Electra D


I’ve always been impressed with the Center’s ability to support Electra and me when we stay here. If you need something they have it, or they know where to get it, or they have experts on hand who can make it.

Faced with a growing glacier of paperwork, Electra moaned, “What we need is someone who ENJOYS sorting things.”

Across the table, Deliah was discussing the food requirements for the evening (finger foods but nothing sticky or paper-staining) and planning a rotating buffet. She heard Electra, said “OH!” and ran out of the room.

She brought back four people, two of them human, who just sort of ‘took over’ the forms.

But not in a bossy way. A man and his wife from Jacksonville, Florida, big fans of Electra’s segment on GUA, sat down and tried to get our goals.

The guy, Ray, was listening to Electra while his wife, Denise, read through a few filled in forms.

Their two sylphs just stood quietly and respectfully to the side until the conversation was over. Bouncing in barely suppressed excitement, but they did suppress it.

Cher saw the fans doing the fan not-dance and went over to welcome them while the planning stage went on. Ghirardelli took them each a bite from the tray that Deliah had already ordered from the kitchen.

There were reasons we made sure to purchase those two before we left the show…

Anyway, Denise suggested we concentrate on two questions in the middle of the form. What’s the best thing about being a sylph? What’s the worst?

“See, everyone’s always concentrated on a sylph’s ‘so there I was when I started to feel dizzy’ story. And a lot of them are basically the same. Everything changed, then I was picked up by someone.”

“Yeah,” Electra said, with a glance up at me. I mean, that was our story.

“But down here, that’s where you’re going to find the big personal differences.” She held up one. “This sylph had a tiara permanently bolted to her skull. So maybe a category of ‘involuntary bodily mods’?”

“Oh, yeah!” Electra enthused.

Ray scribbled a few notes on a 3x5. I didn’t see where he found the cards. Did he just carry them around in case he needed to organize something? I’m lucky to have my checkbook in my pocket when I know I’m going shopping.

Denise flipped through a short pile she’d made. “And this one was sold the day she found out she was pregnant, and her baby was sold as soon as it was on solid foods.”

Half the sylphs in the room and humans gasped. The ones who worked directly for the Center shook their heads sadly, not surprised. Not happy, but not surprised by the story.

“Family separation,” Ray said, pulling out another 3x5.

“But we don’t want all the stories to be depressing ones,” I protested. “What’s a ‘good’ category?”

“Rescued!” one of their sylphs shouted. I don’t recall which one. Actually, come to think about it, maybe they both did. Or one did and the other said, “Fuck yeah!”

Man and wife turned to their pets with indulgent smiles for a moment of perfect understanding.

Someone else suggested “Found by a family member so they stayed at their home.” Ghirardelli supplied “Good Luck Charm!” Cher shouted “New Career.”

Then Ray started setting up the assembly line. Humans read the forms and put them in stacks. I think we started with Body Mods; Family Separation; Family Found; Rescues; Sex Workers; Survival (the word that was agreed to when ‘feral’ upset so many); and Talisman.

The humans read the forms and started the input stacks. Teams of sylphs dragged a page from the input stack and counted up the exact details, in case there were enough to split new categories. That’s how Body Mods split into Tattoos, Piercings and Amputations, for a horrifying example.

All in all, it was kind of amazing watching the glacier turn into ice cubes over the night…



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Index

110. Annie D

112. Annie E