Let's call the whole thing off

[Glenn]

He seemed nonplussed by her threat of escape. "My letters would nip at your heels. I can write faster than you can run." To be fair, what was more important was whether or not the raven could fly faster than she could run, but they both knew the answer to that so there was no reason to belabor the point.

"Finn," his hands started across the table as if he was about to take both of hers in his, some grand gesture of affection or solidarity or care. They didn't quite make it, however, instead landing palm down inches away before he drew them back. "This isn't some sort of accord between us. It's a conversation. You can ask me whatever you'd like. I'll take it in good faith, interest instead of obfuscation. If I can answer, I will." She had asked a question though. Then she had asked another. "I'll tell you where they are, best I can. The Ashfiend returned to dust, vanquished and at peace. Both can be true. I have no idea what happened to Teddi. Likely she found a safer profession in a safer place. Seth was the one who saved her. I fear he'll never find peace wherever he might be now. Calomel is on his farm. He returned a letter about magic last year. I feel like he and your man back in Myrken would have much to speak of, but I'd shy from suggesting it, since I betrayed too much of his trust to you already. I do not know where Ariane is though she has returned some of my letters. If she wishes me to know, she will tell me." Finn would have to negotiate, scant minutes from this, a halt to his pressing, yet for Ariane Emory, he offered it freely, even preemptively. "I imagine Vraal will turn up someday. I half thought he was Berdini for a time; similar proclivities but different methods." Then he finally did frown, even if only slightly, for he had some sense how long all of this was taking. "I don't know about the rest. Gone. That's the important bit, isn't it? Yes, I'll tell you all in time. That's the point of mentioning them." Short sentence piled upon short sentence. "I promise it in the name of your future smile, something I will seek out in the months to come."

That slight frown led to a serious question and a more serious answer. Wasn't it like her not just to accept that he wasn't angry but to always want more? "In truth, I was heading that way anyway. I was starting to understand a little, enough to know that I'd have to experience it eventually. You're wrong though. There's accepting and there's understanding. You wanted me to accept. Now that I've experienced name and glamour both, I accept. I still don't understand. I will, though." There was such spirit to him as he said it, such stubbornness, such curiosity, such assurance. He was so vivid, so alive. It was the same stare that seemed to pick her apart before, the one she both valued and lamented. Then, finally, after hearing her terms, he'd relent. "I'm not even sure if I'm capable of that, Finn, just as I'm not sure you're capable of never using your glamour as a reflexive action. Both of us will try, however. How about that?"

He spoke of Catch, some of it literal, some of it metaphor. He had sent months upon her but he had spent years upon Him. It wasn't his life's work but it might have been the work of a lifetime. She became more and more sullen as he continued on. "I could tell you everything. I likely will in time. He's easy to love for who he is. I wonder if you don't love him for what he is." Burnie was no fool. He was treading into dangerous waters here. From hereon, every word was chosen with great care. "It is a testament to you that you are still able to love so freely. However, I think most who care for you, and you'll forgive me if I count myself as one, would advise you to spread your friendship freely but be more cautious in love."

[Niabh]

“I do not know we mean the same thing when we say love.” Her chin lifted, her gaze level and coolly defiant. “You would not want the sort of love I have for Him. It would shatter you. It would shatter me if I did not give it.”

But his words had one immediate effect: the electricity in the air lowered to tolerable levels, the thunderhead dispersing, as she became more aware of the caution in his voice, the short gap between words. That worried her as much as anything else he had displayed this morning. Glenn Burnie? Speaking cautiously? Then he was indeed concerned.

With a grimace of pain, as if in that short time she had hardened into that position, she began the slow climb to drag herself upright again. She smoothed the wrinkled bodice flat against her stomach, then reached a hand to rub the back of her neck.

“Within the law is a category called gníomhartha toirmiscthe. I do not think it translates precisely, but it would mean something like ‘inexcusable acts’ or ‘forbidden acts.’ Gníomhartha toirmiscthe is any crime committed upon a certain class of person: children, lunatics, the blind, the dead—all those who cannot be expected to protect themselves. These ones are considered to be under the queen’s personal guardianship so that if anyone does them offense, it is reckoned treason and the villain may be executed in my name without the nuisance of trial.” The smile she gave him then was likely not the one he had looked forward to seeing: a bitter, restrained thing. “Probably for the best that I am not queen of anything here. But a habit’s hard to break.”

