"I'm very glad, too! Now how come, dear brother, that I hear about Vetareh from the grapevine before being properly introduced by yourself?"

"Deborah, I've been around for two days—"

    "And you brought her to your place both days, don't think I've missed that!"

"—and we always arrived extremely late at night after very busy days working on saving the world from Elder Dragons!"

    "How convenient, that the Commander always has such excuses—"

He steps forward and hugs her. "I've missed you, dear sister."

    After a stunned second, she hugs him back. "I've missed you, too. I love you, and I worry about you." She blinks then looks up at Vetareh and steps away from the hug. "My apologies for making such a fool of myself," Deborah tells her. "It really is a pleasure to meet my brother's—" She looks at him again. "Girlfriend, really? Didn't think you did that."

"Times change," he shrugs, a smile playing on his lips.

Oh, that makes it much less awkward to be standing here, excellent. She's glad they could so quickly reconcile.

"I'm, ah, very charming? He found me in a cave?" she offers, with a pretty smile. "I have no other explanation, I'm afraid."

    "Ah, that explains it, of course my brother would find his girlfriend in a cave."

"Well, er—do you wanna come in? I was gonna introduce Vetareh to everyone and then we were going back to the Fire Islands—"

    "The Fire Islands, what in the Mists were you doing in the Fire Islands? —and I expect you'll go with him, won't you, of course he'd find someone just as fond of finding things to do in the most remote confines of Tyria as he is." She walks around James and towards Vetareh. "Come on, I'll show you around, knowing my brother I bet he hasn't shown you even half of the rooms here."

Vetareh snorts. But, yes, okay, she can get a tour from James's sister? If James is okay with it??

"No, not yet. To be fair, we've been busy," shit, no, that is the wrong line of conversation to go down, do not remind his sister that they're sleeping together, "the Fire Islands are kind of fascinating, and I've enjoyed the chance to do field research."

"Field research? Do tell me more," she says, going on ahead to show the manse. James just shrugs and shakes his head, smiling at Deborah's antics and following along.

She's not quite sure what sorts of things are okay to talk about, but she can wing it. Probably.

"Well, it's been a while since I've done field research, so I'm a bit rusty. To make matters worse, I haven't worked with asura before in research projects. I was just sort of... winging it." Like now. "It's sort of a pity I didn't know their standard preservation signet, I'll have to fix that when we get the chance. I expect Taimi will be pleased anyway, the researcher I handed it to was enticed away from her skepticism of my qualifications by my report on the signet I used, which I'm very pleased about."

"You've done research and not worked with asura? How'd that work? Here's the library, by the way," and there is indeed a room dedicated to books.

"I have a complicated personal history that I'm not quite ready for Divinity's Reach to gossip about, so please don't, uh. Run off to gossip about it." Oooo, library. She's briefly distracted from talking about difficult subjects by library. This is not entirely by accident.

"You don't need to tell me if you don't want to, I know what tragic backstories are like," Deborah says, shrugging a bit.

The library: is very nice! It doesn't have much magical theory stuff and what little it does is necromancer stuff, but it has history and geography and geopolitics and biology and fiction and even philosophy.

"I don't mind people knowing, precisely, but I have trouble talking about it." She wanders down the stacks and busies herself with looking at books and pretending she's not talking about her tragic backstory.

"I'm from Orr. I fell into the Mists a little over two hundred and fifty years ago." Wander wander, such nice books, there is no reason at all for her to be looking at anyone, because she's looking at books. "I only recently fell out. In front of James, in a cave. This was how we met."

"Oh, sweetie," Deborah says, but doesn't invade Vetareh's space. She clearly doesn't want it to be invaded.

James bites his lower lip but doesn't do or say anything either.

"Yeah." Okay, wallowing is stupid, and pity is uncomfortable, let's stop this now.

"I'll be okay," she says, taking a shaky breath and offering them both a little smile. "It doesn't get to win. I do. I got out, now all that's left is a long and aggressively happy life. And I think I'm doing pretty well so far."

"That's the spirit! —so wait you want a long and happy life and you're going out with him?" Deborah asks, hiking a thumb towards James.

"Hey!"

"No offence, little brother, but you brought her to the Fire Islands."

"I invited her to the Fire Islands," he corrects. "I am fairly certain she goes where she wants to go."

"He's right about that," she snorts, smiling fondly at James. Then she blinks innocently. "What, other people don't go to the Fire Islands for their first date? That's a pity, we had quite a lot of fun."

"Six gods smite me you're perfect for my brother," Deborah sighs, shaking her head, but she's smiling.

James himself is grinning.

"What were you doing in the Fire Islands anyway?"

"Well, we had a picnic..." She looks to James. Her own secrets are fine to share, but she's not actually sure about the security level of what's going on in the Fire Islands.

James sighs. "So, there were some... unforeseen consequences to killing Mordremoth."

"Of course there were. Do go on."

"Primordus and Jormag are active, and Primordus went to the Fire Islands."