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Things have been different since Gideon and Harrowhark returned from the pool what now feels like myriads ago, and everyone knows it.
Which is why it's surprising, though only a little, that Harrow remains as Ninth solemn as always, after everything they’ve all been through. Wrapped in a robe made of snark and painting on her resting bitch face, the remaining houses remain a tad on edge, remain on egg shells whenever Harrow drifts by, braced for biting criticism.
Still, it's obvious, at least, that her relationship with her cavalier has changed. If it isn't obvious from the heart eyes Gideon now sports twenty-four-seven, it's obvious in how much more possessive over Gideon and her time Harrow has become. She's always been cautious about who Gideon is allowed to spend time with, and that caution has only ratcheted. She's always at Gideon's side, a dwarfed, small and reluctant shadow that would rather be honing her craft in the laboratories, if only Gideon weren't so outgoing.
Which is why it's also surprising one day when Gideon is able to be cornered alone for more than a second. It's Ianthe, of course it's Ianthe, who first pulls her aside and says, "I am sick of your Lyctor."
"Join the club. But I'm already president," Gideon jokes, kind of.
Ianthe's eyes narrow. She closes in on Gideon, who's far from concerned considering how much of a frail Lyctor Ianthe is as well. Though considering she swallowed her cavalier to the point that the only remaining trace of him are tiny flecks in her eyes, Gideon should tread lightly. "I am not having a laugh, Nav, or whatever your name is. I will say this once. Take that wretched woman to bed and put us all out of our misery." She pokes her in the chest for good measure then walks away.
Gideon starts to wonder if she’s the only one who actually eats around here. Finally left to her own devices, she forks a white mashed substance into her mouth. The hot, smooth, and creamy substance almost melts in her mouth. She quickly downs the entire pile of it on her plate and starts to work on the leafy greens.
"Griddle."
The voice that uttered is barely above a disinterested mutter, but Gideon hears it. She looks to find Harrow at the entrance of the glass-topped hall-turned-cafeteria, appearing tiny and ticked. Nothing out of the ordinary, Gideon notes. Harrow orders her to come and Gideon’s been more amenable as of late, so she does. She says goodbye to the remaining food on her tray, and follows Harrow who immediately unfolds her arms and walks away the moment she sees Gideon in motion. It leads to a childish game of Gideon nearly chasing her back to their room, not unlike their childhood on the Ninth.
When she enters, Harrow is standing in the center of it with her arms folded again. "What did you discuss with Ianthe?"
Gideon's eyes bulge out of her head in surprise. "How do you know I spoke with her?"
"There isn't much on this vessel I'm not privy to," Harrow says ominously.
She fights off a shiver, as she typically has to do when Harrow gets especially creepy. She likely just listened in, like a creep. "I don't think you want to know, Bone Queen," Gideon says offhandedly. She lifts a leg one at a time to rip her boots off her feet and drop them to the floor with an audible thud.
Harrow looks at the messy heap Gideon's managed to make in three seconds flat. She cuts her eyes to the offender. "I didn't ask you to think, Griddle. I asked what you discussed with Ianthe."
And maybe it's the slight shrill quality of her voice, or the insult and offense buried in her statement, but Gideon finds herself wheeling around to stand over Harrowhark. "She says you need to get laid!"
The statement almost echoes in the room that falls silent after Gideon speaks. Harrow's breath snags in throat. The unfamiliar statement brings her up short. She's heard Gideon say these words once, maybe twice, but the colloquialism seems beneath Ianthe, who frequently employs colder, more biting words. Regardless of who said what, the implication was intercourse, and the intent was to insult. Blood rushes to the surface of her skin before she can identify a single emotion she's feeling. She grits her teeth as whatever she initially felt bleeds into something easily identifiable: irritation. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asks frostily.
"It means—"
"I know what it means," Harrow snaps.
Gideon frowns in confusion then laughs and says, "How do you know what it means?"
"I've spent my life with a nuisance-turned-cavalier who possesses a similar vernacular." Anger is plain on her face, but her hunched posture and arms hugging around herself tell another story she only, as of recently, lets Gideon read.
