Rahim bounces back after a few minutes. He's eager to tell his parents lots of things, although the things have less to do with what he's been doing and how things are going in the dome than they have to do with claims he's heard about ships and monsters and wild animals. Ines doesn't want to be put down at all, although she will sometimes momentarily tolerate being held by her mother instead of her father. She falls asleep in Élie's arms around midmorning, and somehow keeps holding his coat in a vice grip the whole time.

It isn't until later, when they visit the orrery after all, that Rahim says without any preamble, "Papa, why did people destroy our house?"

He's really not sure where to start with that one, so the thing that comes out of his mouth is "To be entirely fair, sweetheart, we destroyed theirs first."

" - why did we destroy their house?"

To Naima – Is there anything you feel strongly they're not ready to hear? 

And to Rahim – "How much do you know about the war?"

- well I don't know, I guess the specifics of hell or anything particularly graphic about what wars consist of -

- and now that I am thinking about it I am mostly imagining possible negative consequences of them hearing that we killed at least a thousand innocent people, which I suppose we did absolutely do -

"Osirion had a war with Cheliax," says Rahim. "But it's over now. Wars usually take months and months and months, but this one was over in a few days."

"That's right. And you know that your mama and I fought in the war? Do you know why?"

"Because they were being bad?" Rahim is pretty sure this is the usual reason why his parents have to go fight things, although usually the things don't destroy their house about it.

" – Yes." Scoop. "Cheliax is ruled by Asmodeus, and he is very, very, very bad. We were fighting so that he wouldn't be in charge there any more. But Asmodeus had a terrible weapon he was using to fight us with, and because he's not very nice and also not very smart, he decided to put it right below the house where his human servants live. Your mama and I – and Catherine and Ione and Shawil – had to destroy that weapon, and when we did, it knocked their house down too." 

"Can you build them a new house?"

He's your son. 

"Why, yes, we can. We are. But that's not why he's angry with us. Asmodeus gets angry whenever he doesn't get just exactly what he wants – do you know anyone like that, Rahim? – and when he's angry he likes to hurt people just because he can. Destroying our house doesn't help him win the war. It doesn't help anyone. But I'm sure he thought if he did it it would make us angry, and if we were angry we'd be just as silly as he is." 

"I am angry," says Rahim, with feeling. "It's mean to destroy people's houses."

"There's nothing wrong with being angry, as long as being angry doesn't make you stupid and cruel." 

"Oh," says Rahim, and doesn't say anything else for a bit. 

That's alright. It's a lot to think about. 

Does it look like these kids have the energy for more excursion, or are they flagging? 

Ines wakes up while they're visiting the orrery and cries about being awake. Rahim isn't overtly tired, but is sort of giving off fragile rather than excited vibes by this point. They could probably use a break.

That's fine. the Dome isn't large. They can all go back to Nebetah's. 

I think I should have told him that we're going to build our house again just the way it was, and that the important thing is that nobody got hurt. 

Are we going to build it just the way it was?

If the children are upset about it, I don't see why we shouldn't?

Well, we certainly can, if they're attached to it. But Catherine's not going to be living just next door anymore, and you've been talking about creating a new demiplane and building something new there. I'm not opposed to fixing the tower, but I'm also not sure that things will be just the same as they were going forward, and we should probably think some about where and how we actually want to live, given that.

And plausibly we shouldn't promise that we're going to do things after all of this. I'm not sure.

Do you think it's worse if we both die having made them promises we're not around to keep? I'm not sure. If fulfilling our obligations to them was our first priority, we wouldn't be fighting Deskari tomorrow.

- so I'm actually not sure that specifically is true? I've been thinking about it and I'm not at all sure that there is a good way to back away from all this at this point even if we wanted to. I suppose we could all huddle in the dome forever like mice, but - the point stands anyway, really.

I'm also not sure, really. Maybe it's better to know what your parents planned to do, had they lived. It just - feels kind of dishonest to say it'll definitely happen? I don't know. If you think it's fine I suppose it probably is, assuming for a moment that we do actually plan to rebuild and use the tower.

I don't want to lie to them. But I also don't want them to be any more terrified tomorrow than they have to be – and if something does go terribly wrong, I don't want to leave them thinking that we didn't try to fix it for them because we didn't care.

That's fair. I'm - okay with it then. I mean, I'm still not actually sure that there isn't going to be a better living situation than the tower or that I'm not going to immediately be struck with the desire to improve upon it as soon as everything settles down, but - I guess, if you can excuse me being incredibly sappy for a moment, it also doesn't matter too much as long as we're all together.

That's true. But this must all seem very complicated when you're five.