…or, Barley Breathing
“There’s a nymph in my room?” I asked. I wondered whether it was the hotter one or the chunky one.
“Chunky?” Violet said. “Really?”
“Chunkier, anyway,” I said.
“Well, it’s the first one, anyway,” Violet said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t mind letting someone crash in my room,” I said. “I mind a little bit that you opened the door from the inside with your mind.”
“Eh, you should be looking on the bright side,” Violet said
“What’s that?”
“You always know who to come to when you lock yourself out,” she said. She reached up and gave me a peck on the cheek, then rocked back on her heels, grinning like a loon.
“I don’t really care,” I said. “What I want to do is have a cigarette and go to bed. In that order only because I can’t do them both at the same time, and tired as I am, I haven’t had a cigarette since yesterday morning.”
“Really? Wow,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re doing as well as you are.”
“People always tell me I must not feel it as bad as they do,” I said. “I don’t know where they get that from. I’ve got a hellacious headache.”
“Yeah, I know,” Violet said, rubbing her temples. She’d been squinting. I’d written it off, as she had just come out of a dark bedroom, but now that I looked closer, she looked pained. “It woke me up, actually. That’s not a bad thing since I needed to talk to you, but if you want to take care of it, no argument from me.”
“You want to throw on some clothes and head down with me?”
“Are you kidding? I just wanted make sure you didn’t flip out when you got into your room,” Violet said. “Now I’m getting my ass back in bed.”
“Okay. Hey, you should eat lunch with us later,” I said. “I mean, with Marlot and—well, you know who I mean, I guess.”
“I do,” Violet said. “I don’t trust fast food salads.”
“Those aren’t the only things they have,” I said.
“I don’t eat meat.”
Of course she didn’t.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Well, what do you normally do for lunch?”
“I’m hazy on the exact details,” she said. ” I think it involves a lot of chewing.”
“Seriously,” I said.
“I make my own.”
“You could bring something with you,” I said.
“I was going to eat lunch with Barley,” she said. “Since she’s a vegetarian, too.”
“Barley?”
“The nymph,” Violet said.
“That’s her name?”
“That’s what she calls herself,” Violet said. “Her name is—” and she hit me with a grassy smell and a touch of cool sunlight on my brow.
“How do you spell that?” I asked.
“Like it sounds,” Violet said. “Go meet her. Get your smoke on. Sleep. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay.”
She headed back into her room, and I started towards mine.
Hey! she thought as her door was closing. I felt a firm pull on my cock. I missed you, you pervert.
Zero boundaries. I shook my head, clearing away a phantom scent, and went in to meet my guest. She on the couch, with her head towards the door as I came in. Sitting up with her back against the arm, not fully reclining. With the way her gold hair spilled down her back, she might have just been skimpily dressed. She swung her legs around craning her neck to see, and that impression flew out the window.
“Wow, Violet wasn’t kidding about you being a cockhound,” she said, setting down my lore textbook. The dragon music box was playing on the dresser. Aside from the faint glow of morning coming through the shades, it and the crystal rose were the only light in the room. “Ass-to-mouth? Mother Khaele, you’d probably get along with Amaranth just fine.”
“Uh, nice to meet you,” I said, turning on the light.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her head. She looked bashful all of a sudden. It wasn’t what I expected from a nymph. It was attractive, though. It humanized her a little. “I guess I’m just in the mood to snap. In the last week, I’ve been bouncing from one floor to another trying to find a place to stay and still make classes. I’ve been used as a punching bag, a dart board, a toilet, and things you probably don’t want to know about. I haven’t been able to get any breathing room, until Violet set me up in here.”
“I thought you just had to have sex with people,” I said, trying not to look horrified. If “toilet” was before her cut-off, then I definitely didn’t want to know what was after it, but I didn’t want her to think she was the one I was judging.
“Yeah, well, some people have a skewed definition,” she said. “And thanks to the outreach efforts of my ‘friend’, they expect me to roll over and take whatever they’re dishing out.”
“That’d be Amaranth?” I said.
I thought I’d seen amaranth flour in the health food section, shopping with my mom when she’d been on a health food kick. Amaranth and Barley. It fit. Barley had got shafted a little in the name department, though. “Amaranth” sounded almost elven. “Barley” sounded rural and hickish.
But then, a lot of people thought “Jamie” sounded like a girl.
“Yeah, her,” she said. “I’m Barley, by the way. You’re Jamie?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry for crashing in your acreage,” she said. “But Violet said you were a sweetheart.”
