-----

Ioan pulled together a stack of eir notes and, with a little concentration and a gesture, moved them over to a once-blank notebook, the pages now filled with eir scratchy shorthand. To this was added one of eir nicer pens, clipped to the cover, and a few slips of foolscap besides.

Tucking those under eir arm, ey walked over to May's desk and bent down to give the skunk a kiss atop her head, right between her ears. "I'm heading out. No messing with my pens, okay?"

Rather than the usual 'do not die' joke, she turned on her stool, looped her arms up around eir shoulders, and pressed her nose to eirs. "You will be okay, yes?"

Ey hesitated. Something about her tone pointed more towards anxiety than simple seriousness. Ey leaned forward to set eir notebook down, tugged up on eir slacks, and settled to eir knees in front of her. "Of course, May. Will you?"

"I will be fine," she said, smiling. "I am just a little worried today, is all."

"Any particular reason why?"

"I just am. I am trying to build trust, but..." She shrugged.

"Want me to leave a fork behind?"

"Will they be intolerable and antsy?"

Ey laughed. "Depends on how much pestering you do."

She lifted her snout enough to lick eir nose-tip, then shoved at em playfully. "I am busy, my dear."

"You fork more than anyone I know, you could just--"

"I am trying to tell you to get out of here, Ioan," she said, grinning in earnest. "Do not mind a little bit of anxiety. I am sorry that that spilled over. I will think on it and we will talk later. Good luck, have fun, and do not die, okay?"

Ey shook eir head and stood again, grabbing eir notebook. "Skunks. I swear..."

Ey stepped out of the sim before she could kick eir shin.

Ey ordered eir usual coffee and staked out eir usual spot on the couch. Rather than getting to work while ey waited for True Name, ey simply sat and enjoyed eir coffee as best ey could, staring off into nothing while mulling over May's words.

*You will be okay, yes?*

Ey frowned and shifted eir gaze down to eir coffee, half gone by now. There were relatively few things that would bring about such anxiety in May, and ey knew the majority of them stemmed from within herself.

She had occasionally gotten upset at em, usually when ey'd not picked up on some cue that she'd given for some emotional need ey wasn't meeting. In each case, she would express as best she could after the initial burst of anxiety. Her down-tree instance was another source, though that hatred she'd borne for so long had softened to something more like distaste of late.

All of the other times, though, had come from within. Whatever dire emotions that dwelt beneath the chipper, goofy, sarcastic, and delightfully earnest layer that made up the most of her would peek through and a little spark of something more profound and inexplicable would come over her. 

Ey frowned down to eir coffee and considered whether ey should start laying in supplies in case she asked em to leave should waves of uncontrollable emotion take her, that 'overflowing' that seemed to affect most --- if not all --- of the clade. If this was the first sign, though, ey at least had some time yet.

"Mx. Bălan?"

Ey jolted and sat upright. True Name stood on the other side of the low table from em, not yet having made the move to sit. "Sorry, True Name."

She smiled kindly and bowed. "May I join you? You looked quite deep in thought, and I am happy to meet up at another time."

Returning the bow apologetically, ey gestured toward her usual spot on the couch. "No, no. Sorry, I was a bit stuck up in my head. Could probably do with getting out more often."

The skunk nodded and sat, blinking a cone of silence into being. She lapped at a bit of the whipped cream atop her mocha to get down to the drink. "I quite understand. Bit too cooped up of late?"

"A little, I guess. Heads down, maybe. End of the year performances, helping May write a monologue, working on my own next project."

She grinned. "Plenty on your plate, then. May I ask how May Then My Name is doing?"

"Oh, she's alright."

Ey must have hesitated before responding or not kept eir own anxiety out of eir voice, as True Name's expression fell. "Say hi for me?"

Ey nodded. "Of course."

"I am also curious to hear about her monologue. It is something I remember thinking about occasionally and yet never got around to doing. I am pleased that one of us is."

That also felt like a closed topic given its context of being purpose-built, so ey shook eir head. "I'm not comfortable talking about that without her permission. Sorry, True Name."

