Yet Another Morning After

[Glenn]

It was not a pleasant awakening. Stimuli. Memory. His own bed. His throat was sore, unnaturally so. But his own bed. His own clothes. Was he alone? It was too late to pretend to be asleep still if he wasn't. It could wait then. He didn't want to call out. It would hurt. He could endure pain but why seek it out? Despite what she said, that wasn't a joy for him. What she said. Memory caught up. What was most important? His first real movement was to run a hand towards his cheek. No growth. There hadn't been any in the dream. His hand ran against his ribs, his stomach. Not distorted, not emaciated. Was he in the dream? He groaned. It hurt. He didn't groan again due to the hurt. Instead, he sat up. No groan there. A good sign? He ran his hands down his legs. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not a Chimera. Brown would get them there if not stopped. That was for later. He pulled down the collar of his night shirt and looked to the tattoo of the jagged wound which remained there just hidden from normal view. He was awake.

There was no easy way to gaze upon his reflection. That was fine. He did not want to face his own gaze as of yet. He remembered. He remembered too much. There was no obvious sign that his body had aged, but he remembered too much of it. Death would come to him all the quicker now. It wasn't the first time. Once again, he had no idea how old he even was and to look at him would be such little help in answering such an inquiry. That could be for later too. There still was a later. What was pressing now?

He had won. 'Won.' At cost. He had won a prize he hadn't really wanted, the means but not the end, and only even a tenth of those means. The means were always an opportunity and a tenth of an opportunity was better than none at all. "What's happened," he wheezed, but it wasn't a question in and of itself, but instead the start of something longer, "when a child is the means and not the end? But then," despite the pain, he meant to say every word than needed saying, "when were children anything but for me?" Hope deferred. That's all a child was. Another chance down the line. The next step on a ladder every leading upwards. "The only difference here is that the end is so much more selfish than usual." People might argue that. They would be wrong.

[Niabh]

The raven perched upon a sunny window ledge, the morning light iridizing on his oil-black back, and nibbled the length of a primary feather. He paused only a moment when Glenn first stirred, then resumed preening when Glenn started talking. He had both warned and been warned that Glenn might be a little bit rough, waking up. “Wow. I knew you were going to start talking first thing, but I didn’t think it’d really be first thing. Lugh’us Dannan, you barely got your eyes open. Is this a fresh thought, or are you continuing the last sentence you remember?”

He hopped from the ledge, his wings catching him gracefully midair, and glided to a seat on the bed’s footboard. His head twisted left, right, then nearly went upside, observing Glenn from every possible angle before he righted himself again.

“The lady’s mother’s been lookin’ after you,” he said soberly. “I’m s’posed to tell her when you wake up, but she’ll probably hear us and come check soon anyway. Oh, and there’s a little kid with no clothes on under your bed, so don’t be alarmed or nothin’ if she pops out. But she don’t speak Human so it’s alright to talk in front of her.”

With an air of slightly more sympathy, he hung back, giving Glenn a chance to go through any self-evaluation he might require. “So how much do you remember?” he asked, a bit nervous.

[Glenn]

That was a lot to process all at once, and he was already processing too much in the first place. That was the problem. Benedict had just given him more to deal with. He went with his first instinct, which was to bounce the bed just a little, not enough to crush anyone underneath but it would likely put them on alert at least. If the child was a child, it probably wouldn't have much of a life to flash before their eyes anyway. that done, he fought his second instinct, which was to jolt to his feet. He also fought back his first question, which was 'Am I a prisoner?' In situations like this, he could find some semblance of calm generally, even if the throat distracted.

"I remember A and B and C. A leads to B. B leads to C. A logical progression of cause and effect," which was good. unless his mind was making false connections again, which it did and which would be somewhat less good. "There was a lot of time between B and C though, and I'm not sure I remember all of it, if that makes sense. Flashes, bits and pieces, encounters. Whole encounters. It was a lot. I imagine I remember the important bits." A bit that was important was that it hurt to talk and that was saying too much. He'd already pushed it too far and he'd likely need his voice later on, prisoner or no. "I don't think Meg likes me much, "he did offer, however, fully knowing that she was the sort to find something to like about almost anyone.

[Niabh]

His bouncing caused the bed-ropes to creak, which in turn provoked a small grunt, then some giggling, followed by a soft scraping from beneath the bed, enough to prove that there was something under there. From the sound of it, it was roughly badger-sized. Likewise the discarded green shift and pinafore sprawled on the floor was roughly big enough for a badger, if one was foolish enough to dress a badger in a pinny.

