❝ Hey . . . P ? ❞ Her hair rolls over her shoulders in waves, bunches of cumulus clouds at sunset. She idly plays with the string of her tea bag, wrapping it around her index finger. ❝ How’d you prepare for the sort of life Steven was going to lead ? I’m trying to wrap my head around it. ❞ For her own sake, she thinks. She empathizes with the boy more than she’d like to admit. ❝ It’s just . . . A big legacy to fulfill, you know ? Living in that light, not, uh . . . Not knowing what comes next. ❞
Filaments of sweet - smelling steam coil out from their mugs, pluming upward like flowers dressed in nothing but light. — Pearl had set out the tea without a word. Serenely, but silently. When she'd first walked in, he'd had the intuitive sense that something was bothering her. ( Fehn held herself as though from an innerness, as though a creature with a shell. It didn't suit her. ) Pearl had set to work on the tea then, wordless in hope of coaxing her to talk to him, to dawn a little. He knew very well that humans often enjoyed the consumption of tea as a means of comfort and, well although he himself had no intention of ever actually drinking it, he certainly enjoyed holding the warm mug. So . . . there was certainly merit in that.
Though he'd been expecting and waiting for her to speak, her question catches him off guard. “ I — ” It was an unforeseen turn of conversation, but . . . not at all one he couldn't oblige. “ We didn't. ”
He lets that sit for a moment, like it were a confession. He supposes it must be. After all, he would have tried to deny it once. For many years, it had been a truth reserved for hushed arguments behind the temple doors, just out of a still-little boy's earshot. Relieved at having said it aloud, and having said it to a third party, he laughs. Exhaustively, but genuinely. “ You should have seen us when he lost his first tooth . . . ! Let alone when he sacrificed himself to an enemy Homeworld for prosecution. On both occasions, we were convinced of his imminent death. ”
He falls quiet, only laughing in small and tired pulses. For a few moments, he does nothing but exult in it: the honesty. “ We . . . weren't prepared. None of us could have been, I suppose; after all, there had never been anything or anyone quite like Steven. But — even in the most basic sense, we . . . weren't ready. ” He averts his eyes then, smiling somberly into his teacup. “ We didn't know what he needed. And even if we did, I — ” He trails off then. Loses the words. Truth could be terrible too. He shakes his head.
