She gets the gist. "Yes," she agrees.

She sits down.

She closes her eyes.

She tries to think about her soul.

So, first of all, who she is as a person; she doesn't know enough about soul aesthetics or however reaching works to be as confident about those.

Who is she?

She is Alissiaverene Jialo, Delightful Siva. She loves her name but hates putting it in the mouths of strangers. She loves dancing and books and beautiful things; she adores Serik Tanaikon despite the fact that he tortures people who don't want it. She's part of the reason he's stopping that and she's so proud of that, in a way she finds difficult to articulate and is reluctant to try too hard.

Facts. Not general characteristics. Generalize.

She hates giving her name to anyone she doesn't trust with it. She doesn't care if people see her naked. She's fine with casual sex but not casual masochism but she was willing to go under Tanaikon's knife the second time they made out anyway. She has weird intimacy habits, and that's fine, that's hers.

Okay. That's a trait. Pick an aesthetic.

Aesthetic. She's seen only one soul before, the green hard thing the translator-man was wearing. She doesn't know what it correlates to. Pretty, though. What should her soul look like?

She thinks of the starry sky, the night she danced with the man she had not yet fallen in love with in midair above a city that sparkled with its own lights below. She thinks of stars, and tries reaching for her soul.

She finds nothing, no matter how many directions she tries. Her brow furrows in irritation. Not stars, then. Crystal, maybe...

She tries a few more aesthetic ideas before she hits on one that gets a response--smooth, spherical. It's above her, like an apple just waiting to be plucked from the lowest branch of an apple tree you're reading under.

She is careful not to jar out of her concentration when she finds it--practice not blowing herself with pain magic is surprisingly useful there. She remembers what Kelora said to do next--try to guide it out, guess another detail. She imagines her soul as translucent sea-green and loses it.

Her hands clench briefly on the arms of the chair and she lets out an irritated breath before getting back to it. She knows where it is, now, and enough aesthetic detail to touch it.

Think about who you are in more detail, Kelora had said. Probably harder to fuck up.

Dishonesty annoys her, and lying with the truth even moreso. She values open, honest communication. People not taking it seriously when she tries to do that, also terrible. She loves Tanaikon for that, that he's never been anything but open with her, or when he had things he didn't want to tell her he told her that. She loves him. That's important too, she's coming to realize. Loving him feels like taking a breath for the first time, and for the first time she is bitter, a little, that she never tasted this before, that her own mother could not give this to her. Loving him, making him happy, giving.

And the delight--her own, not his--that's important too, the dancing and the eeing over books and how much she loves riding the wind--

Her soul feels more solid under her fingers. She can almost make out the details, now. She thinks about who she is and what her soul should look like.

She loses it several more times, guessing wrong about this detail or that. But eventually, sitting in her hands, is her soul.

It's a sphere, just a little larger than an apple, perfectly clear except for the suspension of rainbow sparkles within, ever denser farther in until for a few centimeter radius around the center it's completely opaque. The density gradient isn't exactly spherical, though; ripples and twists can be seen in the glittery cloud.

It's beautiful.

When she leaves the bedroom, Kelora isn't there.

...She's going to go right back in, then, because hiding.

She contemplates her soul and tries to figure out what it'll do for her.

...Not all that much, yet, but it's an important not much. It wants to enforce her intimacy boundaries--which means, very importantly, that it won't let anyone touch it. Among other things; she doesn't get an overwhelming amount of detail about what things in the relevant timeframe.

The other thing it does is more voluntary, and more active. It gives her pain.

It is at that moment that she hears faint footsteps in the corridor, right outside the door. She has no time for anything more complicated than shoving the orb into one of her dress's obligatory water bottle pockets. She can only pray no one notices who shouldn't.

"...doesn't speak Nuimena, you'll need a translator."

"Find one, then."

Tekhesin Seofar's voice is very much like Serik's, accounting for accent.

"I maintain that there is no use in this, Father. Whatever happened to Taliar, she is innocent of it."

And then they are at her bedroom door.

