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Chelsa buries herself in her friends, and the warmth of the world that Harley isn't on anymore. She doesn't understand him. She never will. But there's Corona, sun-scorching and intense; there's Amdon, her oldest and closest; there's Anneia, sweet and smiling; there's Sandre, cuddly and fun; there's Tima, pretty-kindling and empathetic; there's Pacco, bright and deferent; there's Jony, hot as a kiln; Lionara hot as molten glass. And Aelise herself, who makes so many compromises but who does love Chelsa after all.
Harley wasn't like that one cold, cold girl, who - she wasn't even technically a sociopath. Sociopaths kindle like everyone else. She was just - cold. Like an airless environment in which no fire can burn.
But Aelise had her killed, and Chelsa made sure no one would miss her, and if anything like that ever happened again, Chelsa has every confidence that Aelise would make it right. Harley's one thing. He can just be - out of sight, out of mind. Aelise would never expect Chelsa to compromise on the existence of such a terrible cold.
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warmfeelings
queensidecastle
"Maybe you could. You've got time to think about it, anyway."
Mehitabel nods. "And if I do manage to do it for you nobody else will see. Because we're secret."
"What would happen if Chelsa knew you were not on the planet listening to her say good morning every day?"
"I don't like her one bit," Mehitabel announces. "In fact I think I hate her."
queensidecastle
"Good thing you're living in the only place where you can safely say that, huh?"
"Yes, but there should be more places like that." Mehitabel ponders. "What do you keep people safe from?"
queensidecastle
"Just about everything. Except Chelsa. It's possible I could keep people safe from Chelsa too, but I can't experiment with that, because when I make a change to what my Gift covers it's the same change for everyone I'm covering. And most of those right now are Chelsa's very special friends."
Mehitabel makes a face.
"How did you find out what you could do?"
Mehitabel giggles. "What about the rest of it - that you could cover more people, and that you could change what from but not per person, and stuff?"
"How did you get to be able to? How did you know when you could?"
queensidecastle
"I can tell who I'm covering; that part wasn't hard. As for getting to... I tried for a while once when I was pretty young, and it didn't work at all, and then years and years later I tried again and it worked fine. Maybe I was doing something different, or maybe it was all the practice the first time around, or maybe my Gift just grew an extra trick as I got older."
"Do many peoples' Gifts grow like that?" Mehitabel asks.
queensidecastle
"Sometimes. Not that often, but it happens. More often if you use it a lot, and more often than that if you keep trying new things with it."
"Does anyone's Gift ever shrink?"
"So Chelsa's won't ever just shrivel up all by itself."
Mehitabel frowns. "Drat."
queensidecastle
"Anyway, if it shrivelled up too fast, we'd have the same problem as if she just up and died one day. People wouldn't take the transition well."