Looking away, she shook her head slowly, sorrowfully, and rubbed her hands on her thighs. “I fear this is another thing I’m going to want you to accept on faith, Sionnach. Considering we just discussed that difficulty, we may also have to accept that it is going to go on happening in spite of our best efforts. I am still willing to try if you are.”

[Glenn]

If there was a slight moment of panic in his eyes, he at least had the internal reassurance that she would never know why. Something had changed in the last day, something primal within him. The emotion came quickly, without warning, and he was not ready for it. As she spoke of her love, the sides of his lips shot upwards. It was a smile, no a grin, an outright grin in the face of that. He covered his own quickly with a fake cough, hand over mouth, head down, rubbing at eyes slightly. "Sorry." It was a quick mutter. "Sorry." That he had been able to manage it under ganconner's regard made it all the sweeter and more terrible.

As she straightened herself, he'd recover from the minor feigned fit, and he did recover quickly at that. His eyes were bright as the stared her down once more. "Two points: one me, one him. Me first. Your gníomhartha toirmiscthe," and this was pronounced with clinical precision but absolutely no color, no accent, just connected sounds copied as best as he could manage. "is an interesting notion. I've read philosophical tomes that stress the same. In reality, as I'm sure you've seen, things rarely play out as such. Scarce resources make such protection all the scarcer. It generally becomes the family, not the state, that oversees such protections. Early on, that was the case with Catch as well. The Brown boy, Dulcie, others. They treated him like some poor soul that got kicked in the head by a mule and never quite recovered."

For a moment, he almost seemed to lose the thread of his talking. He had meant to start with himself but had gone to the law and the law had taken him to Catch. Why was that? Ah, it was the path of least resistance. He inhaled through his nose and nodded past it all. "I asked you to safeguard them against me, truly along the lines of your gníomhartha toirmiscthe. Had I still been a soulless abomination, they were likely those that I'd target first, the vulnerable, the aberrations, those that stood out. What drives my attitude, probably even more than the burgeoning onslaught of affection I feel for you, Finn," for he was able to say such a thing with nothing but warmth in his voice and a very straight face, one that met her fell smile, "is the relief I feel that whatever madness we explored together through the lens of your glamour last night, it was not that."

He had crawled through that tiny labyrinth and made his point. On to the other half of it, then. "I'll accept some of it without experience, but one more thing to say on him first. As I said, whatever he is, it is innately different from what I saw and have heard of your ganconner. Catch is manifold. One manifestation, generally the dominant one, is the addled man he shows the world, one who, himself, loves deeply and possessively, who craves praise and baubles and creatures and tasks, and who has a jealous and simple sort of canniness because of the magnitude of that love." Had she not read his letter to Catch? That was the very beginning. How little she understood then and how much she was so sure she understood? "That is not all that is within him. Tendrils. A Golden King. A Wolf. A Butcher. Memories, Oppressors, the Truth." There was more. There was always more, and in this moment, with her before him, he wasn't sure he ought to say any of it, not after she described her love. "Just this much more. He is incomplete. Were he to become complete once again, we have as much reason to believe that your gníomhartha toirmiscthe would have to be invoked, not for him, but against him, and all of us combined would stand nary a chance."

If she loved him as she said, even in a way he could only begin to understand, she must have known at least some of that. Some of it, he imagined, would not have mattered. Quite the opposite, even, which he knew was a reason to stay wary around her, but he simply couldn't manage it anymore. Not this morning, at least. Even now, just being near her made him want to smile wryly (but it was a smile still and a warm wryness). "So, we've spoken a bit how I feel this morning. What about you? Has regret faded with sleep or does it still tug on you?"

[Niabh]

She frowned and started to look annoyed again when he smiled, taking it as a sign that he was laughing at her when she was at her most serious. Most people dislike that feeling, but to a queen, it amounted to being undermined, and on the subject of Catch, she was largely humorless and intolerant. That he then tried to conceal it with a fake cough—as if she were both blind and stupid—only made her expression more sour. The ‘sorry’ was at least evidence that he really did mean to try, but it did little to mollify her.

“What was that look about, then?” she snapped, too loudly for the empty room. That she could phrase it as a question, even a harsh one, showed progress: holding him accountable rather than simply imposing her will. No sooner had she said it then, in a mental overlap, she realized exactly what that look was about. Smiling at the mention of love, all this sudden gushing about affection, that bizarre ‘dearest’ that popped out of nowhere earlier…oh gods, oh no, oh no.

Any squabble she might have wanted to have about Catch or the law or her frustration that humans could never simply let things just be themselves was lost in a fairly strong desire to simply drop her head on the table and not raise it for the rest of the morning.

