Six months ago, when my friends and I had been deceived and abducted by changelings, one of the biggest factors contributing to the bad time I had had was a lack of proper rest. First they jumped me after a very late night, then I was too worked up to sleep when I should have, and finally I was asleep on my hooves when I needed to be at my best.
There were a lot of lessons to learn from that, and I tried to apply them often. For instance, Ansel and Corsica had stayed up late for my all-night birthday party, but I had gone to bed early for it. While they were crashing after a long day followed by a party, I had let the party start my day, figuring I wouldn't be able to get to sleep anyway after all the excitement.
That was why I found myself wide awake now, trying to take a nap while Gerardo was meeting with Elise in case I suddenly and unreasonably got kidnapped again and would need all the rest I could get. Despite hiding under my pillow in the coziest ball I could manage, I was too excited and recently-rested to possibly get to sleep. The irony felt like a rock beneath my mattress. I scowled.
It was ten in the morning. The totem pole the yaks had gifted me stood in the corner of my room, looking down at me with a wide, wooden expression. Three expressions, actually.
"Come on," I complained to the totem. "Just a little sleep? Please? If there's any time to rest, this is it..."
But I just wasn't tired. Stupid personality ticks. I had to be the only pony in Icereach who had a fear of not getting enough sleep.
As the clock ticked on, that fear started to mix with the fear that Gerardo might finish his meeting and I would miss him. Elise had asked him to stay and visit, so it probably wasn't a very founded fear, but I felt it nonetheless. Everything would carry on like normal if I ignored this chance and Gerardo flew on his way, I knew, and that was a good thing, but the more I told myself that, the more my brain made up reasons for me to want to speak with him.
What did he know about changelings? I knew he knew about windigoes, but how much? Did he know about fate, or the chapel, or the light spirit I still wanted to believe had been behind the miracles that kept me safe? What kind of dangers would face me when I someday went traveling, the kinds I wouldn't know about because Icereach wouldn't tell me? And how could I protect myself against them?
And, more importantly than any other question: I had spent the last six months putting myself back together after the harrowing Aldebaran incident, and then getting tougher and more capable so I could do better against the inevitable rigors of the road. He knew what it was like. So, was I ready?
That was the question I never asked because I knew I couldn't answer it without inviting more trouble than I ever wanted to see again in my life. It was also the question I needed an answer to. Pushing my comfort zones, taking my brawls with the yaks more seriously, building a cool weapon and trying to become less of a coward... I felt like I could do this for years, or even decades, and until I was tested I would never know if it was enough.
A part of me I didn't really want to acknowledge told me to ask Gerardo if I could hop in his ship and fly away, here and now. The much bigger part of me reminded me that Ansel and Corsica existed, it had only been six months, and this reaction was way too close to the reaction I had felt toward Aldebaran for comfort. Not to mention my weapon wasn't working yet, we were actually getting somewhere trying to study the composition and technique of the mural in the deep chapel, Graygarden was no longer as dismissing of Corsica as he once was, and we had gotten to keep the nicer new house...
Half past ten rolled around, and I gave up on sleep. Time to go find that griffon.
The cafeteria felt like a good place to begin my search, albeit mostly because I was hungry. A modest crowd of ponies were already there, sparse enough to leave plenty of empty tables yet not letting the room feel abandoned.
A lap of the room told me Gerardo was nowhere to be found, so I picked up a food tray and settled down to eat, finding a place where my backwards-facing ears could hear plenty of gossip. The atmosphere in the room largely felt normal, though there were a few strains of discontent or unease - Icereach always had those, being a scientific colony that still had yet to attempt a live test of its rockets - and I zeroed in on those, curious if the griffon was making waves.
"...told them my ponies can't take that extra workload. It would have been fine if they had listened to R&D and not gone with a system we knew we'd have to replace as soon as the bridge was done..."
"...still stuck in the filing process. You'd think my boss would want to expedite it, but for whatever reason hounding support is my responsibility. I do the work, I take the blame..."
"...believe I'm getting reassigned. The sealant tests have been perfect the last five times we tried them, so we obviously know what we're doing, but apparently the other team being slow to deliver means they think my capacity is wasted on..."
"...many feathers. I've seen pegasi before, but that wingspan..."
There! Was that about Gerardo? I glanced over to get a lock on who was talking, seeing a table with three batponies I wasn't familiar with. Interesting. Time to eavesdrop.
