A combination of prompts. For Kris, to whom I may or may not have mentioned something about a continuation to Daine getting hunted, and for the Tamora Pierce Experiment: Writing Challenges August 2011 challenge - adapt a scene from one of the books into a modern AU. I was slightly... overenthusiastic. Inspired by the World's End arc of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and the stories within stories there. The final scene goes (rather quickly) AU in no part due to the rise of availability of therapy.

Conceded Convictions
By icecreamlova

- : -

Daine bowed her head. She felt Numair's eyes on her, heavy with concern, but it didn't help. It took all her strength to push away the memory of gunshots, and begin reciting her tale.

- : -

The first time Numair Salmalin - yes, really, that was his name, just a moment please while he rummaged for his missing business card to prove it - met Veralidaine Sarrasri, he thought he was a hawk. He heard his friends' tales with suspicion until he saw the Youtube video himself, but once he'd picked his jaw up from the floor and contacted Jon about suing - what did Jon mean that it was public property? The video showed him in the throes of animalistic indignity! - well, once that had been taken care of, he promised every friend who cared, and most who didn't, that he would never cross a hypnotist again.

The first time Numair Salmalin met Veralidaine Sarrasri, he promised himself he wouldn't push her. She was short, slender, and entirely too young for the weight on her shoulders. It wasn't apparent to most people, that what lay behind her quiet smile was not peace, but distance - barriers which she twisted around her hands, and clutched to her chest like a lifeline. Somewhere in that tangle of red threads, a person was fading. But Numair hadn't always relaxed enough around his friends to get hypnotized, and he had always resolved to be as tactful with others as Jon's firm had been with him.

The first time Numair Salmalin met Veralidaine Sarrasri, he genuinely meant to keep both those promises. Scout's honor. All the same, despite his good intentions, at the end of a month he had only honored one.

- : -

If Daine noticed the way he was watching her, she didn't show it.

Numair was an engineer; he discovered with delight her conceptual understanding of angles, strains, pressures, and best of all, the way disparate, ungainly parts fitted into a working whole. Words could not describe the frustration that seized him, when he was teaching her theory to fit her natural intuition and then asked her to apply it - only to find her instinct seemed to fall inexplicably apart. Her calculations failed, taking with them the rest of her project, until she held pieces of twisted junk, destined for the scrap heap.

He quickly realized her failures were not caused by lack of skill. Numair the Academic Engineer was horrified; there had been a point in his life when he'd have sacrificed anything in pursuit of knowledge - a point when he really had given up everything to go to Carthak - and could not accept her deliberate sabotage.

Numair the man remembered exactly how well his college days ended.

Numair the compassionate human being worried about her.

His first instinct, sourced from all three sides of his personality, was to ask. Her response to his first instinct, his common sense quickly supplied, would be a rapid and complete denial. So he waited.

It was a spectacular failure.

- : -

"I'm just tired," Daine mumbled, her fingertips rubbing slow, steady circles at her temples. "School. And then this." Her slender shoulders were tense, bunched together, as if she were on the verge of curling up into a little ball and quivering her way through the long, empty hours of the night, with only the tickticktick of her analogue clock for company.

Numair regarded her: the way tendrils of her hair slipped onto sweaty skin, the dull sheen of her eyes, which had earlier been as clear, as translucent as the sea in which she had waded, barefoot. It had been one of those proper coastlines of his adolescence, still relatively untouched by the spoils of human excess, and the layer of white gathered around her ankles had been foam, not discarded plastic rings. (As white as the pallor of her face.) He'd wanted to show her the coast as it should have been - the pristine clean they were trying to restore it to. The city skyline, beyond the harbor, had seemed far away, and the tops of skyscrapers had been veiled from the shimmering smog. He had watched her from beyond the tide line, entirely too sensible (NOT vain, no matter what Onua liked to say) to join her, with her sandals dangling from her fingers, held just above the approaching waves, and her face turned up to the sun.

Fierce joy had rocked him - taking him by surprise - at the knowledge that his student could be so happy, that she had felt welcome, because Numair had too much knowledge of the relentless sting of being an outsider. By the same token, he understood, in a way others in his situation might not have, what it meant that his teaching was so accepted.

The warm feeling wilted now, in the face of her excuse. Her weariness might be no lie, but it was a gross exaggeration. It was time to push.

