"I wasn't getting a lot done. And, you know, time is next to meaningless, and when I finish this up I won't have a lot else to do. Feel free to interrupt unless, I dunno, we get to a point where I am somehow holding things up."

"Okay. It's nice having friends here, such as you and Fazil and Mahdi."

- she smiles a little bit like she is trying not to laugh at him.

"Yeah."

He leaves. 

......well she was pretty sure that whatever she did wrong earlier was being implicitly declared unimportant and forgiven, but now he looks sad again, so maybe it was not, or maybe she did something else wrong? Was she supposed to say something else there? She feels like she really shouldn't be this bad at this with a headband on.

She draws a devil in the corner of her paper and then goes back to trying and failing to focus on predicting sources of civilizational upheaval.

"I think you should stop talking to her, because it's unhealthy and probably immoral to cultivate feelings for someone you have no intention of marrying."

"I have given this opinion due consideration."

" - I guess it's kind of different for you since you could, by law -"

"No."

"And good for you, on that, because it doesn't sound like a good arrangement for anyone involved, but then we're back to - you're just going to hurt yourself. Or her. Or a kid."

"Murdering people is against the rules on this plane."

"That's really really really not the only way to hurt a kid."

"I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm not going to stop talking with her."

Sigh. "How's it going on Cecelia's kids -"

"You wanna hear the stupid idea or the good one?"

After a while of trying and failing to write anything useful, she shuts the notebook and leaves it on the table and heads into the rain forest again. (She waits until she's pretty sure Hagan isn't watching her. She doesn't know which things she's done but she's pretty sure that being seen storming off into the forest again would make things worse.)

She has the impulse to bash her head against a tree. She only actually does this once. As expected, it doesn't help at all, just kind of makes her head hurt.  

She sits down and sighs.

It's not really surprising that she's terrible at making and maintaining friendships. She's never done it before. Probably it's a skill that she doesn't have, and she's having a rough time learning it. But she can't see what she's doing wrong at all, and the things she would naively point to as likely to cause trouble are never the things that seem to actually precede it, so she isn't really sure how she's supposed to figure out what she's doing wrong. Maybe it's something specifically cultural? It's got to be something that seems subtle to her, maybe something she doesn't even realize she's doing. She could ask Fazil, maybe, except that Hagan is talking to him, and - it seems rude to talk to his friends for advice, somehow, if she keeps hurting him.

The parrot perches in the canopy above her head and makes a leaf fall down on her. She blows it out of her face. It doesn't flutter prettily away, just sort of sadly flops over and hits the ground.

Valentine would give her advice, but she isn't sure Valentine would know what she was talking about. Matt doesn't know her, and also Hagan just went to him, so it seems kind of inappropriate to approach him for advice. Her sister would talk to her, but she'd not sure she wants to talk to her sister about it, and also not sure that her sister will understand what her concerns are. She's even less likely to guess whatever Hagan's upset about is.

She could talk to the pegasus. The pegasus definitely won't have advice, but it also won't be able to judge her, because it has no friends, and also can't talk.

Cecelia and her sister wander into view, a ways away. Cecelia isn't particularly affiliated with Hagan, even though Hagan is the person assigned to get her kids back. It'd be bad if she were upset with him, but she probably won't be, because Hagan hasn't really done anything wrong at all. She's more likely than the others to have noticed whatever's up with Hagan, since she's pretty consistently seemed more culturally similar to him than to her or Elizabeth. And she did say that sort of compelling stuff about relationships, before.

The sister leaves to head back to the table and the book pile. Cecelia looks up and folds her hands and sighs, then heads back towards her house.

Korva finds herself getting up and intercepting her.

"Hi. Uh. - it's utterly unimportant but I was wondering if you had a minute."

"Sure. I guess. What is it?"

"I - think I keep making Hagan upset with me and I have no idea why. I realize you haven't been paying attention to most of us but I just - I have no idea who to ask about what I'm doing wrong."

"Did you try asking him?"

"...no. But - I don't want to make him deal with that, if he doesn't want to talk about whatever it is that keeps upsetting him?"

"Do you also feel like whatever it was, you probably deserve the upsetness, and that asking him how you can fix it would constitute trying to get out of your justly desired punishment?"

"I would not have put it that way but maybe?"

"I don't actually know whether that's right, I'm just thinking about how I might feel if Rana were suddenly upset with me and I had no understanding of why. I think that I would be tempted to stay very quiet and hope that eventually he quietly forgave me, but then of course I might do the same thing again, and I don't want to hurt him just because I don't know the best words to bring something up.

"I think if it were me - I would hope that I would wait until he wasn't very upset right in the moment, and then tell him that I'd thought that he might be upset with me, and I didn't know why he would be, but since I didn't want to hurt him I would like to know why, so that I could avoid hurting him again in the future."

"You realize we're not - the thing that you and Rana are. We're just friends."

"Oh, but a friend is one of the most valuable things a person can have! More than gold, more than diamonds, and certainly much more valuable than either while the queen of our realm can give out the others with little consequence. A true friend, a person who you can really trust to value your interests regardless of expedience or benefit to themselves - that isn't something one ought to throw away lightly. Lots of people don't even have one. So I think if you mean that he's really your friend, really someone you can trust, or you think he might be if you don't keep hurting him, then you mustn't give that up over not wanting to be momentarily embarrassed, or not thinking that you're worthy of his good opinion. I expect he's probably perfectly capable of judging for himself whether he ought to think well of you or not, no matter what you do."