"She's probably much worse than you?"

"Right, but I will only need privacy temporarily. You could go sit somewhere Saffron can see you during a matinee show or something, and then meet up with me again afterwards."

"What if she takes me from you?"

"If she wanted to do that she could have done it already."

"Sometimes people don't try until they know more about me."

"Like, only once they find out you can turn invisible or something?"

She's not answering that.

"Well, I don't think I'm going to spring tomorrow so we have some time to think about it but I can't stop it from happening at some point soon."

"Could you take me back from Saffron."

"No, she's got guards backing her up and anyway I'm not actually a good shot, I'm purely posturing with the gun. But for the same reason I can't stop her if she decides to kidnap you in the first place."

"Okay."

"It doesn't have to be her, she's just around and demonstrably hasn't decided to take you yet."

Eefa nods.

Does Eefa want to work on reading some more?

Sure, that wasn't bad.

Then Pelape will do her best at correlating English sounds and spellings in some systematically learnable way.

Eefa is a bit better at this than her apparent age might suggest.

Pelape has no idea what the human developmental stages for this might be so she's neither impressed nor concerned.

Eefa doesn't exactly know herself, so she won't expect either of Pelape.

And eventually the day is over and another begins. Breakfast time.

Eefa freezes up in the doorway to Elysium's dining room.

"...Eefa?"

She is staring wide-eyed at one particular balding man who is serving himself scrambled eggs. She doesn't respond to Pelape.

"Eefa, do you not want breakfast?"

"I do want breakfast," she says without needing to think about it or stop staring.