Her heart skips a beat when she hears his voice, and she has to forcibly remind herself that it is not Tanaikon on the other side of that door, it is someone who does not know her, who is everything she was afraid the Lord of the Howling Mountain would be when she tried to evade his attention at that party.

She wants to mutter a quick summary to Tanaikon, but there is no time. She tries to remember what it was like to pretend mousehood at that party, hopes that Seofar is worse at seeing through that kind of act than Serik, and pretends to be more afraid than she really is.

Very reluctantly, she opens the door.

He looks a little like Tanaikon, in the way that Kelora looks a little like Irikaino - more in bearing and mannerism than physical structure, and least of all in surface details.

But the really attention-getting part of him is his soul.

A dark slash of blood-red not-glass hanging wire-wrapped from a silver chain, it speaks of power and cruelty. The picture it paints of his personality is not a pleasant one. He wants to be feared, he wants to hurt people, he wants comfort and luxury, he wants to hold the power of life and death over everyone he meets. He has a kind of moral sense, but it is not a very good kind. He is dangerous and he wants you to know it. He is quick to anger and disdains mercy as weakness.

He's looking at Siva like he hasn't quite decided whether she's a victim to be enjoyed or an inconvenience to be dealt with.

Wow, Tanaikon was not kidding when he said his younger self was a disaster. She vaguely wonders what his soul would look like, if he had one. She still has to resist the urge to do something that would break the 'mouse' act, but it's easier than she was anticipating.

"Is there a particular reason you're keeping her in your bedroom?" he asks his daughter.

"I had hoped she might be safe there."

He laughs. "No fear of that. Get me a translator." And to Siva, beckoning imperiously: "You - come with me."

Her grasp of the language is still shaky at best, but the gesture is clear. She gets up, saying, "Tanaikon, your baby disaster doppelganger came for me," in a courteous tone intended to sound to Seofar's non-Nathuremi-speaking ears like a meek acquiescence, and follows.

Seofar leaves Kelora behind; presumably she goes off to arrange for translation.

He leads Siva through the castle.

Kelora's parts of the castle are definitely the least ominous. There are much more ominous sections available, and they traverse a few of those on their way to wherever Seofar is taking her. Multiple times, someone screams in the distance and Seofar smiles.

Somehow it had never occurred to Siva that, while she knew perfectly well it was called the Howling Mountain for a reason, she had never actually heard any screaming. She has a new appreciation for this fact.

The fear gets less fake--but he still reminds her of Tanaikon, especially when she isn't actually looking at the red not-glass at his throat. Fear and attraction are, she suspects, a dangerous combination here.

But the soul in her pocket is warm against her leg, and something subtler than the two powers she had had time to examine before she showed up wakes in her mind. The next time she looks at the soul at Seofar's neck the similarities to Tanaikon, the foundation that Tanaikon grew from, are much more obvious.

Her posture straightens, a little. The real fear can stay. But the fake fear--feels incorrect.

The next time Seofar happens to look at her, she's much less cowed, and even smiling a little bit.

...He frowns. This is not correct behaviour from someone in her position.

"Something funny, girl?"

"I still don't speak your language," she points out reasonably.

He stares her down for a moment, then shakes his head and keeps walking.

She keeps following! And being less cowed than is appropriate for someone in her position.

And...

Yep that's a bedroom. Stunning view of the city. Slightly questionable decorative taste. The sort of furniture you'd expect from someone who prefers his sexual partners unwilling and covered in blood.

Man, that is not even a thing Siva had thought of. You start taking all kinds of things for granted when your sadist boyfriend can just vanish all the blood.

Nice view, though. She looks out the window admiringly.

He picks her up by the throat and tears her dress off, as easily as if it was made of paper.

...Well.

Being picked up by the throat definitely isn't doing anything for her, and is in fact kind of distracting in a bad way.

But it's not totally distracting, and the rest of the situation is...objectively really bad. But still kind of hot.

He throws Siva onto his bed and her dress across the room. He doesn't notice the sound it makes when it hits the floor.

"I don't need a translator to explain why you should fear me. That much I can manage on my own," he says as he stalks toward the bed.