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[Tom Cooke]

The Golden Rose Tea Room • Two Falls

Afternoon on the 4th of Bethas, 2720

I
–” He broke off, frowning, then smiled a wry, tired smile. He looked down at the page, then back up at Cerise. “Fair point,” was all he said – was all he could say, he reckoned. If he’d heard the sarcastic drawl of her voice break over the word alone, he wouldn’t draw attention to it, though he couldn’t help the faint pinched look on his face.

He glanced over at a flicker of movement, got a glimpse of Alain. Not the kov he’d been expecting, portly and dreamy-faced, old enough to be one of Cerise’s professors. Not looking much like the sort that’d be on a first-name basis with Cerise, either, though he wasn’t sure who would be.

If she starts to what? He raised his brows at Sish as she hopped up from her chair, watching the little drake drift on her pillow.

He flipped another page, peered back down through his spectacles. In the quiet, he could hear Cerise and Alain going back and forth.

Less than halfway through the book was another elaborate woodblock print, this time sprawling over both pages. The sky was black, with only a break for the moon – if he’d touched the page, he got the feeling his fingertip would’ve come away stained – and the stark-cut greenery was thick with blocky shadows. Two young women in elaborate dresses sat on a bench surrounded by moonlit foliage, clasping hands, leaning close enough to kiss; there was color staining the light-haired girl’s cheeks, but the other was as pale and dark as in the earlier illustration.

She was needling her father about it. He heard a few sharp laughs from the counter, and his heart tightened; he forced himself to breathe, in and out.

He hadn’t been wrong, he told himself. Just because she was pissed over whatever Anatole’d done didn’t mean she didn’t want something; if anything, it just gave her more ammunition to get it. His backing, maybe, for the travel team, or his funding for this or the other postgraduate program. If Anatole had cut her off, it’d explain a lot.

A long trip from Mugroba, he thought, frowning deeper. It was the first time she’d mentioned the Symvoulio; he’d thought, based on what Diana’d told him, Cerise would’ve been pleased to have him out of Anaxas. He shut his eyes for a moment. There was another lump forming in his throat.

He waited, studying the illustration, searching the thick dark night sky. In the corner of his eye, he could see shimmery flickers of gold as Sish’s flank rose and fell on the pillow. He thought again about reaching and scratching a feather, and again elected not to.

He flipped a few more pages with shaky hands and studied a block of text. His eyebrows lifted much higher on his forehead.

Cerise was approaching again. He looked up at her again over the rims of his glasses. “Sish has been behaving herself,” he pronounced very seriously.

It’s none of my business, he wanted to say, who you see now; I won’t stand in your way. He studied her sharp, narrow face, wondering if there was a chance in hells she’d believe him.

He was beginning to get used to it, looking at her face. It was like stepping out of one discomfort and into another. The pair of you, he’d heard Alain say jauntily; he felt a prickle of embarrassment. This isn’t my daughter, he got the urge to protest. I’m not on some nanabo lunch outing with my daughter.

He looked back down at the page, and the feeling ebbed. “Have you read any of these?” he asked, looking back at the shelf. If she’d only started coming here, he supposed not; he wasn’t sure why he’d asked, other than he felt – he didn’t feel, he told himself, anything at all.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Golden Rose Tea Room, Two Falls
Bethas 4, 2720 - Afternoon

Alain had started on their order, so Cerise returned to her green chair. Her father remained where she had left him, reading the book she had put on that shelf. She still couldn't tell from looking at him if it was a pleasant experience, but he hadn't yet stopped.

"Oh? Being good, are we, my darling? What a tremendous trick you're pulling." Cerise smiled indulgently at the little golden creature and her place on the pillow. Sish opened one eye to look at her, then promptly closed it again. Affectionate fingers ran over her triangular head down to the base of her spine, where her tail began. "I think she likes you," Cerise commented mildly as she sat, "she doesn't normally tolerate having anyone this close to her when I'm not around. Or she's more tired than I thought." Her smile was reserved for the miraan and the miraan alone; she couldn't bring herself to turn any of it elsewhere.

Cerise settled back into her chair more carefully than she had been seated before. Her posture was a little straighter, a little less sullen. She leaned on one arm of the chair, legs crossed indelicately at the knees, and put her cheek in her palm. All in the service of petting Sish, of course. She wasn't actually sure if miraan liked to be pet, but Sish seemed to--and Cerise liked to do it, besides. The scales on her hide were softer than one might imagine, and flexed when she took in little breaths in and out. A perfectly darling thing; Cerise didn't know what she'd have done without her, this last year.

