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After Adarin and Isabella depart, Edarial gets back to juggling projects. Unsurprisingly, Iobel is a large help in this. Once she gets a handle on all of the things involved with being a monarch, he can not constantly be doing that alone. He still helps, he's still there doing monarch things and fixing the country, but now he's got a bit more free time to devote to other things.
Accordingly, there's a project he picks back up that he was only tinkering with before his marriage. He'd like to reinvent the fountain that heals familiars, have there be others in strategic locations, so that spellbinders don't need to rush to the capitol to avoid being unmade. Progress on the project's always been slow, there's a reason that it hasn't just been reinvented immediately after the spell charts were lost, but he's got some very good reasons to work on it with a near-obsessive zeal.
One day, to his utter surprise, when he goes to find another portion of the spell-chart to complete, he can't find it. He stares at the chart, stunned. Then he starts checking his work. It takes him a few days to finish the corrections.
Then he's done. He's remade a revolutionary spell chart.
He picks up the huge spell chart, does his best to fold it down to a reasonable travel size, and then heads off to show the nearest spell binder - Iobel.
royal_obligation
royal_obligation
"Most of this," laughs Edarial, wincing, "has been about me, I'm sorry - is there something you need from me?"
come_midnight
"I'm not sure what you have to give. I'm - holding up, there are things I could use but they can wait till you're in a better place."
come_midnight
"Are you sure? Sometimes you ask me to tell you things and then it seems to make things worse. I don't want to make you worse. Especially not while you may have internal bleeding, that seems like exceptionally bad making-things-worse timing."
royal_obligation
Edarial laughs, a little. "Fair point. Okay, well - what sort of... Things are they? Are they things that I'm personally doing wrong, are they things I could do better, or... What?"
royal_obligation
"Then," says Berathyme, slithering up to Iobel, "Whisper them to me, and I will tell you if it is appropriate or not."
come_midnight
Iobel thinks, then turns her head so it'll be harder for her words to carry to Edarial and whispers very quietly:
"The line of reasoning I was muttering about earlier - I wish it weren't so persistently non-functional. If I didn't respect him or like him, there are things that he'd be able to see that would show that, and I know he's smart enough to come up with them if he thought about it, but he didn't - whether it's because of the paranoia or something else I couldn't say - and that meant I assumed it was obvious and now I realize it wasn't but I don't know why it wasn't obvious or what other things aren't, and that's - exhausting to even think about. I'd like him to think a little bit more about what it would be like if the things he's worried about were true - if I still hated him or whatever - instead of - offloading that onto me so I have to say it, over and over again, since no amount of showing will work. Because I don't know how to be more demonstrative about not hating someone. He's complained about me being cold but any imaginable state of warmth that I can invent without instructions is - too far away, I'm not anywhere near hanging all over him like Isabella does Adarin."
"The line of reasoning I was muttering about earlier - I wish it weren't so persistently non-functional. If I didn't respect him or like him, there are things that he'd be able to see that would show that, and I know he's smart enough to come up with them if he thought about it, but he didn't - whether it's because of the paranoia or something else I couldn't say - and that meant I assumed it was obvious and now I realize it wasn't but I don't know why it wasn't obvious or what other things aren't, and that's - exhausting to even think about. I'd like him to think a little bit more about what it would be like if the things he's worried about were true - if I still hated him or whatever - instead of - offloading that onto me so I have to say it, over and over again, since no amount of showing will work. Because I don't know how to be more demonstrative about not hating someone. He's complained about me being cold but any imaginable state of warmth that I can invent without instructions is - too far away, I'm not anywhere near hanging all over him like Isabella does Adarin."
royal_obligation
"Paranoia," answers Berathyme, in a very soft tone. "That is why. He will look for the bad but not for the good."
Edarial, meanwhile, goes back to counting.
Edarial, meanwhile, goes back to counting.
royal_obligation
"Yes. The only way around that is time. It is a hard thing to work around, but can you blame him?" says Berathyme.
come_midnight
"I said it could wait. It can wait. If it has to wait then it will," says Iobel testily.
royal_obligation
"Then wait," says Berathyme.
She slithers back to her binder and curls up next to him. He's still counting - he's at twenty-three, now.
She slithers back to her binder and curls up next to him. He's still counting - he's at twenty-three, now.
royal_obligation
Edarial nods, then winces again.
"I can also do my - sight spell, check for the guards. When it's midnight."
"I can also do my - sight spell, check for the guards. When it's midnight."
come_midnight
"Yeah. I have one for your head and I can probably cover the rest of your injuries in one spell, and I can do my leg, that's three, two if I wall-walk us both, that leaves me with one left unless you can take on some of the healing."
royal_obligation
"I can take on some of the healing - I don't have anything for concussions but broken bones and injuries I can do. So three for me, three for you."
come_midnight
And lying there, and just in case her sense of time is wildly off, trying to charge every now and then.