The small table beside the bed was thickly covered in scrapes and paraphernalia: a pitcher half full of water, along with a pewter cup, a small stack of waxed parchment packets bearing residue of yellow and green, and a single gauze pad stained with a streak of dried brown blood. Taking up the last shred of space was a spray of purple clover with dirt still clinging to their hairy roots and a spray of crumbs across the floor.

“One of the good things about Meg is that she’ll keep you alive whether she likes you or not,” the raven replied dryly. “And I guess it’s probably a positive sign that the lady still wants you alive enough to send Meg. She’s pretty pissed,” he added, canting his head for candor. “The lady, not Meg. You been out a while.”

Meg had asked him to use generalities until she herself could see to him, despite the raven’s insistence that Glenn was made of sterner stuff and would just roll with the news, no matter what it was. Meg had only nodded, with that thoughtful expression that let you know she was taking your advisement into serious consideration, even when he had a feeling she wasn’t.

“I could only follow you so far,” he said, sounding a bit apologetic about it. “I kept dreaming I got blown off course and kept having to find you all over again. This dream shit is tough. I can’t tell you how much the lady remembers because the last thing she said to me was the last thing she said to me. Apparently, I am now your creature. She cut me off.” He couldn’t keep the sorrow out of his voice. His head hung a little in shame. “It’s you and me now, wanker.”

[Glenn]

What did he know? What had she told him? What had he discovered on his own? Meg. Some things could be stated outright. "She wouldn't want Meg in Myrken at all." That much he knew. This was his bed. One possibility was that things had been very serious indeed. It was possible given all that he had experienced. By the end of it, Brown had gotten fed up and pulled all of the bindings out of him; well and good save for the fact he'd been knotted up in them. Before that it had been very long in a wilderness not of his making. There was no question that either he'd meet his own demise sooner because of it or that he might have shed so much more of his humanity that anything could be possible. The problem, of course, was that his bed might be anywhere or it might not be his bed at all, but only something he perceived to be his bed. This could all be a glamour and he might spend the rest of his days, or the next five years in it. To try too hard to pick it apart would just lead to madness. He groaned, wasting no words (it still hurt) and leaned his head back down.

Finally, he spoke, raspy and quiet. "If you were right, she'll want to win and lord it over me and it's not winning if I'm not there to oppose her. She's greedy. Child. Prove me wrong. Prove Brown wrong. Vanquish Gloria. Gorge herself on her cake." Just the idea of trying to swallow cake right now almost made him gag, which didn't help, sterner stuff or no.

He didn't gag. Instead he hear the rest of what Benedict had to say. "What's done is done. What would you like to have happen now?"

[Niabh]

“You sound like me,” said the raven, impressed. He cawed for comparison. Glenn was raspier but the raven had a metallic edge that was difficult to match. “Wait, you really think she’d rather toy with you than kill you?” Strangle him to shut him up, rile him, mock him, make his life difficult, watch from a comfortable distance while he suffered before, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders, she trotted over to rescue him—all that was in the realm of what he could imagine her doing, but never the prospect that she could get angry enough to leave Glenn to die.

The truth closed him in like so many shutters clapping shut. Somehow, amid all the stupidity, this had gotten serious.

He craned his neck and peered at Glenn to make sure he wasn’t being sarcastic. What would he like to happen? He’d like a big mess of fresh venison guts and no competition, but you didn’t always get what you wanted.

“First off, you tell me slowly: what is the worst thing that could happen if you just walked away and let her have this kid? Not everything that could possibly happen. Just the one worst thing. Because to be honest, that’s what I’d like. Just let her have the kid and suffer the consequences and you leave her to it. You two together…you’re bad news. And it just keeps escalating. Second off…I forgot the second part. Oh wait.”

He hopped in delight as it came back, bouncing a few steps toward Glenn across the rumpled coverlet. “Was all that stuff the kid was threatening to do as bad as it sounded to me? Because the impression I was getting was that he wants to take the dream-place and this place and mash ’em together like mudballs, but no one else seemed to be as alarmed by that as I was, so I figured maybe I misunderstood that part? Because if he said that, then that seems to be the first thing to be dealt with.”

