire. In two blinks, it was towering up over the top of her, scowling down at all of us. She got right up in my face and said, ‘He’s not my pet. He’s my enforcer. And he’s got a name. If you need something to call him, call him--'” The woman struggled to remember the beast’s name, then it stuck to her tongue like a sour aftertaste. “’Morwell.’”
Finnegan took a deep drink and then placed his empty glass on the bar. “Yep. That’s the girl I’m looking for. So after that intimidating display, you still decided to help her out?”
“Didn’t feel like we had much of a choice, to be honest,” said the bartender. “Also, she brought us a lot of good meat, and meat’s not so easy to come by these days. That was a month ago and we’re still working our way through that ursua king. Got some stew on right now. You hungry, outlander?”
For a moment, Finnegan thought about politely declining, but his subconscious scrolled through the last several hundred meals of dry rations like a bland flipbook in his mind and blurted out, “That’d be lovely, thank you.” He was surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth, but he didn’t say anything more, and when the steaming bowl was in front of him, he quietly thanked his id for knowing better than his ego. He continued to speak between bites. “So Yura was the one who took her to try and find the Irapa? Did he succeed?”
“Honestly, that’s Yura’s story to tell,” said Anji. “And as you can see, Yura isn’t exactly in a storytelling state at the moment.”
“Well put a cup of coffee in front of the man,” said Finnegan. “I can wait.”
The bartender laughed. “You think we have any coffee left? Been years since we ran out. Shoot, I’d trade you this whole damned bar for a single cup.”
“Yeah,” Finnegan chuckled. “I guess that’s a saying from the old days that hasn’t quite made its way out of my vernacular yet.”
Yura clearly heard this exchange, and the top of his head bobbed up and down as he chuckled, face still firmly planted into his forearms.
Finnegan slid off his stool and walked down the bar a few paces, then slid back in next to Yura.
“You miss coffee too?”
The head tilted ever-so-slightly, revealing an eye behind the man’s elbow.
“Everyone misses coffee, outlander.”
“Yeah, even south of here, it’s almost impossible to get. It never stopped raining on the islands where it grew, so all that’s left in the world is what was grown, roasted, and packaged up before the Shift.” Finnegan kept his voice low enough so that only Yura could hear the next part. “I happen to have a little bit left on my cruiser. Been saving it for a special occasion. You tell me about what you saw with that girl and the Irapa, and it’s yours.”
Yura’s voice perked up. “Goods first, then I’ll talk.”
“Deal. But maybe wait to drink it until you get home. Don’t have enough to go around for everyone.”
Clearly, Finnegan hadn’t been keeping his voice low enough, as the bartender yelled over, “Let me suck on the grounds when you’re done and I’ll give you half the bar.”
All eyes were on Finnegan as he wrapped himself up in his parka and hat and drug the lumbering wooden door back open, sending trails of snow flurries into the indoor air. A few minutes later, he re-emerged through the doorway, covered in snow, and found Yura now sitting upright and coherent, drinking a glass of water. It was as if all of the patrons’ heads lurched forward in unison as Finnegan handed the man a small, indiscreet packet of single-serving dried coffee. Yura looked it over and put it in his pocket, then released a deep sigh. The bartender, looking over Yura’s shoulders did too: there weren’t going to be any grounds left over from instant coffee.
“Before I tell you anything,” began Yura, “I need to know why this story is important to you, because it’s not something I particularly want to relive.”
“This girl, what did she tell you her name was?”
“Told me to call her Danvers, which I thought a bit odd, but I figured it was her last name.”
“It is,” said Finnegan. “Laureena Danvers. Where do I start with her? In the last few years, we’ve learned a lot more about the connection between certain individuals in this world and orbs of immense power that are hidden away deep beneath the ground. Different islands have different names for these exceptional individuals. The people of Koa, for example, called theirs Touched. It wasn’t until sometime after the Shift began that we fully started to understand how instrumental they are to the stability and survival of the world. They’re the reason that the many of the islands that remain today have not been transformed into columns.
“For some reason we don’t fully know, Laureena Danvers is hellbent on seeking out and destroying the Touched, and even stranger, she’s powerful enough to actually do it. We tracked her story back to an island called Delvorn. By all accounts, she was just a normal kid when the people there last saw her. In the four years since, she’s gained immense power, and is using it to kill the very people on which the survival of our world depends. There are enough problems to deal with right now without Laureena Danvers making things even worse.”