"First time you've seen a griffon in person?" another said, confirming my suspicions. "I was in Varsidel two, three decades back. Pesky creatures were everywhere."
I frowned, the batpony's words triggering my long-standing annoyance at Icereach's censorship. During the Aldebaran incident, Elise had strongly implied everyone older than the institute already knew everything that was being covered up, and was happier to pretend it didn't exist. Hearing anything to remind me of that was a fine line between rubbing it in and making me want to know more.
"Wonder if they've mellowed out any since you-know-who disappeared," a third said. Were they talking about the eastern goddesses, Garsheeva and the Night Mother? "As long as he's not here to cause trouble, I'll take peace where I can get it."
"Griffons are always trouble," number two replied. "Either they're zealots who want to fight you or traders who want to rip you off. Money grubbers, the lot of them."
"Ooh. That bad, huh?" Number one sounded slightly disappointed, but was clearly trying to play it cool.
"I just hope he leaves," number two went on. "This city's the last place in the world where we can catch a break. Don't need our ancestral enemies finding out about it. There's a reason the treaty doesn't involve the Griffon Empire."
"I thought that was because the Empire collapsed?" three pointed out. "And anyway, I heard he somehow knows Administrator Elise."
"She is well-traveled," one added.
Two sighed. "And she's not a batpony. You can get along fine with anyone if you're on the right side of history."
I had heard enough. This talk was making me uncomfortable; I already had a hazy idea that batponies weren't the most popular elsewhere in the world on account of the eastern continent and its squabbling goddesses, and returning the favor sounded like a bad way to avoid a fight. Even worse, if the locals didn't like Gerardo, he would probably leave.
Well, he was going to do that anyway, but now he'd do it faster. And somewhere along the way, I had made up my mind that I really wanted to give meeting an adventurer another try.
Shoveling the rest of my food into my mouth and getting up, I hatched a plan: if I couldn't find Gerardo, and was on a time limit, I would let the griffon come to me. Time to go wait at his airship.
The yak fortress was quieter than usual, on account of most of its occupants staying up for my party, but an industrious few still kept it going, running minor drills and doing maintenance and generally reminding the place that it wasn't abandoned. To my relief, Gerardo's airship was still moored at the dock up above. No wind blew, and no clouds blocked the sky. Now that I was back in my proper, heavier coat, it was the closest Icereach's surface usually got to a nice, pleasant day.
I made my way through the fortress and up the tower, but none of the benches in the reception room felt right when I tried them. Sitting just made me feel restless. If Gerardo was going to deceive me, or turn out to be upstanding, or simply leave without fanfare, let it happen. But all waiting did was make my wings itch.
Maybe I could wait on the airship dock instead. It was a nice enough day, and the view would be nice, too... And I could see any approaching griffons much more easily, since he would probably fly up instead of walking like me.
My hooves carried me out onto the dock. From above, I could see all the way down Crimson Valley, the Yak Hoof Glacier lit from behind me in a clean, frosty blue. Milton's poster of the Yakyakistan capitol stuck in my mind, and for a moment, I envisioned a majestic spire of a city poking through that ice in the distance.
I reached out a hoof. But I was still in Icereach.
Gerardo could depart right now, have nothing more to do with me than mistake me for an authority figure when he first arrived, and let that be the end of the story. But, even if he did, it wouldn't change the fact that I was now thinking about things I had spent the last six months telling myself I would revisit when I was ready.
He had woken me up. I wanted that horizon. And I couldn't tell if that meant I was ready, or that I hadn't changed at all.
I turned to Gerardo's airship, trying to distract myself by admiring its architecture. Compared to the Aldebaran, it wasn't nearly as rich or ornate, built more from industrial alloys and composites designed to be strong, light and cheap. This was a dirigible ship, albeit one with a strange dirigible - smaller than usual and looking like it was made of metal, I wondered how it managed to keep the skip afloat without imploding. Aside from that, though, it was maybe the size of my old house. I guessed there was one cabin of reasonable comfort, a bridge, a hold, and that was about it.
Several windows - the ones that I could see, at least - held decals. The sides of the hull were uneven, and supported what looked like custom modifications to carry more cargo - nothing remotely careless or amateurish, but clearly an aftermarket job. At the rear, it flew a well-worn Ironridge flag that was thirty years out of date, if Icereach's censored history books were to be trusted. This looked less like a warship or a roving team's command center and more like a house that could fly.
