...this is alarming. People are alarmed.

Someone fetches someone who fetches someone else who asks around, does anyone know when Dawn-shining Taliar is due to arrive—? Two or three days? That seems like too long. They should send a messenger to hurry him up.

They do that.

In the meantime, there is considerable dithering over whether or not to move her, and in the absence of a clear decision, people end up just sort of avoiding that entire street as much as possible.

It takes a few hours for her to stop screaming.

She still doesn't move, or even open her eyes. She does tense, sometimes twitching painfully, if anyone comes too close.

Well. They'll just sort of. Keep avoiding her, then. Where is Dawn-shining Taliar. They need Dawn-shining Taliar.

Morning proceeds into afternoon, and afternoon into evening; it gets a little colder outside. Someone tries to bring her a blanket, notices her reacting to their presence, and scurries away, leaving the blanket in a heap nearby.

She continues not to move.

A little while after the sun sets, she opens her eyes, briefly.

She is in the middle of a cobblestone street, surrounded by buildings in an unfamiliar, vaguely medieval architectural style. There's a blanket over there. No people around at the moment.

She lies there and tries to make sense of it.

She reaches for the blanket, after some minutes, but it's too far away and she's not even going to try to stand up right now. She curls up tighter instead.

Golden light floods the street, touched with hints of blue and silver. It's beautiful and warm and soothing, and it carries with it a sense of personality. The person who made this light wants everyone to be okay, wants it more than anything in the world. The person who made this light is clever and insightful and honest and kind.

In the light, things don't hurt.

She gasps, and uncurls just a fraction. Some of the tension in her shoulders drains away.

After a minute or so she opens her eyes again.

The person who made this light has immense determination, unshakeable integrity—

—and he's right over there, turning the corner onto this street, with a glowing golden pendant hanging from his neck that says all the same things as his light only louder and in more detail.

He stops twenty feet away and looks at her and asks something in a concerned tone of voice and an unfamiliar language.

She squeezes her eyes shut and trembles.

...okay.

He takes a few steps back and waits.

Nope.

He can be patient.

He sits against a wall. He keeps up his healing aura.

After about forty minutes she opens her eyes again. When she sees he's still there, she immediately looks away and her breathing gets heavier - not quite panicky, but very close.

He gets up and leaves.

It takes a little while for her to notice, and longer for her to calm down.

She falls asleep.

When she wakes up she will find that the blanket has moved within reach and there is a bottle of water and a plate of food next to it.

She pulls the blanket over her shoulders and attempts to sit up; she's shaky and uncoordinated, but it goes better than she was expecting. She listens for - nope, that doesn't work, though it doesn't hurt, either, weirdly - looks, then, for something that might do for a hiding place.

Well, there are a few alleys off this street that might or might not contain good hiding spots. The street itself is unpromising.

She takes the food and water with her and tries the nearest alley.

It's an alley. All the architecture is still unfamiliar. The golden light is still all over everything. There are a few places where she could probably manage to tuck herself away out of sight.

It's probably a farce, but she'll still feel better for it. She hides, and then she eats.

The food is a little weird but not bad. The water is water. In what seems to be a handmade ceramic bottle, that part's also a little weird.

Nobody bothers her in her hiding spot.

The golden light stays.

She stays put, eating a little bit of the food from her pack for lunch and dinner. When night falls, she cautiously peeks out of her hiding spot.

The person who made the light is sitting a long way down the street, reading a book. It probably wouldn't be that hard to sneak away in some other direction, if she wanted to do that.

...yeah. She puts the empty plate down there and peeks out the other end of the alley.

Another street. There are some people on it, walking from place to place.

And she is not messing with some strange cape; if he's that far away it's presumably because he doesn't need to be any closer to do whatever it is he's waiting to do. (Why is he waiting? Good question. But she wants to find out how this trap works somehow other than just walking into it, thanks.) She returns to her hiding place.

