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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
shesepankh
"If he's in love with her then they'd better be taking this trip to Tayane as a little honeymoon. She does not look Annie amounts of happy when we've seen her."
keep_busy
"That makes no sense. She's necklaced. And on top of that he's an Adarin and she's a Bell!"
prodigal_miser
"Yes, but - think of it this way. You're surrounded by happy couples when you strongly suspect that you're incapable of being one half of a happy couple. Then the one person you suspect you could actually manage to pull it off with falls very much in love with you. Through a necklace. And every minute he's not flinging himself at her, she's - having less than she should, and isn't happy. And he can't even manage to fling himself at her, because emotional instability and being used to being alone and unsure of how to stop acting like he is."
dark_light
"Okay, I understand that 'do it anyway' is probably not helpful advice, but I'm not totally sure why..."
castmyown
"Iiit would probably hurt him a lot to do it anyway? He's already pretty messed up now..."
prodigal_miser
"... Not to mention his version of 'do it anyway' is probably 'go touch the necklace himself.'"
dark_light
"Well, he can't do that without convincing somebody to help him or sneaking into Alethia. And it would be unnecessary! I assume. Annie?"
keep_busy
"I mean, it's simplifying, but not necessary, if he loves her and will, you know, go above and beyond giving her the time of day."
prodigal_miser
"But he's not sure he can actually pull it off, he's - literally lacking the social skills for doing it."
keep_busy
"You're making it sound like uttering the words 'I love you' and," vague gesture in a nod to Adarin prudery, "are international diplomatic relations, possibly with spies and poised cruise missiles involved."
castmyown
"... Kinda? He's a bit messed up, he's not going to..." Vague handwave. "Jump out on a limb and display his heart to someone."
keep_busy
"Okay. So, he's kind of inscrutable to me, but if we assume Aya's putting in overtime figuring him out and getting more or less correct answers, this will not suffice as a long-term holding pattern. At least one of the two of them needs fixing, soon, I'll get myself a soul animal if I have to - or I'm recommending the Coma Or Death-Until-Further-Notice option. Because if we assume she's putting in overtime figuring him out and getting more or less correct answers, and that these are them - she loves him. He's hurting. She can't help. She is actively making it worse by being complicated and needy and she's probably just about incapable of staying out of his way, if that would even improve the situation, so this is constantly on her mind -" Headshake. "It's no good. I'm sure something, somewhere, if we look through enough universes, can un-necklace her and then Prime's psychological problems will be his own business, but..."
prodigal_miser
"He might be able to handle it? He has genuine incentive to try. And we can always talk to him and explain the other side of things and see if that can poke him to say three words."
keep_busy
"Yeah. Do try that, in - whatever way might work, I guess - when they get back. I will hold off on drastic soul renovations until then."
dark_light
"I don't mean, is it true, I mean, will she be able to get anything out of this statement when he's under so much pressure and isn't necklaced and clearly feels somewhere between obligated to and affectionate towards her. Will she believe him?"
prodigal_miser
"... I concur. Ow. Well. He - won't lie to her. He's not going to say he loves her if he doesn't."
keep_busy
"But does she know that? I doubt she expects him to lie to her under ordinary circumstances, and it's in the little booklet that Adarins are bad liars, but - it is not an optimal setup for having total faith in the utterance, is it. Hearing exactly what you need to hear like that."