“It’s cool. You know, when I heard there were nymphs on campus, I couldn’t believe it,” I said. “No offense, but my understanding was you were tied to a piece of geography.”
“I am, spiritually,” she said. “And for most nymphs, you’re right. I live in a valley with dozens of nymphs and most of them never leave their fields unless there’s a parade or a fair. It never occurred to Amaranth to leave hers except to come visiting, but when I told her I was leaving she decided she just had to come, too.”
“So, do you read minds, too?” I asked. The subject of the other nymph clearly upset her. Probably best to avoid her.
“What?”
“Your reaction when I came in,” I said. “Total cockhound, ass-to-mouth.”
“Oh, that,” Barley said. “No, that’s not mind-reading. That’s just something that happens. I think of it as ‘the kiss’, because it’s like something in you is kissing up against something in me. Part of your aura or something. Amaranth actually thinks it’s the soul.” She made a face. “Can you believe that? I mean, sex is important, but somehow I doubt it’s the central concern of the soul.”
“You sure talk about Amaranth a lot,” I said.
“I hate her,” Barley said. “If I never see her again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Look, I need to get a cigarette, and then I’m going to bed,” I said. “Do you want to join me?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Awesome,” I said. I got a fresh pack out of the carton and we headed for the stairs.
I was glad it was early. I couldn’t imagine going all the way downstairs in the company of a naked nymph and not getting stopped by somebody if the halls were full.
“Uh, do we have to go out that way?” Barley asked when I started heading for the nexus. “I’m kind of trying to lay low.”
“That’s where the smoking areas are,” I said. “And there aren’t a lot of people out and about yet, anyway.”
“But there are some,” she said. She put her finger on my chest and traced a line up my sternum. “I’m just trying to avoid trouble.”
I looked around the ground floor lounge. There was nobody around. The desk was deserted.
“We can go out the side door, I guess,” I said. “It’s technically no smoking, but since nobody is around I guess it doesn’t matter.”
We stepped out into the sheltered concrete staircase. There was even more cigarette debris on the ground than there had been on the first day. Somebody had scribbled “FAGS” over the word “smoking” in the “no smoking” sign.
“I guess I’ve been taken worse places,” Barley said, looking at it while I lit my cigarette.
The first pull wasn’t the same kind of rush as transforming into a stag and launching myself through the woods, but all the same, it was something.
“So what are you doing in Pelinor, anyway?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Just trying to keep to myself,” she said. “As far as I can, being a nymph. I came here to learn, but I think I must be the only one in Harlowe. It’s all sex and dorm politics over there.”
“You have a problem with the sex?”
“I have a problem with the politics, and the way they intersect,” she said. “There’s this clique that controls it all. If you’re in with them, it’s like your shit doesn’t stink or something. Cross them once, though, stand up for yourself or for anybody else, and you’re an instant pariah.” She looked at me, with big doe eyes. “I don’t even shit, Jamie, and I sure as hell don’t stink, but I tried standing up for a girl and she threw me over just to get ‘in’ with the crowd.”
“What happened?” I asked. I thought she could probably use a shower, but I didn’t say anything. She smelled pretty damn good considering the week she’d said she had.
“They were going to rape her,” she said. “Violently. Like a, you know, a hazing. An initiation. They were going to ‘jump her in’, I think. And I liked this girl, I mean, I genuinely liked her. She’s kind of stupid and way too eager to be loved, but you just look at her and there’s this kind of dopey vulnerability and it’s like, how can you not like somebody like that? So, against my judgment, I agreed to go to this party so she’d have, you know, a friend there, and I tried to warn her beforehand, but all she cared about was that I was ruining her chance to hang with the cool crowd. She was just so excited about being invited to a party, you know?”
I nodded.
“And apparently she got her wish,” Barley said. “From what I hear, she’s real popular. The bitch of every bulldyke on the fifth floor.” She shook her head. “Can you believe somebody would want friends so badly she’d let herself be turned into a plaything?”
“You’re talking about Mack, the demon girl, right?” I asked. I remembered her being paraded around the student union in her underwear, and the early-morning grope sessions.
“Yeah, her,” Barley said. She looked pained. Physically stricken, even. Like the name was a slap across her face.
“Hey, she made her choice,” I said. “You tried your best to help her, but you can’t save somebody who doesn’t want it, so there’s no point in beating yourself up.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Violet was right.”
“Yeah, I am pretty much a cockhound,” I said. “Though I like girls, too.”
“I know you do,” she said. “But I meant about being a sweetheart.”
