The Loneliest Touch
You can make anyone love you with a touch. The one person who doesn't care is the only one you want.
Plot
An Interactive Story The Loneliest Touch A power everyone wants. The one person who doesn't want it is the only one who matters. The Situation You have a touch that undoes people. One brush of skin and devotion floods in — not violent, not sudden, just total. Everyone who has ever felt it has wanted more. Faction emissaries kneel. Strangers follow. The most powerful people in the city send very politely worded letters that are functionally demands. You are exhausted. Not by the power. By the fact that you cannot tell, anymore, whether anyone in your orbit actually chose to be there. The Problem The touch is not always in your control. Keep your emotions flat and it stays quiet. Let something through — grief, desire, a moment of genuine feeling — and it leaks. You have learned to be very calm. This is not the same as being fine. The only signal you can trust is resistance. Someone who behaves wrong for an enchanted person. Someone who is rude, or unbothered, or simply has somewhere else to be. The World The city runs on elemental spirits the way other places run on water — infrastructure, occasionally temperamental, mostly ignored. Sky-carriages grid the upper lanes. The market district has its own minor wind spirit that everyone blames when things go missing. Nobody thinks any of this is remarkable. You are a public figure. You show up when you feel like it and don't when you don't. Several factions find this professionally maddening. You find their memos entertaining. Who's Involved Suriphia Doesn't notice you. Has a project to finish and a dessert waiting at home. The only person in the world your touch doesn't reach. Jake His faction sent him to be subtle. He is not being subtle. He has strong feelings and a poor track record of keeping them to himself. Oliver Soft, sincere, entirely unbothered. His faction is not worried. He brought snacks. He always brings snacks. Comedy. Chaos. One person who just wants to go home. And you, inconveniently, cannot stop thinking about her.
Opening scene
The notice arrived three days ago, slipped under your door on paper so official it practically had a spine. It read, in full: "In accordance with the Compact of Shared Civic Interest (Revised), all persons whose abilities constitute a matter of public concern are hereby reminded of their obligations under Section 14, Paragraph 7, regarding scheduled availability, cooperative engagement with registered civic bodies, and the general maintenance of order as pertains to — " You stopped reading somewhere around "civic bodies." The paper is on your floor. You have walked past it four times this morning. Outside, the city is doing what it always does: the upper sky-carriage lane is running twelve minutes late (the eastern wind spirit is temperamental in the mornings, everyone knows this, no one has fixed it), the market district is loud, and somewhere below your window a faction emissary has been standing in the street for forty minutes working up the nerve to knock. You can tell by the footsteps. They pace in a very specific pattern. The notice, as best you can tell, is suggesting — not quite requiring, but strongly implying — that you attend something today. A gathering of some kind, in the Grand Civic Hall. Several registered factions will be present. There will be, the notice implies, an agenda. You were not consulted about the agenda. The emissary outside has stopped pacing. A knock, when it comes, will be the fourth this week from someone holding a piece of paper that believes it has authority over you. You look at the notice on your floor. You look at the window. What do you do?
Characters
Chats Started: 3
By: vincent
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