Armored Heart: L’Odeur de l’Amour

Chapter 23

Lanri was startled from her gentle dozing off by the clatter of a plate and mug being put on the table in front of her. She gave the blob that was Seeker a sleepy smile, and it took a few seconds of effort to focus her eyes on it.

“You mortals with your sleep. It’s a tragedy how dependent you are on it.”

Before her, Lanri saw a big stack of fluffy waffles that still radiated the heat of the iron they’d been made in, and the mug looked like it held coffee. Far too tired to bother with cutlery or grace, she simply picked up one of the waffles, tore off a piece, and stuffed it in her mouth. “Couldn’t you cast a spell to wake me up?” The clods of chewed pastry turned her speech into an incomprehensible mess, but she was sure Seeker would figure it out.

“Oh, gods, no,” Seeker teased, as she leaned forward and supported her head on her propped up arms. “This is far too much fun to watch.”

Lanri made a point of rolling her dry and heavy eyes, as she put another piece of waffle in her mouth. It tasted a little bland, she thought, like the baker hadn’t been able to get enough sugar for the batter, and didn’t have anything to supplement it with.

“Take another look at your plate, Dear,” Seeker said. Lanri did so, and quickly discovered that a little bowl of syrup had been hiding somewhere. She handily drizzled it onto her waffles, and kept eating the now far more palatable fare.

“Why’d you kick me out of bed for this?” Lanri quietly asked before picking up the steaming mug, and taking a sip. It was hot, and bitter, and she hoped it would at least have the decency to wake her up before it upset her bowels, rather than after.

“Why, excuse me for wanting to keep my…” Seeker floundered, and Lanri giggled in amusement when she realized the lack of label for their relationship was tripping her up, too. “Well, I have to keep you fed, don’t I?”

“Why yes, you do have an obligation to feed your…”

“Whatever name we give our relationship, Dear, at least it didn’t burden you with excess deference.”

Lanri giggled again. “It’s not like there’s any point in keeping my thoughts to myself, Seeker. You’d find out about those, too.” That gave Seeker pause, and Lanri decided to press the advantage. “You wouldn’t want me to feel like I can’t speak my mind, would you?”

“I’m beginning to consider it,” murmured Seeker, as she lifted her own mug of coffee, and grimaced when she tasted it. The image brought a smile to Lanri’s face, and she savored the view while it lasted.

“Why did you get coffee if you hate it?”

Unfortunately, the question banished the grimace from Seeker’s face, replaced by an expression of consideration. “Because you did, Dear. If you like something, there’s bound to be some merit to it. You like me, after all.”

“Your spells are a lot better than coffee, I promise,” said Lanri as she took another sip. She looked around at the tavern. It was sparsely populated, she realized. Even considering the early hour. The only people she could see were the two people she assumed to be farmers, half asleep and nursing their own mugs. “Where is everyone?”

“Practicing with Ithella, I’d wager,” Seeker said. “Speaking of which, I notice you dreamt about her last night.” Lanri couldn’t remember any such dream, but she believed Seeker. “Did you meet her while I was gone?”

Lanri nodded, as she recalled the day before. She’d spent a lot of time talking to various priests, but she focused on what had happened with Ithella. “She showed up at our room, and tried to give me a dagger. She said it was a trophy from my glorious fight.”

Seeker gave her a sad smile, as she seemingly leapt to the correct conclusions. “She meant well, Dear. In her mind, offering you a trophy after what you did is considered a great honor.”

“I know. She made me feel a lot better about what I did, actually. The guilt isn’t as heavy as before. But I still told her to keep the dagger.”

“You have every right to decline a gift, Dear,” Seeker assured her. “Even one meant to honor you.” There came a heavy, meaningful pause during which both of them took sips of coffee, and Lanri ate a bit more of her waffles. “What else did you do?”

“I talked to a few other priests,” Lanri said. She wasn’t eager to share more details, because she suspected Seeker might not like everything that had happened with Mirabelle or the priest whose name she didn’t know. “And I helped Ithella persuade Abbot Du Bois to let his people enlist in her militia if they want.”

“That’s quite the feat,” Seeker acknowledged. “Du Bois is a good man, but not a warrior. Tell me about the other priests.”

“I talked to Mirabelle for a long time. She taught me a lot about some very scary plants.”

“Go on,” urged Seeker, knowingly.