“Glenn,” she said, as though it were a whole sentence, a complete thought in itself. No Sionnach this time. Her voice was low, calm, reassuring. “I’ve seen Him. I know.”

And that was all that needed saying at present. At least as much as she was willing to say in public. If he was anything like as clever as she took him for, he could extrapolate that much to it conclusion.

But he had put her to the question. She sighed, sat back, looked around them as if she had just remembered where they were and likewise remember that she hadn’t much cared for it the first time. “I felt better this morning before you started talking. Now I think I might be developing a whole new set of regrets. I’m not sure. It could just be gas. They feel something alike.”

She gave him her quick, curious, birdlike twist of the head, squinting intently into his face. “Actually…can you have regrets about not having regrets? When you feel as if you should feel worse about something than you do? Because that’s what I’m having. I am starting to suspect I may have caused something dreadful but I don’t feel too terribly bad about it only it’s going to be troublesome going forward and I wish I’d known it might so that I could have done things differently. But I feel I ought to feel bad about it and that makes it worse. I’m not sure if I ought to feel bad, if I actually do feel bad, or if I just feel as if you might feel I should feel bad and I shall have to tell you I don’t.” Uneasily she laid a hand to her stomach, which felt it had come unmoored and was now roving about her abdomen looking for a place to drop dead. “Is any of that regret? Because it seems like something that could topple over its own tail very quickly.”

For a brief moment her head really did tip forward, though not near so far as the table. She sat limp a moment. It had been a long sentence and a lot of feelings and now that she had vomited up most of them, she felt dizzy.

As gently as she knew how under the circumstances, she reached a hand across the table. “Is there anywhere we might have the rest of this conversation in private?”

[Glenn]

It had been years since Burnie had to cover up a smile. The very notion almost made him defeat the entire purpose of the exercise. There was a certain absurdity to all of this, a lack of perspective? No, of grounding, a lack of grounding. He felt vaguely afloat and even as she was staring him down, he ran a finger over his collarbone, over a tattoo that no longer existed.

She had asked him a very direct question and he had absolutely no chance to respond. Instead the tone of everything changed, and in truth, he was left a little bit bewildered. He recognized himself. That had been some of the point of it. That had been some of the relief (even in the face of her regret). This all felt so natural in some ways. When dealing with those being more powerful or more prestigious than him, well... there he was, right?

"No," arguing with her so directly when she invoked his name was probably not the way to go. "You've felt him. You feel. I know." At least he kept it mercifully short, even as he capped it with a flag of truce. "Maybe together, we could do more than either. Maybe we could understand?"

Following this was her actual answer to his actual question, and it left both of them spinning. Thankfully, in this he had quite a bit of grounding. "Finn, regrets about not having regrets? That's guilt." He would know. On that note, with no particular expression on his face except for 'blinking,' he rose. "Let's go somewhere so that you can start making sense to me, okay? That seems a very fair deal for both of us."

[Niabh]

“You say that so often, I begin to wonder at it. The togetherness bit. ‘Mayhap if we try together, we could understand.’” Again, no glamourie, only mimicry coupled with a hint of parodying his look and posture that made it less mockery and more gentle nudging. “Do you soothly believe that, or do you expect to change my mind afterwards? To make me Believe it?” It was a sincere question. She hadn’t the humor for more rhetorical ones. “One begins to feel this friendship unbalanced, Sionnach. You expect to have your every word taken as authority, yet one must glam you and show you half of history ere you take the least truth on faith. But some truths I cannot show you. This is one. If it falls to either show you, or you understanding…this time I’m just as well not to be understood. For I do like having you about.”

And that was her last word on the subject. This time, she resolved, no trickery of his or pride of her own could convince her otherwise.

Her nose wrinkled at his diagnosis, which had taken her somewhat aback. “That’s guilt?” She didn’t feel the same enthusiasm she had for her seedling regret. That had been small enough to seem manageable. This was just a tangled mess. “No, I’m fair sure it’s the regrets again. Guilt is supposed to be all cowering and cringing, not like you’ve eaten two days’ of cabbage. Isn’t it?”

She glanced back to him, curious and indignant, for an explanation—as if this was his species’ emotion and he’d best be prepared to answer for it.

At the least sign he was agreeable to go elsewhere, she hopped out of her chair. Sitting still never sat well with her anyway. It felt better to be able to move. She wasn’t comfortable discussing Catch in public even in the most ideal of circumstances, and discussing him with Glenn was as near to ideal as one was likely to find.

