She has in fact said things in approximately the style she just used already, pretty clearly pointing to cognition in line with that apprently-Draenei style, over the course of them knowing her.

Probably either it's an accidental match and the Draenei don't actually have the thing that she has, or they have- smaller fragments of the underlying whole than she does. Or, more likely- they have a similar thing but Crin and Ishaza didn't notice the isomorphic cognition earlier.

That's- well, she thinks she has in fact noticed bits of that isomorphism in how they talked. Thought they had- a similar thing to her. That exact thing is what she was pointing to in the compliment to Crin that caused a misunderstanding. But- would she have noticed that if she hadn't had the idea they were well-matched with her due to the narrative in mind? Probably yes, she's been- lonely for a long time, and looking for people who thought like her since before she'd fully understood what that meant. Since back when she was tiny and thought it just meant reading a lot of books, because that was the most obvious difference between her and the other students in her class.

But- Crin is older, and Ishaza is older. They've had more time to be disappointed, more time to learn their world is- not the kind of place that has many people who think like that in it. They don't have habits trained in a world with the internet where anyone from anywhere could know the things you know, know more than you know. It doesn't, she thinks, mean anything that she noticed the similarity before they did.

And then Crin has finished talking, ending in- around the place Alethia figured she would since that, "Oh."

And- she's been silly, she thinks. It was- she was bullied, when she was young, and something in her is sensitive to- the kind of thing that preceded that bullying. But she's older now, and time has passed, and this- really wasn't the same kind of thing at all. That old armour, pulled up because something in her is overcautious- it isn't needed.

It's hard, to- not stay in the mental posture of- needing to be on guard and afraid. But it's not correct to be there, after- something like this.

"That makes sense," she says, because it does.

"I -" Crin looks over at Ishaza. "To be blunt, neither of us is well-educated by Draenei standards. Ishaza went to a channeling school and mostly focused on how to wield Hysh, so what she knows she mostly learned through osmosis. And what I know I pieced together through experience and from the few fragments I've been able to gather from Ishaza and from one or two Draenei books, which are primarily... technical texts on statistics and so on, not motivated with the core of how to think. As far as I know it's not formally taught among the Draenei either."

Well. Piecing things together on your own from osmosis and a few things about statistics sounds- viscerally familiar. She actually didn't have statistics or probability theory and limped by for years with epistemology and philosophy more broadly and the occasional thing about this cognitive bias or that and being incredibly embarrassed when she was publicly wrong and so- developing a visceral felt sense of how likely any given one of her thoughts was to embarrass her later.

(This was all back when she thought she was bad at math, because she could not in fact show up for the first few days of class, vanish from classes, and then derive all the results covered over the next month on the test fast enough to get more than a sixty. In retrospect those results meant kind of the opposite of what she thought they did. But her beliefs about her own skills mean that she did not go to probability theory, at the start. Just logic, which was, of course, definitely not math, on account of the no numbers.)

"That makes sense. You're- all the way out here, and Ishaza is out in the world doing. I can't say I disagree with either of your priorities. It's also- a familiar story. I- tried to invent it all on my own, originally, for years. I didn't know anyone else had- seen the thing I had, the- core I had. I thought I was alone. It was such a relief, to learn my path had been trod by giants before me, for all that I hadn't known of them. I honestly credit having- tried alone- for- a lot of how well the lessons of others sunk in. I- knew there were holes, in how I thought, I'd spent years feeling them out, and so- I needed to know as much of it as my mind could hold, when I finally had- a path I could follow. Not- not for results, you understand, I'm not judging either of you at all for not having the monomaniacal focus I did, I was just- learning to learn. I guess I'm just- "

She swallows a lump in her throat.

She smiles, soft and warm, and if her eyes don't sting with unshed tears that means nothing at all about how she feels.

"It's- nice, to meet people who- understand, somewhat, the shape of the thing I care so much about. Enough to find themselves- pleased, to see that I care about it too."

What tension remained falls from her shoulders, and she finds herself- happy.

Crin looks at Ishaza. "She likes my wolves. She's well-educated by Draenei standards. She's unfairly pretty. She cares about ethics and about clear thought and we seem to get along. I mean, honestly...?"

"It's only been two days..."

"All the evidence so far points in one direction, though."

Ishaza nods slightly.

She looks over at Alethia again, hand against her chin, clearly mulling her over. 

It really is remarkable, just how much their thoughts are rhyming right now.

"This... could still be a mistake, but I judge it's more than worth the risk. I'd like to invite Alethia upstairs."

"To your bedroom? Certainly. To your office? I think you don't know her like that yet. To your library? I can't imagine any way that would make her more dangerous than she already is."

"What, you're willing to let her potentially assassinate me but not read my letters?"

Ishaza waves a hand airily. "You'd get better."

"Mm. Well enough, I suppose."

She looks over at Alethia. "Would you like to see my library?"

The tiny voice in her head hoping that Crin would invite her to her bedroom can be quiet, thank you very much.

Ishaza is going to be the death of her.

"I would love to. And also I promise I am plotting exactly zero assassinations. It's the Alethia guarantee."

Ishaza smiles. "Glad to hear it," she replies. 

Crin gets up from her chair and beckons. 

"Follow me, then. Sophia will take care of cleaning up the tea service."

Up the Alethia gets, and on the Alethia will follow.

On up a flight of stairs to the third floor of the tower.

Ishaza brings up the rear of the group.

The library is hardly one by earth standards. Four bookcases in total.

In the closest bookshelf to the door, an imperial encyclopedia takes up one whole shelf; two more shelves are dedicated to imperial monographs on Hysh and Shyish, and a third to texts on Rhya and religion. General history, geography and natural science fill the bottom shelf.

A second bookcase holds a collection of imperial broadsheets, a collection of military histories dealing with Greenskin Waaghs and Sylvanian undead, copies of the present Stirlandian tax and law codes, and a small smattering of artillery mathematics. 

The third bookcase is topped by a small section with five books dyed in violet leather with crystals affixed, in a language Alethia hasn't seen before. The words on their spines say... "The Properties of Hysh Crystal", "Practical Demolitions", "The Orders of Light", "Statistics for Singers", and "Seeing Far". The rest of the shelf beside them is a smattering of philosophical texts on ethics and epistemics. Below them sit volumes of censuses and surveys of Crin's fief, all filled with bookmarks. There are more scientific texts along the bottom, dealing this time with the properties of Warpstone and its contamination.

The fourth bookcase contains cheap paperbacks, rather than the heavy leather-bound tomes of the other three. Most of them seem to be romance novels and books on crafts and ettiquette. 

"It's not much," Crin admits. "But it's a damn sight better than the nothing I started with."