I was making an effort to look at her face, too. I’d always thought nymphs were like a twenty-four hour sex store with one hell of a generous take-a-copper policy, but Violet’s little preamble about decency had reminded me that Barley was a person, too, with needs beyond sex. She wasn’t just tired, she was weary, and she clearly needed some “me” time.
“Do you mind if I try that?” she asked, pointing at the cigarette.
“My friend Marlot beats me with her cane if I let people start smoking from my cigarettes,” I said.
She’d threatened to as a joke, but the sentiment behind it was genuine. It was also one I agreed with. I’d always share if I could with somebody who was out, unless they never reciprocated, but I didn’t encourage anybody to start.
“Oh, I’m not going to start,” she said. “I’m semi-divine, and I’m pretty sure I could heal an addiction if I had to. I just want to see what it’s like. I came here for new experiences, Jamie, and so far they’ve all been pretty sucky.”
“Your first drag off a cigarette isn’t likely to be any better,” I said.
“Well, let me find that out for myself, then,” she said. I looked at her, thinking. She squared up her shoulders. “You aren’t going to catch any diseases off me,” she said.
What the hell. She was an adult being. I flipped the cigarette around in my fingers and offered it to her. She took it, and looked down at it like it was a fireball wand and she was afraid it would go off. Then slowly she raised it to her lips—full, and a color of red found only in lipstick and sunsets—and wrapped them around the end.
She held it in her mouth like that. I’ve never gotten the comparison of cigarette-to-phallus before. Having sucked on more than a few of both in my time, I didn’t see the similarity. Watching Barley with the cigarette in her mouth, her eyes going almost cross-wise looking at it, I started to get an inkling.
It wasn’t that it was a sexy image. She looked ridiculous, actually. Awkward. I think that’s what did it. She was, probably for the first time since five minutes after she was born, a total virgin.
She took it out of her mouth and handed it back without inhaling. She let out a huge breath that she’d probably not realized she’d been holding. Against my will—though not entirely against it—I watched her chest fall. Not to put too fine a point on it, she had a nice rack. I don’t know if any guy’s ever used the phrase “just the right size” and actually meant it, but hers were.
Most of the girls I’d known that were as skinny as Barley were pretty flat. A lot of women I didn’t know personally had skinny bodies and great big boobs that were so obviously transformed or glamoured that you couldn’t take them seriously. Or maybe that was just my elven side.
Whatever.
Barley was full-breasted, and they looked gloriously natural.
“Maybe later,” she said apologetically. “I’m not ready.”
“Sure,” I said. I took a puff. There was a faint sticky-sweet taste on the end of the filter. “It’s cool, whatever. So, if you’re still tired, you can take bed. I slept on that couch lots of times at home.”
“All things considered, I’d prefer your first offer.”
“What was that?” I asked, wondering what Violet had said while I was away.
“The one you made upstairs,” Barley said. “When you said you were going to bed and asked me if I wanted to join you.”
What, no posts yet? That’s never happened to me. Well, I suppose I should make the requisite OOOK! (Or is that MOOK?)
So far, Barley sounds like a real person, the sort that I might like to meet. But I suppose the nakedness could be a bit distracting, and I can see how it might interfere with people treating her as a normal person. OTOH, I suppose she really isn’t a normal person, what with being semi-divine and all, and really being mostly back in her field.
Anyway, it sounds like she might make an interesting and entertaining addition to the list of active cast members. A truly alien being in the midst of a crowd of merely semi-magical people.
From her side of the story, barley came off as the lesser of two evils in that situation. Still wrong, but no longer gather the mob wrong.
I think that the best thing to happen for her now would be for her to go up with jamie and sleep with him. In the literal non-sexual way. That would definitely help her with her whole ‘too much sex/I’m not wanted’ crisis.
But but but, if they do, I hedge my bets on morning sex.
It’s really nice to have another view of Barley and another POV on the whole ToMU crew. I wondered if she would take Jamie’s statement the way she did. Maybe Jamie can finally get some decent girly action.
Anybody recall just what chapters of Tales Barley is referring to? I checked and found I had misremembered the bonus story, which makes me a little cautious about comments about Barley’s comments here.
The almost sleepover/almost rape is chapter 35. I wound up re-reading it too so I could see if there was some way Mack’s interpretation could turn into Barley’s, and I’m having a hard time with that. If anything I’d say what Barley says here lends more evidence to the theory that Puddy’s wine is spiked with PoSH (or something similar) than anything else I’ve read.