Grey eyes turned away from golden scales; had she read any of them? For a moment she considered how best to answer the question. They were mostly fiction, with an odd volume of modernist poetry and somewhat risque political nonfiction. (Nothing too scandalous, of course--just the sort of thing that appealed to the graduate student population of Brunnhold.) Cerise had read them all, and when she had finished reading them she had given Alain Mircalla of Neze Nor, without telling him anything about it. The next time she had come, there it was. She never had asked him what he thought of the book; his inclusion of it on the shelf said enough.

"Most of them." She said simply this, and then, after a moment's hesitation, "I gave them the one you've got in your hand, actually. Have you..." Cerise frowned. She wasn't sure why he continued to flip through it; it didn't strike her as her father's kind of book. Thinking on it, Cerise didn't know what she would consider "her father's kind of book".

"That one isn't for everyone," was what she settled on instead of asking any further questions. He could give her his opinion if he wanted to; she didn't care, she reminded herself again. She had only come here today to see how he was, and figure out what was being hidden from her. That they were sitting here about to eat lunch together had nothing to do with any moony desire to... to... delude herself into thinking they were close.

A year, she reminded herself. A whole year, without her and Eleanor both. No amount of schoolgirl wistfulness would change that.

Alain drifted over to them, carrying a tray with two bowls of soup and warm rye bread as well as a pot of fragrant tea and two cups.

"Vegetable stew; that one there has meat in it, so you want the other one," he said to Cerise as he set the tray down on the low table, "and a special fermented tea from Hox. I just got it last week; you'll like this one, I think, Miss Vauquelin." Alain hesitated, then turned his light smile on her father. "Incumbent." He bowed politely and drifted away, though his eyes lingered a little curiously on her father's overdressed figure as he left. Cerise bit back a groan.

[Tom Cooke]

The Golden Rose Tea Room • Two Falls

Afternoon on the 4th of Bethas, 2720

I
t was a little like a cat, he thought. He didn’t dare say anything; he didn’t dare even look at Cerise, for all she hadn’t – pointedly, almost – looked at him. Instead, he watched Sish lying on the pillow. Her scales in the low phosphor light were like tiny gold coins, ripple-shimmering with her breath in and out. He smiled, watching Cerise pet her all the way from the little tufted feathers at her crown to the little tufted feathers at her rear.

He hadn’t known miraan liked to be pet, least of all so much like cats. He didn’t say so; it was a mung thing to say. When Cerise looked back up toward the bookshelf, his eyes skittered back down to the page. He frowned professionally, as if he’d never looked up.

That was a damned lot of books to’ve read in so short a time. He supposed he didn’t know much of books, or of reading; he wasn’t even a journeyman, he thought wryly, to Anatole’s daughter’s magister. It would’ve taken him a good month to get through any one of these, save maybe the slim volumes that looked like they were full of poetry. Poetry was easier in some ways, but harder in others – it lent itself to slow reading, and mulling-over, even if it took a short time to read the lines.

His lip twitched at the page. Not for everybody, she’d said. He could see why.

“Sanguimancy,” he murmured, “and the unrestful dead. How ghastly.” He looked up at Cerise, and he couldn’t seem to help but grin broadly.

He was interrupted. The portly fellow at the counter had come over with two steaming bowls. He caught a whiff of warm broth and toasted, sour bread. Miss Vauquelin, he said first, in a tone he thought was a pina less easy than the one he’d used at the counter; then, looking at him – Incumbent.

He wasn’t grinning anymore. “Thank you.” Another smell had joined the soup and bread, bitter and a little tangy; he looked curiously at the teapot, and the two empty cups.

He glanced at her steaming bowl, then at her, raising an eyebrow. He’d only ever known certain tyat, or sects of Vitanists, to follow that practice. He wasn’t sure if Anatole would’ve known about this, her not-eating-meat; maybe she just wasn’t eating it today. He knew better than to ask.

“I told you I’d embarrass you,” he said instead, barely managing to muster the dregs of a smile.

