Twenty-seven

"Not with a heavy stick, I hope." She glanced at the tin and asked, "Did it do any good?"

Sebastian smiled and glanced at his hands as if realising what he was doing. He put his hands down a little sheepishly, taking the tin. "A little. He said the this attracts moisture. Not in this weather scale, so he didn't really see much point in it at all."

He stuck a hand in his pocket and frowned lightly. "About the other thing he couldn't say... he did tell me about a book he had, though." Sigh. "He wouldn't sell it, of course."

Sylvie rested her folded hands on the table and considered that.

"Maybe he would lend it to me. I'm certain he'd have at least some acquaintance with the Old Ivy family." She had a few doubts how practical that was, mostly having to do with the idea of keeping this secret from them. If she asked Garren directly to put in a good word for her, he would want to know the reason for her interest.

Sebastian - who had been considering altogether different, not necessarily lawful avenues of getting the book - nodded and pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket. "Maybe. That's one option that's worth a try at least," he said, telling himself to relax. He expected that things would start moving soon enough and that he would not necessarily be happy when they did.

He leaned back in his chair, regarding Sylvie. No, he didn't want to tell her about his other option - and certainly not here. "It might just work, you know."

She shrugged.

"I really think we need to talk all this over." Somewhere they didn't have to worry about people walking in on them.

Sebastian at first raised a grey eyebrow, then glanced to the side at his arriving soup. Of all things, soup - but he couldn't complain. It was food, after all, and he had missed the last meal already.

After he had his soup and had said a thank you that was largely unnoticed, he shrugged at Sylvie. "Then we'll do that," he said, picking up the spoon. He gave his soup another look and sighed. Chicken.

Sylvie didn't pay attention to the soup. After considering for a bit she asked, "What about Auker?"

At first he was going to ask if Sylvie thought Auker would know some collector, but then what Auker had told him earlier came back to him. He turned to look from the soup at Sylvie, smiling. "You know, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe we should go talk about all of this there and take care of two things at once?"

"Something like that, yes." Avoiding telling everything twice or more, and avoiding "if only I had known that" situations.

He nodded and forced himself to eat some of the soup, knowing after the first spoonful that he would probably only be able to eat the non-chickeny bits. Maybe only half of the soup, too. "All right," he said after the second spoonful, stirring the soup half-heartedly. "Let me just do away with some of this."

"Of course."

And back they were at awkward. Sylvie concentrated on not fidgeting, and not watching Sebastian, for the sake of politeness.

Sebastian, however, didn't seem to think they were entirely at awkward. 'Awkward' was the food in front of him. There were certain things he wasn't going to say here and now, of course, but otherwise... "I've been thinking of Father Joachim," he said, making the logical leap from a vaguely related topic to another topic. "Or what we talked about. I've begun to wonder if I've been mistaken about him not having separate personas." The thought was actually chilling. Not just because of Joachim, but because of himself.

Sylvie needed a moment to remember what he was talking about. The memory held a question she had meant to ask.

"He was the priest in charge of the temple where you grew up?"

While she thought, he manage to down a couple of spoonfuls of soup. "He was. Father Joachim founded the place." And yet he would never talk about the parents, nothing besides pleasant things.

She acknowledged with a slight hum and looked at the half-elf, in case he wanted to continue talking.

"I've come to wonder," Sebastian said after a moment, "if he wasn't a little different at times. There are some memories I have where he doesn't seem quite like I usually remember him. Perhaps even a little reserved."

He drummed against the plate with the spoon. "I also think I might place too much importance on the entire idea."

"Maybe." Pause. "How reliable are those memories now, anyway?"

"Not entirely. I was... a young boy, after all." He stopped eating altogether for a moment, smiling just the faintest bit. "A real wildchild, too. Er. But my memory, well... aside from faces, I can remember other things very vividly."

Sylvie looked down at the tabletop and made a rather noncommittal noise. She did not really feel like chatting.

It didn't go unnoticed. Feeling somewhat morose all of a sudden, Sebastian fell silent and bravely ate half of his dish before pushing the plate away from himself. If the dish itself hadn't scuttled his appetite, the mood and his thoughts had. If it wasn't enough that he had begun to doubt himself, knowing that he remembered a happier-looking Sylvie was.

Kai blinked. "Well, I'm ready when you are," he said softly, hiccoughing all of sudden - which gave him a pause. He smiled a little awkwardly as he stood up.