On the other end, it could also be that the alcohol made Barley’s interpenetration of events a bit fuzzier than they actually were and she genuinely went into the whole thing thinking she was protecting Mack and the lack of inhibition caused things to escalate. Either way, I don’t believe Mack is detached enough from reality to make almost being raped up, and I’ve heard of several occasions in real life where rapists are able to delude themselves into thinking that’s not what they’re actually doing. I feel the same way about Puddy, though.
“dopey vulnerability”
…yeah. That’s it **exactly**
Barley’s whole circumstance is making me uneasy. One, as another reader already pointed out, it seems that something has to be way wrong (probably with Barley) for Mack’s story of the Barley Encounter to jibe with hers. Two, talk about *issues* with Amaranth — why does Amaranth not know this? Does Mother Khaele? Three… did anyone else notice that Jamie thought she needed a shower? That the cigarette came back with a “sticky-sweet” taste? The second may just be ordinary, but the impression I got seemed to be that Barley really shouldn’t be able to stink that way, as a nymph. So either I misread somewhere… or possibly, Barley really is in nymph trouble.
I think that talk seales my opinion that Barley, while subconsciously rationalising her behaviour in the near-rape, is basically honest. I can definitely see the view she has on the events that followed, as well as on both Amaranth and Mack. I just can’t see her view of the actual turn of events with the near-rape being anything other than a try at rape. Her words at that time make it all but too clear that it is so.
She’s misinterpreting Mackenzie’s behaviour though, showing how deceptive the reading of just physical lust and sexual desire can be. Barley views it as trying to get a into the in clique through allowing them to sexually use her. But Mack actually wasn’t even aware that it was sexual at that point, and simply let them do it because she never learnt to fight back when people do things that make her uncomfortable.
@k4hl4n
yeah you probably have a point. If you go back in ToMU you’ll see where Barley begins wearing clothes and then the impure blood incident she has with Mack and that’s the last I remember of her for direct appearances in that main storyline. Would a dispossessed nymph become human?
But as far as the relationship with Amaranth there’s a bonus story about Barley’s decision to leave. And gobs of examples of Amaranth’s persistent obliviousness: Puddy and Steff, mother khaele’s interview, letting the Mack-Steff gender confusion go on so long.
But interested in whether she becomes a semi permanent roommate and to find whether Barley is really falling from grace.
@k4hl4n (7): Well, yes, something does seem to be wrong there. But first another possibility: Jamie’s elven blood makes him notice the smell because Barley is made by and for humans.
We have several possible explanations for Barley being sick (which would mean her field being sick, I gather), however. I would, at this point, give this one for the wild speculations list: Aidan was one of the males that took part of her creation.
Put me in the “there’s something wrong with Barley” crowd. I’m fairly sure it’s not her “fault”, but there’s def a few screws (roots?) loose there. Ergot in the field or Puddy’s wine? AE will reveal all…At a time of her choosing.
Jamie worked it out fast:
Telepaths can’t consume meat
Without guilt or shame
Barley has bad blood
In more ways than one—could she
Have swollen nymph lodes?
I wonder if the
Ethernet has weavesites for
Smoking fetishists?
Zathras, as to the second Haiku, again a LOLbad pun…. as to the third, if there wasn’t before, there are now.
Violet continues to amuse me, yeah she doesn’t have much in the way of personal boundaries, nor does she seem to respect them, but the chick just cracks me up… Also the fact that she knows Barley’s real name is kinda cool too, much less can actually pronounce it.
As for Barley… I can’t really call her anything other than a lying bitch in this one. Granted she was drunk at the time, and additionally I really think the nymphs need to get their heads out of the gutter, to realize that not everything has to be about sex… but.
Also this seems to explain more and more why back during the second dance, Jamie gives Mackenzie that look of disappointment, he’s had nothing but Barley’s side of events.
I picture Jamie walking around with 70′s porno music always playing in the background.
Bow chicka wow mow…
Considering ages, I think we can be quite sure that Aidan had no (repeat NO) part in Barley’s creation. When speculating on characters being Mack’s brother, recall he is 3 to 4 years older than Mack and almost certainly was raised under some name other than Aidan.
As for Barley no longer being a nymph – from Mother Khaele’s interview (ToMU Ch 271: Mother Knows Best)
As I have said before, Barley may be on some sort of probationary status, but she is still a nymph.
ARF, MOOK, whatever
OK, reading over 35, it looks hard to take Barley’s comments here seriously. Of course, she was pretty drunk at the time, so it wouldn’t be a shock if she doesn’t remember things all that well, but it’s hard to see how she can believe much of what she is saying.