[Glenn]

For a brief moment, one might have thought that Benedict was showing appreciation for common ground and an overall sense of reason, as Glenn had quite slowed down and was taking things one at a time. He'd not tried to make a run for it considering his current situation for instance. But no, it was about aesthetics and his damaged voice. Which, of course, he'd not asked about (some conclusions were easier to jump to than others). And some were not. "Not kill me so much as leave me to my fate if it meant I was out of her way. At some point it stops being about the thing, the goal, the outcome, and it starts being about the struggle, or the principle, or feelings. Once we reach that point, anything's possible." That was true with mortals; it had been true with him. With a being like the Queen, tempestuous by definition with power to match her fury, it was all the more so.

In this rare moment of calm and selfless reason fueled by equal parts sympathy and exasperation, Burnie had offered Benedict the opportunity to control the conversation; now both of them had to live with their choices. Slow meant that he let his brain lead instead of his mouth. It made for a clearer narrative for once. It meant talking through some considerable discomfort though. "On a personal level, Gloria will find out. There's no question. She will respond poorly, as is her right. A reasonable mother would respond poorly. I lose whatever high ground I might have had that my hands were tied due to my attempt to stop it. She'll declare war, against Finn, against me, against Catch, against the world, against Myrken. It will lead to further tragedy. I truly think that my best chance to give her a best chance is the deal I came up with, as self-serving as it is. So there's that." It was, as he said, on a personal level. There were other levels at play. "The very worst thing, worse than Gloria stabbing me to death or burning down Myrken? A child of Catch and Gloria is no simple thing to be taken lightly. It's not just another child taken from some bumpkin and his put upon wife. There's power and already, from what we heard, animosity. Gloria might wrought terrestrial ruin, but the child may bring forth a celestial sort, a fire fed by the lady's greed (which in itself has drivers likely more than her nature alone; a question on that later, remind me to ask it)." He had learned things and seen things upon his journey, especially at the end. Now, though, he was veering off and he was acutely aware of it. Benedict had asked for something else. "If she treats the child like any other, or even more grabbingly because of what it is, she could unleash forces that could destroy her and all she holds dear. I do believe this."

Which, of course, brought them to the other question. "Brown." If Fionn had turned around and cut a deal that they'd work together to deal with the threat of him at the cost of the child, Glenn may have taken it without a heartbeat's consideration. That time had passed though. "He's raw. Raw power. Little understanding. You can't just smash such walls down. They're primal with timeless inertia. You need finesse. He has none. There are those out there that do, that might teach him, but it benefits no one for him to get what he wants. More likely, they'd take him a few steps down the path and use his power to do something horrible in their interest." Unspoken here was how the Queen had fit that description perfectly. "Given enough time, he might be able to manage something truly dangerous on his own, but he may also gain the wisdom needed to find healthier outlets for his resentment and ire." Given that description, Burnie knew what he would deem necessary, but it had been Benedict's line of questioning. "What do you think?"

[Niabh]

The addition of the Queen to the equation that was Elliot Brown did not need to be spoken for the raven to get the message loud and clear. “I think that’s exactly what she’s done,” he said. “I think she’s strung him along to get the kid. Remember that night when I told you she was trying to coax you into promising without coming out and saying it? I’m not sure but I think that might be what she’s done with the kid, too. A promise don’t have to be words with her. It can be an exchange. Exchanges have power. But it wouldn’t do her any good to go along with him. As much as she wants that kid, she’s still got her limits.” Clan Niall and land went way back. They were greedy, tight-fisted souls about land, and they’d never help anyone else gain some unless it granted them twice as much. That truth alone reassured the raven.

Meanwhile a tiny, plump-fingered brown hand sneaked out from below the bed and inched toward the abandoned dress, fetching up well shy of the pile of clothes. The raven, distracted by the movement, hopped to the bed’s edge, looked down, and made a disapproving crrl. As if sucked back by a powerful vacuum, the hand immediately shot under the bed again.

“Bairn,” he said wearily, in Tuathailli, “we know you’re there. We can see you.”

He waited. No reply. Not even a giggle. The raven shook his head. “Still can’t believe she brought the bairn with her.” He backed away from the edge of the bed to address Glenn again. “Actually, aye, I can believe it. You don’t know.” He spoke in an old, hollow tone, quite unlike himself. “You only know her. You’ve only seen a little of it. You don’t know what it’s like living in the middle of them. How they feel about stuff—especially kids. Kids are like a cause. Most of what concerns me right now is that they’re going to hear their Queen wants a child and be like ‘oh, that’s a fine idea, let’s help her out.’ Then I don’t know if all the reason in the world is going to be able to stop her from going through with it.”

