"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?"

"...I think he felt like the gryphons were his, or like he was the parent of all of them, or something? And he - wasn't asking himself if he was actually making the right choices for them, just - doing what felt right?" 

"That wasn't about feeling partial to the gryphons, I think? It seemed more like he was trying to see them as a species instead of as a few hundred people."

Shrug. "Maybe I'm wrong to compare it, I don't know. I - think it would make me worse at making decisions if I had more - partial feelings about things. But I might just be weird." 

"How would it make you worse at it?"

"I think I'd be - sad and distracted and it'd be harder to think about priorities? And it'd be - tempting to want the world to be a certain way, instead of trying to understand how it actually is?"

"...do you not want the world a certain way?"

"- I mean, I do, I want lots of things to be different." Ma'ar frowns, rubs his eyes. "I - feel like I don't know how to explain the thing I mean. Maybe it doesn't actually make sense." 

"That happens to me sometimes too, when I write out something and then the dependencies are all screwy and it falls apart."

"I haven't tried writing it all out before. Maybe I should."