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The capital is boring.
Why is the capital boring? It's the capital! It should have interesting people in it! But noo, everyone she's met so far has been an idiot. Mostly not even an entertaining idiot, just a boring idiot who thinks she should be impressed by their whatever, like, no, in order to impress her you can start by not being an idiot.
On the plus side, the party has free booze, so that's nice.
He picks up the glass flower again and twirls it in his hand, then makes it vanish, dissolving into the air in a reversal of the way it appeared.
"We seem to have exhausted the obvious conversational outlets, despite the charmingness of your company, and the capacity of my stomach, despite the deliciousness of a significant fraction of the offered food, so unless you can think of something else I'll be heading back to the library."
It has books in it!
And there's someone sitting in one of the comfy chairs!
That is almost certainly the daughter and not a swan. Scratch that, the sun's up, that is definitely the daughter and not a swan.
She should go say hello, that would be the Smart And Mature thing to do.
"Hi."
"I am not. I have unusual reactions to fear, i.e. not cowering, sooo I sort of stood out at this one party your father decided to gate crash, he asked me to dance, I decided that if I was going to be kidnapped and tortured for the rest of my life I wasn't going to go down like a mouse, I said yes, there was dancing, it was delightful, I was apparently charming enough that he decided he actually liked me. Also flying is amazing."
"...hmm," she says. "That's... surprising, but perhaps not as surprising as it could be. I'm glad you're all right." Pause. "My name is Irikaino," she adds. "I am his daughter."
"He did! You disagree with him about whether torture is okay, good for you, you're trying to figure out how to make this thing self-sustaining, also good for you, and I am to stay out of your wing unless I have your permission."
"He, um. Also agreed to teach me torture magic. Which, when I say that, let me assure you, what I mean is--I'm actually a masochist? I'm not talking about torturing anyone else."
"I would've assumed either that or letting you use a tiny bit of his own power," she says. "Most people don't enjoy torture, particularly not in the necessary quantities."
"Yeah, I checked to make sure using magic things wouldn't mean he needed to--more. I don't like that torture is happening, but." She shrugs. "It's not like not liking him for it would make him stop, so."
"It took me a few centuries to arrive at that conclusion, personally."
"I feel like I should make some kind of sympathetic remark concerning your relationship with your father but I don't really know enough about it to do so with any particular accuracy, nor am I under the impression that it's actually my business, so."
She shrugs.
"It's been three thousand years. All the sharp edges have worn down by now. He is what he is."
"I should probably be saving my sympathy for the swans. Except that I'm definitely going to be interacting with you, and...if I hadn't gotten lucky like this, I'm not at all sure that I'd be okay with meeting someone who had."
"I've mostly given up trying to interact with them. The best I can do for anyone is work on the magic."
"Anything a second person who hasn't spent millennia researching the magic is likely to be useful for?"
"Well, you could start learning now and in a few hundred years maybe you'll be able to help. Or it could be less than that."
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