Gideon bypasses any awkward half-starts or stammered inquiries and steps forward to wrap her arms around narrow shoulders. "Ianthe's the worst," she says. Aside from Harrow, only she knows of the trials and tribulations of the Ninth, about the thin line that must be toed and how seemingly offhanded comments like Ianthe's strike deep. Harrow feels a hand on the back of her head guiding her until she rests against Gideon's clavicle. She hesitates a little and wishes she'd hesitate more before she succumbs and wraps her arms around Gideon's waist.
Her eyes shut. She takes a breath that feels like the first one she’s inhaled all day. Another reason she’s tried to stay away and focus on her work—Gideon is distraction personified, and when she isn’t cajoling Harrowhark away from work then she’s unknowingly arresting most of Harrow’s mental faculties with little more than her eyes, smile, or flex of her arms as she handles her sword.
"And what is your assessment of the matter?" is mumbled into her chest.
Gideon had been so caught up in crafting the perfect joke about Harrow’s nose nearly buried in her tits when the question bowls her over. "W-what?" She blinks. Harrow has never asked Gideon's opinion on a damn thing. To the point that Gideon had been sure she never would. For Harrow to look at her in inquiry leaves Gideon dumbfounded. She scratches the side of her face while a tumbleweed travels through her mind. "What do I think about...?"
Harrow rolls cold eyes and steps away to look up at Gideon. "What Ianthe said," she says slowly in what she assumes is patience. It's not.
"Do I think you need to get laid?" Even voicing the question sounds like a trap.
"You haven't engaged in intercourse, and no one suggests such sordid behavior of you." Harrow's body nearly ripples with anger as she glares toward but through Gideon at some unseen slight. "Unless there is something I'm unaware of."
Gideon shakes her head with widened eyes. "No—nope. Just me and my magazines." She thinks it over for a moment then says, "But I do put my magazines to use. Not saying you, umm, have to."
"Yes, Griddle, I'm aware of your claims of reading just for the articles."
"No, I...I touch myself, Harrow."
Harrow stops moving entirely for a moment before she clears her throat and says, "I shouldn't be surprised."
Gideon continues speaking from there, but there's a severe lapse, a length of disassociation during which Harrow replays that sentence ad nauseam. It's a concept she's only considered a handful of times, so few that she can recall each one. The initial thought was learning of the concept from none other than Gideon herself. It was a fleeting surge of her cognition that was over as soon as it started, flagged for disinterest and discarded. The second time was when the nuns thought it important to sit her down and explicitly forbid her. Again, Harrow trashed the idea. The third time was soon after when Gideon confessed that the nuns lectured her and punished her for hours after learning Gideon masturbated. It didn't stop Gideon, and thoughts of her masturbating sprouted in Harrow's mind like the most rotten forbidden fruit. The fourth time was the first time she happened upon the infamous magazine collection.
And...now.
Gideon smirks, refusing to be goaded into Ninth shame. "Those magazines weren't for nothing," she concludes.
Harrow's synapses spark and her mind drifts further, to her conversation with Gideon in the pool. How they clung to each other, dripping wet. The warmth of Gideon's lips and the sound that tore from her own throat, how Harrow could say no more once Gideon's lips descended on her own. Had Gideon masturbated since? Her breath stops and stutters before she forces an even exhale through her nose. "Have you masturbated since our conversation in the pool?"
Her bravado is pulled from her like a sheet and leaves her naked. Gideon sputters, and Harrow's at least satisfied to beat her at her own game. "I—" she laughs awkwardly, scratches at her eyebrow. "I—yeah. Yep. I have."
The full weight of Harrowhark Nonagesimus' undivided attention lands on Gideon heavily. She finds it inescapable, as though the walls have absorbed the door to the exit. "Why did you?"
Golden eyes roll around her skull a bit in panic. "W-what?"
"Keep up, Griddle," Harrow demands. "Why did you masturbate?"
"Because it was hot, Harrow," she says as if it's obvious. "You were all pressed up against me and we were making out. For like, the first time ever. With anyone. Ever."
"I get it." There's no malice to Harrow's voice, but no real emotion at all, just a far off quality lightening her tone. Gideon's words transport her directly back to the moment. She had felt warm, though soaked through to the bone, antsy and anticipatory. In the moments that immediately followed, she found herself wanting Gideon's lips on hers again. They haven't kissed since, lacked the opportunity to as Harrow had to prioritize spending every waking hour outside of their room in her pursuit to be a Lyctor.