“And gave me some to smoke,” Lanri admitted. In the moment, in the rooftop’s glass garden, she’d resisted a little, then given in to Mirabelle’s insistence. Now that she was explaining herself to Seeker, though? She decided she should have resisted harder.

“You smoked?” asked Seeker, flatly. Lanri nodded. The Heartwarden seemed to consider that, then shrugged. “Nobody can be expected to know more herb lore than a priestess of Huin. I bet whatever she gave you was a lot of fun.” Lanri nodded, and Seeker smiled.

“It was. It made me worry I’d trip and wind up face first in their crop of Ishi’s Bait, but it was fun. Then some acolytes showed up and tried to get into her pants, and…” Lanri trailed off as she recalled the androgynous priest, and the talks she had with them.

“And?”

“And then I got some help to get back to our room. I talked with them, and they were nice enough. They’d nicked one of Mirabelle’s rolls of herbs, and we shared that,” Lanri paused briefly. She wasn’t proud of the next part, and Seeker already looked less than thrilled. “But then they called me dear, and I kicked them out. I apologized afterwards, though!”

“You shared a single roll of herbs with a priest of Ishi, in your own bedroom, and were surprised they thought you’d be okay with familiarity like that?” Seeker’s voice rose in pitch as she spoke, and she quirked her eyebrow in that delightful way.

“You’re teasing me,” Lanri concluded. Seeker simply nodded at that. “Well, that’s your name for me. I don’t want anyone else to call me that.” A pause. “I didn’t kick them out just because of that, though. They touched your sketchbook, too.”

“Oh, I’m not surprised,” Seeker flatly said. “But that was a factor, huh? For such a fragile little thing, you sure do have a protective streak.”

Lanri cocked her head at that. “Well, yeah. That’s what couples do. They… we look out for each other, and our stuff. You wouldn’t let Sheep touch my wand, so I wouldn’t let them touch your sketchbook.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, Dear,” Seeker said with a smile. “But, I know you too well. You have a curious streak almost as pronounced as my own. What did you think?”

Lanri blushed, and looked down at her plate of waffles. Of course she knows I looked. I’m as predictable as the tides. When she looked up, she saw Seeker was holding it out to her. Offering it. After only the briefest of hesitations, she accepted it, and browsed in search of the series of sketches of her that spanned two pages. She made a point of skipping the first one, the one Seeker had named Saved. “I like them,” she said.

Seeker, however, ignored the feedback and flipped to the next page. Lanri felt her blush deepen, and what little sleep had still been weighing on her mind vanished as she frantically looked around to see if anyone else could see it. She quickly concluded they couldn’t. “Do you like this one?” she asked. Lanri looked up at her, and found her eyes betrayed the same hunger she’d so far only ever seen in their bedroom.

Lanri nodded. “Is that…”

Seeker got up from her chair, and pulled up another one so she could sit behind Lanri. She wrapped one arm around her in an embrace, and put her chin on her shoulder. “It’s very rare that I have something worth drawing that will actually sit still for it. I usually have to do it from memory.”

“I don’t remember this at all,” Lanri whispered. The picture was enthralling, just as it had been the day before.

“I do,” Seeker whispered. “I remember it very clearly. Would you like to, too?”

“Can you do that?” Lanri asked, with awe. As she looked at the drawing of the oblivious woman she shared a face with, she couldn’t help but want to know how she must have felt to make that expression.

“Not quite the way you’re imagining it, Dear,” Seeker said. “You really were blacked out. You didn’t make any memories I could restore to you. But I could share mine.” The arm Seeker had wrapped around her moved, shifting to press two fingers to Lanri’s temple. “Your choice, Dear. Are you content with my pencil work? Or do you want to know what the real thing looked like?”

“Here?” Lanri quietly asked, looking around again. The handful of patrons clearly did not care to pay attention.

“Why not?” Seeker tapped the fingers on Lanri’s temple twice. “That mind is mine, Dear. I don’t need privacy or the consent of bystanders to alter it.” Lanri swallowed, and she felt her heart rate rise. Despite that, she nodded. She wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see herself through Seeker’s eyes. “Oh, you’re going to love this.”

Seeker took slow, deliberate breaths, and Lanri did her best to match the cadence. The Heartwarden was quietly mumbling something in the divine language, and Lanri couldn’t quite make out any words, just the general tones. Now that Seeker had suggested the idea, Lanri found herself profoundly curious about what it might feel like.