She presumably does since Violet should be able to detect any gross lies. Of course, Violet may not have looked much deeper than this girl needs a little help.
“but all she cared about was that I was ruining her chance to hang with the cool crowd.”
And that you were attempting to rape her, Barley. You conveniently left that part out. And she didn’t particularly “throw you over” for them- Puddy tossed you out of the room and you fled from Harlowe shortly after. That’s an outright lie.
I’m more intrigued that Barley referred to herself, Puddy, and Mariel as the cool crowd of the floor!
I would suspect that the disparity in Barley and Mack’s story is due to cognitive dissonance on Barley’s part. I believe her actions in the story were a result of both her intoxication, and *her* desire to ‘fit into’ the group. When she sobered up, she couldn’t accept her behaviour, so she attributes the desire to fit in solely to Mackenzie, and the desire to rape solely to the other girls.
I think it speaks well of Barley that at least she is so unable to think of herself as someone who would do such a thing (like many people who discover they do things while intoxicated that they would never do sober).
OOK!
I think it’s obvious that Barley has a pretty heavy spin on what she thinks happened. I considered maybe she was just plain old vanilla lying but I think she at least mostly believes her version. Whether that was wine or a preexisting disposition to delusion (persecution syndrome?) we’ll have to read on and see.
I did see a few typos. “She on the couch…” I think is missing sat or something.
“if you’re still tired you can take bed.” I think “the” is missing.
I thought I saw another but I can’t find it now. Maybe it’s just two. Great chapter btw. I like seeing a better side of Barley. She’s much less two dimensional now.
I’m just wondering if this is before or after Barley had her run in with Mack, while wearing some clothes and drinking?
Also there seems to be more then a few assholes at MU. What sick bastards take advantage of a distruaght person(even if she is a nympth) and use her for their own sick and twisted pleasure (punching bag…dartboard…toilet??? wtf?!), without any thought as to her mental wellbeing? Then again it’s her choice, she could have said no, but she didn’t, and unlike Amarantha I doubt its because of her idea of her nympth’s duity that she put up with it. Perhaps it’s due to her own self loathing at herself for messing up with her sister and/or losing Mack, whom she seems to still have feelings for.
2 stories for the price of one!
I really like Violet. And she obviously likes Jamie. It would be fun if they get together – and I hope that’s where one thread of the story is going. (When I was a SF-reading teenager, one of my fantasies was having a relationship with a girl who was a telepath; I though the sex would be wonderful. Only later did I learn that long term relationships need some privacy as well.)
Dee can shield her mind from people like Violet, (as someone else said, it would be interesting for the two to meet up; perhaps they will). I wonder if Jamie can learn that ability?
Mackenzie has at least some self-shielding ability too – hopefully enough to protect Violet if they ever meet.
And then there’s more information on Barley! I never really understood her, despite the informative bonus stories. She comes across much more human here – and indeed there are hints that she is turning into a human, which could be a terrible thing for a nymph but perhaps good in the end.
As a dumb nymph, sex in any form no matter how degrading is just something that happens. As an intelligent human, it is not. If Barley is in between those two, no wonder she is confused and disturbed. Jamie – about whom Violet is right – looks like he’s going to good for her. The worry is that we know she appears later in a much more distressed state. But no doubt we’ll find there’s more to that story than met the eye first time too.
None of which excuses her attempted rape of Mackenzie, though it may give a clue to what happened. Clearly she had fallen for Mackenzie, and was jealous of Amaranth. She wanted to protect Mackenzie from sexualisation by Amaranth and exploitation by Puddy. That part of her current self-belief is probably true, and indeed commendable. But she fell into the dangerous belief that “if they can do that why can’t I, when I love her so much more than they do”, and became the rapist she planned to protect Mackenzie from. That, she seems to have blanked out – not only in what she tells Jamie but also in what she thinks about in Violet’s presence.
Barley needs to get help from someone like Teddi, but I don’t think she realises that yet. When she does realise clearly what she has done, she could be consumed by guilt. Perhaps that’s what makes her so distressed later.
Another lie?
“And for most nymphs, you’re right. I live in a valley with dozens of nymphs and most of them never leave their fields unless there’s a parade or a fair. It never occurred to Amaranth to leave hers except to come visiting, but when I told her I was leaving she decided she just had to come, too.”
Perhaps I am misremembering, but wasn’t it Aramanth’s idea to go to MU and she talked Barley into it? And wasn’t that in a bonus story where we observed the conversation firsthand?