Her hiding place continues to exist.

Someone steps out the back of a building into the alley and wanders off, taking no notice of her.

Good, her hiding place is working as intended.

She sleeps.

The golden light remains.

When she wakes up, there's a package sitting tucked against a wall at one end of the alley, the end facing the street she appeared in. A bundle of cloth with a note pinned to it in an unfamiliar script.

She doesn't notice it.

She stays in her hiding place again and waits for nightfall, eating sparsely from her supplies - she has one, maybe two more day's worth of food.

Once it's dark and the crowds have thinned a little, she checks the street again.

The person who made the light isn't there - but there's someone else in his spot, reading a different book, wearing a different necklace that says different but broadly similar things about him when looked at.

Cape family. Lovely. She'll give it one more day and see if she can come up with an escape plan.

Evidence against the 'cape family' theory: those two people walking down the street holding hands, both wearing personality-broadcast necklaces, neither one masked, with a pen and paper levitating beside them scribbling notes about their indecipherable conversation. The personalities being broadcast are substantially different from the two she's seen, as are the faces of the people.

That's, uh... uh?

Uh.

Well, it doesn't change the facts of the matter, which is that at least two people with unknown powers are staking out her hiding place. Hiding and escape plan still sounds like the best idea.

Midmorning of the next day, the golden light fades.

...ow ow ow ow ow ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

She lies down and breathes and waits to get used to the pain.

It stays out for about six hours, and then it comes back, and the person who made it walks into her alley.

He looks...

Well, he looks like he just woke up from six hours of sleep after several days without any.

She uncurls and sits up and peeks out and sees him.

After a moment's consideration, she goes and stands in the entrance to the hiding place, looking bewildered.

"Uh, I have a translation power now so I guess you don't speak Nuimena?" he says. "Hi, sorry about losing the healing aura on you, I haven't figured out how to keep it going while I sleep yet."

This doesn't seem to be any less bewildering, and after a few moments her confusion gives way to dawning horror and despair and her gaze drops to the ground.

"Sorry. I'm sorry. I don't - I don't really know what to do - I can't stay in this town forever, the rest of the continent needs me, but I don't want to just leave you with whatever's hurting you while I go off and heal everyone else, but it seems like you don't want anything to do with me, so..."

She sits, leaning heavily on the wall next to her, and looks up at him, confused and concerned and frightened, not quite making eye contact.

"...what?"

"...I have this healing aura," he says. "So when you appeared out of nowhere and collapsed screaming, some people went and got me to see if I could help. And I can help but only temporarily - I don't know what's wrong but I know I'm not fixing the underlying problem, just making it feel better as long as you're in my aura. And I went to talk to you and you freaked out. So I waited to see if you'd come talk to me once you had some time to calm down. But you didn't. And I fell asleep. And I should go heal more people because it's a big continent and there's only one of me and lots of people need help, but I'm afraid if I do that you'll just collapse again, and that seems bad."

She looks at the ground again: "okay." She pulls her legs to her chest and takes a deep, ragged breath. "I'll be good." Her voice breaks and she starts crying, hiding her face against her knees.

????????????

"What... I'm sorry..."

She's not really in a state to respond.

Yeah. That's.

What is going on.

Well, it doesn't seem like she's going to stop crying anytime soon to be asked.

There really isn't much about the situation that looks good, though. She's young, apparently alone, apparently terrified of people; the strange baggy clothes hide it some, but she's thin, too - not malnourished, but there's the distinct impression that regular meals haven't been a feature of her life recently, or perhaps ever. And she has trouble speaking, and doesn't seem to be moving around all that well, either, even with the healing aura going.

...yeah.

He finds some food, and the clothes from that package they left that she never found, and he brings these things back and puts them down and then goes to the end of the alley that's farther from her and sits and waits.

After a while, she stops crying, but she doesn't move.

Maybe he should say something...? Because that worked out so well the last time. Right.

