Raafi is outside, sitting in a tree enjoying the view; he comes down when he spots her. "Everything all right?"

    "So far so good, sweetheart. I wanted to ask you about - there was another thing, earlier, where you teleported out?"

His face falls. "That was not my fault."

    "That's not what we're talking about, lovey. What happened?"

"I - not here?"

    "Are you staying someplace?"

"No - I can get one."

    "I'll see if they have a spare office, how about. Come on."

    "Okay, sweetheart," she says, once he's settled at her feet. "What happened."

"It was - I - it was really bad, Katri."

    "I'm getting that idea."

"It was - I'd just found out about - the daeva prison, like I told you, and - I was trying to get them to do something about it before Fharlanghn came, I had no idea how long we did or didn't have, and they just - I know I didn't handle it well. I know. But I didn't know what to do, and I was scared, and then... they started saying all these awful things, accusing me of getting people killed - I didn't know they had the afterlives, they said they didn't - and I just - it wouldn't have worked, they were yelling and I was about to start yelling and I just - it wasn't going to work. And I thought I'd just - let them cool down and try again. And the next thing I knew they'd -"

    "It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay, I'm right here, deep breaths-" she pets him until he calms enough to talk again. "What did they do?"

"There was. A message. It's possible to just send a message to everybody, here. And the exact thing that - they'd accused me of scaring people to death with the news about our world - and the exact things they'd said would do that, it was all right there."

    "Wow. Okay. You're right, that's not your fault and I'll see what I can do about it."

"Thank you."

He snuggles up to her knee, and she pets him again. "I can't imagine what happened there."

"I know. It was just - I told them to contact me, and then - that. Not even a day later."

    "Yeah. Well, I'll ask. Do you want to be there?"

"I never want to see them again."

Pet pet. "Okay. That's fine, I can do that."

He snuggles her some more. "I missed you."

    "Aw." Pet pet pet. "Well, I'm here now. And I'm not going anywhere."

"Love you."

    "Love you too, sweetheart."

She sits with him a little longer, finds him a drink and a snack, and gets back to the meeting.

"Okay, that was let's-call-it-interesting. Has anyone put a truth spell on this person from the daeva prison?"

    "Shining One wanted to talk to them, but he hasn't yet, I think he's waiting for this to be taken care of."

"Well, it should happen. Raafi said they sent some kind of message to everyone, can I see that?"

"The release? Sure." Leonor digs it up.

Kat looks it over. "Which parts of this were common knowledge before this happened?"

"Raafi's existence," says Leonor. "Inklings of some of the rest."

"Okay. Raafi tells me that all this came up in the meeting, and they accused him of scaring people literally to death with it."

"- oh," says Leonor. "Uh, I haven't met James, and I wasn't there. So I'm not sure what happened. But it sounds like Raafi's been interpreting this as - James deciding to go ahead and scare people to death when they didn't have to do that? Because that was one of the objections they brought up during the meeting, and the press release then newly brought all this information to light. Is that right?"

"Yes. He's very upset about it."

"I think... James was bringing up 'this is so terrible that it will actually scare people to death' as a reason Raafi should be working very hard to prevent it from coming up. That is, I imagine maybe James thought that Raafi he should be pushing back on Fharlanghn, keeping out any gods who wanted to send us to your afterlives, preventing daeva from acquiring new magic that lets them travel on their own, etcetera. And when Raafi teleported away, James assumed that he wasn't going to work very hard to prevent it from coming up, that all this was going to be a risk people needed to know about even if the announcement itself would also have consequences. There's a phrase 'the public has a right to know'."

"I'm not sure that's ever an option he had - our gods can see us wherever we are, clerics, I'm not sure if you've been told that, and we don't always have a great line of communication with them. Anyway, he does say he told them to contact him - I'm not sure he actually did that, just because people can't always think straight when they're that upset, but he was expecting that they'd both take some time to cool down and try again."

"I can definitely see how this would have been a problem. Uh, people sometimes use claiming to lack or even in fact lacking certain powers as a negotiating tactic. If you're buying a condo and the salesperson says he isn't authorized to sell it for less, that's a lie, or if it isn't, it just means he needs to talk to whoever authorizes those things."

"We get that at home sometimes, too," she nods. "But - James is the one who could have done something differently here, Raafi couldn't. I don't think he's going to bring it up but if it comes up anyway I think that needs to be acknowledged, that he was backed into a bad corner there."

"I can certainly tell Raafi that I understand he felt very wedged there if that will help," says Leonor.

"It's better not to bring it up at all, if you can help it. He'll work through it eventually but he's not very fast at that. But if it does come up, yes."

"It might still be useful for Raafi to have tools that could have in another similar-looking situation have helped, like asking to speak to another staffperson, considering his own outward credibility as the bearer of his message, and even making a whole ritual of exchanging contact information before leaving so the request to follow up isn't misheard, or assumed to be sarcastic, or undermined by the departure."

"If I put very many limits on when he's allowed to teleport he'll be much less willing to talk to people. What do you have in mind?"

"He could get business cards. They're old fashioned but he could drop one and go without it slowing him down much, and then it'd be clear that the other person was invited to send him a message later."

"I can get him to do that. What about the other stuff?"

"Asking to talk to someone else would also have helped with Luiz."

"I might need to sit in on one of these to see when that should happen - was there a point in this second meeting where it would have made sense to call it off, before he did?"

    "Luiz got angry when Raafi tried to get him to commit to using the spell Shining One is developing, he could have done it then."

"Okay. Do you think that will work in general, or will it be too abrupt? I don't want to set him up to seem to be leaving too soon again."

"Asking for another person within the same organization isn't at all like leaving the premises in a huff this way."

"That should be fine then. And I'm not sure he needs a script but it'd be a good idea to have a safe fallback, just in case - do you have a pen and paper I can use?"

Leonor does have pen and paper in nice Mars federal government stationery.

"Thanks. Do you have an idea of what would work? I can come up with something, but with the cultural difference I probably shouldn't."

"How about 'I worry we're talking past each other, is there someone else I can talk to'."