Though Gideon deems Harrow incapable of destroying her body, unless she crafted a seriously deadly construct, she's more than capable of cutting her down to size in just about every other way. The result is the brief break in eye contact before Gideon forces herself to meet Harrow's gaze and overcompensate a little. "All right. You know how I feel about it. How'd it make you feel?"
"I am Lyctor," Harrow says in affront. "The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House." The words sound rehearsed and sooth Harrow as she says them. "I do not concern myself with desires of the flesh."
Gideon steps closer until they're nearly touching. The proximity lowers her voice to a more intimate sound, a tone of voice Harrow hasn't heard since the pool. It’s been too long. "One flesh, Harrowhark."
How dare Gideon continue to quote and misrepresent such an important oath with her carnal intentions? Harrow's knees suddenly become a weak point that she wants to reinforce with thicker bone. "Gideon," she mumbles.
"My flesh burns for you," she says. "Which means you must feel the same, Bone Queen." Her hands rise to cup her cheeks, and suddenly Harrow's transported back. She leans forward and upward until their lips connect. It's a seal of flesh to flesh, essence to essence, a promise of everything that's come and everything that will come. She sighs against Gideon's mouth when strong arms encircle her waist. Even this is forbidden on the Ninth, unless Harrow is betrothed, which she has never been. This moment and the moment in the pool offer irregularities in her behavior that bewilders. Yet, unlike anything else in her life, Harrow doesn't try to make sense of it.
Her lips part when she feels a slippery tongue drag along her sensitive nerve endings. She gasps at the first touch of their tongues, and Gideon moans into her mouth. She feels Harrow's elasticity in the palms of her hands. It's a remarkable wonder that someone as tightly wound as Harrow possesses the ability to loosen. She didn't even know Harrow could moan, yet she hears it on the air when her lips veer to her jaw. She feels the flex of whatever Harrow would call that tendon as she experimentally flicks her tongue against her neck. Harrow groans and shifts against her at the scrape of teeth.
Once Gideon gets the nerve, she asks against Harrow's wet flesh, "Would you want to watch me do it?"
Harrow breathes harshly. "Masturbate?" She doesn't even recognize her own voice or the word on her tongue.
Gideon nods, kisses her again. "Can I touch myself in front of you, Harrow?" she asks. "Is that okay?"
In the face of judgment from the Ninth, her dead house, Harrow decisively says, "Yes."
Too eager to waste any more time than the universe has made them already, Gideon climbs on the bed, Harrow’s bed, without asking. The irony that the tiny Lycrors get the bigger beds isn’t lost on her. She hands her a pillow and asks, seemingly apropos of nothing, "Will you sit on this?"
Harrow rears back from the fluffy piece of decorative nonsense. "Why would I?"
The question earns her a little shrug. "It may be more comfortable."
"I don't need to be comfortable."
"Humor me."
Sighing, Harrow grabs the pillow to sit on in the middle of the bed.
"Straddle it," Gideon instructs, to which Harrowhark scowls.
"Is this from one of your explicit magazines?"
"We're humoring me right now, remember? No questions."
Harrow huffs. She positions the pillow between her legs and kneels to sit on it. Immediately, she finds the position impractical and unnecessary, and tells Gideon as much.
Gideon just looks between her spreading legs at the sight of Harrow kneeled over a pillow snug between her legs. Countless images from illicit magazines she's been perusing for longer than she'd care to admit, and not one compares to this moment. Harrow's still outfitted to the literal teeth in Ninth armor. Paint still streaks her face in black and white, obscuring her naked features from view. She looks formless and ominous, dressed in all black robes she’s managed to gain access to again, with her favorite armor she's fashioned out of someone's literal rib cage, or perhaps even several people's rib cages that she's sewn together underneath.
“Now what?” Harrow demands.
Gideon’s magazines dictate that she say something to compliment the woman in her bed—Harrow’s bed, technically—but she draws a blank. Instead, she reaches into her pants, and does what Gideon knows best, second only to the sword. The fabric bulges around her pubic mound. She's wet already, and has been since Harrow stomped away from her to their bedroom. She chooses not to analyze what that says about either of them as Gideon drags her wet fingers upward to her clit. A barely audible sigh slips past full lips.