She followed his lead. She was the guest, after all, and it was his city, and she could scarcely take him up to the pigeon croft.

[Glenn]

There was mimicry and then there was mockery and he well knew the difference between the two. The last time she'd done this, not long ago, he didn't react. Nor did he here. If he hadn't already been half-smiling, it might have been harder. "I try," he'd posit. "That counts for something, no? I'll keep trying. You'll keep trying. I still think we can be better together than we are apart. We bring different things. If they could work in unison, the effect would be stronger. It's simple logic." Likely, he'd believe simple logic over whatever truths she wanted him to take on faith. "Maybe you can explain more and I'll ask questions and we'll see where we can get? I'll be reasonable."

They were soon after onto guilt. "It's not like your laws, Finn. Different people feel it differently for different reasons. Some people leap at it where there's none to be found. They seek consumption from its fire for they feel cold and empty without it; for them, it is better to be swallowed whole than to be free to feel something unknown and less monumental. That wasn't me, by the way. All I did was rather large." It wasn't him, but he could understand it. "Others feel nothing at all, placing the blame on every one else. I like to think what you're feeling is more pure than any of that. We have power over our world, within reason. For every choice we make, there are others we do not, roads not taken. Sometimes we could be stronger or smarter or braver, less selfish. Through realizing that, through feeling regret, we can strive for better outcomes. Through feeling guilt, though, we can strive to be better."

Then though, she'd made something of a show of requesting their egress. He wasn't sure if it was Catch they'd be talking of or him or her people or, well, he felt half a step behind, so it was only fitting he walked half a step ahead. "I'm guessing you won't shift your clothes to an elaborate gown so I can storm forward and leave you stumbling behind. You mentioned something about a view, no?" It was playful, her own brand of playful. Likely, he meant it to be reassuring, but it was also oddly natural, like old trousers that he had not worn for many a year, but that still fit if he sucked his stomach in just a bit. "I know a pretty good stoop. Otherwise, you realize that if we go in almost any direction, what we find isn't going to be privacy."

[Niabh]

While she listened dutiful to the definition, one hand traced the line of her flat belly beneath the ivy silk. She looked uncomfortable, if not outright mistrustful, of his definition. All that guilt and regret might be well and good for tultharian but it was not something she planned to indulge in. If that was indeed what this was. “I’m going to blame the cabbage rolls,” she said bluntly, once he was finished, wholly oblivious to the fact that she had just proved his point. “I can strive perfectly well without the stomachache, good neighbor. I don’t need any of your queer tultharian gut-feelings for that. You may keep them.”

Save that the last sentence came out a touch more uneasy than she expected as she suddenly wondered where such a feeling had even come from. One did not catch feelings from the tultharian like mumps.

“What you don’t seem to realize is that what you’re really proposing with that question is ‘Fionn, would you like to throw poor Mistress Peg in a panic and possibly have the guard called on you for a second time this morning by shifting your gown in the middle of this public space, or would you prefer to simply glam everyone into not noticing you do it?’ And the answer,” she went on, following as he started forward, “is that I would rather everyone else not notice. Thus resulting in a stern lecture from you about violation. At least, it would have done last night. Now I am not so sure.”

A lady who had originally made the joke about the view was not a lady to be shocked when the gentleman in question threw it back at her. As it was, it was so out-of-character for him that for a moment, it went over her head, and she wondered if he had somehow found out about the pigeon croft. When it came to her, she was stunned enough that her mouth fell open and her footfalls came to a near halt. It was fine when she said it, but coming out of his mouth, it was…she groped for the word…vulgar. It was the final straw. She sealed up her jaw and started after, arms swinging at a fierce clip. “Right, no, that was flirting, I’m not just inventing things—”

Long-limbed, she rapidly outpaced the half-step advantage and wheeled herself before him, blocking his path with a declaration that simply couldn’t wait long. “Sionnach, do you realize you’ve been getting feelings back? I can hardly see how you do not notice, but have you realized yet that’s what this is?”

Far from being upset, she was exhilarated, fairly dancing in front of him as the words spilled out of her.

[Glenn]

"Actually," Of all the many words that Glenn Burnie knew, the one that had, in the past, gotten him yelled at, punched, slapped, kicked, or assaulted by a pain spelled that inflicted thousands of years of tortured memories upon someone, was the word 'actually.' It did not even slow him down. "I'm moderately certain that's exactly what your people need, doubt especially. I started to talk about it last night," which he remembered. "Certainty breeds malaise. Malaise breeds stagnation. Stagnation doesn't breed. We can talk about that after Catch, though."