She smiled disarmingly and held up her free paw. "Of course, Ioan, no trouble. Can you tell me about your own project, perhaps?"

Ey opened eir mouth, closed it again, then laughed. "I feel like I laid a bunch of conversational landmines around me. Hopefully it's not uncomfortable, but with all that went down on Castor, I've been toying with rewriting *On the Perils of Memory* as a play."

The skunk got a strange look on her face, then laughed. "Oh really? Cheeky! I do not know if I will be able to make it to a performance, but I will be delighted to read the script, if you wind up publishing it."

Ey laughed as well, more relieved than anything. "I'll make sure you get a copy, then. Was worried you'd be upset by it."

She waved her paw dismissively. "Of course not, my dear. That whole kerfuffle was, what, forty years ago? Forty-five? It has been comfortably relegated to memory and is thus fair game for artists."

Nodding, ey finished eir coffee and set the cup down on the table so ey could pull out eir notebook and get to writing.

Ey worked for a few minutes. They both did, if True Name's thoughtful gaze up into nothing was anything to go by. Ey'd wound eir way past all those conversational mines --- May, her monologue, the play about Qoheleth --- and now felt free to relax into the afternoon.

"You know," the skunk said thoughtfully, bringing em out of eir writing. "I was quite pleased when that book came out."

"What, *Perils*?"

She nodded. "It was something of a relief in a strange, roundabout way. While I would have preferred that it had not ended the way it did, it wound up being a pretty efficient way to bring all of that to the surface. A lot of very smart people have been thinking about it over the last few decades, and I am pleased to see some progress being made, especially on the therapeutic side."

Ioan tilted eir head thoughtfully. "Sounds like, yeah. At least, from what I hear from May and Codrin. A Finger Pointing has been pretty tight-lipped about her own therapy and I don't think End Waking went along with it."

"He does not seem the type, no."

"Is it working out well for you, too?"

"Well enough," she said. "Though I am not comfortable discussing beyond that."

Ey nodded. "Right, sorry."

"It is alright. Thank you for understanding." She raised her cup towards em in a small toast. "As to your book, however, I found it most interesting in that I was able to learn much about the assessment and impact of the events on the...ah, liberal side of the clade."

Ioan had to focus on keeping eir expression neutral. True Name hadn't always had the kindest of words for the self-proclaimed liberal Odists. "I'll admit, I was worried as to how the book would go over with the conservatives."

"There were no assassins in the night, I trust?" she asked, grinning.

"Uh...well, no," ey stammered, caught off guard by the humor. "Actually, no contact at all. I don't think I've even talked about what happened with the other side of the clade until now."

"'The other side of the clade' is a more appropriate phrase, is it not? We are spread along a spectrum. Those like Dear, May Then My Name, and Hammered Silver at one end, those such as Praiseworthy, Those Who Forge, and Teeth Of Death somewhere in the middle, and then me and my ilk on the other. Death Itself and her stanza, out of all of us, seemed to have escaped that spectrum." The skunk finished her drink sitting in a silence for a minute, an acknowledgement of the losses from that stanza, then leaned forward to set her cup down before continuing. "To soothe any fears you may have, it was not me who hired Guōweī, nor am I pleased with what happened and how."

"Who did? Do you know?"

She smiled pityingly at em. "Ioan, please."

"Right, of course you do. I don't imagine you feel comfortable telling me who, though."

"It is not a matter of comfort, my dear, it is one of information hygiene. The fewer people who know, the less of a chance there is of plans going awry. Besides," she nodded toward em. "We considered the impact that *Perils* would have on the System, and leaving that element of mystery in it accomplished our goals."

"Goals?" Ey shook eir head. "How do you mean?"

The skunk folded her paws in her lap, leaning back against the couch. "What would you say the current public opinion is of the book?"

"I...well, hmm. If you'd asked me that a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to say, but I've been digging back into it for this project. I guess most seem to see it as a sort of cautionary tale. I didn't publish the internal report, so I think the fact that it read like investigative journalism made people treat it almost like a work of fiction."

"Yes, and mystery plays a role in that. This is why we suggested you not publish the clade-side report. There is an appropriate level of mystery in what you did publish that aligned with our goals."