“I didn’t know,” muttered Yura, eyes downcast. “None of us did. How could we? She even had Irapa snowshoes. Said she got them from a friend who died at the start of the Shift, and that he and his dad had stayed with the Irapa and were friends with them. We knew the family she spoke of: Thorsten and Calix Brandt. They came through here after their time with the Irapa; we remembered them well.”
The woman who had spoken up earlier decided to chime in again. “Thorsten Brandt was the single most handsome man I have ever seen in my life. And so charming. We were crushed to hear that he and his boy had died. They were only here a spell, but they left a real impression.”
“I told her that there was no guarantee that we were going to find the Irapa,” Yura continued. “You don’t find them; they find you, if they feel like it. There’s a meeting spot of sorts, three days ride from here by sled. Who knows when the Irapa see you coming - they might know the second you take off from town - but if you show up at the meeting point and they’re already there, then they’re willing to meet. If not, you can wait around there for weeks and never catch sight of them.
“It was an awful, awkward ride. She barely spoke, and almost never responded when I tried to start a conversation. Even worse was trying to pretend like I wasn’t afraid of that creature of hers! We had to reinforce the sled floor with sheet metal so that it didn’t burn through the bottom. Even though she didn’t speak to me, she did seem to be speaking with the beast, but it was like the two were having a silent conversation, without words. There was nothing I could do but try to tune them out and focus on the way forward.
“I was shocked to see four members of the Irapa waiting for us when we arrived. I’d taken dozens of curious travelers out to the meeting point over the years, and only twice had the Irapa ever chosen to grant an audience. I expected that they would escort Ms. Danvers along to the village and send me on my way, but for the first time, they said I was allowed to come along as well. They had us leave the sled behind and follow on foot. At their encampment, we sat around the fire and they fed us. They asked why she had come, and she told them about her time with the boy, Calix, and how after he died, it was the snowshoes they had gifted him that allowed her to escape the endless exposed sand ocean and find land once again. They never once asked about the strange creature she kept at her side, which I could barely believe. She brought it up herself though, somewhat indirectly. She said that she understood the Irapa to be keepers of vast knowledge, and harnessers of immense power. Calix’s father had studied with them, and she understood Thorsten to be a great man. She wished to study with the Irapa as he did, with their shaman, and learn more about the power she harnessed within herself.”
“Did you see the shaman?” asked Finnegan.
“Yes, but only for a moment, as he held open the door to his lodging for her to come inside. I was shocked. I had never seen a man who looked this way. His skin was a deep, dark red. Laureena saw him at the same time I did, and I think his appearance wasn’t what she expected, because she recoiled at him, and only a moment later her beast sprang to life. He put up a hand and said something to try to calm her, and it seemed to work, at least enough that she was willing to come into his lodging without a fight. The other Irapa were clearly on edge though, and they no longer had any intention of speaking with or entertaining me as their guest. They all stood around anxiously, worried about whatever terror their shaman had just invited into their home.
“They were right to be afraid. It was only a matter of minutes before the roof of the lodging burst apart and her beast grew and exploded through the top. The blue light it was made of looked like it had pulled apart, and beneath was a horrifying creature of pure flame. As it grew in size, the blue light snapped like threads pulled too tight, then sucked back in and tried to wrap around the fire again, but the beast hardly seemed to care. The lodging came down in a heap, and I could see the thing trying to smash its long arms against the shaman, but he was deflecting them off. The girl, she was doing the same thing with her arms, like she was conducting the monster, telling it what to do. Behind her head, there was a floating black orb. Her eyes looked dark; possessed. The other Irapa started to rush in but the shaman screamed for them to stay back. One of the Irapa told me to run, and I did, as far as I could without looking back.
“I made it almost back to the meeting spot before I heard the explosion. I turned around to see and the force of it knocked me onto my back. It must have been immense to have still hit me so far away - they had been fighting for over an hour by that point. I was too afraid to go back and see what had happened. What could I even do to help? I was so glad the Irapa had told me to leave the sled back at the meeting spot. I came straight back to town. The girl never came through here again.”
When Yura finished speaking, there was a long silence in the bar. Finnegan was the one who eventually broke it.
