Page Eight

"To sleep of course."

Nico took a deep breath for an explanation, and to help get rid of the urge to laugh.

"Dungeons tend to have thick walls, and if they have no windows on top of that, they block out noise way better than normal rooms."

She put down her cutlery, rested her elbows on the table, put her fingers together and sighed.

"When the city is full of giant wasps humming about day and night, the prospect of a cell with solid walls becomes positively alluring, especially if it had been scrubbed down well first."

"They tend to be pretty cool in the summer, that's true," he mused.

"I see." He was satisfied with this explanation.

The red-clad Death looked around at the walls, thinking fairly slowly. Something he'd read long ago had just come back to him (probably it was all the iambic pentameter that'd done it)...

"Far from the fierce, unfettered love I feel," he recited quietly to himself,
"That yearns to run, to laugh, to shout and sing
Beneath the open heavens. Such a love
Bursts bindings, smashes locks and chews through chains;
No tyrant heeds and no law but its own."

From the added and none-too-subtle "huh", one might deduce that Weft didn't agree with the quotation, despite having memorised it.

Nico echoed the "huh".

"I don't trust the 'love' they usually put in ballads and stories. Styling hormonal infatuation as the best and purest bond between two people is - " she shook her head and waved the rest of the sentence off, not wanting to say "disgusting", and continued, "I've preferred friendship to romance as long as I can remember."

"I don't quite know what hormones are..." Sebastian began, "...and I'm not going to ask. Romance is romance, love is just another word for friendship without boundaries. Words are arbitrary: reality isn't."

"But problems occur when people draw their arbitrary lines between words in different places. When one means, hm, romance when they say 'love', and the other means friendship, both get a wrong picture of what the other is saying.

"I've met too many people thinking they were meant to spend the rest of their life with someone just because they, as they say, fell in love at first sight. They called that true love, and belittle anyone who'd disagree. Their looking down on others while, usually, making themselves unhappy when their expectations are not met, bothers me.

"I'm sorry I'm rambling," Nico ended with a sigh and reached for her glass.

She decided against bringing up the idea that reality was arbitrary.

"Infatuation's perfectly natural. That doesn't mean it should have the last word, though," said Weft, who came from a place that had finally reduced pairing off to a very sober and businesslike process.

"What gets to me is when it's used to justify irresponsibility." He shuddered faintly around the back and shoulders. "As though following your heart is somehow more clever than sticking around and doing the right thing."

"Let's not get into what is the 'right thing' in any context other than this one," said Sebastian, who had been nodding as both of them spoke. The topic always made him cautious. "Although I'm not sure where I stand, here. I can't remember how things were done back home. I never paid attention."

Nico did not comment since she didn't notice the new shift in topic. Her memory had decided to bring old, good friends to her mind, some of whom she met last a far too long time ago, others she would never meet again. With a slight frown she stared into the middle distance.

Weft had gone quiet for a moment too. No, he wasn't about to start moralising. Sebastian hated lecturing unless the halfie himself was the one doing it.

The phrase "love is just another word for friendship without boundaries" had lodged itself in the same part of Weft's savage little brain as that soliloquy he'd just quoted. Annoying how such things seemed to resonate with him, because they were both wrong (and darned subversive). Love is duty, duty, duty, he thought. That's what I beli- no, it's what I know.

All he said was "You're free to set your own trend, then..."

He wondered what Shii thought of all of this. Her silence might be construed as a worrying portent...

"We all are, I guess," he offered quietly, looking distant and frustrated - but the frustration seemed to be without a goal. He just smiled merrily, out of the blue. "Perhaps I really shouldn't do the talking sometimes."

"Yep, you all are at that." And if everyone did it, the world would be left out for the chulcs. Good job most people don't.

Weft raised a water glass casually. "To companionship, then, and harbourage from wasps."

The gesture brought Nico's attention back to the table. She found she even had a glass to join the toast.

"And to old friends. May they have found company as delightful as this one."