The soup was still billowing up benny-smelling steam. Almost without thinking – they weren’t at some fancy dinner, after all, or Diana’s teatime – he blew over it, watching the broth ripple. It was still piping hot.

He closed the book and set it aside on the arm of the chair. He remembered, once, a little lass getting flustered and defensive over books she loved; he told himself to step lightly. “The illustrations caught my eye,” he said, neutrally as he could. “They’re very bold.”

He remembered those ha’penny terrors as got passed round with the papers. Caina’d got into them, for a time, and she’d read them aloud to him while he patched himself up from this or that beating. Funny stuff – he remembered one where there was hatchers in the sewers of Vienda, another, a whole long series, about a kov who turned into a vicious monster at night, but only when the moon was full. This didn’t seem much like that.

Tentative, he reached for the teapot. He breathed: in, out; he counted the breaths, and trusted his hands. “Why did you give it to the teahouse?” he asked, pouring carefully. He’d be damned if he let her pour his tea.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Golden Rose Tea Room, Two Falls
Bethas 4, 2720 - Afternoon

There it was again, that strange feeling that she was looking at somebody else despite knowing it couldn't be so. She had looked at that face all of her life; she knew none better save maybe her own. Perhaps even more than her own--it had certainly changed less with time than hers had in most ways.

Alain's arrival meant that anything she might have had to say on sanguimancy, the restless undead, or even that unfamiliar smile was cut off before her voice had a chance to find it. By the time the food and tea had been settled and Alain had retreated again, the grin had dropped away and Cerise had lost her chance.

It was only the strangeness of seeing her with company, she wanted to say. Alain was a good listening ear, at the time, she could have added. Cerise couldn't shake the feeling that her father was uncomfortable with having been addressed so, although that was absurd. She met his look over her own bowl and stared back, challenging him to ask her about it. He didn't.

"Don't be ridiculous," she grumbled instead, and picked up the teapot. "It takes more than that." That was a lie, but she couldn't say what it was that had embarrassed her in particular. Alain's lingering glance, maybe. Knowing that he had been a patient listener to more than one childish ramble, and was having to reconcile he words and her behavior now. Oh Miss Vauquelin, is all forgiven then? Was it so easy as that?

But what was she supposed to have done? Difficult enough not to stare, to ask him if he was quite sure he was well, given the casual manners on display. They weren't out of place for the setting at all; they were quite odd given the person displaying them. Her usual expectations seemed not to apply, and she didn't know what to do in their place.

Cerise poured the tea into her own cup, careful and practiced. There was nothing to put in it, and she didn't ask him if he wanted anything. If this particular tea was meant to be enjoyed that way, Alain would have said. And if her father wanted it that way, he could ask. The smell of it was bitter and a little odd; Cerise smiled just at the corners of her mouth. She could already tell that he had been right with the recommendation. The action gave her time to consider her answer.

"Because I like it," she said lightly and shrugged. "It's an interesting book. One would think, without reading it very closely, that it's just some gruesome tale of horrors. To me it's almost--" Cerise frowned, forgetting who she was talking to for the moment and losing herself in thinking on it. "It's very sad, I think. The story of two lonely young women, who have a sort of bond of love--although I think that what the author was trying to say about it I might take exception to, it's rather--"

Cerise blinked and broke off. She was belatedly aware of who she was talking to; once again she shrugged. This time her face colored just a little, traitorously. She did her best to hide it behind a hasty sip of her tea. The beverage turned out to be too hot still, and Cerise made a muffled sound of distress at having burnt her tongue.

[Tom Cooke]

The Golden Rose Tea Room • Two Falls

Afternoon on the 4th of Bethas, 2720

I
s that a challenge?” he asked, smiling again up at Cerise. “Embarrassment is a talent of mine, lately.”

He’d meant it well; he’d meant it to be funny, and he’d thought it was funny, but he thought he heard something – he didn’t know what – in the stranger’s voice that came out of his mouth. He smiled, still, and looked down at the soups, blowing on his again. The smell of warm rich vegetable broth mingled with that of the tea. It was a reddening dark in the cups, tinged a slightly different color than most of the black or green teas he’d had. The smell reminded him a little of Kzecka.

He watched the lass pour tea into her own little cup. He thought she had hands a bit like her father’s, too; it might’ve been his imagining, the way you imagine a resemblance, sometimes, between a father and a son and a father and a daughter, or between yourself and a – relation, regardless of whether you’re related or not.

