She pauses, fingers curled around the edge of her book. Unfair, to buy its release with words; the question on its own would not trouble her, if he did not try to make her owe him the answer.
“No,” she says simply, because it’s true. It never occurs to her to beat a hasty retreat under cover of a lie. Neither she nor her twin have any real guile; Roshka is charismatic, he has an odd sort of charm, an ability to persuade without deceit. He is too earnest to ignore. Aeriel is, she thinks, simply and stupidly blunt; she prefers to work in a quiet world of simple questions and facts and discoveries, and is content to leave the arguments to her brother.
“I have a meeting,” she adds unbidden, not as a ploy to escape but because it is also true, because she must not while away the day gawking at him. She isn’t in a hurry; it isn’t a proper meeting, really, she only has no better word to call it. Aeriel spends most of her afternoons with Professor Talb, visiting the tiny old man in his dimly-lit office which is half-lab, half-aquarium, the walls lined with heavy glass tanks full of eyeless things and ancient things and startling bright things; ethereal and boneless creatures, thick-armored sea beasts, tiny things only called animals because they certainly are neither vegetable nor mineral. A great many people say Talb is a quack and a fool, a senile and superstitious old man who’s only still on staff because he’s older than the concept of tenure, but he is Aeriel’s favorite. She goes and sits on the comfortable chairs he keeps in the midst of his makeshift ocean and he tells her stories about his friends, his pets, shows her things no one knows because no one has bothered to look. Here is life, he says, always, his eyes bright, so alive and so knowing that she cannot understand why anyone would not listen. He dips his bare hand into the waters idly, stroking the slick back of a tiny fish so venomous that he would never even go to trial if his possession of it ever came to light.
Talb won’t mind if she’s late. He’ll brew a cup of bitter tea and they’ll wait, as her eyes adjust to the half-darkness he prefers, the air thick with salt and warmth, and they’ll speak of nothing and anything. Of Irrylath, perhaps. Of his woman, his keeper, his Oriencor, who stands like a poison vial tied up in a razorwire bow, who hides away and bides her time breeding things strange and dark, creatures of her own fantasy. Only Aeriel does not know what she should say of them.
She almost says You need not worry, but it’s too absurd to imagine he would, and she will not give him the satisfaction of putting on an air. Eoduin would gleefully take advantage of having his attention. Roshka, she thinks, would not notice that he had it; he is accustomed to stepping in and out of spotlights easily. Aeriel only waits for his fleeting interest to pass, as no doubt it swiftly will.
no subject
“No,” she says simply, because it’s true. It never occurs to her to beat a hasty retreat under cover of a lie. Neither she nor her twin have any real guile; Roshka is charismatic, he has an odd sort of charm, an ability to persuade without deceit. He is too earnest to ignore. Aeriel is, she thinks, simply and stupidly blunt; she prefers to work in a quiet world of simple questions and facts and discoveries, and is content to leave the arguments to her brother.
“I have a meeting,” she adds unbidden, not as a ploy to escape but because it is also true, because she must not while away the day gawking at him. She isn’t in a hurry; it isn’t a proper meeting, really, she only has no better word to call it. Aeriel spends most of her afternoons with Professor Talb, visiting the tiny old man in his dimly-lit office which is half-lab, half-aquarium, the walls lined with heavy glass tanks full of eyeless things and ancient things and startling bright things; ethereal and boneless creatures, thick-armored sea beasts, tiny things only called animals because they certainly are neither vegetable nor mineral. A great many people say Talb is a quack and a fool, a senile and superstitious old man who’s only still on staff because he’s older than the concept of tenure, but he is Aeriel’s favorite. She goes and sits on the comfortable chairs he keeps in the midst of his makeshift ocean and he tells her stories about his friends, his pets, shows her things no one knows because no one has bothered to look. Here is life, he says, always, his eyes bright, so alive and so knowing that she cannot understand why anyone would not listen. He dips his bare hand into the waters idly, stroking the slick back of a tiny fish so venomous that he would never even go to trial if his possession of it ever came to light.
Talb won’t mind if she’s late. He’ll brew a cup of bitter tea and they’ll wait, as her eyes adjust to the half-darkness he prefers, the air thick with salt and warmth, and they’ll speak of nothing and anything. Of Irrylath, perhaps. Of his woman, his keeper, his Oriencor, who stands like a poison vial tied up in a razorwire bow, who hides away and bides her time breeding things strange and dark, creatures of her own fantasy. Only Aeriel does not know what she should say of them.
She almost says You need not worry, but it’s too absurd to imagine he would, and she will not give him the satisfaction of putting on an air. Eoduin would gleefully take advantage of having his attention. Roshka, she thinks, would not notice that he had it; he is accustomed to stepping in and out of spotlights easily. Aeriel only waits for his fleeting interest to pass, as no doubt it swiftly will.