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Annie is sitting with Ice and Phix in the Belfry. (Phix has determined that neither she nor Max knows near enough about runecasting to hope to approach Aya's little problem in the next, like, year at least, but she's taking notes to deliver to Iobel, who has not yet abandoned so much hope yet cannot be at this meeting for queen reasons.)
"If you could just say more about the subjectivity of it, it might give me an idea of something new to ask the alethiometer," says Ice. "Obviously having it look directly at Aya is an option, if it just can't get enough information off the necklace, but ideally we'd exhaust the possibilities first."
"Or Prime would just give her what she wants," mutters Phix.
"Let's not be weird and pressure-y about that," says Ice. "Annie?"
"...Sorry," says Annie. "I just had a mental image of Aya holding a soul bird and the soul bird looking at Prime and wanting to be petted and him refusing to do it. I think I would sooner let the alethiometer look at me than give her another - thing to pine about. I should work just as well, shouldn't I?"
"You might," says Ice, "unless reciprocated necklace arrangements look different or are different forms of breakable than one-sided ones, in which case you might not."
"Poor hypothetical soul-bird," murmurs Phix, scribbling.
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keep_busy
prodigal_miser
"More of a... 'Why now, when I'm depressing and bitter and used to being alone?'"
keep_busy
"Because I didn't warn her about the necklace, that's why," sighs Annie. "But... he'd met her before that."
castmyown
"It's more... bitter and angry at the world than 'what are the reasons for this happening,' anyway."
prodigal_miser
"Right. So. Then he gets to deal with us." He waves a hand and motions to all of them. "Also allies that he could have used much sooner. That's got to be some salt in the wound."
prodigal_miser
"Anyway. So he's grateful we all exist, but is still sort of angry that it didn't happen sooner. And... There's a measure of pride involved, I'd say. With the - 'my time alone was not worthless without you folks and your magic.'"
prodigal_miser
"Right, of course not. It's aimed at himself, not us. Because obviously he hasn't been doing so well emotionally."
prodigal_miser
"Oh, that's fun. Yeah, bet he has one. A subtle one, buried under the sarcasm."
dark_light
The Bells look at each other.
"I don't think we're familiar. Can you go into more detail?" asks Ice.
prodigal_miser
Blink, blink.
"... Uh. Understands that while he's useful in a - doing things kind of way, he is way worse off than the rest of us. He's a useful resource to be used, and that's about it. I completely eclipse him in emotional stability. All of us do, actually, even Conduit. ... Don't tell Conduit I said that."
"... Uh. Understands that while he's useful in a - doing things kind of way, he is way worse off than the rest of us. He's a useful resource to be used, and that's about it. I completely eclipse him in emotional stability. All of us do, actually, even Conduit. ... Don't tell Conduit I said that."
dark_light
"Lacking emotional stability seems like a sort of... self-defeating thing to have an inferiority complex about," remarks Ice. "Which I suppose doesn't help..."
castmyown
"Conduit's pretty traumatized. She's handling it well, though, props to her."
prodigal_miser
"Yeah. For Prime, though... It really doesn't. So it's sort of a spiral of self-hating misery he's got going on."
shesepankh
"Just about enough that we had better not put her in a coma and not a speck more, at least not so anybody would notice."