- : -

He finally got the story one day, or in part at least, when he cornered Onua in her work shed. She took great delight in rubbing her oily hands on what he called his 'outdoor clothes', and she called "fancy bureaucratic outfits designed to convince 'real workers' that he'd already passed that laboring stage in life, but still remembered it fondly, why don't we be friends?" And she was disappointed that her horse sense influence hadn't been able to counteract the glitter of Jon's firm! To which Numair, wisely, decided to strategically withdraw, and admitted defeat.

Her mood did not change when he asked about Daine, at least not at first. Onua liked her, was fond of her as she was Thayet's lovely, older-than-their-years son and daughter. She was worried about Daine, though.

"Maybe you'll understand, if you hear it from the beginning," Onua said.

- : -

One her fifth or sixth trip - she forgot which - to Alaska, Onua found a companion. And then, on their third night together, Onua realized she hadn't found a companion at all. She spoke of trivial matters, but she didn't really say anything.

- : -

"No," Onua said. "That's not right. She talked about the world, as if it didn't say something about the past she's trying not to reveal. I thought at first that she was worried I would report her as a runaway. But she doesn't know about my husband, and I know plenty about girls who knew men like my husband."

- : -

The fire spat sparks into the frigid night, shimmering against a backdrop of thick smoke. Sharp cackles filled the silence as twigs shattered, molecular bonds breaking and reforming until they collapsed into soot. Sometime in the afternoon, before Onua and Daine's arrival, snow had sheared away from the hillside and filled the valley road to the brim. They'd joined the group of travelers who had decided to wait, rather than double back half a day's drive, and now they sat side by side in a circle of strangers, huddled around the fire someone had started to keep warm. A full day, at least, remained before they could continue on; Onua had decided to use that time to learn more about Daine, and the men - or women - that she had known.

"Me?" Daine had asked, wide-eyed and as innocent as a pigeon perching hook-clawed on a power line. The innocence faded in seconds. "No. Never. Ma was the gentlest nurse in our place, but she would have killed her man if he laid a hand on me."

Onua watched her a little longer, rubbing her fingers together for warmth. "She sounds fierce."

There was a sad little smile on Daine's face, the sort of smile you didn't realize you were showing other people, because you were used to others not looking. Daine was all of fifteen, Onua thought. "She was."

"Was?" Onua asked, as gently as she could.

The smile faded. "A gang, sort of. You'd think Galla would be too cold for them," Daine said, "but. They were drunk, and she made them angry. I got home one night and she was buried by my scrap pile. All those heavy metal columns and bars I didn't want to throw away. They hurt her, and then they left her there for dead."

A log snapped. Onua took in a deep breath, the cold stinging her nostrils.

"Maybe I'd have found her sooner if she weren't hidden like that," Daine murmured. "Maybe she'd still be alive."

"Maybe you wouldn't be," Onua said, just as quietly, recognizing the look in Daine's eyes. "And that would be a tragic loss."

Suddenly sheepish, Daine brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "You've only known me three nights. My community knew me for... eighteen years, and they... Well, it was people that made Snow- made it home. Now I'll look for somewhere new in the city... your Tortall."

A shudder rippled through Daine, the moment she cut off the rest of her suburb's name. Onua promptly brushed off the lie about her age that Daine had told. Her concerns about Daine's family died away in her throat - for the moment - as she touched Daine's shoulder, as light as the last snowfall.

Her silence lasted until much later. The smoke had died down a little, and the fire a lot. The grid of parked cars was almost invisible, despite the moon, which dangled distantly beyond jagged hills, intermittently hidden by thick clouds. She could have gone to sleep, secure in the knowledge that the certificates for the vintage cars she'd bought were locked up, and the hard-won parts for them were safe. But Onua was still awake, and Daine had begun to answer her other questions. Properly.

"Grandfather lived with us. He loved to walk the city streets and collect souvenirs from every corner. When night fell - just before we could relax from looking out every window for homeless people we couldn't help much, though we did what we could - we'd have to worry about Grandfather never coming back. But he always did. I guess it wasn't the homeless we had to worry about."

"And there's no one else you know?"

Suddenly on edge: "No. No one after him."

Onua took a deep breath. "I can't take you past state borders just like that, Daine. You know I can't."

She didn't miss the shock on Daine's face, or the tense betrayal - swimming just beneath the surface of her collected demeanor, however quickly Daine covered it up.

"I can find work here," Daine said. "If you can give me a recommendation -"

"About how good you are at finding parts and putting them together?" Onua shook her head. "I'm not leaving a fifteen-year-old out on the street. This, Daine, is where being friends with an entire firm of lawyers is useful."

