"Right. See you tomorrow, ma'am." And she gets up, steadies herself, and leaves.

"See you." And Isabella watches her go.

She goes, her knees wobblier than they were before Isabella looked at her like that.

And the following morning: breakfast!

Isabella's there! Jackson is kneeling at Roger today.

Ugh. No. Sadde won't—later. He walks to Isabella and sighs, "Good morning, ma'am."

"Good morning. How are you?"

"Alright. A bit disappointed that I did not seem to have enough of an effect on Jackson. You?"

"I'm all right. Do you often have the experience of curing people of their bad behavior overnight?"

"No, but I had hoped he'd grokked what I said."

"What did you actually say to him?"

"That kneeling by everyone has undesirable social implications that he might not want to... imply. To achieve his goal of actually being someone's."

"Maybe he's just intolerably impatient."

"Maybe," he sighs again. "I'm going to go get my food, be back in a bit."

"The omelette station's worth the wait if you like omelettes."

And she scritches him, eating her own omelette.

"I don't have a lot of friends and I usually use mealtimes as a convenient time to talk to Alex."

"Oh. That's fair, I suppose. Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"No, it's all right. There's only so much to catch up with him on after all of one night most of which was spent asleep."

"Like what you dreamt of and such."

"What makes you think I tell my brother that?"

"I mean, sometimes I just dream about taking over the world but he's well bored of that one by now, he's known me all my life."