She presented rather starkly the consequences of magic to him. She even managed a hint of doubt at the end though it was done so imperiously that it hardly registered as such for either of them. "I could always pick the guard option." His mind churned through those consequences. That she was raising them was reassuring. In the end, he hadn't been serious anyway, so there was hardly any harm to it. He got a reaction out of her which was much more the point. Reassuring about him as well. Such reassurance, all around, made the ensuing joke all the easier.

"Really, I was just saying what you said and turning it back a..." His voice faded off, because she was suddenly in front of him. He was swift enough, but not when he wasn't planning to be. He almost crashed into her for her trouble. "Finn," he pursed his lips together, turning his head slightly to the side and looking off. It was a momentary glance, just a bit of being uncomfortable. "It's not that I couldn't feel. For a few years I couldn't, but we've talked about that. What Catch did to Rhaena, over time, seems to have restored me, even as it destroyed her," but there wasn't rancor in his voice as he said that, if she was worried about that. He made a point to look back at her. There was a shine to them, that sparkle, but no immediate fire. "It's just," eyes now met, he couldn't just look away, even if he wanted to, "I could only feel one thing. Or maybe I was only letting myself feel one thing. I don't know. Those are the two possibilities and each means something different." It was safest to talk about this on clinical terms. "I lean towards the latter, because the former invites the possibility of unforeseen consequences to last night, and between us and us alone, I have it on good authority, through my exceedingly careful research, of course, that none of your people can lay glamourie without knowing it." There was a bit of the fire, but it was not long lasting. His voice softened almost immediately. "We humans can do many things without knowing, so I am not at all sure, Finn."

[Niabh]

“Ah, Sionnach. You always think you know what’s best for everyone when you scarce know what’s best for yourself. Will you never believe that I might know my own better than you know them—you who never had a drop more than mortal blood in your veins? And don’t say Catch’s.” A quick hand moved over his mouth, not touching his lip but close enough to feel his breath on her fingertips. “That will only make me cross again, and blood in the belly is not blood in the bone. Anyway, look at me. Do I seem much given to malaise?”

And she actually did a small twirl in place, much as she had done the night before, save that had been all moonlight and glamourie. This was broad, harsh daylight on city stone, and she quite plainly a grown woman of flesh and blood.

One foot slid across the pavement, bringing her to a perfect stop, eyes instantly fixing on his. “All I can say it is rare that one of your folks comes out of a glamour unchanged, for good or ill. More often it is due to your own nature, not ours. And in general, lest we intend otherwise, it passes. Sooner or later.” But he wouldn’t look at her. She leaned her whole body in the direction his head turned, trying to get a glimpse of him, but it was a rather awkward and obvious position. “Is it all too bad? Does it bother you to feel so? Is there something I can do to help?”

[Glenn]

"I'll listen to you, Finn." He'd all but promised that much before. "I don't fully know what you intend. Freedom to roam over more expansive land isn't the answer. You have to realize that too. Our decline doesn't mean your rise, just like your decline didn't mean ours." They'd gone away to wait out that rise, after all. It had already begun. She'd said as much. It wasn't the only thing she said. "You are not your people, just like I am not mine. You're young and you've been among us. How many do you know that are your age? Are you rare or common?" He said it even as she had her finger before him (which did serve its purpose; there was a story behind that moment and he did not tel it). Instead, he blew upon the finger as if that would make it retreat and give him leave to say all he wanted forevermore.

To his surprise, it gave way to her twirl, gave it just a little more momentum. When she reached full rotation and her eyes fixed on his, he was smiling, smiling far too much for his words to come. "Maybe that's a reason not to do it lightly, without permission?" It was more playful than harsh. He had not taken her up to dance, however. Whatever this morning was for him and for her, it was not last night. "I can hardly imagine why we might be changed." The smile did not fade but a droll undertone became the pithy wardrobe for his words. "Perception changing, reality bending, everything we think we know about the confines of our world giving way to a fluidity and an absolute Truth, the very cornerstone of our sanity, might I add, giving way to your truth, fickle and tempestuous as the rest of you." He laughed there, despite himself, short and quick and undeniably sane. A fondness had been sneaking it, disrobing the drollness and pithiness and it left him utterly exposed.

"You don't feel the least bit of regret. I think all the progress we made on guilt is washed away too." He'd turn back to her, if only halfway, and bring his knuckles up to her cheek, just placing them there, fist closed. It was a gentle, tender motion, the way he softly worked her back to a full upright position. "It feels a little unearned, despite years of exile." The serious started to creep back. Exile led to the remembrance of why he was exiled. That led to so much more.