I was almost too caught up in looking at the ship to react properly when the door swung open.
"Hello, there!" a pink, middle-aged mare greeted. "Can I help you?"
"Err..." I took a step back, completely off guard. "I mean, hi. This is Gerardo's ship, isn't it?"
"You know him?" the mare replied, bundled heavily in a thick green sweater and looking chilly regardless.
"I ran into him," I admitted. "A friend of a friend. Name's Halcyon. Who are you?"
The mare shivered. "A..." She sized me up. "A traveling companion. Slipstream. Would you come in? Can't let all the hot air out..."
Well, if I was being invited... I nodded and quickly stepped inside, hoping this wouldn't be the last time I saw Icereach. Why had I even come up here if I was afraid of this? It sure did stink to be afraid of and desire exactly the same thing.
The interior of the ship didn't feel all that chilly to me. In fact, even after keeping the door open for a while, it was substantially warmer than the institute bunker. I took a second to take in the decorations, and redoubled my assessment that this was a house that could fly: the exterior was probably kept clean for utility purposes, but the interior was small, snug and absolutely covered in memorabilia.
Warm orange light bathed the cabin, illuminating wood-trim walls that were sporadically filled by hooks and pegs used for storage. Here and there, pictures of ponies and griffons and even creatures I had never seen before hung, a messy table taking up one corner of the room with a curved bench around it and two bolted-down swivel chairs. A short, wide window covered the far wall, and I spotted at least three exits: a few stairs leading to a doorless room up front, a homely door leading to the stern, and a hole in the floor with a ladder leading below.
"Much better," Slipstream sighed, tightening the door against the cold and revealing herself to be a pegasus, now that I got a closer look at her. "Sorry about that. Going from deserts and Ironridge to a place like this is a bit of a climate shock, and I've never liked the cold. Now then!" She turned to me with a welcoming smile. "I'm not Gerardo, but I might be able to help you with whatever you needed him for. What brought you out here?"
I have dreams of traveling the world but got kidnapped by impostors last time I tried so I both love and am terrified of adventurers, and the paradox makes me stop thinking and go with my gut, which brought me up here, I wanted to say. Fortunately, I had more self-control than that. "Just figured it would be the surest way to run into him before he leaves, you know?" I said instead with a shrug.
"He's been gone since dawn," Slipstream explained, walking to a window and offering me a chair. "He usually takes his time exploring new locales. But I've never known him to walk away from someone who wanted to meet him. What did you want to speak with him for?"
"It's like..." She knew I wouldn't be able to dodge that question forever, but she probably had no idea why I was dodging it. "It's hard to hear firsthoof about what's out there, you know? Beyond Icereach. I'm pretty curious."
Slipstream evaluated me again with a hint of apprehension. "I'm well-traveled, myself. If you're here for stories, I'd be happy to oblige, but I can tell you aren't at ease. Is there anything I can get you to clear the air?"
I sighed. Now I was making things awkward. "Nah, you're fine." I waved a hoof. "There was just a little dust-up a while back that left me kind of scared of adventurers with airships. I'll get over it."
Slipstream relaxed, as if she was equipped with a magical lie detector that let her tell when I was trying to balance what was safe to say with what I wanted to say. "Not six months ago, by any chance?"
"Yep." I nodded. "That's the one."
Slipstream just shook her head. "If you were involved in that, I'm surprised you'd want anything to do with outsiders like us. Icereach isn't known for... No, I shouldn't say that."
"You're gonna say something about being open and connected with the world, aren't you?" I raised an eyebrow. "About how reclusive we are over here?"
The pegasus nodded, abashed.
I sighed. "That's the problem. No way to protect yourself from bogeys if you don't know what's out there in the dark. That's the way I see it, at least. Figured I'd take the chance to talk with someone who's seen it all."
At that, Slipstream laughed. "Quite proactive for someone your age." She gave me a serious look. "How heavily armed are you right now?"
"One or two magical superweapons, plus years of professional combat training," I replied without missing a beat, feeling my broken prototype in my saddlebags and my bracelet around my leg. Hopefully, I was smooth enough that she would think I was just good at bluffing. If this situation somehow wound up with me in a fight... Well, I would probably lose, and it would be completely my fault for coming up here, and I would also have some of the worst luck in the world. How hard is it not to get taken in by evil adventurers twice in one year?