Instantly, Harrow feels a flush rising beneath the surface of her skin, an involuntary reaction as blood begins to rush through her body. There’s little finesse, little sound beyond the rustling of fabric and Gideon’s occasional sigh. She watches the subtle shift of Gideon’s legs in tell that her body is becoming aroused. Though this isn’t a practice she’s ever engaged in, Harrow is knowledgeable of simple anatomy. How arousal is no more than a trick of the body: increased blood flow, increased neurotransmitters that practically drown the brain and deceives it into thinking it’s experiencing pleasure. All a ruse of the mind, she knows. Yet her curiosity is beginning to surpass her knowledge.
"How do you feel?" Harrow finally asks.
"Hot," Gideon admits. She's slick and begins to swell. She twists and whimpers when she plunges inside herself and sticks another hand into her pants to rub her clit. She's never really done this fully dressed, and feels her clothing start to stick to her everywhere. Her body prickles with awareness of midnight eyes watching her. "It feels...it feels good, Harrow," she moans for the first time.
Harrow's hips buck involuntarily. Heat emanates from her center. She's learned to control so much about her own bodily functions, mostly skeletal. Yet these sensations, she blames on her body, are beyond her control. She wills her body to still and affect the sense of a corpse. A corpse has one advantage going for it, however, in its ceased bodily functions.
"Do you know what I think about?"
The question knocks her from her reverie. Harrow meets her eyes. "I assume the large-breasted, spread-hipped women of your magazines." Well-endowed women who look nothing like Harrow’s narrow and frail form—
"You," Gideon says, undeterred. "I think about you."
Curiosity is such a repulsive thing, as is pride. But Harrow shifts against the pillow in a brief moment of restlessness that doesn't even register to her. "I'm sure there is better use of your time than—"
"I think about seeing you without your paint."
The statement is scandalous enough for Harrow to rock silent.
"Without your robes," Gideon continues, "without your weird little bone armor. Just you." Her hand quickens between her legs, and Harrow tracks the movement.
Harrow's hands fall to the pillow. Her fingers curl inward, blunt nails digging into the fabric, wishing it was her own flesh. Interestingly, this moment strikes as an inappropriate time for self-mutilation. It quickly falls from the first, second, third through sixth thought in her mind. Instead, her brain feels terribly empty yet satiated as she engorges on Gideon's thoughts, sounds, movements. Her eyes flicker from her face full of slackened features to between her legs where her hands, invisible, move with purpose and precision that she's come to expect from her cavalier who knows her way around a sword. Harrow feels her own heart give a hard thump then begin to pump that much faster at the mere thought. Her gaze lifts from Gideon's hands moving obscenely inside her pants to the flex of her forearms, biceps and triceps—some of the muscles responsible for Gideon's mastery of the sword.
She's envied those muscles. She hasn't met a single necromancer prior to Lyctorhood who was also adept at the sword. She's wanted to touch those muscles. Just to better grasp the inner workings of her arm, curious as to whether Gideon has had any broken bones that she doesn’t know about or didn’t directly cause. Without further thought, Harrowhark leans forward to grasp Gideon's arm right above her elbow. Her skin is scalding in comparison, and Gideon stills in shock like a trapped animal in her grasp.
"Harrow," she whispers, and her voice carries eons of wreckage at the bottom of an ocean.
A chain reaction unlike anything Harrow's ever felt surges through her from the goosebumps lining her arm, to the clenched tension in her lower abdomen. She twitches against the pillow and bites her lip when it feels like something's crawling up her throat. Some formless sound she can't make sense of. The arm in her grasp starts moving again as Gideon stares at her through lidded eyes.
"Harrow," she moans. "Fuck—"
She's wondered where Gideon gets such language from, and eventually chalked it up to her magazines. Harrow's never heard anyone on the Ninth utter such profane language, and it hits her ears hard. She releases Gideon's arm to grasp the pillow between her legs and black eyes shut tightly. Divorced from her own thoughts and very will, her body gives a jerk that unhinges her jaw until her mouth falls open, almost in shock. This sensation feels like a shock to her very system.
Ninth nuns warned of carnal pleasures. The body, her body, has been but a vessel to serve the locked tomb and exist as a being of devotion to the beautiful body within. Harrowhark has been but a war crime whose sole existence, other than the tomb, is to be the most knowledgeable and competent necromancer, a Lyctor. Nothing about her existence constitutes the need for desires of the flesh beyond a desire to unite with the body of the locked tomb.