"So, similar to what you and Jonas did with the *History*."

There was the briefest flicker of a wince on the skunk's face at the mention of Jonas, quickly mastered. She replaced it with a smile and gave a hint of a bow. "Yes. In a relatively short time, both have started to fade into a near mythical status. A credit to your skills as a writer, Mx. Bălan."

Ey smiled warily. "Thanks. Why, though?"

"Why are they becoming myths?" She shrugged. "Life on the System is shaped by the modes of our existence. Creativity has assumed a level of primacy that was not feasible phys-side, and so successful creative works accelerate more quickly toward myth, here."

Ey nodded. "And you? What do you think of it?"

"Of *Perils*?"

"That, the possible play, the events as a whole."

There was a moment of quiet as the skunk thought, brushing a paw over one of her knees to smooth out her slacks. "With the understanding that there is much that I cannot tell you about my feelings on the proceedings, I found it all frustrating and unnerving. I worked with Qoheleth on several occasions throughout the years, and watching his...I will not say decline, as I think the analogy does not hold, but his metamorphosis from Odist to Qoheleth touched on some primal distress. As I have said, I am not pleased with what happened or how. I liked him quite a bit."

This seemed to deserve another moment of silence, one of acknowledgement rather than thoughtfulness, and so ey let it play out, the muffled clatter of the rest of the cafe coming through the cone of silence suddenly much more present.

"What news from Castor had you thinking about *Perils*?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Well, I do not associate aliens or time modification or the...ah, struggles that Answers Will Not Help experienced with what happened with Qoheleth."

Eir mind raced. How could ey possibly bring up the Name? That Codrin now knew it and that knowledge --- at least at one layer of remove --- had propagated through the clade? Surely she knew that, at least, but how could ey say that out loud to her?

"Mx. Bălan?" True Name was frowning, whether at eir silence or expression ey couldn't guess. "I am guessing that the answer is complicated."

"It...uh, yeah. What Codrin heard on Artemis...I mean..."

The skunk tilted her head, gestured for em to continue.

*Doesn't she know?* ey thought. *She has to. Is she faking it?*

"Well," ey stammered, hastily backtracking through eir train of thought. Perhaps ey should feign ignorance as well if that was indeed what she was doing. "All that about getting lost, and how fourthrace experienced similar and also dealt with long-term effects."

Still frowning, she nodded.

"It was all bound up in some clade-eyes-only thoughts," ey hastened to add, hoping that the slight untruth would be enough. "Eir worries about Dear, Death Itself...but I don't want to say any more."

That seemed to have been enough, as the tenseness that had been building in her shoulders relaxed, though her frown remained. "Of course, yes, I did not mean to press. My apologies."

Ey shook eir head and waved a hand. "It's okay, I just had to disentangle all those thoughts really quickly."

"You are a very thoughtful person," she said, a hint of a smile creeping back onto her muzzle. "In the common sense as well as in the sense that you seem to be at all times full of thoughts."

"I lost track of the number of times May's accused me of living up in my head a long time ago, yeah."

"There is no harm in it, my dear. It serves you well." She settled back against the couch once more and sighed. "Pleasant as it has been, I have spent more time talking than intended. I would like to get a bit of work done before I lose track of the threads, if that is alright."

Ey smiled and nodded. "Of course, True Name."

As the skunk's focus drifted away, ey opened eir notebook again and stared at what ey'd written already. The words were marks on the page, ey could tell, but eir mind was so wrapped up in the conversation that ey wasn't able to make sense of them. Too much had gone on in too short a timespan. All that talk of Qoheleth, of the conservatives' opinions of the events, or at least of True Name's.

She'd been so candid about it all, just as she'd been growing more candid with em in general over the last few years. She had all the reason in the world to use her centuries of skills intentionally, though. Ey'd never met anyone so tightly in control of themself as her. Perhaps even now, dozens, hundreds of sensorium messages were flying across her stanza preparing a soft landing for eir play in light of the fact that others now knew the Name.

And yet...

And yet ey couldn't stop emself from thinking, *Holy shit, I don't think she knows.*
