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Kiri stays away for weeks, and then she's back, and then she goes to the Ardelay house to learn her way around it and make (thoroughly advised) decisions about staff maintenance, and then she's back, and then she leaves again to be at the Chialto house, but this time Ko is allowed to go with her.
(At a safe distance.)
It's a long boring ride, or it would be boring, but Kiri has learned to make harmless fire-shapes in the air and entertains him with swirls and streamers of it crackling alongside the carriage until she decides to take a nap.
He's not going to be able to sleep in this carriage, it bumps too much, but he can scoot over and sort of nudge part of her onto his lap while she mumbles words.
(And then lurch away from her once she stops partway through "interior decoration".)
She smiles a sad smile at him like she always does when she wakes up and finds him halfway across the room. Or in this case, the carriage.
"You're not even huggy," he observes, on this occasion. "Not like Jayce is anyway." (Jayce is a very huggy little boy.)
She shrugs. "If I didn't have a family and it was just me, and distant Ardelay relatives I barely know, and stuff, then that would be fine probably. We just used to be next to each other all the time and now we can't. I don't need hugging, I just want my brothers."
Ko thinks about this, but doesn't get much of anywhere. Kiri's the smart one, all sweela, always thinking and writing. He isn't going to come up with a solution if she can't, probably.
"I could just try it again," he says.
"You didn't like it last time," she says.
"Yeah, but, you weren't mean about it or anything."
"Why would I be mean because you had to go to the bathroom?"
"I dunno." He fidgets, and looks out the window.
She makes a fire-dart that follows the path of his eyes.
They arrive in Chialto, and wait for the arrival of the prince.
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liakoura
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
calescent
Kiri giggles.
"It's just as well it's me. I couldn't have."
"It's just as well it's me. I couldn't have."
The prince giggles. He is happy that Kiri and her brother get hugs!
liakoura
"I'm gonna go see if cousin Linsel is here and wants to play cards," says Aleko after a silence, and he skips off.
calescent
When he is gone, Kiri asks the prince: "Do you think about being a girl a lot?"
"I dunno," he says. "How much is a lot? I do some."
It would be nice to be a girl. But not nicer than being a boy is, just different. Sometimes he is not allowed to do things like wear pretty necklaces because he is not a girl, but if he were a girl there would be other things he wouldn't be allowed to do. Really what he wants is for all those rules to go away so he can do whatever he feels like, regardless of if they are supposed to be girl things or boy things.
It would be nice to be a girl. But not nicer than being a boy is, just different. Sometimes he is not allowed to do things like wear pretty necklaces because he is not a girl, but if he were a girl there would be other things he wouldn't be allowed to do. Really what he wants is for all those rules to go away so he can do whatever he feels like, regardless of if they are supposed to be girl things or boy things.
He shrugs.
calescent
"I don't actually know if most people do that. I don't think about being a boy generally though."
"I don't know either, but I don't think they do," he says. "Because if everyone did why would there be the rules?"
calescent
"Well, I don't know, if for some reason it was important that half and no more or less of everyone was doing each thing it might be a good way to divide it up since if you let everybody pick it might not be half? But I doubt it's important like that for half of everyone to not wear necklaces even if they feel like it."
"And there aren't any things that are like that and if there was a reason like that for the rules everybody's forgotten it so if they all thought about the rules like I do there would stop being them." Stop being the rules, that is. The rules would stop being.
calescent
"Yeah. So probably there aren't very many people who think about it like you but I guess there might be some small number."
He nods. "Yeah, maybe."
calescent
"Maybe there's a word for it. I will pay attention and let you know if I find one."
He smiles. "Okay!"
calescent
"I wonder if it even makes sense to say that you are a boy. Maybe you are just a something, which is shaped like a boy."
He considers this notion.
"Yeah. I think that sounds right."
"Yeah. I think that sounds right."
calescent
"But not a girl who is shaped like a boy. If I were shaped like a boy one day I don't think my thoughts would feel like yours. So you're something else and I don't know a word for it which will make it hard to write down."
"Why do you wanna write it down?" he wonders.
calescent
"I write everything down, so I can remember it right later if I need to. But don't worry, it's all in code, it was even before I started being prime, Jayce snooped once so I made up a cipher."
"That sounds like a you thing to do," says the prince, smiling.
"Anyway, if you don't know a word for it can't you just write it down in other words?"