He sits and doesn't do anything.

She looks up, eventually. She doesn't seem any less scared, but she's more resigned. She's confused that he's still there, though.

After a moment, she notices the food, and tenses up all over again.

...if this was just about her, at this point it would probably be best to just leave her alone because clearly there is no way to interact with her without making things worse, or if there is a way he's unlikely to stumble on it by accident and definitely not going to figure it out by observation.

But it's not just about her, is it.

Something happened to scare her like this, and if he doesn't figure out what it was and make it stop, there's a good chance it will happen to more people.

Now how does he find out what it was, when she can barely talk and is terrified of him and he has no idea what she's even afraid of or how to avoid it?

Good question.

She decides to ignore the food. That helps a little. She considers Taliar, and after a couple minutes seems to come to a conclusion.

"You stay... until... they come?"

"...I don't know who you mean by 'they'," he says.

She looks at him again, confused and concerned and perhaps a little less scared, though it's hard to tell.

"Police, or..." she shrugs. "To... take me back." The last phrase comes out all at once, and she tenses up again and looks away, staring at nothing.

"...I am not going to take you back to - wherever you were that made you this scared of everything," he says. "If I knew where it was I would go there and make them stop doing that."

"Supposed to." She doesn't look at him.

"I'm supposed to—? Supposed to send you back? I don't think I am, and even if I was, I still wouldn't do it."

She doesn't move for several long seconds, and then gives him a dubious look.

"You must be from somewhere very far away."

Shrug.

"If you don't somebody will."

"...I think you're probably from another world," he says. "Because if you were from this one you'd recognize me. I've taken my healing aura through almost everywhere in the world that has people in it. And I've never seen any clothes like those before, or heard a language like the one you're speaking. I didn't know there were other worlds until now, but it's the only thing that makes sense."

She considers this for a few minutes, and then inclines her head in a 'that's plausible' sort of gesture.

"Can't send me back. Maybe." She doesn't actually look any less tense at the prospect, though she is less confused at least. "What instead?"

"I'm going to leave this town tomorrow to go heal more people. You can come with me, or follow me, if you want. People were a little scared when you appeared like that, because it looked like someone might've done something awful to you with magic, and people who do awful things to other people with magic usually don't stop at just one. But whatever's going on, I think it's not exactly that."

Headshake. "Tinker trap."

"...what?"

"Not magic. Tinker trap. Cape stuff."

"I don't think 'cape' or 'tinker' like you mean them are things this world has," he says. "And I bet 'soulbearer'," he gestures at his necklace, "isn't something your world has."

She considers, shrugs, and then nods.

"So. If you want to follow my healing aura around you can do that. If you want to avoid me instead for some reason, you can do that."

She goes distant again. "I don't... talk. Stuff." She gestures vaguely.

"...yeah, I noticed that..."

"...If there's things you want to do that you don't think you can do by yourself, I could - try to help...?"

And, she's terrified again: wide-eyed, stiff, and staring off into the middle distance.

"Okay, I won't do that then."

What - oh, he's crying now. That's a thing that's happening. He should stop. It's probably going to freak her out, like everything else he's ever done.

It does, but, differently so; it takes a second for what she's hearing to register, but when it does, she looks worriedly at him and scoots over to put an arm around his shoulders.

...oh.

Okay.

That's - better than being terrified - maybe?

"Sorry," he murmurs, sniffling. "I keep - not knowing what to do, and then - doing the wrong thing - I don't know. I don't know."

She squeezes his shoulders by way of a hug.

She's still very tense, and after a second she starts trembling, just slightly; she looks around to make sure they're still unobserved.

He - tries to calm down, tries to think - why is she -

"...No one's going to hurt me for this," he says. In case it is that.

She gives him another dubious, concerned look - 'if you're wrong, that's going to be bad', she seems to be thinking - but the trembling stops.