They didn’t shake, like his. There was a practiced grace and a deliberacy about them, like he might’ve handled a riff, or even a teapot, once. It was how she petted Sish; she handled the floral teapot, held it by its sweeping curl of a handle, as if she’d held it many times before. Steam billowed up, caught the soft phosphor light, and behind it she smiled faintly.

He looked askance at the row of spines. All of them, he thought again. At the counter, the fellow she’d called Alain was already gone, and he didn’t let his eyes linger there.

In the quiet, he blew again on his soup, reaching for the spoon. There was still a tremor to his fingers; the tarnished silver rattled against the bowl before he steadied himself.

It prickled at him, needled. He’d been more than happy to use the shakes, back at the party; he hadn’t cared if she saw them. He’d thought they’d buy him time, or pity, or both. Here, the table was too low, his knees all in the way, and he had to stoop at a slight angle. It was ill-mannered Uptown to pick up the bowl, but he didn’t see as he had much choice, unless he wanted to dribble all over himself feebly.

He was saved the decision, for the moment. He looked up when Cerise spoke again. His brow furrowed; he watched her narrow, sharp face, listening intently.

He blinked, taking the book back off the arm and re-opening it in his lap. He’d forgot to take off his reading-glasses, he realized. A soft blur of words came into focus; he flipped the page, and then another, searching for the illustration of the garden. He listened, his lips pursed, feeling oddly empty of thought. He couldn’t make sense of this, of any of it, but all of it felt strangely familiar.

He ran his thumb along the viny border, looking at the page. Then he shut the book and set it aside again. “I wouldn’t’ve thought it was gruesome,” he said, thinking of ha’penny terrors; he knew the difference, he thought.

There was a muffled noise as Cerise took a sip; the tea sloshed a little as it went back to the table. Her face was blotched red again in her thicket of dark curls, brow shading downcast eyes. He didn’t look at it, then, but for a second. Easy-like, casual, he picked up the bowl of soup and settled back with it, nudging a chunk of carrot and a wedge of potato with his spoon.

“Or not just gruesome,” he said after a moment, thoughtful. “What’s gruesome can be lonely. And sad.” His lip twitched; he studied a floating pea diligently. “If the author’s dead, and the book’s in your hands, it’s yours to decide what to make of it, isn’t it?”

He brought the bowl up and blew on a bite of chicken. “These two young women, they don’t end well, do they?” he asked quietly, pausing.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Golden Rose Tea Room, Two Falls
Bethas 4, 2720 - Afternoon

The table was too low and the chair was not at the right angle. When she had led them to the Golden Rose, she hadn't thought--well she hadn't thought much of anything at all, other than it was nearby and she felt safe there. She had somehow forgotten the tremble in his hands that hadn't been there a year ago; for all her concern, Cerise was still young and it was too easy for her to put such things out of her consideration.

The memory of the way he had snapped at her outside of the Museum of Antiquities when she had suggested the take a cab still stung. She wouldn't venture to share such obviously unwanted feelings again. Instead she spoke about the book, because he had asked, and when she broke off and burned her tongue on her tea there was just nothing else to say.

"They do not," she said carefully and set down her cup. Her soup she sadly couldn't even try quite yet. The smell of it curled up to her, taunting. She hadn't eaten that morning, either, and had only a bite or two at the museum. At the time, her attention had been rather focused on the important business of attempting to scandalize her father and Incumbent Burbridge.

Cerise remained somewhat hunched over the table with her cup between her hands. She spun it thoughtfully, staring at the dark red liquid in it. There was a distorted reflection of her face that wobbled here and there on the surface.

"I think you are supposed to feel sorrier for the girl, Daphne, than for Mircalla. Daphne loves her, you see, and I suppose you could say Mircalla has loved Daphne most of the girl's life. But Mircalla's love is poisonous to Daphne, because Mircalla is a monster who has lived for hundreds of years by consuming the lives of other people." Cerise looked up at last, though not quite to look at her father. She didn't know why she was saying all this; it wasn't really the sort of thing one discussed with their father. She had never been very good at keeping her mouth shut once she'd started.

"I always thought," she continued carefully, "that if Mircalla is a monster, she was made one by her own loneliness, not the other way around. And she was destroyed for it in the end. But Daphne never forgets, for the whole rest of her life. In the story, it's because it was so traumatic and terrible but I feel like... You never really recover from losing the people you love, even if they were monsters. Even if loving them was destroying you."

