"Azem!" snapped a voice. "Do not tell me you are lost in one of your dreams again."
She blinked into the light as her eyes adjusted. She turned to the man that was with her, focusing.
"Hades?" she asked.
Hades pinched his nose. "Must you insist? Fine. Do I at least have your attention?"
She looked out over the wide areas of Elpis. Greenery and creations as far as the eye could see, an idyllic place to perform research and studies.
"I've been here before," she said, distantly.
"There's no record of such, but your familiar certainly has," retorted Hades, his voice fully conveying that he was a man who had been annoyed before, was being annoyed now, and would be annoyed forever into the future. "What mischief are you up to this time?"
"I am… not certain," she said, and Hades scoffed.
"Fine. Be difficult. I hardly know why I bother myself to keep company with you."
She strode past him, looking out over the landscape.
"My charming personality and helpful attitude," she said, distantly. "And you. So sure you see the truth of things, and yet so inflexible in the interpretation of that truth."
"What?" asked Hades, taken aback. "I - well. That is to say…"
He sighed, as though suddenly embarrassed, and looked away. "Just… help the researchers out, would you? There's been much fuss about them missing your familiar, and if you won't conjure it back up, then the least you can do is help tidy up after it."
She turned back to face him, staring as his face, studying him for a long moment.
Hades coughed into his hand, and crossed his arms. "Helping people. That's what you like to do after all, isn't it?"
She smiled at him. A big smile, awkward, too wide for her face, but sincere, and kind.
"The obvious love you have for it all. The patterns that you see. The connections that you see amongst those patterns. To hear you speak, why, it seems like you almost speak with the voice of the cosmos itself."
"You dreams speaking to many realities, and the peoples within them. A wonderful tapestry adrift, azure filling in the spaces between voids. It's quite enchanting, you know."
She looked to Venat, and shrugged. "You make it sound very romantic. That's just how I see things, Venat. It's not the only perspective, you know. Probably not even a correct one."
"Modesty ill suits one of my best students," Venat responded. "And I think our own star would be much the better if more saw it through your eyes."
"Maybe," she said.
"And despite what wonders you have just described to me, something yet worries you," said Venat.
She had made her arguments before the Convocation, but it was not until they had taken a break that Emet-Selch had thought to track her down, to berate her in the hallways.
"You would make a mockery of our Convocation," he had said. "To allow those small lives a voice in our society? A society hardly any of them will live long enough to appreciate? They're mortals, Azem. To call them sentient is barely a truth. To call them equal to the responsibility of leading the star is an absurdity unto parody!"
"And yet, they live," she had replied, calmly. She never could quite meet his energy. "They listen. They experience. They have opinions, and those opinions should be taken into consideration."
"Rubbish," he'd retorted. "Their offspring will reap the benefits of living in a world set to rights, if only we've the will."
"We have the will," she said. "But have we lost the way?"
