“So!” Mera practically skipped as she led me into the Fall refectory, dragging me with her by sheer force of expectation. I shot a glance at Kelly in passing, and she gave me a sort of shrug and a jaunty wave, and that was that. “I know you’re a Traveler. They have counselors where you’re from? What’re they like?”

“Yes, and um.” We were heading for one of the small tables in the rear corners, two chairs and enough of a bubble of space that it had an air of privacy. Well, more than an air of privacy; with every step we took towards those tables, the sound levels dropped until we couldn’t hear anything from the rest of the refectory.

Too bad it was the noise in my head that’d been loudest in the first place.

Belatedly, I realized that she’d been waiting for me to answer her other question, and I mentally scrambled to remember what it was. What were counselors like where I’m from? “Extremely variable, I guess.”

“Thousands, that sure as the waves crash on the crags isn’t any different here.”

I snickered at that, almost unwillingly, and it felt like breaking a little bit out of another fugue. Not at all the same, but… “I grew up surrounded by the certainty that the only counseling you needed came from your religious community and the leaders thereof. And among those leaders, my father was… well, pretty highly ranked. Anything I said to anyone would get back to him; I knew that like I knew the sun would rise over the horizon.”

“And after your youth?”

“Did James tell you anything about me?”

“That you’re a Traveler,” she said without hesitation, “and your name. Well, he also drilled me on how to pronounce it, at my request. Date of your arrival, basic information about your physical health, the name of your First Friend, and that you’re literate and numerate. Nothing else.”

There was a ring of truth in her voice, something that wasn’t just mundane communication. I took a moment to think about that, to absorb it; it tasted of steel and copper, of blood and lightning, and I had absolutely no idea what that meant, if it meant anything at all.

She has seen much, and deeply. There is an embodiment of truth in her, for all that it is not her Truth. Spark didn’t imbue the thought with any particular meaning, deliberately maintaining some distance to let me draw my own conclusions.

She’s seen some shit, I translated that as, and studied her more carefully. There were faint lines of scars on her arms, getting denser as they got to her hands, and her nose wasn’t perfectly straight—or rather, the bone of the bridge clearly was, but there was flesh missing. Her hair looked like it was buzzed almost to the scalp, but it was noticeably patchy even so, and there was something about the topology of one of her ears that was just wrong.

She bore up under my scrutiny as though she wasn’t noticing it, her expression somehow both calm and intense at the same time, so I decided to risk the obvious question. “Is it taboo for me to ask you what’s up with the, like, everything?”

“Yes.” She gave me a beat, smiling a little. “Do you want me to tell you anyway?”

“Only if you would rather me know than wonder,” I said.

“That’s an interesting framing, throwing it back into my court while making the act of declining imply that I’m deliberately cultivating an air of mystery—or a lack of desire to connect with you, because it’s no longer your curiosity but rather my wanting you to understand. Do you deliberately do that, and if so, what’s the reason? Is it a common mode of rhetorical engagement in your culture of origin?”

I blinked at her, taken aback. “Wow, that’s… a lot.”

“You don’t have to answer those questions, or for that matter, any particular question I ask. As for—” Mera broke off as Tizpa stepped up to the table, sliding over a couple of long, rounded-rectangular things halfway between bowls and plates. A gigantic glass tankard of water followed it, and she disappeared without a word.

Disappeared more literally than usual; by the time she’d taken three steps away, she was a blurred figure, and I realized that I somehow hadn’t noticed that everyone was blurred other than my lunch companion.

“Yes,” I said as Mera opened her mouth to say something. Tizipa’s appearance, and the pause in the conversation that had resulted, had given me a moment to think, a moment to compose a response. “I deliberately do it, but no, not for the reasons you listed. It’s not a common mode of engagement, but I usually lean towards letting people choose their preferred outcomes, and choosing outcomes means communicating what they are. Also, yes, I want you to tell me, and isn’t that an interesting reframe of my wanting to know. Was that deliberate?”