“Thank you for telling me your story, Yura. It’s important that we know what happened here. I had an inkling that something like this had happened, but there was no way to know for sure without hearing your experience firsthand.”
“The shaman - was he one of these ‘Touched?’” asked Anji.
“It sure sounds that way,” said Finnegan. “Although in this case, I don’t think killing him was originally what she was after. I think the girl was telling you all the truth about why she wanted to meet with the Irapa, and then got a surprise she wasn’t ready to handle when she learned exactly why it is they hold such tremendous power.”
“None of us had ever seen the shaman before,” said the bartender. “Most of us had never even caught a glimpse of a regular Irapa. We had no idea he looked that way.”
“There aren’t many who have had direct contact with the Touched, and until the Shift started, it seems that even the Touched didn’t have much contact with one another. They’re not the most forthcoming bunch.”
“Well you seem to know a lot about them,” said Yura. “When did you come into contact with the Touched?”
Finnegan sighed. “Now you’re asking me to tell a story I don’t particularly want to tell.”
“Deal’s a deal,” chided Anji. “I bought the first round and we told you what you wanted to know. An ‘amicable exchange of information’ goes both ways, outlander.”
“I thought I paid for that with my last packet of coffee,” Finnegan said with a shrug. “Fine, fair enough. Though this isn’t exactly current news; it happened when the Shift first began, four years ago. I was on one of the dozens of Iso crews dispatched to try and get to the bottom of what was happening with the receding ocean tides. My group was sent to one of the western archipelagos, where the water had retreated completely. One island was being hit by the storms particularly hard, so we headed in that direction.
“En route, we saw what appeared to be a person with dark red skin and white hair walking across sand that was supposedly un-crossable. It was my call to pick them up. I had heard of the Touched, and based on their appearance I assumed this one of them, on their way like us to the island being ravaged by the storm. We hovered down and picked them up, and the moment we closed the hatch we realized what a horrible mistake we had made. It wasn’t a person, but some kind of wretched creature wearing red skin like a suit. It attacked us almost the instant we took to the air, and as we fought back against it, purple smoke poured from its wounds. Touching it caused my companions to seize up and freeze like statues. I was the only one already wearing my air-tight Iso suit, and the only one who survived the attack and subsequent crash.
“It was horrible. My mind couldn’t even process what had happened to my rest of my squad. My friends...they weren’t even there anymore. They were all broken apart; chunks on the floor. I wanted to do something, anything to help them, but they were gone, and there wasn’t any time. The ship was sinking into the sand. We’d been warned beforehand that there was supposedly no way to cross the sand on foot, but the creature had been doing it. So - and I won’t go into too much gory detail here - I took a page from the creature’s book and made myself some overshoes from the skin it was wearing on its feet. It worked...sort of. Just enough to keep me above the sand as I ran the next several hours to reach the island.”
The bar patrons grimaced at this gruesome detail, but didn’t interrupt his story.
“There were more of the creatures on Koa, controlling the smoke from gaping purple holes that had emerged in the ground. I fought alongside the islanders, many of whom succumbed to the smoke’s effects and were petrified. An Aquine woman begged to help - she said she could keep the effects at bay, but the Koan chieftain refused to listen to her. I was slashed by one of the creature’s claws, surely a death sentence, but she used her Magi powers and kept the disease from spreading.” Finnegan stood and lifted up his shirt, showing them a scar like purple bark across his abdomen.
“The chieftain was convinced that this was all the doing of a woman who lived on the island. She had red skin like the monsters and was incredibly powerful - supposedly invulnerable. Even to a seasoned Iso, the Touched are the stuff of legend; I definitely never imagined I’d be faced with having to kill one. When we found her, her powers didn’t seem to be functioning, and at the behest of the chieftain, I took my window of opportunity and ended her life to try and save the people of that island. My actions could not have been more wrong, or more misguided. Killing her didn’t put an end to what was happening on Koa. For all I know, it was the death blow to the island itself.
“The orbs I mentioned earlier: Koa had one. The Touched of that island drew power from it. But the creatures that attacked Koa also drew power from it. Siphoned it. Corrupted it. And now, Koa is a column. One of many, rising into the sky, surrounded by water that refuses to stay put in the ocean like it should.”
“How did you escape?” asked Anji.
