"If it's most people. It doesn't have to. I can hold Vern and Cypress can hold Path and it doesn't hurt at all. But - yeah, it's not something I would casually recommend if you're not going to move to Chamomile."
"Understood. Uh, is 'twelve' the same thing as the system on which I have a flattering number of points?"
"It's uh - scale of how bad a thing is. Twelve is bad. Really, really bad."
"Is the scale on which I have the flattering number of points also shared across the board?"
He does not look at Edarial and Iobel. This is by design.
Darren wonders if he should switch his degree to get something in therapy, but decides against it. He's not sure even a trained therapist could - help with this.
"Uh, born in 1987, September 13. Forks, Washington. My parents Renée and Charlie got divorced when I was a baby and she moved with me to Phoenix and taught kindergarten there. I spent most summers with Charlie. When I was fifteen Renée got hit by a car, and she died, and I moved in with Charlie full time. And then somebody who looked sort of like Renée from behind dropped my medallion," she displays it, "in the grocery store, and I picked it up to try to give it back but couldn't catch her, and decided to keep it. Which was good because I need it to look human now. Uh, went for a walk in the woods, passed out, woke up like this," she changes to fullform, "and then Darren found me and explained about critters and got really, really excited that I was a sphinx."
"Sphinxes are supposed to be extinct and are also super magic. I'm a magic geek, thus - really, really excited."
"Anyway, turns out I'm also a monster magnet, we got attacked by a gigantic lava thing during my first flying lesson, we got to the ocean and Darren hit it with a wave but got really hurt and it turned out that sometimes when I pass out it's because I'm doing thoroughly comprehensive healing magic. Mrs. Adams who I mentioned came out and drove us home. Me and Darren started a business selling magic scrolls and I've been iterating software to automate part of the spell development process. Savannah got possessed by a demon one time, which wasn't fun either, and then most recently I got swallowed up by a sort of ink monster, right out of Darren's lap, in his house, and taken away to a warehouse where I was tortured for information about other sphinxes until he and Savannah rescued me. Aaaand then I started college a year early and we live in an apartment over our store because college is in Seattle and so is a critter-hideaway-town-place - they're called Avalons."
".... Perhaps you're right, we all just seem to go through some sort of harrowing experience," observes Prime.
"I still don't feel very harrowed. I have been very frightened on several occasions, but not by anything that actually went on to happen."
"I wish there was some kind of observable pattern to - harrowing experiences. Half of them seem to be because of people taking offense to pedigree..."