- : -

"There was more paperwork," Onua said, her eyes never leaving his face as he listened. "I had to convince her I was fine with her age, before she'd show me her passport. But I don't think you want to hear about that."

He shook his head. "Thank you. For telling me."

She grinned. "I'm not telling you because you asked, Numair. I'm telling you because she needs you to know."

- : -

"You don't want to know," Daine said.

Numair said, "Magelet."

Her fingers fumbled, warping her neat line of calculations. "Why do you keep calling me that?"

"Because you're going to do magic someday," Numair said. Grasping a corner of her sheet - no student he'd ever met before had managed such neat 'scribbling' - he tugged the paper over. "You have a better sense for what works and what doesn't than anyone I've ever known. I want to teach you how to show everyone else, but I can't do that if you won't let me."

"And that's magic?" Daine said skeptically.

"What else?"

Daine shrugged. "Ma didn't even think it was a real job. She kept testing me for any other strength."

"But you tinkered anyway," Numair said. "What's keeping you from your ideas now?"

"What my ideas can do."

- : -

Snowsdale is not the sort of place you want to spend a holiday. We don't get many tourists. The ones that come think that it might be fun to play around in the snow, Winter Wonderland without paying a cent. But that's not true. In Snowsdale, you pay a fortune to leave to see snow at all. It's cold, but there's only ever sleet.

I loved it the way you love your home, no matter how little it deserves that love.

If Galla were a whole country, Snowsdale would be that small village that no one ever talks about. It's that small, that isolated from polite company, except maybe for politicians who ride into power with promises of cleaning up the entire chain of neighborhoods. We were a community. I could name the baker's every daughter and her favorite color. I might not have liked them much, might have hated the youngest because of her poor dog, but I still knew. So when you talk about how little you know some of the people in Jon's company, well, I can't understand that.

Me, Ma, and Grandpa, we lived a little further out from the town square, and a little further out in their hearts. Oh, they loved Ma; she used to be a doctor and was a fair sight better than that quack at the local pharmacy. You know the sort: the professionals who only live on pothole-filled streets because the government pays them. But she was strange, too: student of one doctor, left Snowsdale for a year to get licensed, and came back with me but no marriage ring, or even the first name of my father. I don't know if they thought she was crazy for leaving behind the filth and squalor and the gangs that sweep past, or for coming back. Grandpa was a bit too mad about learning everything street possible, and a little too light-hearted about visiting the Woods. And me. Well. Snowsdale knew me through exactly two things.

Making any animal I wanted come eat out of my hand. (Though some of those wandering dogs, poor things, would have taken food from anyone; we couldn't help them as much as we wanted.)

And taking things apart, and putting them together again into different shapes. (The baker used to fancy Ma, so he'd visit. He'd bring, I don't know, a fancy new temperature-timer device with him, the talk of the neighborhood, and the next morning it rang at dawn because I'd been playing around with it.)

Only two sorts of people visit Snowsdale. Three if you count people in the government who can't avoid it, but only two real sorts of people. There are the tourists, of course, students and people who pop their head around to see how we live on the other side.

And there are the gangs. Snowsdale wouldn't suffer gang activity from any of our own, but it was still easy pickings for looters from the other neighborhood. They decide that Snowsdale is the perfect place to come and wreck stuff, because no one cares if there's shooting in that entire part of the city. A practice ground, if you will. Some of them come because drag racing and mooning old ladies is fun. I don't know.

Six months ago, a larger band than normal decided to visit. They decided to bring guns too, maybe because last time, when they broke into the car shop, we chased them off. We were starting to learn, you see. They thought they'd surprise us by coming out of the Woods, this time. (There are these big, fancy houses back when Snowsdale was bigger and fancier, and the only fancy buildings around. (Except, maybe, the brand new electronics store.) They're half burnt and half rubble, but at night, kids who don't have much sense like to visit, and bring back bits of wood snapped off the banisters or coals from the hearth like trophies. We call the houses the Woods.) If I had caught them there, then maybe Ma would still be alive.

They visited Ma. I don't know what they thought she had. Medicine, maybe, but she didn't have anything you couldn't buy at the pharmacy, and she certainly didn't keep it at home. Or, maybe, they'd just remembered that she was pretty. She must have made them angry, too.

