Not really! I don't cry about things! It's very confusing!

I think maybe she - got in the habit of wanting-things like she had powerful allies but she doesn't? And it's stupid to want-things like that if you don't.

:...Poor thing: That feels - like not quite the right affect, like it's - pitying her, somehow, treating her as lesser than she is, but he doesn't know better words so he just holds that uncertainty open to his Carissa. 

:I cry about things: he points out. :Sometimes. Occasionally:

Well, you're a very strange person. And not Chelish. She's Chelish, but - I think hoping to forget that?

...It's very odd how, in some ways, his Carissa is more Chelish than Mhalir's.

He feels - what is that feeling - he's jealous, almost? (This part he keeps back, not letting it slip into the Mindspeech link.)

:She is already cleverer and more powerful and better-resourced than Ma'ar was: he points out. :And Ma'ar did not let the fact that he was small and weak and helpless deter him: 

:Maybe. But - Ma'ar wanted to fix Predain, and if Tantara had already gone and conquered Predain and killed everyone he'd ever known and made it part of Tantara then - it might've been harder, to figure out what it was he wanted to do.:

:Also I'm not sure how much of the stuff is hers? Presumably really it is Mhalir's, and she gets it because she's his host, and - I would expect in some ways it's good for her, to have a you, but - he's an important Yeerk, she's not an important human, right? He's the only person she matters to -

I don't think that feels like having a lot of resources, I think it feels like having one resource which is a very powerful friend.:

:That makes sense. And - a friend who does not share her values - who she just tried to betray... She must have been so scared, after: 

:Were you able to read her mind?:

:Yes, she was not resisting my Thoughtsensing. But - also not participating, or really responsive to us, she was - mostly trying not to think about what had just happened or what would happen in the future. It made it harder to tell how she was really feeling: 

Sigh. 

:I think if she were actually on her own she'd do fine within the scope she was, uh, focusing on? But she's with this and so she's working with problems on this scope and - well, I think I'd have not tried, personally? But instead she tried - that -:

:It seems - fair to her - to ask if she would prefer we let her work on her own, somewhere else? But...it does not seem as though Mhalir will be very on board with that: 

:What is your backup plan in general for if Carissa needs time off?: she thinks at Mhalir.

<I can bump one of my staff temporarily to borrow their host - I have done it before, on Velgarth it was sometimes safest for Carissa to go in alone so we would not be two people to Thoughtsensing. And then - interview some of the Velgarth mages we recruited in Ma'ar's Golarion for a medium-term voluntary host, I suppose?> 

:Does she get to keep the magic items or are they yours.:

<....Obviously she can keep them? It is not as though I cannot buy more, and - I want her to be safe...> 

- awww. I mean, one could imagine you guys having a breakup under circumstances where you're mad at her, say because she tried to murder you? So it'd be relevant - who they belong to legally, whether you would in fact be making a gift of them or what -

<I - am not sure - no, hmm, they would belong to me legally, there was a process specified under the treaty by the time we were resurrected. I could have made them gifts to her and legally her property at the time, but - it would have been extra paperwork and I did not think to.>

A mental sigh. <I could do the paperwork now, though. If you think she would - feel safer... I am not mad at her.> 

:I'm not sure. But it's a - fact about the situation, right, which resources are hers and which are only hers as long as you are -:

<I will make all of the magic items officially and legally hers as soon as we return to our ship.>

It feels so far from adequate as an - apology? It seems odd to frame it as that, since she did, after all, just try to kill him. But - he wants to make things right for her. Somehow. 

Even if the route to doing that doesn't involve them working together on the same team. 

It hurts a lot, to consider that. 

:I'm not even sure, right,: she tries to caution him, :I'm just thinking about stuff that might matter to me, or that I might be - keeping track of -:

<It makes sense. Thank you for doing that.> 

And now he's very tired, again, and he just wants to drift for a bit. 

- also he really very badly wants to be a baby bird curled up under Caroline's wing, it's been a while since he wanted that exact thing so sharply.

The ship travels onward. Leareth is sitting down and taking notes again; Urtho pilots, with Ma'ar watching on. 

"Can I look at the goggles."

She hands them over. "Wishing you'd married into money?"