Cerise took her bowl in her hands and sat back, clearing her throat. The soup was likely cool enough now, but she blew gently on a spoonful before putting it in her mouth. It was good, thick and rich; inoculating against the grey misery outside. There were mushrooms in it, along with the carrots and potatoes and who knew what else. The soup of the day had not once been quite the same in all the time she had been coming; she suspected Alain had no actual recipes for any of it, and just made it up with what he had on hand.

"I'm actually surprised you don't recognize it; I tried to write a paper on it once and got a failing grade. It was, ahem, 'inappropriate and salacious material, not befitting a young lady of my station'." The last she delivered in a pinched, nasal tone of voice--an absolutely miserable impression of her sixth year literature professor. That had been a fight, too, although a minor one. She couldn't remember now if it had been with Diana, her father, or both of them--she was not sorry she wrote it, to this day. Also, to this day, that professor seemed to sigh a little when she passed him in the hallways. That had been an interesting year for literature papers. In fact, the memory made Cerise smile. Some of her best work, she had thought. The paper and the ensuing arguments both.

[Tom Cooke]

The Golden Rose Tea Room • Two Falls

Afternoon on the 4th of Bethas, 2720

A
monster, she said, who has lived hundreds of years by consuming the lives of other people. He swallowed tightly, nudging a hunk of mushroom with his spoon. He hadn’t taken a bite yet; his mouth was oddly dry.

He found he’d been watching her. He felt something like relief when she sat back with the bowl, though he couldn’t’ve said why. Something about the way she’d been looking at it. She said she hadn’t eaten – since when? – he’d been about to say something, he realized, some – keep your strength up, lass, you never know who you’ll be beating the shit out of later…

She took a bite, and he felt another little prickle of relief, another easing. It disturbed him so much he looked back at his soup. He managed a bite, finally, in the pause. He nearly swallowed a cut of carrot whole.

The broth was thick, and had the faint taste of arrowroot. Not a gravy by half, but not watery, either. It wasn’t just the usual medley of spices; there was heat there – not Muluku heat, but heat anyway – and the sweet twinge of ginger, mingling with the earthy mushrooms. What he’d thought was potato might’ve been turnip, but he couldn’t tell. He studied the soup with what was almost the fervor of an Everine, as if it might keep his mind from other things.

He swallowed another gulp of mushroom and snowpea as Cerise spoke again. He found he couldn’t look away, no matter how hard he tried.

I feel more for Daphne, he wanted to say. Pity for a monster is worse than hate, he wanted to argue, suddenly, with an even hotter fervor – love, even worse. She’s duped you, too, this Mircalla. You can’t call it love, if it’s all twisted and bent out of shape. You don’t care for someone, if they’ve twisted your arm and half-destroyed you in the process. It’s not real care; it’s poison, just like you said Gaudoin says. And what’s left when you’ve cleaned yourself out of it isn’t grief.

Something stopped him. He blew on a chunk of turnip and a few wisps of chicken floating in broth. He slurped a little as he took the bite.

She spoke with so much sincerity, he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to argue; he didn’t know how she’d take it from this face, anything he might’ve said in opposition. He snorted softly at her nasally impression of the professor.

“I don’t,” he said first, frowning. “Recognize it. Recall, I mean. Like I said, there’s – a lot I don’t remember. A lot,” he added carefully, “I’m not going to remember. Ever, they think.”

It wasn’t a lie, exactly; that was precisely what his physician had said. Not even the warm broth could wipe that bitter taste from his mouth. You had to, he told himself. You don’t have a choice but to lie. You’ve gone this far; there’s no turning back without making things worse.

He creaked in his chair and set the bowl on the table, careful-like, then took his teacup. One sip – his lip twitched as he set it back down. It wasn’t unlike what he’d had in Kzecka, not in the least; he wondered, in fact, if it was the same.

It warmed him inside out, even more than the broth. “A failing grade for that?” he parried; maybe it’d given him the strength. The edge was back in his voice. “What rubbish. Salacious and inappropriate, my erse; that’s the sort of conviction you take to the mona. I’m not sure if I agree with you about this – lonely monster – but I…”

It was only a book, he told himself. All this was nanabo and all, but it was only a book.