“Iso technology is a little more advanced than the tech that powers beacons like the one of Koa, or here on the plateau for that matter. Our internal transmitters still functioned after the Shift. I called in support to Koa the moment I stepped foot on shore, and it took a couple days but eventually another scouting vessel showed up to grab me. By that point, there wasn’t much left of the island, and only a dozen or so of us still alive, hiding in a communal cellar. This was when my contact with the Touched actually began.
“Before I could get on the ship, I was stopped - blinded really - by what I can only describe as the sensation of pure light. It was like sunshine coursing through my veins. Whatever it was, it communicated with me, not with words, but spoke inside of me with visions. It showed me the orb beneath the island, and that there were others like it all around the world, acting as barriers. When it was done, I knew that Koa was lost, but that it was now my duty to take the body of the Touched I had killed to another orb chamber and leave it there. I needed to atone for the mistake I had made.”
“Did you do it?” asked Yura.
Finnegan smiled. “I did. But that’s a whole other story, and if you want me to tell it, I’m going to need several more drinks.”
“What happened to the body?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. The vision didn’t tell me what would happen when I brought the body there, just that I needed to. Maybe the rest of her power was absorbed back into the orb; maybe it brought her back. I never returned to the chamber to find out. If she did come back, I think the last thing she would have wanted to wake up to is the face of the guy who killed her. There’s a lot I still don’t understand, but I can tell you this: I’m certain that life and death for the Touched is something completely different than it is for you and I.”
“This blizzard started last month,” said the bartender. “That’s when our water receded too, right around the time Laureena Danvers fought with the Irapa. We knew the two were connected somehow, but we didn’t know the whole story. Was the shaman keeping a barrier intact around the whole plateau?”
“Probably not by himself,” said Finnegan. “The whole Irapa tribe appears to be more in-tune with these powers than average folk. For the larger barriers that exist now, like the one in the Central Islands, it takes multiple Touched working in unison.”
“With the shaman gone...are we going to become a column?” asked Anji.
Everyone in the bar had moved in close, sitting around Finnegan like he was conducting story time at the library. He could see the fear in their eyes, so he made sure to keep his words hopeful and optimistic.
“The barrier that kept the storms at bay and the waters pulled in close to your shores has faded, but that doesn’t mean it can’t return. So far, there are no smoky, purple holes erupting from the ground in the Northern Plateaus, which means the orb here hasn’t been corrupted. I have a feeling that Laureena Danvers - strong as she and her fire beast are - weren’t enough to wipe out the Irapa entirely. And I also have a feeling that the Irapa are a particularly competent bunch, and know to do what’s best for this land and the people who live here. As for you all, I understand that there’s not a lot that can be done because of the blizzard, and that things can start to feel hopeless, but I assure you they’re not. You’re actually in a better situation here than a lot of people these days, and I’ll do what I can to help make your situation even more sound. In my vessel, I can scout from the air better than anyone could on a sled. I’ll do a thorough search for the Irapa on my way out, and see if I can’t find an entrance that leads to your orb. If I find anything, I’ll be sure to come back here and let you know.”
“Where will you go next?” asked Yura.
“Depends on if I can find the Irapa,” said Finnegan. “But with any luck, I’ll be headed in the direction of Laureena Danvers.”
Fate Index:
1. Antagonist gains great power
2. Character loses a limb and has it replaced with an unexpected alternative
3. Protagonist has/develops some incurable urge they must sate daily
4. Protagonist has great power but loses it
5. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
6. Flashback episode
7. Protagonist learns unsettling information
8. Protagonist joins or befriends powerful creature
9. Protagonist leaves home for the first time
10. Something consequential turns out to be an illusion
11. Shift in power
12. Betrayal
13. Protagonist finds powerful item or treasure
14. Protagonist discovers great power
15. Semi-permanent transformation
16. Goonie squad
17. Protagonist takes up cause of beleaguered
18. Protagonist becomes antagonist
19. Protagonist becomes famous
20. Ancient deity decides to walk the mortal realms
Outcomes Used:
14. Protagonist discovers great power
18. Protagonist becomes antagonist
Added outcomes:
Magic finger traps, but for the brain or heart
(thanks to @TCurdler on Twitter)
Super intelligent magical infant
(thanks to @wiljamius on Twitter)
