"No, we didn't look at your pocket everything besides to see you'd left it behind - if you'd sent an email we would have seen that -"

"Oh. Didn't know that."

"Could you look at it now?"

"I don't have it. The police confiscated it as evidence."

"Oh."

She is confused but doesn't want to talk about the police right now and it doesn't seem that important to talk about them.

"I um. I said I was sorry and that you were very nice and I hoped we could play together again and and that I was sorry for making you sad but somethings are really important.."

Meelia starts crying a little bit again.

"This must have felt very very important to you for you to go to such lengths trying to learn more. I just wish you'd felt like you could afford to go slower and talk to us and learn what was going on before you charged in... now they're going to deport you unless you have a startlingly good explanation for your interviewer, I wouldn't even know what strings to pull there and it wouldn't be fair to Poante either, who works very hard for us."

"Don't think I want to stay. ... 'less it's to talk to red haired people. ..."

Meelia thinks some more.

"Um. Guess I also want to see you and Haemi more which I didn't ex-pect but um. Not gonna stay anyways if I'm 'llowed to go home."

"... you could come with me if you wanted? But but. I don't want to hurt you more or make you be around me when I hurt you before..."

"If you were going to stay and we thought you'd be able to follow the law we'd let you stay with us, of course, we'd forgive you. But we're not going to your planet, no. I don't even think that would be a good idea, not when right now it looks like you did all this on your own without any help and it wouldn't look like that if we went with you and then it happened again. You could write to us, maybe."

Meelia cries for a bit but nods at the same time. She doesn't get how she could do it again on her planet but doesn't ask right now. 

"s'okay."

"Would write some prolly, but not if it made you feel not-good."

"We'd like to hear from you, if you'd like to keep us updated." Sigh. "They'll probably do your interview quite soon, now that you're awake, but it's basically a formality, there's not much in question besides... why... and no matter why you're going back on the next ship. I'm going to hire you some guards to go with you on the trip who will be - as tolerant of the situation as I can find. Please don't dislocate their joints or give them concussions. Poante has a pinched nerve in one arm and his brain damage tests are not conclusively at par."

"Oh."

"I really didn't mean to do that. Amaliens and animals and monsters if they have bones get better after those things pretty fast once I put the bones back...."

She sniffles a bit, hugging herself.

"... guessin he doesn't want a hug from me or anything."

"I wouldn't expect him to."

"Makes sense."

"... do you?"

"If you would like a hug I'd like that too."

Meelia will nod, a bit scared but. Hugs are important especially when you're scared.

Tish goes over and hugs her as much as is feasible what with the shackles.

Meelia is good at hugs, even in such difficult hugging circumstances.

Pat pat. "I'm going to go catch Haemi up on things, unless you need me for something in which case I can just text her."

"Don't need anything right now. She can have a hug too if she wants."

Tish nods and extricates herself and collects her bag and heads out.

Meelia rests for a bit. Her face still hurts and is scabby and arms are sore and the bit where she stabbed herself before doesn't feel perfect and her head feels weirdly light.  She naps for a couple of hours but will wake up if anyone comes to see her.

Oranges pop in every now and again to change her bandages and bring her toast and a banana for breakfast and ask if she needs to be escorted to the bathroom.

She isn't interested in breakfast but will eventually use the bathroom. She's mostly just. Waiting.

Eventually a blue - not Tish, not Haemi - comes in and sits down beside her.

"I'm Setta Afna," she says. "I'm a judge. I'm here to talk to you about what happened over the last few weeks. Do you understand what a judge is?"

Meelia glares.

"Yeah. I do."

"Do you understand what this interview is for?"