“Absolutely.” Mera grinned at me, one side of her mouth dimpling while the other went not quite as high or as wide. “You’re going to be a fascinating client.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “You say that like it’s a foregone conclusion. Based on what I’ve learned about Shem in the last week and a half, I’m guessing I can say no.”

“You could,” she agreed. “You would rapidly be convinced otherwise, but you’d have lost time. If that expression of agency is important to you, I’m happy to go through the process, but I’m only here through Second of One and I won’t be back until mid-Harvest. Has anyone explained the calendrical system to you?”

Something clicked for me, something related to how she was acknowledging what I said before probing on different questions. You, she’d said, rather than we. I had no intention of even pretending that I didn’t need to talk to someone, but it obviously didn’t have to be Mera providing that service.

Maybe emboldened, maybe running on that clicked-in deduction that hadn’t quite hit my conscious mind or ability to put into words, I treated her response as the deflection it was. “Where did you get your scars?”

“I don’t want to answer that question.” Her face hardened a little, and I saw her reach out for a spoon, hands tensing around it. “I’m willing to answer it anyway, if that’ll foster a trust between us that’ll let you open up to me. I’m also willing to trade answers.”

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“Why?” I glanced down at the plate-bowl thing; it was filled with a sort of grain mash that had pieces of vegetables and meat in it and smelled heavenly, and I barely noticed any of that. “Why not just establish a boundary, and not share it, since you don’t want to?”

“You think of emotional vulnerability as something that isn’t so much offered as asked—that is, your truths aren’t to be shared with me, I’m supposed to pull them out of you.” She gave me a much narrower smile, one which didn’t manifest the lopsidedness. “So when I refuse the exits you’re offering, it supports the genuineness of my interest—it shows that I want to know, that I’m pulling instead of just receiving.

“But at the same time, you feel like I’m predatory, and demanding that vulnerability, that intimacy, is something that’ll get your hackles up hard and fast. Encouraging you to reciprocate changes the way you feel about me, and that’ll make our discussions more productive.”

“Encouraging me to reciprocate,” I said slowly. “So I’d be—I’ve been—reciprocating in the performance of interest, in the… establishment of vulnerability. Pulling, me on your scars, you on my everything.” And you put it that way, I thought to myself, because of… what it is that you’re trying to push me towards by mirroring. Not the giving, but the prying, so that I don’t resist you prying harder.

Mera shrugged, starting in on her… porridge, basically. I followed suit, doing my best to appreciate the flavor despite the intensity of my emotions and the feeling like my mind was revving up to try to keep up with her.

I glanced up from my food after a moment, smiling. It was a good feeling, kicking up the tempo and trying to out-deconstruct our conversation, and that was the tell. “This whole conversation is, in a way, a distraction. It’s probably all true and genuine, but the point of it is to charm me.”

“Is it working?”

I snorted a laugh, immediately regretting it as I choked on the food. I drank deeply of the water once I’d finished coughing, and then shrugged. “Yeah. It’s got exactly the right amount of transparency, and you’re demonstrating a kinda terrifying level of insight into me for someone who basically didn’t know anything about me ten minutes ago.”

“It is,” Mera said, “quite literally my job. And I might be the junior everywhere I go, but I’m still two and a half times your age and a qualified Circuit Minder.”

“And, what, I’m supposed to give you deference and trust for that?”

She snorted indelicately, shoulders shaking. “Fuck that noise.” Her eyes glittered with humor—and for once, the expression her face made was unmarred, with the muscles around her eyes pulling in exactly the right ways to express that humor. “But terror at how insightful I am is pretty cool. I dig it.”

I bit back what I was going to say. There was yet another level to her… posturing, or her positioning, or something. I filled my mouth with food instead, doing my best to experience it but not being present enough to notice anything in particular about the flavors or textures. Spark, I composed almost idly, what’s she running in the way of Skills?

