post-election party

[ continued from here ]


I thought for a moment, trying to explain the situation a little better. "By feeling too much of other people's pain, by taking too much of their own needs on alongside your own, I mean. Or by letting bad people too close to you until they can manipulate you. Does that make any sense?"


"Yes," I replied, although I still found my brow furrowed slightly at the thought. Perhaps it made me cold, or perhaps it simply made me a remarkable fit for my job, but I wasn't sure that I'd ever done as Remy described. I could feel pain on behalf of others and the hurdles that they faced, that went without question. But whether or not it had ever been debilitating was another matter entirely.

"I hope that I avoid this," I added, expression softening into one more matter-of-fact.

I was okay, perhaps, with the idea of being cold and calculating, so long as it benefited more people in the long run.

her deliberately incautious rush

[ continued from here ]


"...really?" Arya said, thoughtfully. She wondered if he had more pigeons than the ones with him, if he was prepared to risk them. Or maybe he meant it hypothetically. But she was curious. Always, she was curious.

"I have a gyrfalcon," she said. "She's pretty good."

Although mostly she'd been trained by Silence, and Arya was just her caretaker; she didn't know that anything in her experience covered hunting down pigeons in flight.


"Really," Zhuge nodded, pursing his lips and bouncing his shoulder, letting out a soft rush of air from his lips, at which point the pigeon flew over towards the girl, hovering around her head, as though searching for a proper perch. "But not now. I tell her to trust you this time."

Letting out a coo of protest, the bird started to hover closer to Zhuge in the space, not seeing a shoulder easily offered yet. To explain her hesitation, Zhuge smiled and patted his empty shoulder for emphasis.