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Ma'ar is watching the wards and the hypnotic swirl of the Void on the other side of a shimmering barrier, and practicing illusions. He's never been very good at them, but practice helps with everything.
- something, a flicker, a ghost, maybe nothing at all, but it doesn't fit and it jars him out of his half-trance of watching.
He keys into the navigation wards. Tells them to look here.
"- Urtho? Can you come look at this?"
"Well, if they're all like that, and their gods keep outsiders off their backs... it did lead them to believe their Evil god when He declared He'd seen the error of His ways and was going to be nice now...."
"Then you probably wanna get yourself together before they get back, yeah?"
The ship travels uneventfully through hyperspace.
Mhalir's people accept his explanation about Carissa being overdue for a vacation, and it seeming that there won't be a better time than now in the foreseeable future; it's a bit odd but what else are they supposed to do.
Leareth takes a lot of notes in his personal cipher, and thinks, and worries, and then spends half a day catching up on all his actual responsibilities as the King of Cheliax, and then reads a book to his three-year-old daughter and puts her to bed and helps Ma'ar with his magic homework.
And then he finally sits down. Lets his head fall into his hands for a bit.
Writes and sends a short letter to Khemet, asking when would be a good time to meet.
Carissa leaves her alt be after breakfast and goes back to work and tries to not worry. Worrying about other peoples' feelings seems like a fundamentally doomed endeavor.
Carissa wants to go into town but she'd have to ask permission and she doesn't feel like it. She lies in bed and doesn't really do much of anything until this is too pathetic to bear and then she starts working on her bracers, which is at least productive.
Khemet replies in the evening, saying that he's free after dinner if Leareth would like to come over.
Leareth would like to come over!
He messages back to confirm this, and then goes to inform (his) Carissa so that she won't worry.
Leareth, honestly, hadn't even gotten as far as considering whether to ask Khemet for advice on the other Carissa, though on consideration it's obviously a good idea.
"I suppose we will see." He kisses her, and then heads out to take the permanent Gate-terminus over to Sothis, and within ten minutes is outside the Dome.
" - you look like someone who has spent too much time worrying about something."
"...Yes. Not inaccurate." Leareth closes his eyes. "Can we - talk about it in a little while?"
Leareth wants a hug so badly. And - it's hard to explain what, exactly, is so loadbearing about this - but there's the fact that Khemet doesn't even need to hear what he's upset about, yet, in order to trust that it's worth comfort...
"You know, you are allowed to leave some of the saving the world to other people. We want to level too."
"...I know. That is not..." Leareth takes a slow breath, in and out, still leaning into Khemet's arms.
He switches to Mindspeech. :Can we go to my operations building, to discuss this:
They could go to the Sothis Gate-terminus to Axis, but Leareth is feeling impatient right now.
He raises an interplanar Gate freestanding instead, and pulls both of them across and snaps it down. And then pulls Khemet closer and kisses him, fiercely.
(They are in the section of Leareth's operations building where only Leareth's magic works.)
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