Maze and Alay’s wedding is in two days – it’s going to be at Keer’s house at Mesiath (Keer really likes the tall trees and is the only one of the Senior Taren Setari who took his land grant somewhere other than the islands). Alay’s just starting to show, and she and Maze are so funny together right now. She’s been rostered on light duties, and drops to only training at the talent school after the wedding. Maze wants to wrap her in cotton wool, and you can see him making himself not do that, and you can see Alay trying not to enjoy too much how he’s fretting over her. They’ve fallen so hard. I always enjoy when they’re rostered to guard us – Sen insists on saying hello to the baby by wrapping her arms around Alay’s waist and kissing her stomach. Alay goes all pink when she does this, but says that there’s no need to tell Sen not to. I’ve been seeing quite a lot of them both because Maze and Rye, having finished preparing the place for Maze and Alay’s wedding, have started working on "The Wedding Garden" for Kaoren and me, and have been pulling out trees and scooping out dirt and experimenting with water features on the south side of the island. Alay comes and watches and is highly amused and happy about how much Maze enjoys it all.
I feel very protective of them, which is silly of me, but I don’t want their wedding spoiled by the brewing shitstorm about touchstones. Between the kids and the Setari I’ve been busy playing down any upset I might be feeling myself. Kaoren’s not fooled of course, and knows that I’ve had to wake myself up out of a few projective dreams as well. I make sure I don’t dump all my stress on him, and after over a year together I’m better at spotting when he’s stressed or worn, and knowing ways to make it better. His meditation garden is really important to him that way: a space even I don’t go into unless he asks me. His sights are so overwhelming sometimes, and one of the things we designed the entire house around was this quiet and peaceful place. He’ll go out there even when it’s snowing when he needs to de-stress.
But he smiles more easily these days, and that makes me very happy indeed.
11 - October
October 19
Grilled
Just finished being examined at the inquiry. It wasn’t fun – they had a Sight Sight talent I’ve not met before who acted in combination with a medical scanner as a lie detector. They started out by checking whether there were any missions I’d done which hadn’t been presented, and then if anyone had ever asked me to use my powers for non-mission things, and then whether I ever used my powers of my own accord for non-mission things. Which of course was yes, and then they wanted to know exactly what and when and why and spent ages trying to get me to admit to doing anything which could be seriously disapproved of. I’m so glad I resisted the temptation to peek on Nils and Zee when they went off camping. They also wanted to know if I thought I had any limits to what I could "make real". I said: "My tendency to collapse after ten seconds, and then for whatever it is to fade away." They wouldn’t just leave it at that – particularly when Lira is still non-faded. I still don’t know if I made her or not, and they weren’t tremendously satisfied at my answer to whether I thought I did: "I could barely think at all at the time. All I knew was that the roof was falling in, and so I tried to stuff us both into a corner. I’d completely forgotten she was projecting herself. I wasn’t trying to do anything more than stop bits of rock hitting us."
The questioning wasn’t hostile, just a lot of polite, clever questions to go with the lie detector, but I hated it all the same. When they’d run out of new ways to try and trip me up, they asked if I wanted to say anything, and I said: "Just that it’s very uncomfortable being treated as a potential criminal all the time."
That comment got a lot of headlines (though for all the protests, people are thoroughly enjoying all the information coming out via the inquiry, and the viewing statistics of me being questioned are pretty much 99% of the population – the other one percent being too young to watch). Kaoren says it’s lucky that I live such a blameless life, or at least am too embarrassed at the idea of being found out to spy. We talked about what would have happened if they had hit on the only things that I did want to hide, which was my theories about the creation of Muina, and the Kolaren government trying to buy me. I’d spoken very briefly to Raiten to ask him what I should answer if I was asked anything which touched on that, and he told me I should just tell the truth. I’m still glad that the subject didn’t come up, though.
There was a lot of discussion about whether Lira should be questioned, but fortunately we won that argument by pulling the too traumatised card. The nightmare worked for us in that respect, and KOTIS had mine and Lira’s main medic talk for a while about the anxiety attacks the inquiry had caused her and how her loss of conscious control of her powers could be psychosomatic given the extreme trauma associated with them. Lira was very annoyed about any of this being public, but pleased that she didn’t have to front the inquiry. It would have been damn interesting if she had – she would have given them all an imperial dressing down, because her response to upset is to attack.
It’s the submissions stage next, which should be even more annoying. I’m going to try and ignore it, but I’m not sure I’ll succeed in concentrating on other things. I’m going to have to start properly planning for my wedding, which is, gods, only five months away. It’s weird – I feel like I’m already married to Kaoren – but the idea of the wedding itself makes me nervous. I wish Mum was here. No sign of the gate to Earth becoming active again in the near future, which has disappointed me a lot – I want to send more letters. Probably January, if it really is a Muinan year between each opening.
Maze and Alay’s wedding was glorious. Early Autumn, so that the heat had dropped away, and there were berries on bushes, and birds everywhere and a kind of gauzy haze over everything. And it smelled wonderful. Snow is all very amusing and different for a Sydney girl, but it was so nice to be away from it for a day. Keer’s property is all ferns and beams of light spearing down through the canopy, and edges around a narrow bit of tea-coloured lake. Most of it hasn’t been cleared at all, except around the house. And the whole place is totally infested with different varieties of deer – some where the adults are no taller than Ys and some almost moose-sized. Mesiath is a bit more dangerous to live in than Pandora – more snakes and poisonous bugs, and there’s already been a couple of incidents of people finding the local hunting cats – daturs – stalking them or sitting uncomfortably close watching them. And there are lots of smaller hunting creatures like the martens (named for the pine martens shown in the Planet Earth documentary) and hordes of little nut-eaters, and too many birds to count. Mesiath totally seethes with wildlife. It’s always great fun watching Tarens deal with outside – they’re getting better at it, but the Setari families had some real adjustments coming from Tare to live on the islands. Mesiath is even more overwhelming for them, and there always seems to be someone shrieking about bugs or lizards.