He gave his small, watery sigh as the passage beyond the door creaked under the weight of a very light step. “Anyway, that’s what I think.”

[Glenn]

"What's done is done," which didn't mean that there was no point in talking about it or throwing guilt around; that however, was more to prevent future transgressions in other areas. When it came to Elliot Brown, it was simply too late. "Without what she did, we wouldn't be at this point now. He'd be far less of a threat and a worry. That said," He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, pinching the bridge of his nose with a long exhale between one word and the next, "it's other powers that I think will sway him now. When it comes to her, given what you've said and what we know, maybe we can convince her it's best to trick him into being a baby again and having her take things from there?" Stranger things had happened and he was rather mutable in some ways, even if he was entirely stubborn in others. "That would take some doing, but not impossible."

As solutions went, it was quite the contrived one however. "I have no desire to end him. He's a victim in this, even if partially a victim of his own bluster, but Myrken made him as much as anything else and I failed to make Myrken better. Responsibility direct and indirect, or at least indirect from multiple angles. If not that, then the best option is to find some appropriate young woman; Gloria won't do because he won't listen to her. Niall (his girlfriend, not the Queen) won't do because she won't listen to me. I don't exactly keep a number of them in a pouch handy for such situations. But find one and use her to convince him to use his power in some other way, to protect those who are helpless instead of tear everything down to punish those who are not, that sort of thing. Redirect him." He raised both hands in an overwrought shrug, his range of motion rather limited if he wasn't about to get up. "There are options to try and time to try them. As you say," and his gaze was firmly upon the door now. "There are more pressing matters at hand."

[Niabh]

“Glenn,” said the raven with perhaps manufactured patience, “you are not responsible for everything that goes on in the goddamn world, and even if you were, it wouldn’t matter. The situation is beyond you right now. Only difference now is that you know about it. Now that you’re not workin’ against one another and everybody knows everything, you can work together again.”

He still held the faintest bit of hope that the Queen would eventually burn through her fit of pique and warm to Glenn again, at least enough for them to talk properly. Having seen her, he wouldn’t recommend it for a while, but that conversation could come later. They’d been on the outs before, and somehow they’d always come around. But this was quite a bit more serious than their previous squabbles. Glenn had put himself in the way of something the Queen really wanted. Maybe she didn’t want him to come to harm, but she wasn’t feeling exactly charitable toward him, either.

And then there was a certain nagging notion that the raven couldn’t quite articulate. Somehow Glenn managed to center himself in everything. Glenn seemed to think he was still a priority, blissfully unaware that the lady had just gotten herself a whole barrel of more pressing matters. He didn’t know if Meg was going to tell him, or even if she’d been forbidden from mentioning it, but her very presence here in Myrken was its own sort of herald. Anyway, if she didn’t tell Glenn, the raven would. No one had told him he wasn’t allowed to tell anything. Being a free agent had some advantages.

It was the one drawback of being a raven. You always had to belong to someone. With no intent of his own, the raven found he now belonged to Glenn. His loyalty had shifted. The old loyalty was a quiet ache, somewhere behind his breastbone. The lady had been cruel, but he missed her. He worried. And he hoped Glenn still shared the same sympathy.

As if his gaze summoned it, a little warning scratch came from outside the door, a moment before the woman Glenn knew as Juniper nudged the door open with a heavy hip. Outside of dreams, the Tuatha woman was just at the age where women start to wear their years on their faces, the lines in her brow and beneath her eyes exaggerated by exhaustion and strain. Her mouth was set in a heavy frown. Setting down a clattering tray on a convenient dressing table, she sighed, stooped, and gathered up the little bundle of clothes.

“She’s under the bed,” the raven supplied helpfully.

Juniper sighed again. “She’ll do no harm for staying there.” She wadded the dress and pinny between her hands and set them at the foot of the bed, before finally looking directly at Glenn. “Did see thou would wake today,” she said, in a thick, stumbling lilt. Concerned, curious, her brows drawing tight above her large, kittenish grey eyes, she patted her own throat, then tipped her head for a reply.