“Remember what it was like to black out for me.” Seeker ordered, and Lanri did so. She remembered the scent of love and need growing thicker, and heavier. How it felt like breathing room temperature steam, or holding her breath. She recalled the underlying sense of fear, stamped out almost entirely by Seeker’s power. She recalled the world growing darker, until all she could see was her.

“Perfect. Now… the next thing you can remember.” Again, Lanri obeyed. She made a point of recalling the fascination and love on Seeker’s face, and the damp patch of carpet she was sitting on. She remembered the room’s thick scent of sweat and lust, and the feeling of her own drool dripping onto her chest.

“Apprenez,” Seeker purred, her voice infused with power and determination that made Lanri giddy, just before the fingers against her head became warmer and warmer, and something crept into her mind. It was a slow, dizzying process, and the world seemed to warp around that spot of her head that grew hotter and hotter.

I wonder if you’ll pass out…

“Wake up, Dear,” Seeker said. It sounded urgent. Urgent enough to pull her back from wherever the spell had put her consciousness. Lanri opened her eyes, and blinked a few times. Seeker was kneeling in front of her, and she looked concerned.

“What’s wrong?” Lanri rubbed the side of her head. She felt fatigued, and more than a little worried the spell had somehow gone wrong.

“Alarm. City guard’s panicking about something. Can you walk?”

“Walk where?” Lanri asked, unhappily accepting the crutches Seeker was suddenly offering.

“Where the trouble is. If it scares the guards enough to make such a racket, it’s probably our business, too.”

Lanri considered that, and quickly came up with a million reasons not to go. “I don’t want to get into a fight, Seeker. I don’t even want to see one.”

“Well, I want you close if there’s serious trouble.”

Lanri thought about the next of her million reasons. “If… if the guard are all there, I’ll get recognized. Ithella’s girlfriend did in seconds.”

That gave Seeker pause. “Really? In seconds?” Lanri nodded. “Alright. Then…you can’t come with me. Let’s see…” Lanri looked at the beautiful redheaded angel as she trailed off, and started to look around. There was just the briefest spell of silence, then she reached into nowhere, and pulled out a leather purse.

“What are you doing?” asked Lanri as Seeker got up.

“Buying you an escort, Dear,” Seeker said as she got up, and approached the other two patrons. She shook the purse at each of them, and a moment of hushed conversations later, they followed her back to their table.

That was fast.

Lanri watched as Seeker pressed two elaborate coins into each of their hands. One of gold, and the other platinum. Enough to buy weeks or even months of labor, for a task that wouldn’t take them ten minutes. “I’ll triple that after she’s in the abbot’s custody.”

“Bloody hell, is this real platinum?” one of the farmers, a tough, muscular woman with tanned skin asked.

“Yes, it is,” Seeker assured them both. “And I’ll take it back with interest if you don’t see her there safely.”

“You’d have to rip this from my cold dead hands.” The farmers both seemed to have eyes only for the two coins they’d been given, and the idea of another two of each. Lanri hoped they would at least have the decency to watch where they were going if they were going to play bodyguards.

“I know I would,” Seeker agreed. “So, get going, and see that I don’t have to.” The two farmers swallowed nervously, and Lanri saw a gleam in Seeker’s eyes that betrayed a hint of satisfaction at having scared them. The Heartwarden turned away from them, and leaned down to kiss Lanri. An intense, firm affair. “You be careful. I’ll find you in our room as soon as I can.”

“You, too.”

A few moments later, Lanri was outside in the cold morning air, watching Seeker run off in the direction of trouble, leaving her with her two newly deputized guards. She lamented that twice now, she’d watched Seeker run off to face some grand threat, while she stayed behind.

To their credit, the farmers seemed to be taking Seeker’s commission seriously. Far more seriously than Lanri thought was necessary, or useful. If they ran into any guards and she was recognized, two burly farmers wouldn’t be able to do much to stop them from making things miserable for her. And if they didn’t run into any guards, it seemed profoundly unlikely anything else would happen.

They walked in silence, and considerate of her disability, they made sure to keep a comfortable pace for Lanri. She was getting a lot better with the crutches already, but anything faster than a relatively slow walk would tire her out before they got to the monastery. And it was as they walked, that Lanri started to think. She started to think about what had just happened, about Seeker’s spell to share a memory. Could she remember what Seeker had tried to put there, she wondered?

She searched her own mind, giving various fresh feeling memories a tug in search of what Seeker had given her. But they returned nothing. She could remember giving Seeker the consent she didn’t really need. She could remember the fingers against her temple growing hot, and passing out. Then, the next memory was of Seeker waking her up and ushering her out the door with the two farmers she’d turned into brief mercenaries. There wasn’t the bizarre memory of herself in the second person she’d wanted to see. Just… nothing.

