"If you could just say more about the subjectivity of it, it might give me an idea of something new to ask the alethiometer," says Ice. "Obviously having it look directly at Aya is an option, if it just can't get enough information off the necklace, but ideally we'd exhaust the possibilities first."
"Or Prime would just give her what she wants," mutters Phix.
"Let's not be weird and pressure-y about that," says Ice. "Annie?"
"...Sorry," says Annie. "I just had a mental image of Aya holding a soul bird and the soul bird looking at Prime and wanting to be petted and him refusing to do it. I think I would sooner let the alethiometer look at me than give her another - thing to pine about. I should work just as well, shouldn't I?"
"You might," says Ice, "unless reciprocated necklace arrangements look different or are different forms of breakable than one-sided ones, in which case you might not."
"Poor hypothetical soul-bird," murmurs Phix, scribbling.
"You've got a better shot at getting him than us. One hopes," says Phix, stretching a wing and then unhaving the set thereof. "Like, if being Aya right now were not staggeringly unpleasant we could be a lot more leisurely about getting her the hell fixed, that would be nice."
"Anyway, uh, subjectivity - ugh, this is all depressing enough to make me wish me and Aldaras had happened the other way around, because she's a me but like I keep saying I touched it and he already loved me and I can't make heads or tails of how Prime's feeling. Is Aya any better at reading him? The question's bound to be of exceeding importance."
"Right, okay. Mmm. It's pretty obvious he's spent a very large amount of time being self sacrificing and - er, noble. And I believe that at some point he realized that he, personally, could not take any more self-inflicted punishment. So he's sort of. Doing whatever he likes, keeping people at arm's length, subtly lashing out, being really bitter about everything..."
"... Uh. Understands that while he's useful in a - doing things kind of way, he is way worse off than the rest of us. He's a useful resource to be used, and that's about it. I completely eclipse him in emotional stability. All of us do, actually, even Conduit. ... Don't tell Conduit I said that."
"Yes, but - think of it this way. You're surrounded by happy couples when you strongly suspect that you're incapable of being one half of a happy couple. Then the one person you suspect you could actually manage to pull it off with falls very much in love with you. Through a necklace. And every minute he's not flinging himself at her, she's - having less than she should, and isn't happy. And he can't even manage to fling himself at her, because emotional instability and being used to being alone and unsure of how to stop acting like he is."
"Okay. So, he's kind of inscrutable to me, but if we assume Aya's putting in overtime figuring him out and getting more or less correct answers, this will not suffice as a long-term holding pattern. At least one of the two of them needs fixing, soon, I'll get myself a soul animal if I have to - or I'm recommending the Coma Or Death-Until-Further-Notice option. Because if we assume she's putting in overtime figuring him out and getting more or less correct answers, and that these are them - she loves him. He's hurting. She can't help. She is actively making it worse by being complicated and needy and she's probably just about incapable of staying out of his way, if that would even improve the situation, so this is constantly on her mind -" Headshake. "It's no good. I'm sure something, somewhere, if we look through enough universes, can un-necklace her and then Prime's psychological problems will be his own business, but..."
"But does she know that? I doubt she expects him to lie to her under ordinary circumstances, and it's in the little booklet that Adarins are bad liars, but - it is not an optimal setup for having total faith in the utterance, is it. Hearing exactly what you need to hear like that."
"Hello. This is a - not a public service announcement, I guess, but we have been gossiping terribly about you behind your back and thought you might like to know that it is Adarin-general-consensus that if Prime ever tells you he loves you he will not be lying to make you feel better or anything."
"They also strongly suspect that he does, in fact, have feelings for you, quite a lot even, but is - it's not really funny, so I won't say 'hilariously incompetent' - decidedly incompetent at doing anything about it, or at least expects to be, so he's not even trying."
"Aww," says Vernaia, and she nuzzles him. "Thanks."
"Anytime."
"I'm tempted? I'll do it if we get desperate about Spring, anyway, and think the alethiometer could come up with something if it looked at me. But this isn't because I think it would be a good Therapy Animal, I just know that Aldaras would be happy to snuggle it and I don't expect it to interfere all that much with my daily life."
"I feel pretty emotionally stable? I mean, the dragon thing's still sort of distressing, But that's understandable. I'm not going to throw up walls of sarcasm or be a huge grump or act at all like Prime because of it, it just sucks. Um. I don't know, is there an - emotional stability test?"
"Although I can substitute for notebooks usefully under some circumstances," Path adds.
"But notebooks still work, so I'm not exhorting you all to come to Alethia with me and get daemons."