Slipstream just shook her head. "Halcyon, you've got a long road ahead of you."
I blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Big dreams, taken a few knocks along the way already, but not enough to shake off the starry-eyed ambition?" Slipstream glanced at me. "I've met your kind before. Most ponies would lie about having done big things and then look at me like I'm crazy when I ask about weapons. I look at myself like I'm crazy when I ask that question. I'm sorry you've seen enough to make it a perfectly sane one." She stepped toward a tiny kitchenette in another corner of the room. "I can see why Gerardo made an impression on you. Spiced cider?"
"What?" I blinked. "Uh, sure. Wait, you actually believed me when I said what I was packing?"
"About having years of combat training?" Slipstream bustled around the stove, pulling out several spice bags from a cabinet. "No. But I believe you've legitimately considered the reasons you might want it."
This really wasn't how I expected this talk to go... Not that I came here expecting to meet another pony in the first place. "So what about you, then?" I asked, trying to ground myself again. "How well do you know how to fight?"
Slipstream flicked her ears. "I won't be winning any tournaments any time soon, but Gerardo wouldn't let me follow him if I didn't know a thing or two about self-defense. His line of work is extremely dangerous. It isn't exactly a spectator sport."
I lifted my head. "What's he even do? He told me something about an extraordinarily adventure... something."
"Griffon adventurer extraordinaire," Slipstream replied. "And he's a treasure hunter. He chases things that are worth more than your city, and couldn't be legitimately purchased even if they had a price. Frankly, it's a miracle he hasn't been assassinated yet, though having a house in the sky and a friend to watch his back does do wonders. Some days, it feels like fate itself is keeping him safe."
"Fate keeping him safe, huh?" I leaned in in sudden interest. "Is this random superstition or conjecture, or have you ran into any spooky arbiters of fate out there who could really do that? Pretend, like, I know nothing in case it's really obvious."
Slipstream shrugged. "I've known ponies who could see the future and bring back the dead. Tell me anything's possible, and I'll believe there's a way."
I gaped. Icereach shut out things like that? "You're bluffing."
"Believe it or not," Slipstream said, tending to a kettle that was beginning to whistle. "The age of immortals and ponies walking among each other is still within recent memory. If creatures can attain lifespans measuring hundreds or thousands of years, who's to say what is and isn't possible in the world?"
"You mean the Night Mother and Garsheeva?" I pressed, indignant. "I've heard of them. Sorta."
"Only sort of heard of them?" Slipstream looked over her shoulder and gave me a frown. "If there was one place I would expect them to be remembered, it would be here. This city is half sarosian, isn't it? That's a much denser concentration than elsewhere in the world."
I kicked my hooves, swiveling on a swivel chair. "Maybe everyone remembers, but they don't like talking about it. "Same goes for changelings, windigoes, destiny, and any reason someone would build a chapel at the bottom of the world. You see why I've gotta know, right?"
"Well, I'm glad you're feeling more comfortable, at least," Slipstream said, taking the heated cider and carrying it over to the table with a pair of wing muffs.
I took the cider, gave it a sniff, and decided that if Slipstream was trying to drug me, refusing it wouldn't even matter because I would be so unlucky that a boulder would just fall on me instead. Besides, I had said yes when she offered it before, hadn't I...? I took a sip. It was good.
"Hey, so..." I settled into my chair a little more, trying to force down my nagging paranoia and make the most of this rare opportunity. "You've been around a lot, you said? How did you know when you were ready?"
"Ready?" Slipstream looked up from her mug. "To leave, and go traveling?"
I nodded. "Yeah."
"I didn't, really." Slipstream shrugged. "It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I was young, recently unemployed, saw an opportunity to catch an airship to the next town over free of charge and didn't feel like my prospects were glamorous enough where I was to make it a big risk. One thing led to another, and after spending about a year abroad I decided it was a life that could be worth the drawbacks."
"So it just happened?" I frowned, recalling front and center how I had 'just happened' to get recruited by Aldebaran.
"That's how it usually is," Slipstream explained. "At least, for the kind of wandering Gerardo and I do. In the distant past, the world was a lot more connected than it is now. Creatures would travel carrying cargo, or even to meet business partners and supervise projects and investments. Or they would go on vacation. That's been on the decline for more than a hundred years, however. Our style is more... directionless. Or our direction changes all the time. So I can't speak for everyone."
