Ioan Bălan — 2350

True Name, having gathered her wits about her at least enough to trudge out of the lake and fork herself dry, requested directions to somewhere she could think alone. Ioan directed her down the path toward the rock, explaining that it’d be far enough away that they wouldn’t hear each other if she didn’t want a cone of silence, but that she’d still be able to see them at the entry point if anything happened.

“I need to think. No one from the stanza is replying, and I do not want to speak to Jonas,” she explained, then rubbed her paws over her face. “Or perhaps I just need to sulk. I will return in an hour.”

She bowed to em and May then trudged off down the path, head bowed.

May glared after her down-tree instance with her paws bunched into fists and ears splayed, then whirled on Ioan, waving a cone of silence into being.

“Ioan, I am not at all happy,” she said, voice frigid. “I know that none of this is your fault except inasmuch as you have been meeting her for coffee, but I am having a hard time keeping my anger to myself.”

Ey took a long breath, scrubbed eir hands over eir face, and paced in an abbreviated line before her. “I know, May, I don’t blame you. I’m completely baffled. Go ahead.”

“I spend two hundred fucking years trying to get away from that life, from all of her fucking schemes,” she said, voice quickly rising in volume. “And then I spend the last three trying to calm down so that I quit burning up whenever I so much as think about her, and now this. Look at us! Hiding in the woods from assassins. Assassins!“

Ey averted eir gaze from her. Nothing ey could say would help, and ey knew ey knew some remote part of emself was feeling much of what she was, too.

“Her and fucking Jonas are still doing whatever the fuck it is that they do, and now they are doing it to each other. Every time I think I can just settle down with you and get away from that, it just seeps right back in. I know that you were trying to do right by us, meeting up with her, but I really, really wish you had not.”

“May, I–“

“At least tell me what happened there.”

“Right. We met up as usual. She was looking pretty terrible, and when pressed on it, she said she was struggling and wasn’t comfortable elaborating. When asked about Secession day, she said she and Jonas were going to have, in his words, a gathering. She said her instances were going to merge down for this and that one of them said he was looking for her. She kept getting anxious and looking around at everyone there, and then jumped up, I guess when merges stopped coming. Guōweī came in from the back and walked right toward us, then we stepped home and grabbed you.”

May crossed her arms and watched em pace and talk, her expression softening, though the frown remained. “And that is it? No talk of these…what, reactionary groups?”

Ey shook eir head. “None today, none in the past. It seems like something she’d keep close to the chest.”

“And it was in a cone with visual ACLs on secure?”

“Yeah.”

“But Guōweī was still walking right for you?”

Ey nodded.

The skunk looked down to the ground, brow furrowed. “I suppose if he knew she was there, that would be proof enough. I imagine a place like there chooses to display it as blurred out rather than completely hidden.”

“I guess,” ey said, though the words lacked conviction to eir ears. “Then she grabbed my hand and told me to go.”

“She grabbed–” She hesitated, mastered a sudden swell of anger, then subsided. “It makes sense, I suppose. The chance that you would head some place she and Jonas could not guess is greater than if she had chosen. Ioan, my dear, you are pacing a hole in the path.”

“Sorry, May,” ey said, trying to stand still. “It’s just a little nuts.”

The skunk sighed, held out her paw to em, and gave her best smile. “I know, my dear. I am really fucking confused and really fucking pissed, I do not imagine you are feeling much better. Would walking help?”

Ey took her paw in his hand and nodded. “Please.”

Remembering their promise to stay in sight, they walked slowly back and forth along the short stretch of beach near the entry point, still within sight of True Name, kneeling on the rock by the outlet of the lake.

“I am sorry that overflowed onto you for a moment, Ioan. I did not mean to yell at you.”

“You’re fine, May, you just had some guy chasing you around our house trying to kill you or whatever, you’re allowed to be pissed.”

She snorted and shook her head. “He had only just arrived less than a minute before you. I imagine True Name’s fork said something about being with you but not where, so they came to our place and saw someone that looked vaguely like her. I am surprised they did not just wait for her. How eager they must be. Perhaps they wanted it to be as close to simultaneous as possible for precisely this reason and one simply jumped the gun.”

“Makes about as much sense as any of this.” Ey looked out across the lake at where the other skunk sat, head bowed. “What do we do now?”

“I do not know, my dear. I have had precisely as many assassins after me as you, now, and I do not know what to do about True Name. I guess just stay here for a bit and gather our wits.”

Ey sighed, bent down, and plucked at a pebble on the bank until it came free of the sand, tossing it into the water. Anything to keep from spiraling back into anxiety. “I’ll have to go back and clear the house at some point. I’ll lock down the ACLs to us and any immediate guests.”

“I do not imagine you will find much there, now that we are gone, but I appreciate you doing a sweep all the same. I have some concerns about our privacy.”

Ey frowned.

She waved the idea away with a paw. “If it is an issue, we will discuss it. If it is not, then I do not want to think about it any further.”

“Well, if you say so.”

She leaned against eir side, resting her head on eir shoulder. “I am sorry, my dear. It is one of those things that is not a concern until it suddenly very fucking is.”

Ey ruffled a hand between the skunk’s ears, the settled eir arm around her shoulders. “I’ll tell you what all I find there, and we can both hope it’s nothing. What will you do, meanwhile?”

“I am not sure. I do not particularly want to come with if they are looking for someone who looks like me. I will stay here and I guess keep an eye on our…ah, guest.”

“You sure you’ll be okay with that?”

There was a long pause before the skunk gave in and slipped both of her arms around eir middle, burying her face against eir shirt. “I do not know,” she said, voice muffled and small. “I thought that I would be, was going to say that I would be, but I really do not know.”

Ey rested eir chin atop her head. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be gone all that long, five minutes, tops, but if you need, just send a ping and I’ll be right back.”

“I am not expecting anything so dramatic, my dear. I will stay here and try to de-stress. True Name still has about half an hour left of…well, whatever it is that she is doing.”

Ey tightened eir arms around the skunk for a squeeze, kissed her atop the head,then stepped back. “All the same, just stay safe, alright?”

She sniffled and nodded. “You too, my dear. Good luck, and do not die.”