:Yeah, I beat Lionwind to it!: she says after a pause in which she decides not to pursue the discomfort.

:- You must've worked so hard: 

:I practiced with Skan till he was sick of it and then Ranara once I had it down enough that I wouldn't read her thoughts accidentally:

:Oh, good: Ma'ar says this sort of noncommittally. 

...she is going to focus on class now and maybe try to grab him after.

Ma'ar is also going to focus on class. 

He doesn't try to evade pursuit afterward; in fact, he sort of half-glances back at Azabel. 

"...Hey."

"Mmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yes - maybe - I'm not sure..." He trails off, avoiding her eyes, and switches to Mindspeech. :I - wanted to say sorry. About snapping at you the other day. It was rude of me: Ma'ar isn't at all sure this is the right thing to say but he's had days to think about it and hasn't come up with anything better. 

:It's okay. I was really defensive and stuff:

:Mmm. Well, I - was defensive too, I guess, and I shouldn't've gotten upset, it just made it worse: 

:I wound up talking to Lionwind about it, I hope that's okay:

:Oh. Uh, that's fine, I - am curious what you said though: 

She can flip back to her notes on the conversation.

Ma'ar listens to her recounting of the conversation notes. He seems calm and thoughtful about it, with no current sign of defensiveness. 

"I didn't expect it to make you defensive," he admits. "So - I wasn't understanding you right and making good predictions. Which is bad and I - think I could do things better if I understood other people more. What do you think?" 

"I think you're right."

"Can you - help explain what I was missing?" 

"I can try? It's complicated and I don't know exactly which parts you're missing and how but I can try - do you have questions for me to start with -"

Ma'ar frowns for a while. 

"- I guess now that I think about it, I'm not actually confused that - most people are partial that way?" he says finally. "But it seemed like it was more - offputting to you, than I'd've predicted?" 

"I was sort of - uh - I don't actually know if you actually implied this let alone whether you meant to but I experienced an implication that being emotionally partial would make me worse at large-scale decisionmaking?"

"Oh. I - get that, I think. Sorry." Ma'ar shakes his head. "I don't think it'd make you worse at it, really. But...i think that's because you're self-aware about it? And careful, and - if you were Queen you wouldn't put, I don't know, your mother first ahead of your kingdom, right? But - I think a lot of people would, or wouldn't even know if they were doing that..." 

"Have you actually observed monarchs doing this or are you guessing?"

"I mean, I don't personally know any monarchs, but - I think I've seen people do that in general. I...feel like Urtho was doing something partial to do with the gryphons - not exactly the same sort of thing but it feels related." 

"How's it feel related?"