The naked smile didn't fade but he found some wryness to drape over it, at least. "I don't think this is going away, Finn. It's all a bit cliched but thoroughly accurate: I'd built up walls to protect myself and to protect the rest of you from me. Wholly without permission or true intention, you knocked them down last night. It let me look at myself, whatever's left of me, for the first time in years. I don't think those walls are going back up so easily. I'm not going to just forget this." He'd reach up then with his pinky finger, swatting at her nose ever so slightly with it. "You're pleased with yourself now, but I'm going to be all the more impossible to deal with most likely. You ought just to surrender now."

[Niabh]

His questions took some of the shine off her enthusiasm. At the very least it stopped her from bouncing on the balls of her feet and rooted her heels to the ground. “We are not talking about me and mine at present. We’re talking about you.”

Save that that excuse wasn’t going to stave him off very long, since he could very easily point out that the reason that they had met this morning, why she’d stayed the extra day to begin with, was so that he could ask her questions. It was not fair, as he was far more interesting than she was just now—something she would rarely admit about anyone. Usually one had to observe the outcome of a glamour from a safe distance. It was so rare to be able to find out about it first hand, from someone intelligent enough to be specific, that she hated to give it up.

Her eagerness wound down to mere thoughtfulness. “An you must know, there’s not many. Of all the other queens, even their daughters are older than I am now. They’ve all known each other since before I was born. They keep trying to decide things without me. I expect by now word’s crept out that I’m not really there and they all had a secret council and worked out strategies for the next fifty years or so. But,” she added, with a careless, confident toss of her head, “as soon as I’m home again, I shall go down the line twisting heads back round. The Nialls have always been second only to the High Queen Herself. They don’t dare spurn me.”

Which was not the real worry, but doubtless he could follow that piece of information to its unavoidable outcome all on his own: being the youngest inevitably meant that one would be the last. She didn’t like to dwell on it; it felt morbid and hopeless. It was why things had to change.

“Of course you’re your people,” she said. “What an odd thing to say. You can’t claim to be working for their benefit and then deny them in the same breath.” Her fingers arched back when he blew on them; she smiled, then flicked her hand dismissively at his face and folded her arms. “This is another one of those matters where I really feel you have not thought this thing through. Exile’s meant to be punishment, and punishment is something that happens to satisfy other people, not something you get to choose—unless you’ve chosen it over an even worse option, like being killed, and back home being cast out of the clan is practically the same as being dead anyway.” That she was able to say such a thing so lightly and without even a glimmer of self-reflection proved how intent was her focus on him. “In any case: either you went away as a punishment, in which case you have no business deciding when it’s over, better or not; or else you went away to get better, in which case you’ve accomplished it and there’s no further point.”

She was cautious even holding forth the notion of ‘better.’ Whatever he was at present still felt fresh and very fragile, newly hatched. She didn’t even know what it was, and from the sound of it, neither did he.

“So the real question be,” she concluded cheerfully, “why did you do it?”

When he touched her cheek, she caught his hand between hers and pressed it to her cheek as if it were a kitten, with a pat for his wrist before she let it go.

“See, this is very confounding,” she remarked, sounding not the least confounded. “This affection business all of a sudden. I can’t be sure if it’s solely for me or if you so yearn for touch and I happen to be near to hand.”

[Glenn]

"That's blatantly false and you well know it," it was, after all, exactly what she thought he'd say and her reason was good enough that she was correct. "I'll admit I'd opened the door a bit, because I'm the more pressing issue," his gaze became just a little sharper with that, a prelude for what was to come. "The willful, intended destruction of an entire people, much like the slow decline of another, takes a long time. On the other hand, here I am, before you, trying to brush years of sleep from my eyes."

He did force it back, at least momentarily to her people though, and she told him much that he might have guessed, but he might not have as well. Without more information, all he could do was guess. His harsh regard loosened as he took her in. This was such a different her than what he was used to, griping about petty politics back home, the girl forbidden from the ball by her peers and forced to clean the soot out of the fire, or at least something along those lines. "Well, you're the only one who sends letters back and forth with a fallen human philosopher and politician. I'm sure that would make them very jealous." His voice was neutral. It was a joke, probably. Probably not? For now, she had dodged his question about her intentions and her plans.