I was making my rounds 'bout the city. Normally, it would take the day, but I took a detour to the Woods, looking for Grandfather - he had walked off again, and there was nowhere else left to look - and that took part of the night. (This is after the gang passed by, though I didn't know that yet.) I wasn't afraid; I knew the back streets better than anyone but him. Then, at the Woods, I found a litter of kittens. Their mother was a scrap of a thing, barely looked big enough or old enough to be their mother, and she certainly couldn't feed them, but she purred so proudly. (Snowsdale was better than the surrounding neighborhoods, you see, but you still had to be a survivor if you were alone.) I tried to help them. That took the rest of the night.

When I arrived home, the smoke was too thin to see. I had to ask the baker what had happened. The students had used those guns to loot the stores, and there were puddles of oily petrol further down the street that I had walked past without a second thought. The rest of it went to making sure the house went up immediately. My passport and stuff were only still safe because Ma had buried them, and said I'd need it one day when I met my father. There weren't any bodies in the house, just charred walls as tall as my knee and shards of dull brown and deep green glass - shattered glass bottles, because petrol certainly wasn't the only thing they took. They'd dragged Ma and Grandfather out first before setting the house alight: a small mercy. I found them crushed under some of the old, rusty cars the boys tipped over onto them.

There isn't much useful metal around Snowsdale, but the scrap was piled around my house, hoarded over a decade. Or, more correctly, we'd always lived by the scrap, and I made it grow. I liked to take things apart, and most of the time, no one minded. You can barely see the rusted red roof over the piles of metal.

If the metal hadn't been there, I might have found them earlier and got her to the doctor.

They returned to the Woods with the spoils of their attack, and the knowledge no one would do anything about it. But I knew who they were, and I cared enough to do something about it.

You'd think they would have robbed the electrical store - the only electrical store - and they did take the iPads and laptops, and one of those toy robot dogs that walk everywhere. (The owner was pretty new, the sort of person so good you wondered how they even existed, until you realized he'd lost his little girls when he was younger, and now couldn't stop seeing their faces in every street brat who was cold at night.) I took the rest. Ten or so robot dogs, each a little bit different: ratty tails, or with fake fur as white as frost. I grabbed them, took them apart and touched them up with bits and pieces from all around the town. Got some of the local kids to help me set up my traps all around the Woods.

Then I used those robot dogs to follow 'em until they were so spooked they wasted the bullets shooting the night, until half the conversations were arguments about getting out of there already, and then I bulldozed the Woods. The lookout was so jittery from thunderous sounds without a source, or from cats hissing at him from the shadows, he didn't realize until he saw me that something was happening. Some of 'em shot at me, but they'd already spent their bullets for fun or on the dogs. I got them to run.

Maybe you know all that. Some of it made the national news. But after the media had come and gone (without my name, thank you, because why would I let anyone give it?), things changed.

You see, after the attack, nothing was working right. They'd get the local mechanic to come in (because there seemed to be some distinct taboo over asking me instead, or even speaking to me) but most of the machines kept dying once more. It wasn't my fault, and by itself, what I'd done that one day wouldn't have mattered.

But Ma was dead, and no one had stopped her, and I wanted to be careful. I kept taking things, kept making it even harder to get to where I was staying, and worst of all, kept making those kids do the same. They thought I was interesting; that it would be cool to be able to do the same things with machines. I... I wasn't myself. When all those upstanding citizens tried to curb my wild influence by offering me help (they wouldn't take that behavior from one of their own), I didn't listen. I stole their tools next.

After a week of continuous machine breakdowns and people not being able to get anywhere, enough was enough. They tried to get me.

Like I said, I wasn't myself. I thought they were trying to strip me defenseless again. I... one of them nearly lost a hand. Another one nearly lost her head. I don't know about the others, but they were really, really angry after that. They came with guns.

I took my emergency supplies (even the passport I hadn't really thought I'd need, because Ma had always insisted I check every night it was safe) and I ran.

Can you imagine that? The people I grew up around were hunting. Hunting ME. Because I had nearly killed one of them.

I hid where I could, on the first day. I sneaked into the shops to take as much as I could carry. Maybe take Frostfur or Rattail with me (I'd named those robot dogs) to carry some in the opposite direction. I would wait outside the shop until it was deserted, impatience making me jump at every small sound. Then, when the owner was out on a break, or when I judged I couldn't be seen, I would creep as quietly as I could in through the front door. The video cameras weren't working properly, so I didn't have to worry about those. I filled up whatever I'd brought with me, selecting at first, then rushing when time had slipped away, then I'd run out.

