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]

"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."

[pythbox]

"Yeah, that," says the prince. He is extremely clear on this point, even if it is not a clarity he can articulate.

[liakoura]

"Well, how do you know?"

[pythbox]

"Because... people don't even have themselves memorized," he says. "You can't. There's parts of you that haven't happened yet. And I don't know about you, but even if Kiri followed me around every day of my life taking notes, I bet she still couldn't - say my entire half of a conversation for me, or know what I think of somebody's clothes without checking."

[calescent]

"I mean, if I could memorize a whole person like a book I'd've done it to myself by now."

[liakoura]

"...Yeah, you would've."

[pythbox]

The prince giggles. "I wouldn't," he says. "Even if I could. I don't think I'd even want to could."

[calescent]

Kiri snorts. "Far as I know most people don't care about it. I do though."

[pythbox]

He shrugs. "I care differently than you care."

By which he means: if Kiri wants to memorize herself like a book, she wants the opposite of the kind of self-knowledge that the prince has and is pleased about. If it were somehow possible to know himself so perfectly well that he could never again have a moment of realizing what he's going to do only after he has decided to do it - and he doubts it could be possible, however many sweela primes might try it - there would go much of the appeal of continuing to live. Surprise is one of his birth blessings for a reason.

[calescent]

"Way differently," agrees Kiri. "I don't want to surprise myself like that at all."