Reality impacted the Burgundian as a elephant gun to a flack jacket, but he took it on the chest.
"Oh, you misinterpret me faultingly, cheri. I assure you in the entirety, any irritation I bear towards your person is not catalysed by any erroneous act you may "have done", but rather those very acts which you have not deigned execute. Endeavouring to reportingly preserve the sanctity of the fraternal ideal as a singular example. You utilised the assets of my department errantly, trailing a considerable jetsam of lustful quandaries, dour, flaccid dissatisfaction and an air of reeking, all-pervasive cancer of reluctance which bleakly bears Lillian as an intolerable acolyte. You come and go, you come and go like the hackneyed, proverbial anti-climactic karma chameleon, utilising a series of impenetrable (and no doubt, vivid) pseudonyms as an actual, active camouflage for Dieu knows what subversive intrigues. The temptation to sweeten a certain Cerulean personage into placing the matter into an eternal rest was (for a duration), unremittingly relentless. Honestly cheri…?" Achille squinted, glaring at the enigmoid."…I care not what moniker fits your flights of fancy, or what badge I may pin to that generically endowed visage of yours. An unimpeachable fortress is one not worth assailing, nor particularly useful during the existence of a bypass."
"…Speaking with uncharacteristic certainty cheri, I do not admire you - this is not the same as detesting, mind - I do not envy you due to the solitude you garner. The bleakness, the blankness, the migrant, nomadic nature of the life you forge. Be it Tara or Susan, you see fit to set your tracks in the sand, not the rock; wiping clean every step you leave. "This freeport", as you so impassively declaim, served as your home for an operable duration, a home that you exchanged as readily as a fresh, newly-pressed set of clothes for those recently worn. Now, shape-shifter…" The Burgundian continued, also glancing at the void expanse of his glass. "…I have only encountered four personages of your apathy, excepting yourself, and three of those individuals were other than human. The fourth… again a siren of smoke and mirrors."
"…As for that petit tincture of yours? Why, it resides in cryostorage; flash-frozen to a state of atomic immutabillity, and will persist there until I (or, indeed, its progenitor) demands its utilisation furthered. I have projects more demanding than the ejecta of those who care not for myself, nor, indeed, the station nor congregation with whom they interact and who they have only been bombarded with mouths crying "friend". I'm sure you appreciate me, cheri."He finished, with a winning wink.
"…So, this "old friend" of yours… come off it cheri, Corino may be a hermit but I have the extreme displeasure of her acquaintance, along with innumerable more… bizarre entities of alienation, mostly threatening and all flashing ungentlmanly levels of disdain. No secrets among old sparring partners, eh?"
"…After all, that mangy dogette bears her wizened hands in the affairs of many men. It can be woefully exhausting".
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
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