When the locals realized I was stealing, they searched even harder. I couldn't go near the stores anymore. Some of the kids still admired me, so they helped. I started waiting until dark, imagining men hiding their footsteps in the wind, but when I spun around, almost growling, there was no one there.

It was two and a half weeks after the attack before they finally found me. By then, their goal had changed from helping me, to doing the only thing that seemed sensible.

I knew they were on my trail. One of the cameras I'd set up had picked up movement in the night. I watched the fuzzy image on the screen. You could see the group with shotguns in their hands, their faces long and thin and patience worn away, maybe because their kids kept defending my actions. That was why the shotguns were loaded. They were as jumpy as I was, as they began following my footsteps. The camera lost sight of them when they left Snowsdale.

They did eventually find me near one of the gang-ridden neighborhoods, because I knew I could run if they tried anything. I didn't spin around and leave this time, and it seemed a good decision at first. The baker tried to talk to me. Maybe the baker truly wanted to reason with me. But it had taken them until night had fallen to catch up to me, and the moon was barely a sliver, until their guns would have been invisible, clutched in their hands. The streetlights hadn't worked properly for years. When the red eyes of those robot dogs began to light up...

I didn't know the baker could shoot, until then.

I ran. This time, they were determined not to lose me. White construction powder coated the ground, so that the sound of my heart pounding against my ribcage was as strong as my gasping breaths - cold air rushing into my lungs - and they were both louder than my footsteps. That's why I was glad two of the men who'd come after me weren't remotely familiar with the area. They tripped over uneven footing or nearly smacked into the trunks of unhealthy, twisted, council-planted trees that struggled for life, and one turned on a torch before the more experienced men snapped at him to turn it off. They were so close, I could hear that.

There was a loud explosion I recognized as a gunshot, followed by another. And another. The barred windows began to close around me, and curtains were drawn. Someone shot a dark streetlamp, sending shards into my back. I stumbled over the uneven steps that led onto a platform of labyrinth-like apartment blocks, but didn't fall. Behind me, I could hear cursing, as the clumsier men met the steps with dissimilar results.

Before that moment, I had known they were trying to get me away from my safe sanctuary. I hadn't imagined that they would be so very serious in their attempt to...

I couldn't fight back, though. What could I use? Stones against guns? I tried once, and nearly got my hand blown off for my trouble. The most accurate shot yet.

I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from crying out, but only for a second, because I was soon back to panting, running, until my skin, which felt like it was frozen beneath my threadbare coat, chafed against my muscles. Their voices were fading away, and the wind whistling through the walls of apartments was quieter, but I didn't stop for another five minutes, because I had to catch my breath. I darted behind one of the blocks, and slowed beside the small series of shacks that squatted behind it, old homes that had been left behind by urban sprawling. Almost as an afterthought, though, the inhabitants had strung spiked wire crossing their roofs in case anyone jumped onto them.

I was wheezing, hands braced on my knees, sweat rolling down my face like it wasn't so cold it should have frozen. I would have seen clouds of breath puffing out, if I could see anything at all. While I was there, not ready to run yet, my mind was racing ahead. I knew the terrain, you see. I was close to the last stretch before we hit open ground, if I could even get that far. (It would be difficult to navigate the road there, particularly in the dark, and when I reached it I would be dead.)

The men stumbled into the alleyway not much later. They hadn't been as behind as I thought. One of them snapped on the torch ("She knows where we are already," he said). Its brightness clawed at my eyes and made everything else look even darker. They talked in soft voices as they rechecked their guns, re-fastened shoe laces that had come loose. One of them scuffed at the loose gravel.

I hid on the roof of the shack, holding my breath lest one of them look up. That's as hard as it sounds. You can't move properly if the roof is on the verge of caving in, and even twitching would make creaks echo. The bramble of coiled wire atop it was scratching into my skin, one end dangerously close to poking my eye out. I dared not move a muscle as I listened, waiting, praying that the roof wouldn't sway and give me away.

For entirely too long, they stood in the alleyway and tossed ideas backwards and forwards. My arms were beginning to ache, as I wondered if they'd known all along I was in that clearing. As seconds ticked by, my certainty grew. Why else, in the midst of their attempt to sink holes into my body, would their hunt fall off? Why else would they allow so much time for my escape?

