[She'll allow him it - the fragmented glass pieces of her physical weariness alongside the flash of something thinner and sharper and more intimately dangerous that flickers in response to his question. It's a sun viewed through a pinhole. Remote. Bright enough to leave brief spots on the vision.]
Some of them, yes.
[There's no effort to shield what his question draws out of her. Maybe if she weren't tired from the effort of dredging the Station back into the void there might be no penetrating that serene, clinical quality of her mind. But she is and he asked, so why bother pretending otherwise? Truth matters, she says to the Prince, however bitter. Let him know it.]
Some of them were comatose, then died. Some of them died while on missions. [There are no names in the shape of the thought, but there are traces of flowers blooming in still pools - of books and a pen scratching - of spice and honey - of soft fingertips - of the feeling of a brush pulling through hair for the six hundredth time, every long strand sliding like silk through the instrument's teeth.] Now just us and The Prince remain.
no subject
Some of them, yes.
[There's no effort to shield what his question draws out of her. Maybe if she weren't tired from the effort of dredging the Station back into the void there might be no penetrating that serene, clinical quality of her mind. But she is and he asked, so why bother pretending otherwise? Truth matters, she says to the Prince, however bitter. Let him know it.]
Some of them were comatose, then died. Some of them died while on missions. [There are no names in the shape of the thought, but there are traces of flowers blooming in still pools - of books and a pen scratching - of spice and honey - of soft fingertips - of the feeling of a brush pulling through hair for the six hundredth time, every long strand sliding like silk through the instrument's teeth.] Now just us and The Prince remain.