“Have you ever read Tsadi pezre Awameh?” he asked, propping his head up on the arm. “I don’t know that it’s – your sort of – reading,” he added, a little sheepish, glancing away. “She’s an imbala poetess, post-Exile, trying to understand what it means to love when you’ve no – no soul. That’s what they believe. Ardently. You might find imbali poetry a more sympathetic look at somebody like that.”

You fucking idiot, he told himself.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Golden Rose Tea Room, Two Falls
Bethas 4, 2720 - Afternoon

Ever. Cerise paused, bowl in her hands. She swallowed hard, stricken by a sudden and inexplicable panic. It beat in her breastbone and made her feel a little dizzy, as if she would have fallen were she not already firmly planted in her armchair. A lot--how much was a lot? How far back was a lot?

Was Mama a lot? Was she? Even the good parts?

No, that would be... Cerise didn't let herself think about that; she didn't know why she had started to. Too much foolish sentiment, talking about lonely monsters. More of the day made a little more sense at least; why would he be upset with her if he couldn't remember that they'd fought? Cerise frowned and set her bowl down, not liking the way her thoughts bent and twisted around such a simple fact. The spoon clattered against the side; it didn't match the one her father had, and neither did the bowls. Nothing in the Golden Rose matched anything. Nothing at all.

She blinked at the mention of her failing grade, and found a smile from somewhere, jagged glass. The language she let slide, back into the sea of her uncertainty. "Not just for that," she admitted and didn't look at all sorry. That had been only part of her analysis. She raised her eyebrows, looking at him again. It was a considering sort of look, while she weighed his disagreement with her sentiment against what he said about the mona.

In the end she chose to shrug and keep smiling. "Mircalla did not make herself what she was," she said with a voice that was a little far away, "but you don't have to agree. It wouldn't be the first time."

The conversation moved on. Cerise had more of her tea; she did like it. She would have to remember to tell Alain. And, she thought, looking at her father, maybe she could ask what it was. Just to know. In case she did something she needed forgiveness for, of course.

"I don't read a lot of poetry, just some here and there." I didn't think you read much either, she thought but didn't say. Especially not imbali poets. Cerise shifted in her chair, re-crossing her legs at the knee. She was quiet, considering. Was he... embarrassed, to talk about poetry with her? When had he even started reading Tsadi pezre Awameh--before? Or after? The distinction seemed to matter; she couldn't have said why.

"That might have helped with my paper--only a few years too late." Cerise didn't laugh, but she didn't frown. Her pointed face was a little less sullen than it had been before. She looked at the bookshelf, at the handful of slim poetry volumes there--that was, she realized, most of her venture into the category. An oversight, really. A thought occured to her, and she turned back to look at her father with a terrible sort of smile.

"I don't know that any of my professors would approve much of imbali poetry. I will have to track some down. If I remember."

[Tom Cooke]

The Golden Rose Tea Room • Two Falls

Afternoon on the 4th of Bethas, 2720

C
erise’s bowl and spoon rattled as she set them down on the table.

Why did it trouble her so? he wondered. If she hated her da so much – he couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought, for all he knew himself a fool. He blinked down at the table, and then blinked back up at Cerise when she spoke. It wouldn’t be the first time, she said, and his lip twitched.

I didn’t make myself what I am, either, he thought wryly; if you knew what I was, I think you’d feel differently. However much you sympathize with a lass from a book. He couldn’t say that. The taste of the tea clung in his mouth, floral and bitter, and the bitter he’d felt in her field earlier clung, too, though it hung strong and indectal around her now. He took another sip of tea, to keep him from saying anything. To buy him time to think what to say.

There was nothing he could. Not to that distant smile on her narrow, sharp face. He thought, in spite of all the curly dark hair and the heavy dark brows – he thought he recognized that expression, too. She was hard to read, he thought, except when she wasn’t; except when he recognized something familiar, something he had pieced together himself with the face that he had, slow and clumsy, something he had seen in the mirror. He thought he knew the set of her thin lips.

He hadn’t thought her one for poetry; he sat back himself, smiling faintly, as she considered.

Only a few years too late. More needles here than in a hedgehog; more spines than a hatcher. He took this one as he was learning to take them, with a sigh and a raise of his brows. When she met his eye, it was with another sort of smile altogether, one he thought he knew well indeed.

