Finnah doesn't want to be here but she doesn't want to not know what was said.

Finnah solves this problem by going to the kitchen and getting a very large bag of chocolate covered butterscotch fudge droplets and munching them steadily. Now she is slightly less screaming to get away and have feelings somewhere else. At least nobody here is green.

Finnah abandons her bag of candy. She walks four steps, breaks into a run, turns into a cardinal, and eventually manages to be sitting on her bed in her room upstairs with the door locked.





She calls Aurin.

Eventually Aurin answers. "Mial?" (There is no good reason for there to be two separate crystals.)

"No."

"Hi, Finnah, what's up?"

"Your grandfather's here."

"Oh." Pause. She can almost hear switches flicking on and off in slow ponderous patterns in his skull. "D'you want to go get drinks?"

This is probably not a healthy response to this situation. "Yes."

"Okay. Uh, guessing everybody in your house is occupied - I can get a pro 'port to the station near the one with the blue light and the good redreed and the bad music."

"Sure. Fine."

"See you there in a couple degrees."

The call ends. Finnah opens her window and flies out of it.

Finnah flies to the bar with the blue light and good redreed and bad music. There is bad music playing. She descends as a cardinal, lands as a human, re-acquaints herself with the menu, and waits to order in case Aurin will buy her sympathy drinks or actress Rathadaar Kerik will appear and buy her you-are-hot drinks.

Aurin shows up. Aurin buys her a redreed pineapple cocktail and gets himself a beer - a perfectly ordinary hops one - probably anticipating that she is going to get drunk enough that he'll have to be sober to haul her home. She considers this permission. They sit near the window.

Finnah gets halfway through her cocktail. "You don't talk about him," she observes.

"It seemed - insensitive to bring him up? I don't really talk about you or Mial around him either. Haven't been, anyway."

"But you know him."

"Loosely. Don't see him that often. Intervening relative is dead, lives on another landmass, nobody involved teleports, you know."

"So why did he - put your wine down."

Aurin puts his wine down.

"Swallow, idiot."

Aurin swallows. Finnah follows suit. Barely anything left.

"So why did he land on the doorstep and wait for me to get Avar and then say shrennaki."

Aurin coughs. "Oh, this is not a good day for me and having recently been holding drinks and that word," he says.

"Look, you can't even say it." Pineapple thing is gone. "More?"

He gets her another one. He sits back down.

"I have too said it, I warned Mother so she doesn't get blindsided by Mial's stupid shirt idea, I just don't want to say it - arbitrarily."

Finnah snorts and inaugurates her new glass. "Well, your grandfather did it."

"I... can't think of any reason for you to make that up," says Aurin slowly, "but -"

"I didn't mishear him! He showed up and I thought he was going to be my mother when Xaran learned to shift -"

"Remind me who -"

"My little half-brother, Xaran?"

"Right, right."

"He learns to shift, poof, I'm no longer dangerous, because he's going to be so much more reliable about not shifting than me I guess, come home. So I thought it was about the miracle, that he wouldn't have known Mial didn't take it, or if he did know it would be about not being contagious, anyway. So I get Avar and I wait for the fireshow, and - fucking - shrennaki!" She takes a large swig of what's left in her cocktail. It burns and she doesn't care.

"...I mean, my first instinct is to be happy for them all..."

"Yeah, I mean, fuck, good for them, why make the damn thing go on for more than a hundred seventy years if the old lizard's fucking - fucking - doing the thing, but. Shit, Aurin, d'you know how many letters I've thrown out? I don't even read them."

"But you know they're saying she wants you to move back, right? You're not throwing away - things that were mean letters and then turned into nice ones fifty years ago or something."

"Yeah. I don't think it'd make any fucking difference to me if she wrote me a solid paragraph of shrennaki shrennaki shrennaki. 'M not even a shren anymore."

"...Doesn't seem to matter as much for the language's purposes as it does for siaddaki," observes Aurin.

"I know, it's leaning on, like, the pain thing, the - the underdog thing - but it wouldn't matter, anyway, because she blew it, she had me in her pocket and she blew it it is blown there is no recovering from that shit."

"You think they should've -"

"I'm wondering if I - ugh, get me another drink, not pineapple, uh, I wanna try the lemon thing -"

Aurin goes and gets her one of the lemon thing. She tastes it. It's horrible. She drinks more of it.

"I'm wondering if I'm the really fucked-up one."

Aurin doesn't answer her.

"Spit it out."

"There's nothing to spit out, I don't have - have opinions on your family stuff. It's just a thing that happened," says Aurin.

"I could've gone - home. Former house shrens would probably look at me like I was insane for not doing it. House shrens got left and stayed left, half the time."

"I mean," says Aurin, and he measures his words, sipping his beer, "did anybody ever claim shrens as a group were the most well-adjusted of people?"

"Fuck no," snorts Finnah. "And the miracle only does so much, at least after an entire childhood of the stuff." The lemon thing is still horrible. She still drinks it, but slower than she was going through the pineapples. "But I could've gone home and Mial's family drama wouldn't be so. Close but not relevant? I felt like, like the fucking family pet. They love me and I've been living in their house for a hundred goddamn years and Piro is not my grandfather and doesn't love me and so when he shows up -"

"If you went home," Aurin points out, "your stepdad -"

"I guess that's true. My stepdad. Not my dad. Doesn't love me. Chased me out of the house in the first place, Piro never managed that. He's probably glad I never went back. Fucker. If sticking it to him didn't mean saying oh mommy of course it's okay that you thought I was going to cripple the baby you actually cared about when the chips were down you are forgiven I might've done it just to - that fucker. What made him so much better than my dad anyway, she wanted me more than my dad, or was it just, I was an egg and then she knew what I was like after and she was stuck -"

Aurin wisely makes no reply.

Finnah glares at her lemon thing. "This," she declares, "is disgusting."

"Ah -" Aurin doesn't ask her why she's been drinking. "Another pineapple one?"

"Please."

He gets her another pineapple one. He sits with her while she sips it.

She can mostly walk, on the way out. Aurin gets her someplace with enough space for him to take off; he's got a saddle and can carry her back to Mial's house. She manages not to tumble from his back.

And Aurin opens the door, Finnah leaning on his shoulder mumbling about lizards and Larotia and "fucking, fucking, teacakes, fuck".

Aurin glances at the tableau on the couch but does not have a hand free to wave. He smiles slightly, tightly, acknowledging everybody's existence and directing Finnah firmly stairsward. "You wanna risk this or you want to be a bird?"

"Fuuuuck, like I care if I fall down the stairs, big deal."

"...Oh, fucksake, Finnah, be a bird, I will carry you."

"Don't wanna."

"I bought you pineapple cocktails and you owe me, it is this or you cover my celery mixers next -"

"Fiiiiine. Sourpuss." She turns into a bird, somewhat awkwardly in midair with folded wings; Aurin catches her and scurries upstairs with her. The lock on her door is intentionality-controlled and lets them right by. He puts her on her bed. He goes back down the stairs.

Mial appears in the living room.

"Hi Mom, hi Dad, hi Aurin what are you doing here, who the hell's this?" he says as he turns in place and detects each person present.

Do not say "when a dragon and a human love each other very much", Aurin, are you sure you're not drunk -

"I'm not entirely sure, Finnah mentioned he was here but didn't have a lot of insight into why."