"There’ll always be someone standing on your head in KOTIS."
"Compared to the wealth of careers offering complete independence? Smallholders need to sell their product. Chefs please their diners. Companies have hierarchies more complex than the military." She paused. "Even artists suffer from patrons."
"Patrons only have as much power as they are allowed. They cannot dictate your waking, your sleeping, your daily routines."
"Oh?" Oriel worked a bored note into her voice. "Perhaps I enjoy structure."
He propped his chin on one hand and settling in to stare, without any hint of embarrassment.
"Enjoy it? Or need it? You think you can find something to belong to?"
Oriel restrained a few curt words and turned her back, focusing once again on the snowboards. She couldn’t afford to offend people here, so it was best to simply ignore him. But she didn’t want to listen to him either, so she looked about for an excuse to leave, and saw Kaszandra’s aunt, Tsa Dale, looking at her thoughtfully, holding several depleted food trays. Oriel immediately stood up to help clear away, and left the whole problem behind.
Kaszandra’s aunt led Oriel and two children from one of the Setari families to the nearest of the houses, and an entry room where they could shed outer layers before continuing inside.
"You two go back and bring anything that’s left," Tsa Dale said to the two children as she levered off a boot using a metal device set into the floor.
The children nodded and bounced off, while Tsa Dale and Oriel shed layers and started ferrying trays into the house.
"We should be able to fit the leftovers all on a few plates," Tsa Dale said. "And everything else into the cleaner. Some of this stuff is Laura’s, but we’ll sort it out later."
Oriel fetched the second delivery of trays while Tsa Dale reorganised and covered plates, and it was only a few joden before the food was tidily sorted, and spotless trays and bowls were emerging from the cleaner.
"Hey, Aunt Sue. Where are the leftovers? Lira is being very particular about some biscuits Allidi and Haelin made, and how I have to tell them how nice they were, but I didn’t even see them and will get all sorts of looks later."
Kaszandra herself, cheeks red from the cold. Oriel tried not to gape, sorting through the translator’s rendition of the Earth language while Tsa Dale inspected the food plates, then offered up one that contained a few broken pieces of brightly decorated biscuit.
"Thanks!" Kaszandra selected a couple of shards and bit one cautiously. "So what did you want to talk about?"
"Whether your brother-in-law is a creeper, or is he a creeper."
Kaszandra laughed, and gave Oriel an apologetic smile, switching to speaking Taren. "He’s still staring, is he? Sorry about that. He’s being an artiste." She wrinkled her nose and added: "I shouldn’t put it that way, I guess. Kaoren says that Sight Sight triggering the way it does for Arden can be pretty overwhelming. But I still think that he can deal with his Sights without being so rude."
Tsa Dale raised her eyebrows, and then said: "Come into the snug and explain this to us properly."
The translator had unhelpfully suggested that Tsa Dale was calling Arden Ruuel a kind of spreading plant, which surely couldn’t be correct. Puzzling out probable other meanings, Oriel obediently followed the two Earth women into a warm room overstocked with plush chairs and couches, arranged to enjoy a large window out into a tiny walled garden. Feeling that her day only continued to grow stranger, she obediently sat in one of chairs.
"Taren-Kolaren doesn’t have a word for muse, but that’s more or less what’s going on with Arden," Kaszandra said, and added to Orieclass="underline" "Muse is a person who inspires artistic creation. Arden’s seen something in you that he wants to make into art. He did the same thing to Lanset—the actress, you know—and that’s how she ended up here. He invited her to our Snow Day to make up for staring at her a lot, and then asking provoking questions so he could watch her reaction with his Sights."
"Hmph." Tsa Dale looked unimpressed. "The staring could be excused as his Sights going into overdrive, but the questions are obviously a choice."
Kaszandra chuckled. "Lanset slapped him once. I think that’s the proper response." But her smile faded, and she lifted one hand in a helpless gesture. "Sight Sight talents really do suffer from this need to know, and I think it’s true that Arden struggles when he sees someone who inspires him and he can’t find out the things he wants to know about them. But he chooses what I think is a very performative response. He likes playing a game of being rude, and then being charmingly apologetic."
"I say don’t answer any of his questions," Tsa Dale said.
"Even then he’d see the reaction to the question, which tells him way more than anything you might answer. Sight Sight and Place Sight are a deadly combination."
Oriel’s interest was not Arden Ruuel at all, but on this pair of famous strangers, clearly concerned that she might be overset by a little blatant provocation. That friendly warmth was so unfamiliar Oriel wasn’t altogether sure how to handle it. Smile and assure them everything was fine?
Perhaps her expression wasn’t as controlled as usual, because Kaszandra glanced at her, then said: "Play some music, Aunt Sue. I love your proper, out loud music room."
"You could easily fix one up for yourself," Tsa Dale said. "Just because Tarens have no appreciation of a good sub-woofer doesn’t mean you can’t import Kolaren equipment."
"It seemed excessive to set up a room that I’d only use when Kaoren, Siame or Sen—and Tyrian, now—weren’t around."
"They don’t listen to out-loud music at all?"
"They do, but music is one of the things we have to be careful about. The themes and meaning, things non-Sight talents mightn’t even notice, get really foregrounded. Kaoren has music he likes and listens to, but he avoids unfamiliar stimulus if he’s got missions scheduled. It’s hard for him to predict how he’ll react. And Sen—so many nightmares out of things I’d never have guessed would have a negative impact."
"Is that Sights, though? Kids that age, particularly imaginative ones, are all about the night terrors. Your mother had a night light until she was ten, according to Bet."
"Really?" Kaszandra sounded delighted.
"She doesn’t admit it." Tsa Dale smiled as unfamiliar instruments swelled around them. "I remember secretly watching Poltergeist when I was five, and avoiding closets for years. It would be awkward to have that kind of reaction to chance-heard music." She shifted her attention back to Oriel. "But whatever Sights reaction Arden is having, he doesn’t get a free pass to shift his discomfort to someone else. Do you want him squished?"
"I think that it’s nearly time for Maxen and I to head back," Oriel replied carefully. "Then I’ll be in basic training, and Arden Ruuel will be irrelevant to me."
"That’s underestimating Arden by way too much," Kaszandra said. "This is someone who stubborned his way out of the Setari program, despite having a very strong and rare talent set. Plus he’s scary smart, and did I mention the charming when he wants to be part. Lanset thought she’d left him and his rudeness at a party, and found him consulting with her director the next day. I can ask Kaoren to try and make him stop, but I’m not sure it’ll work."
"What would happen if you asked future Dad to stop him?" Tsa Dale asked.
Kaszandra frowned, then looked thoughtful. "I’m not sure. Tsur Selkie is good at getting things done, but he didn’t manage to get Arden to do what he wanted the first time around."