He wipes his eyes and tries to focus on calming himself again. He doesn't know how to communicate his certainty, but if he stops crying that'll solve the problem just as well, right? Right?

She seems - not content, she's still very tense, but willing, at least, to sit there as long as it takes for him to calm down. She continues checking their surroundings every minute or two, apparently more out of habit than anything else.

Okay. He's - he's okay. Yeah. He rubs his eyes again and takes a deep breath and lets it out.

"...Thanks."

She squeezes him just a little tighter for a moment, and then lets go and scoots a few inches away, puts her hands in her lap and examines them.

...yeah.

He isn't sure what to say.

She doesn't seem particularly bothered by sitting there in silence.

After a few minutes, she asks, "Why? You... upset."

"I... I don't want to do things that hurt people," he says, after considering this question for a moment.

She nods. "I scared... not hurt, just scared. Okay," she asserts.

"...okay."

She does seem calmer, at that.

"If I... go... with you, and they come to take me, will... you be okay?"

"...I don't think anyone will," he says. "And if they did, I would not let them." (His soul flares slightly, though it's hard to tell in the general glow.)

She's concerned, again. "Easy to... be hurt, doing that."

"I know," he says.

"I—"

Now he's the one having trouble using words.

"Worth it sometimes," she nods. "Not this."

"It's - always worth it, for me."

(That is the sort of thing his soul says about him.)

She looks at her hands again. "Don't want you hurt."

"Well. I don't want you hurt - I don't want anyone hurt. And people listen to me because I'm the one with the city-sized healing aura."

She grins, just slightly, seeming very tired all of a sudden, and nods, and then goes serious again. "I..." she seems to think better of whatever she was about to say, or perhaps she's just having trouble talking again. "Seen, too many people hurt. Enough. Done. Understand?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay. I've - seen a lot of people hurt too. I don't like it."

"Yeah."

"We go?"

"Yeah."

"...My name is Taliar, by the way."

"Denice."

She wobbles to her feet and retrieves a nondescript blue backpack from the nook she's been hiding in. She continues ignoring the food and clothing.

Well, she can ignore them if she likes.

He gets up and leads the way out of the alley.

She hesitates when they get to the street, and tenses up again, but takes a deep breath and continues following him.

Nobody bothers them. A few people smile at Taliar; he smiles back. Some of them glance at Denice, but for the most part she seems to be folded into some kind of pseudo-invisibility field, an aura of 'oh, that's Taliar's problem'.

He leads her to an inn, about fifteen minutes' walk away. The front doors are open, but Taliar goes in the side, avoiding the sparse crowd of early diners. The hallway back here is empty, and after a couple of turns it leads them to the pair of small adjoining rooms where Taliar and his father are staying.

She's pretty stressed out by this, though she does relax a little when they get back indoors and away from other people. When they get to the rooms she puts her pack down on the table and then seems to be at something of a loss.

Yeah, so is Taliar.

"Um. This can be your room until we leave tomorrow. It was going to be mine but then I didn't end up needing it." Because he didn't sleep for three days. "I can share the other room with my dad."

She nods, then after a moment tilts her head. "You okay?"

He smiles wryly. "Yeah. I should actually sleep tonight, though. I hope I figure out how to keep the healing aura going in my sleep soon."

She nods.

"It's okay. Hurts, but not..." she gestures vaguely, "not new."

"Sounds familiar," he says. "I bruise really easily, it's been that way all my life, I know it's - possible to get used to that kind of thing. But I was still really glad when I got my healing aura."

She nods, and before she's even quite finished the gesture, she flumps into one of the chairs by the table. She looks... she's not crying, and she's not trying not to cry, but she's the sort of unhappy that's more likely than not going to build to tears.

"...do you want a hug?" he offers hesitantly.

She stiffens, and doesn't look at him, but nods.

So he goes over to her chair and tucks his soul securely into his shirt and hugs her.