Imbali, he nearly said, aren’t your ticket to pissing off some Anaxi golly professor. But he thought this was a challenge as much as any other, and he remembered her earlier, Not just for that.

“If you remember,” he said, nonchalant. “There’s Adopu, too, who’s more of a traditional imbala. But no, I don’t think you’ll find many in Brunnhold’s library. Anaxi struggle with Mugrobi literature for… more than one reason.” He took a sip of tea.

None of them made themselves what they were, he thought to add, frowning. He wasn’t sure why he still wanted to argue the point, but he did. Maybe it was how out of character it’d seemed; maybe it was he wasn’t sure if it was playing defense for the hatcher on Cerise’s part, or compassion for the monster. Which did he want it to be?

“I can – send you some,” he blurted out, before he thought; he looked away. Then he looked back, with a wry smile. “I think I’ve a few volumes here,” he said, “if you want to give your professors hell. It’s topical, at least. With the…”

The Symvoulio. Mugroba, she’d said earlier, flippant as you like. He looked down at the bowl she’d left on the table; he looked back up at her.

He didn’t try to smile. “Are you dueling anytime in the next –” He broke off, at a loss. “If I’ve the chance to come to a match, before I go,” he said, “I’d very much like to.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

The Golden Rose Tea Room, Two Falls
Bethas 4, 2720 - Afternoon

Cerise made a noise at the second recommendation, a wordless sound of acknowledgement. She was almost certain very little, if any, of such work was in the Brunnhold library. Honestly, that particular subject was one that sat very strangely in her mind. She didn't quite know what to make of it, and hadn't yet had that much cause to try to figure it out. But sometimes she looked at the blue uniforms that moved throughout the campus and paused, just a little. Anaxi struggle with Mugrobi literature, he said, and she wanted to ask when that had changed for him. And, in a private well of bitterness, why only now.

Don't send me anything; I don't want anything from you. Cerise choked on the words, because he smiled at her after looking away. This, she thought dizzily, was probably the longest conversation they'd had in--well in a very long time. At least, if one didn't count constant barbed exchanges that sometimes devolved into her shouting and his irritating politician's calm as conversation, which one really shouldn't. And of all things, it was about literature. She hated him, she thought; she was angry at him all the time. Her stomach twisted. The food just wasn't sitting well, after not eating for so long.

"Very topical, yes." Agreeing was uncomfortable. Forget talking, when had they last agreed on anything? Yesterday she would have said she could have fought with him about the weather. Maybe it was easier to talk to her if you couldn't remember anything about her. Her shoulders slumped a little.

"That would certainly save me the trouble of having to remember to find them myself," she agreed. A hooked smile shaped her mouth but didn't quite reach her eyes. "But if I fail my classes and don't graduate this year, I'm telling Diana you put me up to it."

There were still a few bites left of her lunch. She looked at them and made no move to pick the bowl back up. Suddenly she wasn't hungry anymore. The tea was warming enough, still, so she took another sip of that. Only then to almost choke on it when he asked about her duels.

"Matches? Oh, uhm." Were there any before he left? She didn't even know when that was; soon, she thought. In the next few weeks. Once again, a voice in her mind whined "why only now?" It wasn't that he'd never come to any of her matches or tournaments. He'd made a few, here and there. Especially when she had started with the Junior Varsity team, and had started winning. That had been a brief and dazzling period, she thought, when she was young enough that a few victories made her feel invincible. Even Diana and Eleanor had come to a few of those, although she didn't think Ellie had much enjoyed them.

That had stopped, eventually--the attendance and the invincibility, both.

"No." Her voice sounded wretched and sharp; she inhaled slowly and let it back out again. She ran a hand through her hair, making more of a mess of it than it already was. Dark curls tumbled everywhere. "There aren't--not so soon. I don't know when--but no, not in the next two weeks. If you had wanted to see--it's too late. Tryouts are about to start." Too late, all of it. She didn't know why that made her so miserable.

Maybe there was something in her voice. Sish woke up from her contented nap on her pillow and clambered down from it to settle across Cerise's lap, battering her little head against her elbow. Sish's sharp little claws dug into her thigh somehow, even through all the layers of fabric between the miraan and her skin. Cerise didn't stop her.

"But maybe, if I make the travel team..." Cerise broke off and shrugged. The faintest color blotched her face.