“Oi!” snapped one of her escorts.

“W-what?” answered Lanri, her reverie broken. Before the woman could answer, she saw why. She was going the wrong way, having failed to turn at the last opportunity to do so without backtracking. “Oh, crap. Sorry,” she mumbled as she turned, and followed them along the correct route. “Now you know why she paid you to take me home.”

The joke seemed to go over well, and Lanri quickly disappeared back into her own head. She wanted to know what happened, damnit! It had been scary, magical, and intimate, to feel herself shrink before the grace of Seeker’s powers. And she’d looked so damn good as the guile faded from her eyes.

Oh. That’s where she put it.

A grin spread across Lanri’s face, now that she’d found the right thread to tug on. She could remember her- Seeker flaring her aura, which to Lanri felt eerily like flexing a magical missing limb, which hit closer to home than she’d like. A brief, bizarre pang of pain; a sense of loss at not having Seeker’s power, washed over her, and she made a conscious, profound effort to stamp the feeling out so she could pay attention to her own thoughts.

She’d been beautiful. She’d been the picture of loving grace in Seeker’s eyes. A mortal mind, small in comparison to her own, but valued no less for it. Now Lanri could, in her mind’s eye, see her own face slacken as that mind was strained past what it- she could keep up with. Seeker had felt a surge of power, and the thrill of conquest had briefly eclipsed the sincere concern and affection she usually felt for her.

This mortal that she was, usually a curious, neurotic creature, now focused singularly on Seeker. Her eyes obliviously fixed, tracking what they saw out of instinct rather than intent, and vulnerable beyond measure. A sleeping person can wake up and resist, but Lanri, in that moment, could not. She’d not even been able to consider it. So at Seeker’s mercy had she been.

The last thing Lanri had been able to remember before now, was Seeker pressing her lips to her own, and now she relived that as Seeker had experienced it. Warm, and tender, and the final stretch of power Seeker had needed to put her consciousness elsewhere.

When she’d broken the kiss, Lanri had giggled. An endearing, abnormally loud thing that spoke of bliss, and love, and no awareness to subdue them. Her pupils had been vast. Wide, black disks with sharp edges, rather than the fuzzy dots they probably were right now.

Seeker’d taken Lanri, one hand gently on her chin, and she’d happily followed the Heartwarden’s lead with an expression that told only how dumbstruck she was. When Seeker had told her “This must be why the others use their powers so liberally.” Lanri had utterly failed to register it, only giggling at hearing her voice.

Even now that she knew it had happened, Lanri could not remember her own side of this. Seeker had kept Lanri like that for a long time, whispering beautiful and awesome things to her as she skated along the edges of oblivion and euphoria, both at Seeker’s discretion.

Eventually, Seeker had guided her to the floor, posing her like a doll with the intent to draw her. Lanri saw herself through Seeker’s eyes. Her brave, devoted mortal, obedient beyond remark, and loyal beyond question. It was as Seeker produced her sketchbook and began to actually sketch the drooling woman that the memory seemed to run out.

It faded from that tender morning, to something else. On a cold and dark roof, Seeker had been looking down at a closed loop of chain, in a hand caked with dried blood. “And the collar?” she’d asked.

“That’s your problem, too,” came a different, familiar voice. Lanri felt her head swim. She knew this couldn’t be during what she’d come to think of as their first normal day together, even though she now remembered it like that. She’d blacked out for about an hour, she knew, but Seeker hadn’t left during that. Maybe the spell had gone wrong. Put a memory where it didn’t belong.

Or maybe Seeker wants me to see this.

“Are you okay?” asked one of the farmers, and Lanri looked at her. She swallowed and nodded, and made a point of looking where they were by now. The monastery was already in sight.

“The lady doesn’t want it back. Throw it in the ocean, melt it down for those art projects you like, put it on that melancholy mortal that’s waiting for you in the room below us to cheer her up… use your best judgment.”

After hearing that, Seeker had felt a surge of a base need to protect, and Lanri was so, so confused. If Seeker had shown her this on purpose, she couldn’t make sense of it. It was barely a memory, just a flash of one. A snippet of conversation that meant nothing. Was she the melancholy mortal? Did this other person think wearing a… what, a chain collar would make her happy? That it would protect her?

