She squeezes him back. Oh, believe me, I know. I'm just used to it being a little less direct than that.

So in the case of letting them lie to their siblings, it's not really a mistake and even if it is I should let them make it. The case of them agreeing to let you come around seems a bit more complicated; I'm not actually sure I know all the parts yet. I am pretty sure they're going to say yes even if they ought to say no, though.

Can you explain why?

Parts of it. Even the parts I know I'm not sure how they fit together yet. And parts of it I'm pretty sure I shouldn't tell you.

Fear, though. One of the things that came up today is that they really can't tolerate other Eldar being mad at them, at all - bad associations. I'm not sure how deep that goes, but from what they've told me it's likely to be especially bad with you; you not being there at the time doesn't seem like it'd be enough to make denying you something you want feel safe at all.

Okay.

Nod. That's really the biggest part of it. It's a little more complicated than that - it's more five or six different connected things than one thing - but basically that, with the complication that they still care about you and want things for you even when I'm pretty sure that's not actually a factor. They care a lot about you being safe, for example.

Does he remember much about me, has he said?

I haven't been asking, they find it upsetting... it seems like it doesn't take much for them to get at least some memories back, though. And they trust your judgement in a way that makes sense for the kind of person you are, when they're calm enough, and they know enough to know that they wouldn't be able to hide things from you the way they're intending to hide things from their siblings.

I'm less inclined to play along, yeah.

Mmhmm. Which is part of why I want to be careful about it until they're okay with saying you can't come and with asking you to leave - they're doing pretty okay with that right now - I think they're actually talking about it less than might be best, trying to spare me - but it'd be really easy and probably really harmful for you to push them too far.

Okay. Thank you.

Hug. I suspect they'll want to see you sometimes, though. I think... right now there's still a few too many - complications, hard things, things they haven't figured out how to deal with yet that you'd remind them of, but when that's less true, I think it's actually going to surprise them how okay they are with it.

I was not expecting to ever see him again, I am not - struggling too much with it.

Mmhmm. She snuggles up. Not going to be forever, though.

I certainly hope not.

I'm pretty sure.

She's relaxed, talking this out, and now she stretches carefully and settles more comfortably against him.

If there are conditions that'd make it easier, like if he wants me to come talk to him but he won't say anything back, or whatever -

I'll see if I can figure any out. Right now... she considers. Still too much, I think. If I'm putting this together right it's more about them than about you, having you there at all would be too much. Portals should be okay, like that first time - they might not want to be seen, either, depending on what exactly just happened.

Can you tell me anything about that?

She tenses, then intentionally relaxes, sighs. Probably should. It's, um. She makes a face. So, kobolds have a reproductive cycle that follows the seasons. It doesn't matter to anything, but it occurred to me that they'd notice, and that definitely wouldn't be a good surprise. Telling them wasn't very good either, though. And - there's... things I can do about it, to make that not happen, and I thought telling them about that would be enough but it wasn't, they just started trying to find ways for me to not have to. Which was. Very awkward. And I should probably have been more patient with it than I was, but. She sighs.

One of the things that happened during that, that I'm not entirely sure how I should be interpreting, was that they asked if I knew of anything that'd work like that on Eldar.

What do you know about orcs?

...almost nothing?

Orcs are the servants of the Enemy. He bred them from Quendi. From prisoners he takes, specifically.

That is definitely a pained wince.

Well, I can certainly bring the relevant plants for you to try, if you want them.

Spell triggers to get to safety seem strictly more useful. But - yeah, that would be my guess as to why he'd find the topic distressing.

Makes more sense than anything I'd come up with, yeah.