[Glenn]

"Knowing is everything." It wasn't said with any particular amount of emotion. It simply was. If there was any sort of ethos that Glenn possessed, it would be that. Knowing ensured that there was a responsibility. Knowing bestowed the means to make a difference. Despite his words before, he didn't seem to be holding much of a grudge at all. He'd been the one contorting himself and the situation to find a solution. Now, the situation had become very rigid, but they were no more at odds than they'd been before. If anything, it was as the raven noted and they were less so, except, of course that given knowledge, he had a need to act upon it. That was not only true for whatever Brown was up to.

But yes, Glenn was behind, which meant he was lacking knowledge, which, as part of a far more complex equation, could stay his hand. It was staying his hand now. He hadn't much of a sense how long it'd been or what had happened when he was out. That he needed so skilled attention was a concern. That he couldn't be sure if it was due to his time in the hoard or his time wandering the land she made of dreams, the reflection of her home, or if it was because of what Brown did at the end, yanking the tangle out of him... well, that lack of knowledge made it all the worse.

One might argue was that he wasted his time for questions by asking the raven his desires. That was out of friendship, as Benedict had not asked for this and he meant to ensure he did not feel powerless in their intertwined fate.

Now, though, they were temporarily out of time. "I bounced on the bed a bit to keep her honest." It wasn't exactly charm and it was most certainly a form of dissembling, not in words but in tone. It was entirely true after all, but nothing about him that led to that act was nearly as good-natured or playful as he made it seem with just a few words and something of a tight smile. "How many years of my life did that little stunt cost me? The dream bit, not the bouncing."

[Niabh]

The woman continued to stare blankly at him, her hand hovering nervously over her own throat. The raven looked as embarrassed for Glenn as he was capable of looking. This was going to create a basic problem, he feared: Glenn navigated the entire world with his yap, and Meg was not so well-armed. “Uh, you’re gonner have to speak a little slow with her.” For her sake, the raven hoped her grasp of the local tongue was lacking enough to be spared Glenn’s attempts at jokes.

The raven repeated Glenn’s question in Tuathailli, whereupon Juniper shuffled and blinked as though coming back into the room after a short absence. She held up all of one hand and most of the other, then fixed her eye—one might dare say impishly—upon the raven before rattling off a screed of Tuathailli, ticking off points on her fingertips and leaving the raven dazed and taken aback. Twice he opened his beak to interrupt, but was unable to find an appropriate pause into which he might wedge an objection. His training for mimicry took over, counteracted by the need to translate from pure Tuathailli, with its subtleties and nuance, into something Glenn would understand.

“You been asleep nine days. Your throat’s rough because she put a reed through your nose and down your throat to feed you. It should be better in a few days now that you can swallow normal. The Lady, uh…well, I didn’t quite understand that part, but she says there was something in the brew you took that was really bad for you—or, well, it could have been really bad for you, and it was, but not as bad as it could have been. She looked at that stuff you took, and asked the Lady what she put in it, and she thinks there’s something that’s perfectly ordinary for them that might not be safe for humans, and the Lady just didn’t know any better. The Lady’s a lot of things, but she ain’t no doctor. She—Meg—needs to check you out to make sure the other medicine she gave you to counteract the bad stuff, didn’t do you any harm either. Basically she had to poison you to unpoison you. You might get…I think ‘tremors’ is closest word? Hey!”

All the while he had been speaking, a small head rose like a tousled moon, the round brown brow just high enough to peek over the foot of the bed, and a little damp hand crept forward to finger the ridge of his tailfeathers. The raven stepped away hastily, nearly tripping over a fold of bedclothes, and aimed a vicious snap at the tiny fingers.

Juniper huffed with impatience and started forward, bending over Glenn and attempting, with expert gentleness, to pry open one of his eyelids and peer into his pupil.

[Glenn]

They had interacted before, of course, but that was during a dream and during a dream, one's meaning was more naturally evident. It was not like glamourie in some ways, a realm where perception was far more symbolic and communication was based on entirely different principles. He was still recovering, but this was also a very good reminder that Finn was at least somewhat exceptional among her people when it came to interacting with those of his kind.

He listened, and did not yet tremor, as Benedict explained. Mastering languages was no strength of his, which he would freely admit, quite the admission as well given that he would claim almost any other academic endeavor as a strength. Rote memorization was a weakness though, an unpleasant side effect from certain aspects of his youth, no doubt, combined with an inclination to rely on logic, reason, ration as his main means of learning and understanding.

