He looks at her with a raised eyebrow. "Yes?"

“I made you something! It should help with sunlight.”

She presents the sunglasses to him.

He stares at them for a few too many seconds to be comfortable. "What are these?" he asks, looking back up at her and not making any motion to accept them.

He is bad at emoting, this doesn’t mean he doesn’t like them. Her sunny smile remains.

“Eyewear that darkens to prevent too much light from passing. They go on your face.”

"...will this not just make it harder to see."

“Nope! Because I am clever and thoughtful! They react to,” UV radiation, “sunlight specifically and only darken when exposed to it. As you can see now, they’re perfectly clear.”

He stares at the glasses again for a few more uncomfortably silent seconds then takes them so he can peer at them more closely.

Then he lifts them to his face, guessing the purpose of the temples of the glasses correctly. He does look surprised when they go invisible, though. "Hmm. This might come in useful." Up at her again: "Thank you."

“You’re welcome! They can turn and stay visible if you’d rather, but I thought you’d find anyone asking questions irritating, so. They still work while invisible. Because magic.”

"Yes, I can see them working."

“I’m mostly just proud of my work and telling you things that are obvious out of excitement. I hope you like them! I’ll leave you alone now if you’d rather?”

"Do as you will," he says in his usual tone as he turns to stare at the Styx again.

...no, not his usual tone. He sounds, perhaps, maybe, a little mostly-undetectable bit... upset? Sad? Angry? Annoyed? Worried? Something.

She tilts her head.

"That didn't sound like a 'Yes, I'd rather,'" she observes. "I like your company and would like to stay if it wouldn't bother you. But I know I've been tagging along with you a lot already, so. It's pretty fair if you want some alone time."

"If I wanted you gone I would have told you so."

Wait that was a bit too honest.

"Oh! Okay." She melts into starscape, and fwoosh! Into his hood she goes, to her regular perch nestled next to him.

...that worked fine. Good. He's not sure why he expected it to not work fine. But it did, so he's fine.

........he successfully had a positive-rather-than-neutral social interaction with someone that isn't Zagreus? Hooray.

Hooray!

She does of course keep doing various projects in the background while staying with him, because she's herself, but she really does like his company. Or, well, any company, but he's not weird about it and doesn't expect her to do things besides keep him company, and is rather nice once it's understood he's bad at emoting.

He spends longer on that balcony than he usually does, though, and despite the lack of emoting from his body language the wind billowing his chiton starts getting a bit more aggressive over time.

She notices, but she doesn't really understand the mechanism by which his chiton and cloak blow in wind that doesn't actually exist, so she's not really sure what it means.

.... Wait a second. Where is Lord Hades? She hadn't noticed before, because she'd been busy working on her present to Thanatos, but. He's no longer at his desk.

And that's about when the "wind" suddenly stops, at the same time as Thanatos does have a physical reaction of a sort: he freezes, completely, not even the fake breathing gods do in human form, and stares at the river. His gaze follows its flow, turns around to the place Zag usually comes out of after dying, visible from the balcony, but...

...it is not Zagreus who steps out of the river.

"Um," says the little mote of starscape nestled beside him, and then that's all she can say, because. Because what.

Hades himself does not say a word, and neither do any of the shades or gods or demigods around. In fact, the whole House is taken by a sudden hush, as Hades disappears from their view walking past the petitioning shades towards his desk.

He walks around it, takes a seat, then bellows, "NEXT!" as if nothing's happened. Which breaks the spell and gets the line going again despite the whispers about what the FUCK.

What the fuck, indeed!

She can't help but notice that Zagreus is also not here, and... also not anywhere in the Underworld. She would know, she's approximately everywhere down here.

".... Zagreus isn't anywhere in the Underworld," she says softly to Thanatos, because she's better equipped to know this than he is, and probably he'd like to know that. "Did he try to stop Zag from leaving? And then..." Fail and get sent back? Holy shit what terrible parenting!

"...I knew he's not here. I think. I don't know how." He furrows his eyebrows. "...sometimes being a god is such a pain."

"Oh. Yeah, it is, isn't it." Because she herself is a god, she can't just go immediately running off to the surface to find him. She needs to be carried up. Metaphysically. Maybe she could try to break out on her own, but she doesn't particularly feel the drive to do so right now, and that'd be really difficult and she doesn't have an easy reset point like Zagreus does. And when he made it up to the surface, she wasn't with him, so. Instead she's just. Still down here.

She doesn't really know how to feel, actually. Upset, probably? She was kind of expecting that she'd be with Zag when he finally escaped the Underworld, but. Apparently not.