I nodded, listening and trying to read her. Slipstream's advice sounded... relevant to what I wanted to hear, like she understood me. At the very least, she seemed to know to explain things that someone in Icereach wouldn't know, even if they were common sense elsewhere.
Was this a good thing? I was getting exactly what I wanted. Or was that a reason to be suspicious? I couldn't remember exactly what I had asked to prompt her reactions, or exactly how much I had divulged about my own situation. Was I getting taken in again? Was her friendliness suspicious, or legitimate hospitality?
I had no baseline. I couldn't tell. It was completely and utterly impossible for me to judge whether this was a normal conversation, with all my fears and biases and lack of experience getting in the way.
The Aldebaran incident had messed me up, I knew. I thought six months had been more than long enough for me to sort it out, stop worrying about the things I couldn't sort out, and get back on my hooves. But now that I was in a situation like this again, I was realizing a whole new layer of damage I had never even noticed before.
What a mess.
"How did you..." I trailed off, trying to put my thoughts back together into a conversation. I was good at acting. At the very least, even if I didn't know whether this was normal or safe, I could pretend it was. "How did you not get, like, taken advantage of? If you didn't know whether you were ready to leave? There's gotta be a whole lot of scary stuff in the world."
Slipstream chuckled. "You have no idea. The way I survived was by having friends who were far more talented or experienced or determined than me. They fielded most of the big problems and heavy hits. Which isn't to say there weren't times when everyone was in trouble, or when I had to seriously pull my weight. But that's just living. No one can be perfectly prepared for everything they run into in life. The best teacher is experience, and all."
Yeah? And what if I didn't like that? What if I still dreamed of someone who was all-powerful, all-knowing, and could just keep problems like that at bay?
I... had mostly given up on that dream, actually. I still remembered the sting of my failures six months ago. Even if I could brag with the yaks about what I had accomplished, I would never forget that being rescued over and over by destiny hadn't felt as great as I imagined. And yet, when I forgot to actively remind myself where that led to, those desires sometimes returned.
I shuffled my cider in my hooves. The warmth of the drink was starting to get to me, combining with my heavy coat and reminding me just how hot it was in here.
"Thanks for the talk," I said, taking one more long sip and getting slowly to my hooves. "I've got some... stuff to think about. Maybe I'll see you again before you leave?"
Slipstream nodded. "We'll see how long we stay, though I doubt we'll leave before tomorrow morning. It was a pleasure meeting you! Most of the time, locals never come up here to chat."
I made myself smile. "Glad I could brighten your day."
Nothing accosted me as I moved toward the door and began the process of opening it. No hidden traps, no changeling schemes, no poison darts or interrupting kung fu masters or Elise lookalikes telling me I absolutely had to stay.
I opened the door. Gerardo was on the airship dock, furling his wings after a landing.
Immediately, my heart skipped a beat. Here it was. This was when everything fell apart and I suddenly had no choice but to-
"Well well," Gerardo greeted, strolling up to me. "Good afternoon, there. I see you've taken our previous encounter as a challenge."
"A what?" I blinked, waiting for everything to shatter.
"About how I told you you'd have to try harder to squirrel any information on past catastrophes out of me?" Gerardo raised an eyebrow. "Clearly, you decided to plumb my associate for details instead."
I took a step back, feeling the other boot coming down. "Errr..."
"Quite clever of you," Gerardo chuckled amiably. "I'd wager it even worked. Although, now that old Elise and I have had a chance to clear the air, I can see you are, in fact, the real thing. Welcome to my home, young Halcyon."
Nervously, I leaned against the door frame. "Actually, I was just on my way out..."
"Stop letting out all the hot air!" Slipstream called irately from behind me. "Gerardo Guillaume, no visiting on the porch!"
Gerardo's headcrest drooped in disappointment. "Ah. Scheduling woes, a thing the civilized world believes we need. Well, we'll be around for a day or so if you feel the urge to properly meet a griffon adventurer extraordinaire. I'd be happy to give you a tour of the place, or chat up old exploits. Until next time."
He slipped past me, and I wandered forward in a daze. By the time I reached the dock, the door was bolted and sealed behind me.
They were letting me go. I was... pretty sure that was normal. My heart was beating out of control, but I was perfectly and completely okay.
