They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
"They're not starting with preconceptions or anything."
"I know. They've been very nice."
"Are you sure you're the only one -"
"I'm not sure. But I never heard of another Penumbra."
"- which is sort of good and sort of bad." Sigh.
" - so it might be only her for the worlds."
"We can probably trade for it, they're - twitchy but they're not - if they were convinced we're trustworthy -"
"Maulabel's not blue, she said, she might just be twitchy because she's out of her depth."
"It wouldn't be impossible to do it with a regular Shine and a Shadow -"
"You told me it shouldn't be impossible for me to steer a regular shadow-walk."
"...it wasn't."
"Yeah, but still. You're probably it until a few more generations of magic study have gone by."
"Mm."
"Sorry. If you'd rather find somewhere that doesn't want it this desperately I guess we can but they're being very nice about it."
"We are not trying to forcibly stop them we have no idea what else they can do."
"If they're leaving anyway -"
"They might come back. We are not trying to stop them."
"No one's voted for you, Neli -"
"And that's not the capacity in which I'm here. We are not trying to forcibly stop them from leaving if they decide to leave."
"I'll stop translating if you're difficult."
"What does Aitim have on you -"
" - he's his father, remember, it's that stupid fucking thing -"
" - wait, really?"
"I might want to go suddenly."
"Okay. Please don't strand me."
"I won't."
"And then when you feel safe we'll figure out what's next."
"Yeah."
"We could at least have greys on standby, make the call based on the circumstances instead of making it in advance by not even being prepared -."
"No."
"I'm going over your head on this one, I'm going to ask if we can have a team."
Sigh.
"And if you neglect to translate plans to leave that's treason, Kisantami."
"Damn right we want someone who will do their job -"
"Stay until we have a replacement -"
"What did they just say -"
"I wasn't listening. Have a lovely evening."
"Aitim -"
"He's within his rights. Threatening to kill people is a very blunt instrument and sometimes employing it will backfire -"
"You just said you'd have people shot -"
"Because if you'd taken umbrage and walked off in a huff we wouldn't have lost anything."
Afen leaves.
And when they're done there's a knock on the door and a young man with light green hair says "Hello!" with only a bit of an accent.