"Fine," there was a soft, put upon exhale, for she had managed to shift things back to him once more. "I am my people. My people are not me. I've ceded the right to speak for them until I earn it again. My exile, and it was exile, was primarily about not hurting other people. I didn't leave to heal. I did leave to figure certain things out. I left because, unhealed and uncertain, I might well have been a danger to people." He might begrudgingly admit that even healthy he was probably a danger to people too, but then he was a different sort, maybe a danger worth it. If she didn't raise the point, he wouldn't either. "I am not the horror that I was. After last night, I realize that." He realized how so much of that sounded. Instead of giving way to reason or humility, he'd shift his gaze past her slightly and take it even further. "Since no one can understand, no one else can bear judgment."

He'd never quite seen her like this. Finally, he was beginning to understand her hints that the letters might not be an entirely accurate representation of her. "First," he all but snatched his hand back, "the affection, if that's what it is, and I refuse to admit that," even if he already might have, "is so rare and valuable as no one's experienced it in years, which is probably centuries in your time," which was the reverse of reality, "so you should appreciate it without question. Second, is the idea that you happen to be the one near at hand because you are solely you all that confounding?"

[Niabh]

Her head gave a stubborn shake at his sharp glare, gracefully brushing it aside before she turned aside from him to regard, silently, the street around them, the people. All the early morning bustle had finally thinned out as people settled into their day’s routine, resolute or resentful as their spirits moved them. They were all so oddly quiet. One rarely saw greetings pass between them. If they met one another’s eyes, they treated it as an accident, letting their gazes swept at once aside as if the contact caused embarrassment, if not outright resentment. That would never happen at home. Even your worst enemy would glare you down in passing, the two of you brushing shoulders like a pair of wolves.

Such an ugly lot, all of them, the city’s innate ugliness twisting their spines and wearing off on their faces so that even the ones who were still young looked as if they’d been composed of the same moldering plaster and pocked brick as Razasan itself—as if they’d all been built at the same time and weathered together by the salt wind. Looking on them, she had the squeamish feeling, as she had had several times in Myrken, of having flipped over a rotten log and found a swarm of blind grey wood lice scurrying for cover. Save that wood lice were honest creatures for all that they had little appeal, and if one blundered in and overturned their home, one had little right to complain of them.

There was no need to picture how this same street might appear if they should all vanish: she’d already seen it yesternight, the sea sweeping the city clean from bank to bank.

She didn’t particularly want them all dead, but mightn’t it be nice to see what could grow there instead?

In spite of the sun piercing the thin crisp silk on her back, the thought struck her chill.

But for drumming of her fingers at the juncture of her collarbone, she was motionless and thoughtful, her gazes sweeping over the populace like a seamstress measure cloth with her eyes before deciding where to make the first cut. “No. It wouldn’t take long at all. It’s not a plan. It’s an action. We could do it by lunchtime. Rather, I could. But I’m not going to. And that isn’t because I’m particularly merciful; it’s because I haven’t found anything here worth wiping out a whole people to have it. Neither lands nor space. Not even dominance. Not even to say we’d won.”

She had rather rushed into that sentence and now she slowed, mulling it over. Her tongue crept into a corner of her mouth as she lowered her eyes and touched the hollow of her throat, elegance and sorrow. “Well. One thing. But as you have just said, He is not the sort of thing one goes around claiming. But I did not need you to tell me that.”

Finally the stony expression softened. Her hand drifted away from her throat, and she turned back to him with soft, gentle exasperation. “See, this is why I wanted privacy. Particularly if you have spies.”

When he sighed, she sighed along with him. “No, that’s backwards. Without they understand you, they will judge you—for your actions, for what you did, for what was done to them. You hurt people.” She laid out those three words like a winning run of cards. “There’s two sides to a trial. Justice and mercy. Justice is what you deserve; mercy is what you’re given. I fear that what you’re counting on is mercy and there won’t be any, not unless people understand.” She hesitated, head bowed as she walked. “I’m trying to. But my mercy means little. You’ve done me no true ill.”

To have him snatch away his hand was a shock, and she didn’t bother trying to conceal her hurt, though she suspected, now, that his reaction might be simple embarrassment that she had drawn attention to it, or that she noticed it at all. Tultharian men had this strange attitude that you were meant to simply overlook the fact that they were putting their hands on you. Glenn she gave the benefit of doubt that he was still a bit green at this whole affection business after so long. Instead she took a single step back from him, a measured formal distance meant to curtail any future contact until the matter was resolved.