It wasn't until he was being prodded (an act that he did not struggle against or object to) that he spoke once more. "She didn't actually answer my question which makes me think you didn't actually ask it. Would you like to tell her that I will avoid swordfights in the near future." Then, he laughed, enough for his head to shake and disrupt his work, enough that he felt the need to mumble an apology. "Benedict, if it's so bad that I can't write for a time, you realize that you'll be mimicking my voice to letter recipients. I'll have to work out tone in what I wish people to ascertain and what I don't. It'll add an entirely new dimension to it," even if he did generally speak as he wrote and wrote as he spoke, much to the detriment of all who heard him speak and read his letters.

[Niabh]

“Maybe I did ask the question and she didn’t answer because it was a dumb question,” the raven replied. “You always jump straight to life and death, do you know that? Except when it actually could be life and death. Then you dismiss the possibility altogether.”

“Nine day,” Juniper said, overriding the raven. There was a note of smug triumph in her voice, though whether it was at her faith in the correctness of her diagnosis or her ability to follow the conversation was a matter for conjecture. She stepped away from Glenn, with the absent, reassuring pat on the arm she might bestow on a child for being a brave patient, before she turned her back to him to swirl a spoon in one of Glenn’s teacup, borrowed from his pantry shelves. She had nimble, precise hands, too small for her plump frame. “Tha’ll live to fight more. Drink.” She set the cup, half-filled with a murky liquid with a fiercely bittersweet smell like rotten marigolds, close at hand by his bedside. “Pinch thy nose.”

Though she kept her face carefully stiff, she struggled not to flick quick, curious glances toward Glenn’s face. The raven had warned her that the tultharian would be talking the moment he opened his eyes. She assumed this was the raven being optimistic, hoping for the best possible outcome for his friend. In her experience, men were weak as water after more than a day in coma; every day lessened the possibility that they would wake at all, much less awaken with their wits. Now she must wonder if the elixir had gone too far the other way. It was delicate enough to get the dose right under ordinary circumstances, but with tultharian, she had feared to put much more than a few drops on the back of his tongue. Nine days had made her too familiar with his silence, supplanting the ghostly memory of the man she had met in dreams. He both was and was not what she expected. For one thing, she’d thought he’d be taller.

The raven, meanwhile, flitted his wingtips and perked up at the prospect Glenn proposed. “Yeah, sure, that’s no problem. That’s the way they do things at home anyway. You’ll love it. You’ll get to impose yourself on people in real time, and I’ll finally get to find out what’s in the damn messages.”

Juniper silently moved around to the foot of the bed and hoisted to her waist a chubby, bare-assed brown child with a messy halo of nearly black curls. Both of them regarded Glenn with nearly identical blue-grey eyes, clearly delineating their kinship. Unlike Fionn, their pupils were clearly visible, though the whites were not. The woman cocked her head in curiosity. “Do remember me?”

[Glenn]

Glenn had managed to impressively sit up, but he hadn't done much more than that. Even when he spoke, it wasn't quite as long as one would usually expect out of him. Benedict had asked a serious question about Elliot and he had answered it but otherwise, it'd been a few quips and an equally serious question to the raven (not nearly answered in full) about wants, desires, and expectations. The simple fact of the matter was that Glenn Burnie had been through so, so much in his time in Myrken. There might have been cumulative effects to Golben and Underdark and Chimeras and encounters with Catch but there was also some level of resilience or at least familiarity. This was not, it was unfortunate to say, his first coma. Nor had it been the same sort that most other humans encountered.

"And if it means," he pinched his nose then, causing his voice to distort in a way that his feathered friend might be happy to mimic later; moreover, he timed his next words with the swallowing, which might have been a feat for anyone other than him. Here, it was just disappointing to all around him, "that I am fighting your queen?" At least one of the two of them would have been able to make that out.

He still had no idea whether he could write or not, but messages had to be sent and he had a uniquely skilled emissary now tied to him. On a practical sense, that was a problem gotten ahead of.

Which left them with Juniper's question. "I do. I don't dream like others. I don't remember everything that had just happened to me, but to me it was closer to nine months, I imagine, not nine days. Our time together, then, was long ago for me, and in at least two ways, less so for you." He had to pause after that and inwardly cursed that he hadn't used simpler language. He'd take the time of recovery to nod to Bendict so that he might translate that bit (a wonderful way to prevent her from responding as of yet), before he continued on. "I'm afraid I did a poor job waiting for you. How is she?"