Yet her body gives another involuntary jerk against the pillow and her entire pelvis throbs. Her clitoris is the culprit, Harrow knows. With over ten thousand nerve fibers, there is no other body part like it: so many sensitive and easily stimulated nerves crammed into one concentrated surface area. She belatedly realizes this is why Gideon made her sit on the pillow, pure subterfuge.
"Griddle," she warns, but it's an elongated moan, and it's only confirmed when Gideon moans in return. "Just like that, Harrow. Keep going."
Gideon's completely misread this situation. Harrow isn't encouraging anything about this moment.
But perhaps it's Harrow whose misread the situation as Gideon and her own body appear to be on one accord. She doesn't stop, emboldened somewhere in her hindbrain by Gideon's breathless declaration. She whines before she can help it at the husk of Gideon's voice, her encouragement. How she's craved Gideon's attention before she even understood that she did or what it would come to mean long term. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut against the truth of what she's doing and thrusts repeatedly into the pillow. With her legs spread around it, the soft surface presses into her everywhere. Her labia majora and minora depending on the shift of her body. She feels the cavern of her hole pulse steadily, the tension building in her pelvis and behind her abdominal wall.
The intellect in Harrow attempts, struggles, fails to catalogue these sensations and understand them. The only word her muddled brain can work out is tingles. Everywhere. From her genitalia dragging wetly across the pillow between her legs, spreading through her pelvis, licking up her stomach. It even extends to her extremities.
Her nipples tauten with the blood pumping quickly through her veins, and she grits her teeth as she's suddenly made to perceive how they feel against the cotton of her bra. It's yet another distraction, and Harrow can't help but think if she can just reach into her robes, past her rib armor, past the shirt underneath, and the undershirt beneath that, under her bra to rub against the hard peaks just once, she can find relief. As it stands now, her nipples throb in a reverberation across her chest that tumbles down hotly between her legs. If Gideon twists at just the right angle, Harrow can see hers through her shirt. She can raise a construct in this very moment that could manipulate Gideon's strained flesh with its phalanges, but decides very quickly this moment is for her alone.
Sweat prickles at her hairline and beneath her robes. Her once hesitant foray into whatever Gideon’s coaxed her into has become quickly paced thrusts. Her hamstrings and quadriceps burn, and Harrow isn't sure how much longer she can go on. She doesn't have the stamina of a cavalier, like Gideon who seems far from tired as she regards Harrow's straining form. "You're doing good, Harrow, so good. Don’t stop."
Harrow moans and throws her head back. She doesn't even have the wherewithal to correct Gideon's grammar, soothed and stimulated at once by the low purr of her voice. She can’t remember the last time anyone has used the word good in the same sentence as her name. The nuns always told Harrow her recitation was sufficient. But good is good. Everything floods south, her blood, her focus, copious amounts of lubrication that saturates the pillow to the point that Harrow's inner thighs can feel the reach of her own arousal. She bucks forward again and again.
"It feels—" Gideon whimpers and Harrow thrusts harshly at the pathetic sound. "I can't believe I finally get to kiss you, Harrow."
Harrow wets her mouth, panting.
"Your lips are so soft."
Her clit throbs. It’s a ringing bell reverberating through her whole body, and she shudders. She yearns to feel Gideon’s lips on hers, and rises from the pillow to thoughtlessly shed her robes. Gideon gets a moment to take in Harrow kneeling before her spread legs, in closer fitting clothing that may suggest she has slight curves after all: her close-cropped black hair, evenly toned brown skin surrounding the edges of black and white face paint, her slight frame, torso still encased in her bone armor. Gideon doesn't even notice the pain of bone on bone when Harrow clambers up her body to lay flat.
Warm lips close on warm lips as Harrow greedily eats her own name from Gideon's mouth before the air around them can even experience it. She pulls back to regard her from this vantage point.
"I've always liked you like this. And now I know why," Harrow admits candidly yet cryptically.
Gideon’s forehead wrinkles. "Like what?"
Harrow leans lower to breathe into Gideon's ear, "Under me," earning a moan uttered against her own. She repositions to lay directly on top of her and shudders at the feel of Gideon’s metacarpophalangeal joints brushing her mons pubis. Her hips spread and she lifts just a little until thick knuckles press directly against her clit instead. Harrow thrusts forward and moans the three syllables of the first person to ever touch her this way.