In the sense that I hadn't been physically accosted, at least. If this was my reaction to finally meeting more adventurers, I was pretty sure I was anything but fine.
Ten minutes later, I was alone in the reception room at the top of the tower. I sat in the farthest seat from any entrance, my back to the room, facing a wooden wall. My ears told me no one was coming. So, I took the boots off my forehooves, buried my head in them, hunched over and sighed.
This was a mess. I was a mess. This wasn't how I wanted things to go at all. Rationally, I was all but certain Gerardo and Slipstream weren't morally bankrupt mercenaries in disguise, or whatever Aldebaran had wound up as in the end. I couldn't point to a single fact that suggested they were, outside of the ones colored by my bias. But whether my bias was right or wrong, if this was how I reacted after time had run its course and I had healed every visible wound from six months ago... I was suddenly faced with the possibility I might never be able to travel.
Finding a way to do it safely wasn't the problem. Being able to protect myself wasn't the problem. Getting the resources... might be a problem, but it was one I could apply myself to. Actually trusting... well, anyone? I couldn't do it now, and I didn't know how or when that would change.
I wanted to cry. My desires were all still there, to leave Icereach and wander the world in search of that nameless something I knew I was missing. Seeing Gerardo and his ship had reawakened them, even if I had put them on pause for a whole six months. They had even brought me up to and inside of his airship. And once I made it there, I had slowly deteriorated until... this.
Feeling this, seeing how my experience with the changelings was still coloring my ability to do what I wanted long after they were gone, felt like the final screw in my opinion of them. After the incident, getting my thoughts on Aldebaran straightened out had been one of the longest and hardest tasks I had dealt with. They might have lied to me and betrayed me, but physically they hadn't so much as scratched me. Except for the Composer, but that was a windigo. And, without knowing their motives, I had never known if there might have really been a reason for all that.
When I could tell myself they hadn't really tried to hurt me, and that I didn't know what they were after, it was a lot easier for my opinion on them to be complicated. Now that I was here, it was even more easy not to like them at all.
"Someone, please help," I whispered into the void. Nobody answered.
"I don't want to have to live like this," I quietly went on. "How can I go out and find what I'm meant to do with my life if I keep stopping myself at the door? Better to be able to take chances and suffer the consequences if I'm wrong than to be too scared to start in the first place. At least, that's how it looks from down here."
Nobody came.
Although, there was one pony...
Taking a deep breath, I readied myself. Just like six months ago, no song-
-was necessary.
Halcyon frowned at her bare hooves. Immediately, she put her boots back on, did them up slowly, and sighed.
"Stop coming to me like this," she breathed, loud enough that it would register in her ears and form a memory she could leave intact for her mask. "I appreciate that you're trying to grow and become your own pony. That's good. Make a life for yourself. But I don't like how it's leading you to think in terms of me and us. Being different from me is fine. Coming to me for help? Avoiding that is the whole point."
She tinkered with her mask, feeling her talent glow softly as she molded it. "I'm only doing this for you because our goals are still the same, and I don't want you to languish here for even more years. But you need to get used to solving problems yourself, or else find someone who can do it for you. Someone who isn't me. I am not your god."
Done. It was a relatively minor change, after all. The blankness swirled around her like a great dark hurricane, demanding emotion and detail to make it no longer nothing. Fortunately, it always stopped as soon as she-
-put the mask back on.
I reeled, feeling the customary headache that came with being changed. This was always a feeling I hated. It was hard to find words to describe it. Cheating, unnatural, lost... There was always a lump of bitterness that came with needing to adjust myself by force, rather than doing it through effort and determination the way normal ponies could.
It didn't feel like I had lost any memories. Granted, I wasn't sure what that would feel like, but I knew what I had asked for and was fairly sure I had it. There was now an extra wall in my mind, one that separated adventurers and betrayal and made my head spin when I tried to think about them together. Hmm.
Well, maybe it would work for what I needed right now. If it got in the way when processing... whatever I needed to process, I'd just have to ask blank me to undo it when the time came.
Hopefully, she wouldn't be too annoyed.
My head still hurt from the transition, so I laid down and focused on existing. Gerardo had left me a standing invitation to return. Accepting it felt... more or less fine, even though I could remember the reasons it shouldn't.
I'd give myself a few minutes to breathe and steady up, and then I would go back and see what I could do the way I was now.