My muscles were shaking, with a mixture of fear, adrenaline, and the stiffness of staying too long in one position. Perhaps it would have been smarter just to keep running, blood filling my mouth from where I'd accidentally bitten my tongue, knees scraped from the inevitable stumbles and tumbles.

I trembled. I stilled myself quickly, but the damage was done. The roof had, for an instant, shaken.

The men (and two women) did not look up.

In fact... they left.

It was then that I realized exactly how much noise the shaking fir would have made. Hadn't I worried that the cops would disguise their footsteps with wind?

To cut a long story short, I limped onto the state highway, and hitch-hiked my way out of the city. I must have been a sight, hair filled with dirt, elbows and knees scuffed, half a sleeve torn off. It's funny how you can see the worst of humanity one moment, and then the best in the next. As cautious as drivers were, they let me ride once they saw I had no gun. One lorry driver gave me his jacket, and dropped me off in the suburbs we say belong to Galla, but are really part of the mountains. You can actually see blue sky, and the disturbing emptiness there, reflected in the lakes tucked behind every turn. He was a sweetheart, asked me if I was certain I wanted to be there. I said yes, it was perfect, and eventually he let me go.

You know the rest. I rummaged around, found a junk yard, met Onua the bargain hunter, got into a discussion and got a job. Only realized months later why she took me on at all.

Came to Tortall.

Saw a man hypnotized into believing he was a hawk that was either drunk or had a broken wing.

- : -

The room fell absolutely silent, bar the ticking of the analogue clock on the mantelpiece.

Daine watched it for the sake of watching anything that wasn't Numair's face; or Onua's, when the woman reached over and pulled her into a hug.

"Do you still keep in contact with the children who helped you?" Numair asked eventually.

Her gaze shot up. Of all the possible responses she had played out - and therefore feared - in her head, this one had not occurred to her.

But as she found the white knuckles indicating a tight clutch, understanding began to creep into her belly. His shocked eyes merely cemented her conviction. He was not unaffected, nor did he weigh the matter lightly; he had simply learnt what it meant to be lost for words, and struggled against it. That confusion bolstered her strength: because whatever else she saw on his face, she did not see fear or revulsion.

"Daine..." Numair's voice was shaky as she had never heard it before, stripped of gaudy flourish.

"I was afraid to tell you before. I thought you might react like... them." She winced internally as he flinched. "I'm sorry. That came out wrong. Do you remember when you told me about Alanna's twin?"

"Thom?" Onua repeated, lost.

"Yes, I remember," Numair assured her.

"He was sick," said Daine for her sake. "He saved Roger, and Roger repaid him by basically drugging him to use his influence against Jon. He might have succeeded if Thom hadn't escaped, and Alanna hadn't stopped him. But I wasn't drugged, and I wasn't, I don't know, under some sort of spell, and I still stole from them. I still nearly attacked the people in Snowsdale, even before they came after me."

When had she curled her arms around herself? Daine wasn't sure.

Because she wasn't looking, Daine jumped in surprise when his face aligned with hers. Numair was so much taller than her, he had to nearly kneel down to ensure he was level with her on the couch.

"I don't have any easy answers for you, Daine," he said. "I could say that you were grieving, that it was a difficult time, but it's no use if you don't believe it. I can only offer my opinion that you are a good person who has seen the worst of humanity, and is struggling to overcome it."

"But when I saw the worst of humanity, it wasn't just in other people."

Onua held her for a moment longer, then drew back. "Most people can't even get that far. It takes amazing courage to admit that, Daine."

Daine was quiet.

Onua and Numair exchanged a glance that she couldn't quite read.

After a moment, Numair told her, "You need to talk to someone else about this."

"I told you and Onua," she pointed out, fingers tightening around each other like she wanted to tangle them into the tension in the room, and pull.

"And we'll be there for you," Onua said. "But you need someone who knows what he's talking about."

Numair didn't even protest at this.

As the words sank in, Daine began to shake her head. "Tell a stranger-?"

"Not just any stranger," Numair corrected, nearly comedic in his perfect seriousness. "One who has magic with words."

Despite herself, Daine felt the smallest smile flicker on her face.

It hit her like a loaded truck, that smile. To feel her lips curving up, slowly, and she knew if she looked into a mirror, she would find sadness there. Just as startling was the realization that Numair and Onua would notice it even though no one else - not even herself - had.

She parted her clasped hands, half-listening for the sound of red threads snapping under the strain.

"Daine?"

"All right," she conceded. "I trust you. Who do you recommend?"

- : -

Well?