From the moment you began to perceive her, she has run no fewer than seventeen Skills. Each and every one is passive, and most are subtle. There may yet be more, of such surpassing subtlety that they are shrouded behind the others or blend in with the power flows of the world itself.

“You’re using an idiolect that’s disturbingly disarming to me,” I told her frankly. “I’m tempted to take a moment and try to tease out which of your Skills is letting you do that, but that might be rude.”

“If that would make you more comfortable,” she responded instantly, “do it. So long as we’re in private, polite society norms can fuck off into the sun. I’d much rather you prioritize literally anything having to do with your well-being or comfort, so that we can make these conversations as productive as possible.”

“Conversations, plural, huh.”

“Leaving aside Ease, where I am not going to be working, I’m going to take up as much of your time over the next few days as you can handle.” Mera paused, taking a deliberate bite of food, eyes locked on mine. “That a problem? I’m not going to convince you otherwise, if it is, I hope I made that clear already. I’ll just let other people do it.”

“Not that it’ll be necessary, but… other people?” I tilted my head to the side, then remembered what I’d been practicing out of Jannea’s notes and turned my head a little to the side instead, glancing upwards. “Not Meredith, obviously, and Kelly is all about momentum and striving. James?”

“For penny-ante problems, sure.” Mera snorted. “I don’t have time for fuck-around. I’d go straight to Rafa. Oath to whatever God you want me to name, she’d bring you round fast.”

My eyes widened at that, and only a little bit of it was performance. “I’m good, I can make however much time this is going to take. No need to…” I frowned. “No need to summon a cataclysm? No need to break the world?”

“No need to whistle up a firestorm, sure. Good! The story’s actually not that fun or interesting, by the way. Dodging around it is a better time than the truth.”

It took me a second to parse that, and the moment I realized I’d had to consciously pause and shift gears, I knew that the bouncing between subjects was deliberate. And that meant… “You talk about me being comfortable,” I said, thinking out loud, “but you’re keeping me off balance on purpose. Why is that?”

“Learning how you tick, building a rapport, unsubtly suggesting maybe you should ask fewer questions and talk about yourself. Manipulatively shaping the way you think and feel about our time together.” She shrugged. “Tell me about yourself? Starting from the beginning?”

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a slow breath. I didn’t know what to think of this lady, with the young, glowingly healthy features and the scars that obviously went beyond the physical. But I wasn’t getting the slightest sense of untruth from her; she was just… a lot, a vast amount of personality and constantly-shifting pressure. But not too much, I couldn’t help but notice.

What a delicate balance to strike, I thought to myself. Almost as delicate as the balance between building positive trust and disarming criticism via preemption. Taking another slow breath in, I opened myself up to the world as best I could, impulsively reaching for Spark to help bridge the gap between my sensorium and the System’s expressions of divinity.

It… didn’t happen, not really. Instead, I felt Spark push at me, sliding into my mind and doing something that wasn’t entirely unlike gently muscling me away. I did my best to let it, feeling everything go muted and distant—and then, as my body breathed out, Spark took me by the metaphysical hand and guided me back in.

We should trust her. The thought resonated, vibrant with a strength beyond anything Spark had managed to manifest previously. She rings of truth and the desire to help. She burns with the glory of the echoes of a thousand minds tended. Behind the purity and strength of that chord hides the greater part of her Skills, but some show aspects of themselves nonetheless—mirrors and structural supports, the essence of fertile soil and the sun, and others.

I let the breath escape me, emptying out my lungs as far as they would go—about two thirds, probably, since it was a normal-ish breath. I held that for three seconds, thinking, then breathed in again.

In the end, for all that I could think of plenty of reasons why I didn’t feel like engaging with Mera… rationally speaking, she came endorsed by James and Kelly, she was a professional in a country that took its civics seriously, and Spark was vouching for her.

Plus, she’d won, inasmuch as there’d been a battle. I trusted her—I wanted to trust her.

“My grandfather,” I began as a preamble, starting on familiar and well-practiced ground, “was a fire and brimstone preacher.”