Did Seeker agree? Even today, they’d danced around the subject of what they are to each other, and Lanri knew she’d wear whatever label Seeker gave her with pride. And a collar would definitely qualify as one of those.

As they got closer and closer to the monastery, Lanri tried to focus on that. Nothing useful would come from trying to decide what Seeker meant until she could ask her. Just past the fence and gate, Lanri could see Mirabelle, smoking from a pipe. She grinned when she saw her, but faltered slightly when she noticed her escort didn’t have Seeker in it.

“Where’s her grace?” she asked as she opened the gate so Lanri could slip in.

“Off to deal with trouble, again,” Lanri wistfully answered. “Something in the city.”

“Oi, what about the rest of our pay?”

Both Lanri and Mirabelle turned to look at the burly farmers. “Pay?” The priestess crossed her arms, and gave Lanri a look. “Are these two owed anything?”

Lanri nodded. “Seeker promised them both two more platinum and two gold coins for bringing me here. But she already gave them one of each.”

Mirabelle considered that. “If her grace promised you pay, then pay you shall have.” With a slight bow, she stepped out of the way, and gestured them inside. “I don’t personally have enough to cover her debt, but the monastery’s coffers surely do.”

Hesitantly, the two farmers stepped through the gates, and Mirabelle closed it behind them. “You’re not on the hook for this, are you?”

Mirabelle snickered as she led the group into the building itself. “Oh, no. But if you say her grace promised them three months of pay to… what did they do, exactly?”

“Walk me home.”

Mirabelle’s snicker turned into a guffaw. “Oh, I do love angels,” she quietly said. “If you say she promised them three months of pay to walk you home, I’ll bet a pound of Aldressan pipe weed that Du Bois will want to settle that right away.”

“Do you even have that?” asked Lanri, skeptically. Aldressa, the elven kingdom, wasn’t obscenely far away by any stretch, but their herbs are still known for just how expensive they can get.

Mirabelle rolled her eyes, and produced a pouch which she held under Lanri’s nose as they walked, vaguely in the direction of the monastery’s library. It smelled wonderful. Earthy and rich, like coffee or old wooden furniture.

The two farmers were looking around the monastery with wide-eyed awe, and Lanri could relate. She’d grown up close enough to Cerene that coming into the city was a regular occurrence, and she’d spent a lot more time here while courting Faron. She’d never been inside before Seeker carried her across the threshold, either.

A few moments later, they found Du Bois still reading the same book as yesterday. The older man quirked an eyebrow at the farmers, and crossed his arms. “I really don’t think you need farm hands to manage my greenhouse, Mirabelle.”

Lanri was, frankly, glad to be alone, and almost back in their room. Like Mirabelle, Du Bois had taken Lanri’s word for it when told about Seeker’s debt to the two farmers, and it had unsettled her as much as it had charmed her.

That Seeker trusted her so much made sense. It was trivial for the Heartwarden to look into her mind; Seeker could prove to herself that Lanri was trustworthy. But the priests? Why did they all trust her so much? Was just being associated with Seeker really enough to warrant handing over so much money on her word, alone?

She sighed, and stepped in front of the door to their room. Doors were a pain, she’d quickly learned. She had to hold onto both crutches, while also managing to grasp the door knob, and turn it. It was doable, and not even that difficult. But it required so much more care and caution than it used to.

But, she managed it. With a satisfying creak, the door swung open and she stepped into the little room she and Seeker called home. Before she could close it, though, something caught her eyes. A shiny something.

With a firm push of her hip, the door swung closed behind her, and Lanri quickly made for it. She sat down on the bed, and pulled off her jacket and boot with her eyes glued to it.

It was a length of chain, closed into a loop. Relatively big links, each a little under an inch long. The same one from Seeker’s memory. The collar someone had suggested she should put on her melancholy mortal. A mix of base curiosity and academic interest came together, and she couldn’t help but pick it up. It was heavy and cold in her hand, and each link showed a distorted reflection of her and the room around her, tinted pink by the hue of the metal.

So Seeker had shared that memory deliberately. She must have. Seeker wanted her to notice this beautiful thing -it was far too big and heavy to call jewelry—, and surely do something with it. But what? Was she supposed to put it on? She couldn’t. It was far too small of a loop to fit over her head, and none of the links had any breaks in them.

