November 17th, 2007
Earlier this year, one of the Cafes at YaoiCon invited me to be a server. Normally I write Tybalt stories (they don’t take my others) for the YaoiCon Fiction Anthology, but this year it was cancelled. I’ve gotten used to the idea of contributing to YaoiCon and the invitation was no small compliment, so I accepted. This was my first year as a face, as someone physically involved with the programming and at-con events. Writing is a solitary kind of pursuit, and in earlier years my contribution has really ended at least a month before the convention actually started.
This year was very different, and on the whole I don’t think I mind at all. If staff asks me to return I’ll be more than happy to accept. I loved meeting everyone – other servers, constaff, and guests alike. We had some scheduling difficulties and I only formally served one table, but I got to circulate and meet quite a few people. Everyone (servers included) was exhausted and I presume cranky from the two-hour-plus wait, but they were still some of the most friendliest, most wonderfully enthusiastic people I’ve ever met. Their sheer energy carried me through the night, long after I should have staggered off somewhere quiet and collapsed, and I loved every minute of it. Even dead on my feet, I wished I had more time to meet all of them, and then more time to know them better.
I think that’s why I have to stand up and say this now.
To everyone who came to visit us at the Cafe, if any of you are reading this…
November 17th, 2007
N.B. The copy of this story in Envy, the YaoiCon 2006 anthology, contains a number of misprints and editorial errors. I am very sorry for the inconvenience.
Yellow-throated songbirds pecked at the bars of their tiny, gold-wire cage, blinded and too fat to fly, searching in vain for the trays of millet and grapes, oats and figs that someone had taken away that morning. A soft mewling startled them, but they soon forgot it, oblivious to the sleek, golden-skinned cat-prince watching them. Tybalt licked his teeth contemplatively, sprawling in the Roman couch beside the cage. He flicked open the top and plucked out the fattest, laughing quietly at its futile squirming. It amused him for a moment, but soon he grew bored again, and he thrust it, head first, into a glass of brandy.
It didn’t take long. The bird drowned in minutes, its struggles against his hand growing weaker and weaker until they stopped altogether.
“That’s cruel, Tybalt, even for you.” Tybalt’s guest, a gentle sylph of a boy, just barely a man, tried to look away, but the beautiful tragedy entranced him, somehow, and he could not.
“Well, I miss her, and their suffering eases my own.” He plucked the bird’s feathers deliberately, one at a time, tossing them back into the cage. “You wouldn’t deny me that, would you, Methyst?”
Methyst buried his face in his hands, running his fingers back through his short, dirty-blonde hair. “Still her, even now… Tybalt… It’s been seven hundred and fifty years.”
“Seven hundred and forty-nine, two hundred eighty-seven days.”
“Even still.”