She leans into the hug, just a little bit desperately, and, yeah, now she's sobbing.

Hugs.

Yeah, those.

She start pulling herself back together again almost immediately, and pulls away before she's quite done sobbing.

Okay. He lets go.

"Sorry," she says, when she's nearly calmed back down.

"...I don't know what you're sorry for but okay."

"For," she gestures vaguely at herself.

"Oh. It's okay."

...well.

"Was Cape, before. Thinker. Hearing. Was..." she gestures at where his soul is shining through his shirt. "Helped. Gone."

"...gone - when you came here?"

Nod.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he says.

"...I can explain what being a soulbearer is like and how to become one, if you want."

He has her attention.

"Well - scariest part first - if somebody touches your soul, it hurts more than anything else in the world," he says. "It's never happened to me but it happens sometimes and it's really bad."

Well that's alarming.

"Yeah," he says.

"Apart from that - everyone's soul says things about who they are as a person, but mine does it the loudest of anyone I've ever met, on most people it's subtler. They're always true things, though. And everyone's soul has powers that suit who they are, and your soul gets more powerful when you - exalt it - it's sort of hard to explain what exaltation is exactly, but you can think of it as... when you act more like the kind of person you aspire to be, when you do things that are what your best self would do - that exalts your soul. And the opposite thing is called debasing your soul, when you... betray yourself, when you act like the kind of person you definitely don't want to be."

Nod. "Very dangerous."

...well, that reaction says some things.

"Yeah."

What else...

"The way you manifest your soul is by - finding somewhere you can sit and think without distractions, and thinking about what kind of person you are and what your soul is going to look like and where it's going to come from, and if you get anything wrong about yourself or your soul you have to start over, but if you keep imagining it right you can find your soul and pull it into the world. You can't manifest your soul unless it's something you genuinely want to be doing, but once you've done it you can't put it back, you're a soulbearer for good. —Oh, and if you're younger than twenty, sometimes trying to manifest your soul hurts and doesn't work and you have to wait a long while before you try again or it'll just hurt more and keep not working. But I'm seventeen and I did it a few months ago and I was fine."

Nod. "Fifteen."

"So if you tried it now you might be fine and you might get hurt."

"Not... goona. Dangerous."

"Yeah. It is," he says. "But - it was dangerous for me too. Sometimes it's worth doing something dangerous. I think it's better to know how."

"It... if...." She sighs and starts over. "Before. Where I was. If.. that," she gestures,"would have been... they would have... very bad. Worse." She's trembling, just a bit; it's not clear whether she's noticed.

He nods.

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Capes, just happen. No... no special danger. Hide, careful, safe enough - no choice anyway. I was seven."

"I don't think it's possible to be a soulbearer at seven, I think the youngest I've ever heard of was twelve..."

Nod.

"Not... normal, capes, either. Adult or teenager, most times."

"And it's just... something that happens, some people get powers sometimes?"

She nods, then shrugs.

"Not sure. Could be a reason."

"Do the powers ever go away like yours did?"

She shakes her head.

"Sometimes change - Eidolon, famous for that. And, some powers stop powers. Both rare; none like this."

"So probably that happened because you came here..."

Nod.

Thoughtful silence.

After a few minutes: "Do you need anything?"

She considers, and then, cautiously: "...food?"

"Okay, I can get food."

"Thanks."

She sits quietly.

He goes, he gets food, he comes back. Takes about five minutes. The food is assorted buns with stuff in them.

..takes a little while for her to look up. She still isn't looking at him.

...this is starting to look like there's yet another weird thing going on here, but... well, at least now there's food.

Sure does, yup. Though this isn't the first time he's seeing this combination of tenseness and passivity.

After another few seconds she looks at him - not eye contact, not even close, just kind of checking on him.

Okay...

"...I can leave this with you and go in the other room if you want?"

"No." Wow, she's never responded that quickly before. "No. No, I- No. No." She gets progressively calmer as she talks, goes back to looking at her hands as the outburst stops.