“I am questioning the affection,” she said, with far more patience and tolerance than seemed necessary, “because I’ve found that when tultharian men try to touch my face or take my hand, they want to fuck me. I don’t believe you want to fuck me, and I would not be insulted if you did, but if that’s why you’re doing it, you should know that I don’t want to fuck you and that you should stop it now. Otherwise I do not mind you touching me, as you are quite mannerly about it and because we are friends and you’re having a difficult morning and needing to be comforted is altogether different. But I don’t want to be confused about it.”

Nine times of out ten, versions of that small speech had gotten her roared at by men who loudly denied that they had ever had any such intentions and that she should stop flattering herself that anyone would ever want to fuck her sorry ass. But she had faith Glenn might be the tenth.

She shook her head again. “Here now: my satchel’s at your place anyway. Let’s wend our way there. If you want details, you’ll have them. I don’t feel like discussing wanton wide-scale destruction here on the street, even if your folk are deaf as posts.”

This time she brushed around him in a swish of green silk and started striding along the street with every impression that she knew where she was headed, leaving him to catch up for once.

A little shadow kept darting across the walk between them. Glance up quick and one might catch a glimpse of a very confused raven trying to predict their path and stay ahead of them, moving from windowsill to roof ledge to door mantel, where he rudely shouldered his way amid a crop of city pigeons.

[Glenn]

Just as he should never forget what she was, no matter how much he sometimes seemed to want to, she should never forget what he was. Some of that was his people, yes, but it was a far extreme of them. "An action is not a plan," there was such certainty to him. It was underpinned by the fire that so appealed, but now something else as well. Fire consumed. This somehow drew upon it and generated a light all its own. "Actions without plans often hurt your cause, sometimes fatally. In this case, you'd gain nothing you certainly need and lose so much that you might well need. They'd tell stories of you, the brash Niall queen, who with a decisive hand, retook all that had been lost." To signify that hand, he slammed his own fist into his palm decisively. "One generation, then another, then... oh, well, suddenly there's no one to tell stories anymore. Maybe the wind will do it for you? No one to listen then but the trees. Ah well. At least trees are captive audiences."

His tone switched sharply, an undercurrent of thunder wafting through the flames. "All of the detail you've given me, all that you've shown? It's only made me all the more certain you need us. It's been very validating, Finn. Good." He inserted an aggravating little pause in between the words and went so far as to provide a small courtly bow mid-step. "Neighbor."

He allowed the subject of Catch to be saved for privacy (this was not that), in part to humor her (as he did not see it necessary here in Razasan) and in part because she moved swiftly back to speaking of him (which was something of necessity this morning).

She may have looked back at him, but he dodged her gaze, even if he returned her questioning with some semblance of truth. One of the two ought to have been enough. "I suppose that's why I'm the only one fit to judge myself, so long as I'm at least mostly sane, which we've learned that I am. I know how that sounds. I'm just not sure that I care." For their kind, years of exile was not insignificant.

Then came the halting, the hand, and eventually (after quite a back-and-forth), the snatching. "That's fair," he admitted, slightly yet obviously uncomfortable by her directness or what it might have implied. The fairness of it all meant that he did not disrespect her by looking away. "I've only just gotten certain of my facilities back. It makes sense that I might be feeling all sorts of things, especially when combined with my words and actions both." He inhaled and exhaled slowly, nodding along to her notions and the wake of his own words.

"You'll give me a moment, Finn? Please." He shut his eyes then, presumably thinking, or feeling, or both. If she wanted to, in that moment, she could have stabbed him dead three times over or escaped forever with his purse and who knows what else. Was he trying to understand his own thoughts? Trying to learn his own emotions? Was he simply working out the words that he might say to her, something he never had to do? Finally, if she committed none of the aforementioned acts, cool, clear eyes would open again. "I badly wish to speak with you, to write with you, to compare ideas, to joust with words and deeds, to continue to explore as we have been exploring, to find myself anew with you and to find a path forward for your people and mine, and for you especially, and you appeal in ways no mortal with a beating heart could easily resist, but no, not that, not now." It was a lot to say but he managed it without a quaver. "I think it will not surprise you that I am a prude. Because I am not one on religious grounds (and loathe the very idea of propriety), but instead on grounds that value above all connection and commitment, both over time, I think (and know again that I am still working all of this out), it allows for all manner of affectionate gracing so long as meaning and intent are clear and certain boundaries of consent and magnitude are respected." It was a near-endless stream of words, but they were exacting and full of meaning, the product of Burnie actually thinking what he was to say before saying it for once. Did that make them more satisfying or less?

Regardless, he would not have much left to argue with as she started back to his abode. At first, he'd even trail a step or two behind.