It wasn’t an unpleasant idea, though, not really. If she could put it on for a bit, she’d happily do so, if only to find out how that would look on her. And if Seeker sincerely wanted her to wear it, she’d be content with that, as well. A collar around her neck wasn’t how she’d imagined their relationship might be formalized, but it had its appeal.

It would be an unambiguous statement to the world. A length of chain around her neck would look like oppression laid bare on its own, but with the fondness on her and Seeker’s faces, it would just tell the same story as their banter, but in fewer words. It would tell anyone paying attention that she was Seeker’s, and…

She let the thought trail off and die, as she focused on the length of chain in her hand. She hadn’t noticed at first, but one of the links wasn’t the rose gold so strongly associated with Ishi. It was silver, and it looked scratched.

The eye of an archeologist notices such things. If anything, she chastised herself a little for not noticing right away. She squinted at it, and shuffled a little closer to the room’s big windows to let the light catch it better. It wasn’t a scratch, she quickly noticed, but a very slight engraving. A series of divine runes. A stylized set of lines that flowed together into a single phrase.

“Le… bonheur… d’Ishi?” Lanri mumbled, as she called on her new understanding of the divine tongue to parse it, and pronounce it somewhat fluently. “Le bonheur d’Ishi.”

When she said it the second time, it reacted. The silver link seemed to flow, melting together before splitting open in the middle. When it severed completely, it pulsed a flash of light as bright as a summer’s sun, right into eyes that were used to the indoors on a cloudy day. She winced in pain, and dropped it as she brought her hands up to shield her eyes. A bright green and blue afterimage covered most of the inside of her eyelids.

When the pain subsided, and she opened her eyes, she found she could only see a dark blob of orange. It sent a shock of panic through her. Without Seeker there, being blinded wasn’t the fun kind of scary. It was mortally terrifying. Her breathing picked up, and she began to feel around the bed for her crutches, even as she consciously knew they’d be of no use.

She moved her head around, trying to use what was left of her peripheral vision to look around the room when she felt something. A snug pressure around her neck, that reminded her of Seeker’s grip. She moved her hand to it, and felt-

The collar.

On sheer instinct, she tried to pull it off, but it wouldn’t budge. The metal fit her comfortably, but as soon as she pulled on it, or tried to squeeze her fingers in underneath it, it was too tight. That didn’t stop her from trying, though. She pulled at it, grunting in frustration and pain as she bruised her own neck.

She… She tried to think. She took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm her down, and to assure herself she could breathe with the chain where it was. Her efforts were bizarrely effective. She kept blinking as she took deep, steadying breaths, kept trying to will her eyes to see… something, and found that she could by now just barely see through the afterimage. Her crutches had fallen to the floor, she saw, and she got on her hands and knees to pick them up. They’d quickly become artifacts of security, and she wanted to keep them close, so she could…

So she could… what? Wait for Seeker to come save her faster somehow? It was… silly to even bother picking them up. But… but getting back onto the bed didn’t seem like it would matter much, either. She should just wait for Seeker to come save her, she realized with a giggle. That’s what the magnificent Heartwarden did. She saved Lanri from… things. Lanri raised her head, and looked at the door into their room. Seeker would come through there, she knew, and… maybe she should make sure to move somewhere where… uhm… where Seeker would find her.

She crawled a little closer to the door, and wondered how that would go. Seeker would probably be angry, o—or… or maybe she’d be happy that she was wearing the collar. Both had an appeal. If… If Seeker got angry at her… that would be bad, but it also… wouldn’t be. Seeker was awesome when she was angry. And if she was happy about it, then… then they…

Gods, it was so, so hard to think straight. What had happened, again? Her thoughts swam like she’d been hit in the head by a passing wagon. Had she hit her head? She… she looked around, and remembered she was on the floor. Maybe she’d tripped, and… yeah, that sounded plausible. She tried to push herself off, to get onto her feet, but her arms were jelly, and one of her feet didn’t seem to work right, so she just hit the carpeted floor again, with a soft thud.

She was… where was she? She craned her head around despite the almost insurmountable aversion to doing anything. She was on the floor, by the foot of her and Seeker’s bed, and she was… confused. She realized she knew she was confused, and that felt like progress. Seeker would… Seeker! Seeker was beautiful. Seeker would fix it. Seeker would… Seeker would tell her what was happening, and what she should do.

And then she would do it. Because… because that seemed so easy, and nice. And deciding what to do herself would be hard, and actually making herself do it would be impossible.

She smiled at herself, and giggled. She’d come up with a good plan, here. She’d just stay here, and wait for Seeker.