"I'll be okay, just... need a minute." But she doesn't actually pause before reaching for a bun.

Her hand is shaking too badly for this to quite work. She grabs the wrist with her other hand and that steadies it enough to manage.

...okay, then he'll just. Sit here quietly, he supposes. That seems like a reasonably safe thing to do.

Sitting there quietly seems to be a good idea. She sits there looking at the bun for a little bit, checks what he's doing, and then nibbles at it.

Sitting quietly.

She makes her way through the bun, slowly, checking on him frequently. When she's done with it she looks assessingly (and still very nervously) at the plate and then at him.

Sitting quietly. Slightly confused about what is going on here.

She takes another bun. She's slightly less cautious about eating this one, but much more concerned with his reaction afterward.

Sitting quietly, still slightly confused, starting to get a little sleepy.

She decides that the third bun is not worth the risk.

"Go to bed?"

"Yeah I think I'll do that. G'night. Sorry."

He goes to the other room.

She lies down and tries not to think about anything in particular. She mostly manages; she has a lot of practice, even if she is kind of rusty at it.

Taliar conflictedly attempts to sleep.

He does not succeed in getting his healing aura to persist through it, but he does eventually succeed in sleeping.

She manages to fall asleep before he does.

She wakes up before he does, too, which isn't very pleasant at all, but she stays quiet and stays in bed.

And then Taliar wakes up and so does the golden light.

Oh good.

There was a bathroom, right? She will go check it out; she could really use a shower.

There's a bathroom! There's even running water! This planet doesn't seem to have invented the shower yet, but she could have a bath.

And then she's all clean and wearing fresh clothes and everything.

And then she heads back to her room, and if nobody's there she starts going through her pack; it got a little disorganized while she was hiding and she wants to make sure it's in order while they're on the road.

Nobody's in her room. It vaguely sounds like maybe there's people in the other room, which would make sense since Taliar is obviously awake and he slept there.

She will deal with the existence of other people when she has to, but she doesn't yet.

Clothes are repacked, with the dirty outfit wrapped in a plastic bag; books are tucked neatly underneath them. The sunglasses and earplugs she dithers over briefly, but packs away as usual, along with her first aid kit and the remnants of her travel food. She leaves the tablet and its charger and her stash of money on the table; she suspects they're useless here, but it probably won't hurt anything to check.

Someone knocks tentatively on the connecting door between this room and the next.

She startles, waits a moment for whoever's knocking to come in, and then when it's clear that that's not happening, she goes to open it, looking somewhat bemused.

It's Taliar.

"Hi."

"Hi." She goes and sits down with her hands in her lap.

"...so we're leaving soon and I'd like to offer you breakfast before we go but - something happened last night with dinner that I didn't understand but it didn't seem good - um, I want you to have access to as much food as you want and I don't want you to have to be stressed out about eating it, do you think there's a way to make that happen..."

She peers at him, confused.

He is also kind of confused. They can be confused together.

"You want...?"

"I want - I want you to be okay, in general, and one kind of okayness is having enough food. My healing aura does a lot but people still more or less need to eat."

She peers at him, confused but thoughtful. "Not goona starve," she offers.

"Yeah, I know," he says, "you actually can't, for as long as you're in my healing aura, it's still—" he trails off with a helpless shrug.

She considers this, looks at her hands, considers it some more.

"Usually..." she trails off, waits a couple seconds before continuing. "If we're... hungry, it's, easier to make us do things."

"Oh," says Taliar.

"...that's really not okay."

"Yeah."

"Hard to... feel, safe, breaking rules. If someone sees. Or knows."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Sorry. Know it... hurts."

"Yeah," he says. "It's... yeah, it does. But... I'd rather have the chance to help people than not, even though it hurts sometimes. So."

"Yeah."

"If nobody... sees, knows, can know - it's not scary. "