"Because Feris was mean to you?"

"- If he'd published a book saying mean things about my... nose... or about, uh, I don't know, my personal combat prowess, something I don't care about, then I'd have pretty much ignored that. But if I'm not good enough at my job to avoid making things worse I shouldn't do it. I'm taking some time off to think about that. Is Natsuko doing all right?"

"I haven't heard anything I'd worry about."

"That's good. I know Feris prefers Tarwë but Tarwë doesn't feel ready to lead a team yet for what I'd summarize as Elf reasons, and, you know, maybe he has a point, maybe I wasn't ready." Sigh.

"Is there really such a thing as being ready or is it more the sort of thing where no one is ready going in and some people get lucky enough to survive their first time?"

"- I can only make sense of that if you mean 'survive' metaphorically. Maybe it's like that. I don't know."

"It's not like people ever nonmetaphorically don't survive things. And if I'm reading your hair right you've decided to give up on your dreams, which is at least sort of like dying."

"Hey, I think it's a nice color," says Fere.

"- I don't know what you were reading into my hair. It was sort of a signal to other Amentans that if they wanted they could choose to read me as thinking of myself as operating in a yellow role. If I'm stepping back from work it's a little silly."

"Oh, I definitely read that all wrong, then. Your job was yellow?"

"You could make a case for blue but that felt more - presumptuous, I suppose."

Both of the Sesatis seem to need to contemplate this for a moment and then it's Fere who comes up with something to say first. "Red is a nicer color anyway."

Nelen snorts. "Thank you. Can I get you anything?"

"Neither of us knows enough about Amentan hospitality customs to guess the right answer to that but we definitely want to go with whichever one isn't rude."

"Well, you ask for water or tea or crackers if you want any of those, and decline if you don't, and if you want a six course meal you don't choose this occasion to mention it," says Nelen.

"I never turn down crackers. Anyway - did Feris end up telling you I thought it was great watching you react to him giving you a slave?"

Nelen gets up and goes to the cupboard and produces a box containing crackers - the box is made of wood and painted prettily, it looks like they transfer whatever kinds of crackers they obtain into it - and opens it. There are several cracker options in there; he takes a pepper one. "The most gratifying thing ever, he said."

"Yeah! You were so - like - like whatever happened - you could see how horrible it was, clearer than even I could, and - like however much you think about everyone you meet having thoughts and feelings, you thought about it that much about her too. I think. I didn't read the book or anything, I don't have anything to say about it, I just want you to know... I don't know. You know?"

"Well, I think so, but I also think I should downgrade my estimate of how likely I am to be correctly understanding whenever a Sesati says anything. But thank you. She emailed me, I think she's all right."

"I'm glad. Anyway I was planning on being all 'please don't drink yourself to death, you're great' but you don't seem to need it, I don't have anything else to do here unless you want company." She nibbles a cracker.

"Company's nice. I have a date in a couple hours, but nothing till then, and Sasa's at a movie."

"Cool. D'you like video games?"

"I do! What kinds have you tried so far?"

"I've been introducing Valan to this one racing game where all the cars have guns and if you die you get resurrected again immediately in your car behind everyone else. I don't know a lot of others you can do with three people yet."

"I don't have that one but I have Procgen Party, it's a bunch of never-identical-twice mini-games you win various tokens at and then you spend them on stuff to win the meta-game with..." He heads over to the room with the big screen and fires it up for the three of them.

"How does it keep changing?"