Gideon jerks at the sound of her name. She instantly registers Harrow's heat pressed to her. Just turning her hand over would put her in more direct contact, Harrow in the palm of her hand. Not that she can move much at all while pinned beneath narrow squirming hips. As she manages to wrench a hand free from her pants, Gideon briefly marvels at the notion that Harrow has any muscle definition at all. Wet fingers grasp Harrow's jaw on either side, and Gideon’s scent permeates around them suddenly. Harrow's nearly drunk on the potency of this moment. The feeling of thrusting down into Gideon, gripping the sheets beside her head as she watches her, inspires arousal then power, which is arousing. To possess someone as strong as Gideon, her childhood nemesis who always meant so much more. Harrow pulls away and grabs the hand that had been between her legs to inspect the viscous fluid on her fingers.
Without much thought, she drags Gideon's hand closer to lick the pad of her finger. Gideon watches her tongue flick out then back in a flash.
"Harrow," Gideon moans. "Fuck, Harrow."
"Better than your magazines?" she asks brazenly before taking Gideon’s fingers into her mouth.
"Way better," Gideon agrees with wide eyes and a nod. Harrow feels her pace quicken between her legs, and Gideon's knuckles rub her clit even faster. Her eyes shut as thick fingers lay heavily on her tongue. Harrow sucks her essence into her mouth, and feels her insides constrict.
Gideon tastes divine, and she tells her exactly that.
Golden eyes nearly roll back. Of course Harrow’s a talker in bed. She’s a talker in life, having spent their entire lives subjecting Gideon to endless monologues. She voices the only thought remaining in her head. "I can’t wait to taste you, Harrow."
Harrow spirals. She’s no good at imagining any sexual act like Gideon is, but for one brief moment she pictures herself completely nude before Gideon’s fiery gaze, and moans.
The signs of Gideon’s impending orgasm flutter through her, and the stutter in Harrow's rhythm may signal her own. Gideon finds herself hurtling even faster knowing they share in this together.
It’s only now that she’s at the precipice of falling over into the abyss with the faint taste of Gideon on her tongue that Harrow recalls she’s never experienced any of this before, this rapid ascent that shears her self-control and threatens to send her into a panic. Her body rolls repeatedly to meet Gideon's hips, midnight gaze appearing frenzied as she stares down into half opened eyes. "Gideon," she gasps, "please, beloved."
Her voice is high and breathy, and unlike anything Gideon has ever heard. She must sense her uncertainty, her need. Gideon reaches up her back and presses until Harrow folds forward to bury her face into her neck. Gideon's grasp on her nape is an anchor for her wreckage as she drifts farther out to sea. "One end, Harrowhark," she insists. She groans as she feels herself tighten, feels the demanding press of Harrow’s hips. Gideon grits her teeth, then murmurs into Harrow’s ear, "Show me."
A whiny sound is expelled from Harrow's larynx. "Gideon—" She releases the bedsheets to curl her fingers into Gideon's fiery hair as she ruts harshly until it feels like something inside her breaks. Her hips stutter to a stop and her head rears up and back in a bout of what feels like rigor mortis throughout her stiff body. Her clit throbs, her walls clench, and Harrow emits a soft cry then she churns forward in short quick thrusts, lip bitten between her teeth as the volcanic reaction continues. Gideon bucks wildly to meet her hips again and again as she comes apart below. She moans Harrow’s name repeatedly, and Harrow moans at the novel moment. Sensations ripple across Harrow’s body unlike anything she's ever felt before. She's convulsed and writhed in pain, but never in pleasure so intense she wonders if it is pain. Then, in a glorious moment Gideon will never forget, Harrowhark smiles.
She doesn't stop until every aftershock has been wrung from her flesh, then Harrow more or less goes limp on top of Gideon. Neither of them notice her bone armor as she nuzzles closer. Her eyes shut when warm arms wrap around her.
"That was just..." She can hear the smile in Gideon's voice, the awe. "You okay?"
"I'm...good."
She knows only Gideon will know how much that means.
They lie in contented silence, until Gideon opens her mouth to say, "I rocked your world, Nonagesimus. Maybe even your whole universe."
"Griddle!"