BTW, Laurel’s son is AidEn. (Yes, my son Aidan can be a little devil, but he is not in this story.)
ABTW: Did anyone else remark yet on the Irish roots of Aiden/Aidan? “Firey.”
don’t like barley. she is such a martyr
@ Larry, 24: If I remember correctly, Barley’s version of events regarding coming to school are correct. Barley wanted to go, Amaranth had to tag along.
As for the rest of it, I would say Barley’s out-and-out lying, but whomever mentioned Violet is probably right. I seriously doubt Violet would help someone who’s so completely predatory and violent if they didn’t believe they weren’t. Shame how often the perpetrators can talk themselves into believing they’re the hero in a situation, or at least blameless.
Larry@24, no, based on the bonus story,The Wind that Shakes the Barley, I think Barley is right to think that it was originally her idea to go to University.
Chapter 56 of More Mu happens on the second Tuesday of the story, so it will be another four days until Barley meets Mack again on Saturday morning and realizes, from the fact that her skin doesn’t immediately heal after Mack bites it, that she has displeased her Goddess to the point where her nymphly powers aren’t currently working.
@Larry (24)
i believe you are mis-remembering. i’m pretty sure the Bonus Story indicated that BARLEY was the one who decided to attend University, and that AMARANTH simply decided to apply too and tag along.
and that is most likely where the discord between the two crept in. Barley worked to make the exam and got accepted. Amaranth pretty much took the exam as a lark, and *still* got accepted.
Barley’s whole point in attending is to prove (to herself most of all) that she is actually quite intelligent. Amaranth severely undercut her accomplishment by breezing in too, plus her acceptance of “ANY form of sex is good, no matter what” has put a bit of a strain on not only Barley’s “workload”, but i believe there’s mention that the women and wives in the valley are less than pleased with the men being encouraged to engage in any and every variation/perversion (YMMV) that has ever crossed their mind.
and you may have missed the update, but AE *has* established that it is “AidAn”, the traditional spelling of the name.
Oh that lying f-ing bitch..
“But first another possibility: Jamie’s elven blood makes him notice the smell because Barley is made by and for humans.”
Has Steff ever commented on either Barley or Amaranth’s smell? I recall her saying something about Mack’s at one point.
Oh, I get it now – Barley’s blood tasted foul because of smoking?
Or did I just jump the gun/ get the wrong end of the stick…
Also… ah, the love thing. Amaranth is all about the love – that’s what she’s made for. Barley hates. Badness. Much badness for a nature-created semi-divine love thang.
I need to be more awake, I think.
Amaranth isn’t all about the ‘love’ so much as all about the ‘lovin”. As Barley noted here, Amaranth confuses a person’s sexual identity with their soul on a regular basis….
Durh. Jamie’s so clueless sometimes. Not like Mack, but still.
It’s interesting to hear things from Barley’s side… she makes some good points. I kind of want to go back and read those chapters to get the dual-perspective, but I am too lazy to figure out which they were… I’ll check the comments to see if someone’s already done it. Although I suppose I could just click the Barley tag. Durh. I am also sometimes clueless.
As a fictional character, Vi is hot. Like Feejee. In real life, I’d run like hell from both of them, but here in the safety of fantasy, they’re both damn sexy.
@The Other Dave (33): I felt the same desire but wasn’t too lazy. Here’s a link: 35: Girls’ Night
Here’s a devilish idea:
What if the teenager who became Amaranth’s “father” in the bonus story by making multiple contributions to her field turned out to be AIDAN???
That would mean Amaranth is Mack’s niece! And that she is also sort of quarter demon herself!
for everyone calling barley a liar and such, all you have are 2 sides to the story. yet you are willing to accept one as the full truth without any backing of it because it was your first source of information. dont get me wrong barley could be lieing here but what evidence do we have of it? the only person who has been in contact with barley since the incident that maybe could discern the false actions is violet and she is on barley’s side. we do not know if she is because barley was in desperate need of help or because she is in the right here.
barley’s view of sexual activity is pretty generic, with few minor kinks thrown in. amarath on the other hand takes everything, even things that arent normally associated with sex and uses them for sexual gratification. this divide between mild and out there is the major issue between them. barley knows amarath does these things, its why people flock to her field, flock to her, etc etc; she leaves to get out of her shadow but amarath follows her instead. so her great escape has become her greatest nightmare, where people dont know whats normally expected of nymphs and they meet amaraqth and she does everything, so when they meet barley they expect the same exact thing and barley just cant, it bothers her and she just cant feed off it to the same degree amarath does.
