okay but what's the thread count

[liakoura]

Kiri stays away for weeks, and then she's back, and then she goes to the Ardelay house to learn her way around it and make (thoroughly advised) decisions about staff maintenance, and then she's back, and then she leaves again to be at the Chialto house, but this time Ko is allowed to go with her.

(At a safe distance.)

It's a long boring ride, or it would be boring, but Kiri has learned to make harmless fire-shapes in the air and entertains him with swirls and streamers of it crackling alongside the carriage until she decides to take a nap.

He's not going to be able to sleep in this carriage, it bumps too much, but he can scoot over and sort of nudge part of her onto his lap while she mumbles words.

(And then lurch away from her once she stops partway through "interior decoration".)

She smiles a sad smile at him like she always does when she wakes up and finds him halfway across the room. Or in this case, the carriage.

"You're not even huggy," he observes, on this occasion. "Not like Jayce is anyway." (Jayce is a very huggy little boy.)

She shrugs. "If I didn't have a family and it was just me, and distant Ardelay relatives I barely know, and stuff, then that would be fine probably. We just used to be next to each other all the time and now we can't. I don't need hugging, I just want my brothers."

Ko thinks about this, but doesn't get much of anywhere. Kiri's the smart one, all sweela, always thinking and writing. He isn't going to come up with a solution if she can't, probably.

"I could just try it again," he says.

"You didn't like it last time," she says.

"Yeah, but, you weren't mean about it or anything."

"Why would I be mean because you had to go to the bathroom?"

"I dunno." He fidgets, and looks out the window.

She makes a fire-dart that follows the path of his eyes.

They arrive in Chialto, and wait for the arrival of the prince.

Comments

[pythbox]

"Huh," he says. "Good question. I don't know, why do you mind it?"

[liakoura]

"Well - wouldn't anyb- wouldn't most people? One day she can't do anything like it at all and the next day she can't stop and she's setting things on fire and crying about how if Great-Aunt Elytte did this to people then it's just as well that she's dead, and now you're just sort of not minding, I don't get it."

[pythbox]

"I don't mind because I don't..." He trails off, struggling to find the concepts to explain, let alone the words. On one level, it is just so that he doesn't mind, and he doesn't really know why other people do. But on another level, he can make guesses, and know that the guesses are things that don't apply to him.

"I don't have any big secrets, and I don't have any - things that - " He gestures helplessly. "The way that people are sometimes, that they don't like it if people know something about them, even if it won't hurt them any other way, they just don't want anyone knowing? I don't do that."

The concept he is attempting to describe is something like shame, or embarrassment, or fear for one's reputation as a thing in itself. He can't quite bring the words to mind.

[calescent]

"You just... don't get embarrassed?" translates Kiri slowly.

[pythbox]

"Yeah! That," he agrees, nodding. "I don't do that."

[calescent]

"I'm not sure if Ko's gonna be able to learn that."

[liakoura]

"Aw, come on. He can do it."

[pythbox]

"I'd teach you if I knew how!" he says earnestly. "But I don't really have a 'how', I just don't ever get embarrassed. It's not like I used to and then stopped."

[liakoura]

"That's weird. Why are you like that?"

[pythbox]

"Just am!" he says, shrugging. "I don't really know what embarrassed is."

[calescent]

"I have a really good metaphor for it but it'd probably just sound neat to you," says Kiri.

[pythbox]

"Well, what is it?"

[calescent]

"It's like noticing that you're leaking, I think."

[pythbox]

...Well, it's a funny image, and he can imagine embarrassed people looking mournfully at the streams of water dripping out of their elbows and shuffling behind a curtain, but it does not get him much closer to understanding the feeling itself.

[calescent]

"Yeah, I didn't think that'd help."

[pythbox]

"It was funny, though," he says, giggling.

[liakoura]

"Well, I don't want to leak, anyway. What if I got empty?"

[pythbox]

"I guess that would be bad," he says. "But I don't think it's how being embarrassed works."

[liakoura]

"No, I mean, like..." There is something he means but he doesn't know how to say it.

[calescent]

Kiri's all the way over here. She can't help.

[pythbox]

"Mm?" says the prince.

[liakoura]

"I dunno. Kiri's smarter than me," he volunteers; this seems relevant.

[pythbox]

...The prince does not see how this is relevant.

[liakoura]

"...I dunno. What if she memorized me like a book, then what?"

[calescent]

"If I what? I can't do that. That isn't how people work."