"I wasn't fishing for an apology, I meant it. ...though now I wonder if Krile was hoping I'd—no, I don't want to think too ill of her, she means well, after a fashion. But regardless I don't want—this—to be taken as some kind of, of bribery. I meant everything I said, that I'm going to Eureka regardless and that I hope you will too but this here was all extracurricular." Oh how it's his turn to babble, it seems. He'll just keep nuzzling a catboy, how's that. That's comfortable.

He giggles. "The possibility occurred to me, I admit. It probably would have been prudent of me to be more cautious around you." He grins. "I guess some part of me knew that hiding out alone in my inn room was never going to work out, though. I accepted that invitation, after all, when I could have just ignored it." He shuffles awkwardly, trying to adjust without pushing the Viera off his shoulder. "You would think that I would relish being away from the war effort more than I do, but alone in a room is not all that different from alone in a tent, I guess."

Red Fir lifts his head up to plant a kiss on Qana'to's cheek and offer him a slight grin. "Well, I don't know about you, I guess, but I'm very easily bored and chasing new things to do all the time. I'll probably get fed up of this life eventually but it hasn't happened yet."

“What is it you do? You said at one point you were a gatherer—” that wasn’t the word, oh well, “for Sharlayan, but no longer?”

With the shift in topic, he relaxes visibly, stretching and flexing his fingers and toes before lying down on his side again, one arm lifted in case Red Fir wished to lie under it. “Seeing as you said that seducing Miqo’te is an extracurricular rather than part of your formal duties.”

"Gleaner," he corrects with a smile and, sure, he'll follow Qana'to back down onto the bed. "They go places and find things Sharlayan needs and do errands for the scholars. But I got my own Archon marks a decade ago," he says, giving the spot down by his hips where they've been tattooed a glance before looking back up at Qana'to, "and I've been with the Students of Baldesion since, though I've been the out-and-about type rather than the sit-and-study type. Like, ah—" He cuts himself off and shakes his head. "Never mind."

“I’m really surprised they put them there for you,” Qana’to says, debating whether to gloss over the hitch. Eh, he called me on it. His turn. “I’m sorry to pry. I didn’t mean to bring up anything uncomfortable.”

Red Fir purses his lips and looks away. "I was thinking of Raha and Moenbryda," he says, keeping his voice steady. "I know you'd met them, I wanted to not dig them up for you either."

"Oh, that idiot," Qana'to says with a bereaved sigh and a shake of his head. "I should have grabbed him by the tail and dragged him out of there. Moenbryda at least was reacting fast in the moment, but he had—"

A long pause, then a fist gently thumps on Red Fir's shoulder. "If you pull any stunts like that while you're dragging me around that stupid island of yours, you are going to wish you had a tail to be pulled by instead. I've had quite enough of those heroics."

"I'm not planning to," he says, softly. "I just meant that like them I'm not wont to stay locked up in a musty library." And then, more softly still, "You and Raha got close?"

He barks a short, quick ha! "Did someone tell you?" he asks. "I guess if I wasn't easy to read, he was."

"Just from the way you talk. I never really got to see him after he went to Mor Dhona on his mission. I just... heard, later on, about what happened. And now he's gone." He tries to keep his voice level, he really does, but—Raha is just one of so many people Red Fir's lost, he didn't go with the island but he's gone nonetheless.

“Ah, we had a common interest, then,” he replies quietly. “I did not know him long—we got close as you say, but it was still only weeks, even so—but certainly I found his cocky playfulness endearing.” He giggles and squeezes Red Fir gently. “It seems like another thing that you gleaners have in common.”

"I am pretty sure he was never a gleaner," he replies, trying to return to the cocky playfulness, himself. "But cocky, that I'll grant you, ever since he was a fresh-eyed green boy just joining us and excited about everything. ...though perhaps that too was just how he was, I don't think he ever ceased being excited by everything."

“He was certainly easy to excite. I rather liked that about him.” He gazes at the ceiling. “He was the only other person who asked about my culture in any detail since I left Nhivnah, actually.”

"'Nhivnah'?"

He shakes his head. "I mean, the Black Shroud." He pauses for a second. "You know, they borrowed that name from us. Nhivnah is "Black Grove" originally. The color signifies warmth and safety to us, thanks to our time living in the snows of Ilsabard."

"Which part of that is the 'black' and which is the 'grove'?"

Qana’to thinks for a minute. “The name is several thousand years old. It predates the migration to Eorzea, even. The ‘grove’ bit is usually bhenah, so that’s the second part, and as for black: nowadays it is moui but the old word started with an N, I think.” He shrugs. “At least a lot of names in the old poems start with an N but mean ‘black.’ I should really see if there are any records outside the oral history sometime. Though I suppose if anyone did collect such things, it would be someone in Sharlayan.”

"Ha, I guess it would, wouldn't it. Maybe I'll look it up. Are there any tomes you'd like? I'm attuned to their aetheryte and can reach there from here about once a day so I could fetch some for you, I'm sure."

The offer catches him off-guard. “Oh, that’s very kind,” he says with a slight stutter of surprise. “To be honest, I’ve never even heard of any such tomes dealing with my own language, so I would not know where to start. I suppose anything about early Seeker culture would be good. From before we split.”

"No promises, I've no more idea than you whether they'll even have such tomes, but it sounds interesting and I'm sure it's been the pet project of some scholar or other, at some point."

“Well, if not, I guess I’ll have to be that scholar.” He laughs softly. “Or maybe it should be you, since you’re working so hard to understand our social habits.”

"I'm not sure I'll find the time within the next decade, there's far too much that still needs to be done. These projects tend to be led by people who can dedicate all of their time to it, or at least ones as hard as collecting information from over a thousand years ago about a people who was not by and large very literate."

That was just flirtation, silly. “No writing system until we came to Eorzea, yeah. Everything lives in the oral tradition, though the oldest songs do have a lot of weird fossil pronunciations to maintain the meter and the like.” He looks over at the desk. “Hence my personal project to record some of it. But I’m sure you’ve heard enough about that.” He gives the man a hug and then turns onto his back. “Thank you for indulging me.”

"I have not heard enough about that, are you kidding me, I'm not indulging you I like languages!"