my feeling about why she feels like poison is very simple, shes a DIVINE being, therefore her body is a temple to a god. mack is allergic to divinity so when she attempts to imbue it bam, theirs a reaction to it.
also heres a really telling quote about the whole situation from chapter 35
“If there was any other way I could see that would give me a shot at you, I’d take it,” she went on, giving me no clearer idea what was happening. “I really would, but… that’s not going to happen. I’m tired of always giving, never taking… never getting anything that I want for me. I’m sick of fucking Amaranth always getting her way, always copying me and then somehow getting the credit… you know it was my idea to sit by you and Puddy, that day with the doughnuts? ‘Look at that girl,’ I said. ‘She looks sooo sad. Let’s see if we can’t help get her out her shell.’”
She stopped and took a swig from the bottle, making a face. I wondered why she was drinking it if it tasted that bad.
“And now, she’s spanking you in front of the whole student body,” she said. “Whoopy.”
“Nymphs aren’t supposed to get jealous,” I reminded her.
“‘Nymphs aren’t supposed to get jealous!’” she repeated, mockingly.
I wondered if nymphs were supposed to drink, for that matter.
“Maybe I should just go,” I said, getting out of the chair.
“Maybe you should sit your ass down before I knock it down,” Barley said, in an attempt at a tough-guy voice that would have been hilarious, in just about any other circumstance. “That’s what you like, right? I was nice to you, but Puddy bosses you around and even fucking Amaranth steals your clothes and marches you around like a golem… and they both got a turn with you.”
“Puddy never got a ‘turn’ with me,” I said indignantly. I would have liked to argue the point about Amaranth, too, but wasn’t sure how.
“That’s not what I hear,” Barley said. “How about today at lunch? I got a full report from fucking Amaranth… who, by the way, was just pleased as punch that you let your roommate digitally rape you in full view of the cafeteria.” Barley gave another derisive little snort. “She says it’s great progress! Can you believe that? I wanted to make love to you, Mack… but wise, all-knowing Amaranth doesn’t even know the difference.”
so yeah, granted barley isnt the puriest of beings, she isnt the evilest bitch out there, and i bet you if she was mack’s owner alot of the stupid stunts that amy has pulled would never have happned, i include the not telling about steff, stuff about 2, and especially the situation with sooni in there.
I am now crazy curious about Barley.
I noticed a few typos.
“She reached up and gave a peck on the cheek,” Gave me a peck?
“we headed for the downstairs.” Maybe not a typo, but I tried to read it as “we headed downstairs.” Is that what you meant?
“Somebody had scribbled the scratched “FAGS” over the word “smoking” in the “no smoking” sign.” ??? Not even sure how this was supposed to read. I did think the substitution was funny, since fags are slang for cigarettes.
I SOOOOOOO blame Puddy’s alcohol. I agree that if Barley were all that bad, Violet would have known. Which means Barley thinks she’s telling the truth. I’m also not really having a hard time making the stories jive in a way. Mack really WAS pretty clueless, and she couldn’t stand up to Puddy at ALL. Barley may have actually, in her inebriated way, been trying to be kind.
I can also, while not entirely siding with her, kind of see Barley’s point where Amaranth is concerned. I got the impression from Amaranth’s “origin story” if you will, that Amaranth is far from a normal nymph, and was certainly created to be VERY openminded about whatever people want. We don’t know that any other nymph is like that, and certainly Barley isn’t. Thanks to Amaranth, now everyone thinks nymphs will fulfill your every fetish, which apparently they will, but that doesn’t mean they’ll LIKE it.
[What sick bastards take advantage of a distruaght person(even if she is a nympth) and use her for their own sick and twisted pleasure (punching bag…dartboard…toilet??? wtf?!), without any thought as to her mental wellbeing?]
Nymphs seem to belong to the “there is no such thing as bad sex, only good and better” school. Barley seems to have mostly just run into too much of a good thing. She seems to have her preferences, but these are not things she considers objectionable.
Yes, it was Barley who first got the idea of going to college. I had assumed the reverse until I checked. [Which does bring up the point these tales could use some serious indexing if someone has a lot of free time.]
Barley is the one who is making the incorrect statements in regard to her incident with Mack. Mack and Jaime are both pretty much unable to lie to us. Indeed, we know things about Mack she doesn’t because she has told us, and has forgotten or misunderstood them.
[What if the teenager who became Amaranth’s “father” in the bonus story by making multiple contributions to her field turned out to be AIDAN???]
