"Yeah.

"Thank you for listening. A lot."

Hug. 

Hug.

"Still really glad I met you."

"I'm glad I have you. 

- also my cousins are visiting and you should meet them and tell them a story. I was going to say, but."

"Oh. Yeah. I can do that. I should - possibly wash my face or something first. But yeah. Maybe Beowulf, I can do Beowulf when I'm half-asleep."

"Sounds good."

"Maybe you could hold me for like, two more minutes, though."

"Or ten?"

"Yeah. Or ten."

He does that. He doesn't actually comment when two minutes have passed, or ten.

Snuggles.

At some point - maybe pushing fifteen - she will feel like enough of her emotional stability has returned that she can get ready to meet people and pretend to be a functional person who did not just kind of have a meltdown.

One person glares sharply at Rána when they walk out for her to tell the story but everyone else seems pleasantly unaware that she may have just had a meltdown of any kind.

Well, she can give them Beowulf. Beowulf is in fact kind of hard for her to mess up. She manages it fine.

....hopefully everybody else likes it, too.

Rána's cousins seem pleased. They talk animatedly with him when it's over, and get him to translate some compliments for her, and generally aren't more terrifying than fairies are.

"We can sneak out without being rude if you want, I think."

"I'm all right, I think. Whenever you want to head out."

Then he'll talk with people a bit longer and then steer his human home.

This is fine by her.

"Cousins are all right but my father'll be in a bad mood the whole time they're here."

"Aww. How come?"

"He, uh, blames their grandmother for his mother's death. It probably wasn't her fault, he's a bit -" shrug. "It's kind of like your thing a little bit I guess. My grandfather found someone new to have children with very fast after she died in an accident and -"

"Ohhh." Nodnod.

"Having children is a big deal. It's the most important kind of relationship we have, I guess."