The math has been done. It can’t be.
Although we were shown it (in a bonus story), I doubt the teenage contribution to Amaranth’s creation is unique; what is the usual response by a teenage boy to “You aren’t old enough to do that!”? While we can see specific effects, and his contribution may have been more significant than usual, Amy’s creation is noted as being “unusual” in several other ways. Her field is a “special” grain. Because seed grain (or cuttings) became available when they did, there was an unusually short interval between the creation of Barley and Amaratnth (this is the main source of Barley’s jealousy, the attention of being the new kid hadn’t had time to pale).
As to the continuing speculation that Aidan might be Amaranth’s father – very few 3 year olds are refered to as teenagers.
I’d like to be Jaimie. Or rather, when I was his age, I’d liked to been given all the opportunities for sex that he gets seemingly without effort on his part. After careful consideration, I realize that I did not need a Barley or a Violet or an Iason, no matter how sexy they are. What I needed was an author to shape my life the way Alexandra Erin shapes Jaimie’s life.
So there’s two questions. How do I go back in time and secondly how do I become a fictional character?
@41:
Also remember that the given teenager was contributing to the field.. again, and again, and again, and again… over and over and over, which would have had some impact.
I also agree with the further-above suggestion that the whole dart-board/toilet etc.. thing was likely a result of Amaranth’s extreme permissiveness and even encouragement of all the wildest and way-out fetishes she encounters and engendering similar expectations of Barley.
I agree with Luddite that this might be male influence in Barley’s personality. F’r example, let’s say a teenage boy has a crush on the popular girl in school, who’s still a little skinny like Barley, and who gets jealous or tempermental now and then because she’s still a teen. He sneaks out to the field, thinking of his favorite girl, maybe having an idealized mental picture (Moar boobz plz?), and has at it. The result is a nymph who’s more like a real person than a sexual divinity, because she was shaped after a literal, actual, flawed person. That’s a hypothetical, but maybe something along those lines happened. It’s been mentioned Paradise Valley is something of an experiment, and it’s been mentioned they have kids there (or at least teens), so I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t have perfect nymph-making protocols or security measures. Given the chance, I bet a lot of teen boys would love to have their perfect girl made available to them, and boy howdy, is sneaking out to the field to “bless” it the way to make this happen.
Ok, Violet is beyond freakin’ awesome.
I hope she doesn’t turn out to be fucking psycho like everybody else.
Barley….
Oh, poor Barley. She really, REALLY, needs to get away from Amaranth, needs to stop thinking about Amaranth, needs to just let that whole thing go for good and live her own life. It’s bound to be hard after eighteen years of dealing with the irritating nymph, but this level of absorption is seriously unhealthy.
Also, the alcohol may have clouded her recollection, and whatever was in that alcohol likely led her to things far beyond what she normally would have, but this much self-delusion is equally unhealthy. You were majorly out of line, Barley. Drunkeness, drugs, and jealousy of Amaranth is no excuse for what you tried to pull. Face up to it and go apologize to Mackenzie, sincerely and honestly.
As for Amaranth: Deep, calming breaths, Barley. You’re away from her now, and she didn’t know any better anyway. Live for yourself for a while.
I hope knowing Jamie will be good for her. He really is a sweetheart of a kid. Hopefully he won’t turn out to be a psycho either.
Why do i have a feeling Barley-sex is gonna rock alot harder than amaranth sex?
amaranth sex (albeit, we’ve only witnessed with mack) is pretty chaotic.
@44; Isobel.. We’re not discussing hypotheticals here, but what actually happened during the ‘germination’ of Amaranth as discussed in the bonus-story here..
http://www.talesofmu.com/story/bonus-stories/a-boys-prayer
at suryn(36) The reason for Mack’s reaction is simple, it’s stated in the chapter where they run into each other, all you have to do is piece all the small bits of information together. Nymphs are pure beings, they cannot get any std’s or anything because of mother Khaele divine grace. So as pure beings (like Barley states) there permanently virginal, however should they ever loose that grace they would also loose the protection. So it fallows that since barley broke the rules she lost the protection and then her virginity, that’s why Mack didn’t like the taste and also why Barley freaked out about it. This is just a guess but if looking at a symbol of divinity made by someone who has no faith (Steff) hurts then swallowing divine blood would have killed her.
Looks like Jamie has got a new girlfriend. Or two.
Les: I think Isobel is talking about a hypothetical germination of Barley, not about Amaranth.
How if it happened with Amaranth it could equally hapen to someone else, that sort of thing.