Estella sat in one of the squashy armchairs in Rilienās sitting room, or the arrangement of furniture around a low table that served the same function, though the room itself was clearly multipurpose, containing several bookshelves and the likes as well. Her legs were pulled up underneath her, and in her lap rested her teacherās lute. She thought heād been joking when he said heād teach her to sing as bards did, but then, how silly was she for thinking that a Tranquil would joke? But he did, she knew he did, and she thought this had been one of them. Apparently it was not so, and though she wasnāt sure how he could stand to listen to her mangle the chords so many times before they even sounded close to the way he played them, he did, and so she practiced this as faithfully as everything else. He didnāt ever teach her anything useless, after all.
Her clumsy fingers picked over the strings almost absently, her fingernails cut down to bare slivers of white above the quick, so that they would not interfere with her playing. It was a beautiful instrument, she had to admit; the first time heād handed it to her, placing her fingers on the strings with that strangely patient, hyper-competent manner of his, sheād almost refused to take it, for fear of doing it damage somehow. She always seemed to be clumsy when it counted, and didnāt want to be responsible for destroying something so well-made, and clearly well-used.
Once she had the chords more or less how she wanted them, she started to hum softly in the back of her throat, the tune an old Tevinter lullaby she remembered only dimly. About half the words were lost to her, but she recalled the melody well enough to at least try recreating it. Occasionally a finger slipped out of place and she winced at the wrongness of what followed, but she would always diligently set her digits back where they belonged and start again.
Perhaps the frequency of her errors was partially attributable to the fact that she wasnāt watching what she was doing, but rather watching him. Sometimes, he would give her a new tune to try and sing it with her, something which never failed to make her feel an odd mixture of privileged and nervousāit was always that much worse messing up when she was also making things more difficult for someone elseāother times, he would work on something else while she practiced, occasionally leveling a deadpan comment at her without looking up from whatever occupied him. Having been under his tutelage for quite some time now, Estella thought she had a bit of a grip on the kind of person Rilien was, and she had to admit that while he sometimes still intimidated her, with all of his artfully-honed skills and obvious perfectionism, she was mostly just glad that she had the opportunity to learn from him. She was never as sure of herself as she was when he said sheād done something well, because he had no reason to deceive her, and he did nothing without a reason.
At present, he appeared to be bundling herbs, tying them together with string. She figured heād probably hang them from the ceiling downstairs when they were done. Tilting her head, she wondered, not for the first time, how it was that one person could be soā¦ graceful all the time. Sheād known refined people before, of course, and she supposed Cyrus might come close to being as naturally fluid as Rilien was, but her brother was inconsistent in a lot of things, including the application of his talents. Rilien was constantly doing everything just so. And yetā¦ she couldnāt put her finger on it, but something seemed off about him of late. Like he wasnāt quite himself somehow. She supposed that if she hadnāt been hanging onto his every word and action when in his company for a couple of years now, she might never have noticed in the first place.
Feeling brave, Estella stopped humming and put her voice to use with a question instead. āRilien? Isā¦ā she trailed off for a moment, trying to find the best way to phrase what her intuition was telling her. āIs something the matter? You seemā¦ different, lately.ā She wondered if she might not be overstepping some kind of boundary here, one she wasnāt meant to cross, but she was concerned. It didnāt strike her as a good kind of different, this change.
And here heād been thinking she was drawing that breath to sing. Perhaps he should have known betterāEstella usually had to be instructed to practice that particular skill, unlike the lute, which she would pluck at more readily, should she find it waiting for her when she arrived. He wasnāt entirely sure why she was so reluctant; she had a pleasant tone, an unusually rich soprano that lent itself well to bardic music. He found itā¦ nice, to listen to it when working on something else.
Alas, she chose instead to ply him with a query, and for a moment, Rilien did not seem to have heard her, finishing the current bundle in his handsāelfrootābefore he acknowledged her words with a flick of his glance in her direction. She looked slightly uncomfortable to be asking, and he supposed he could guess why. But stillā¦ either her observational skills were improving exceptionally well, or he wasnāt being as subtle as he believed himself to be. Seeing as his subtlety had years of field-testing in proof, he supposed he should be congratulating her.
Instead, he set the bundle of elfroot aside and pulled the next towards himself, unwinding a length of twine just as he had for the last. He wasnāt ignoring her so much as he was trying to decide what he wanted to do with the question. It was, in effect, an opportunity to speak with an empathetic listener about his troubles, and he knew that anything he told her would remain with her. All the same, there was a mild stirring of feeling in his chest. He knew that, whatever the reason, he didnāt want to appear uncertain in front of his student. Logically, this made some sense; it was better for instructional purposes the less fallible she believed him to be. But the logic didnāt have anything to do with the feeling, something that he remembered with great clarity now.
More than any of that, though, he justā¦ wanted someone to speak with. He already knew what Lucien would say, and knew that perhaps it would make his friend feel guiltier than he already did for something that was not his fault. He wasnāt sure Aurora or Ashton would see the problem for what it was, and Sparrowā¦ Sparrow was half the problem. So it seemed that Estella was both the person best suited to hear this and the person he most wished to tell, for reasons he didnāt really understand.
"I believeā¦ that I have made a grave error.ā
The silence in the room seemed to her to thicken after that statement, and Estella stopped playing, pressing a palm over the lute strings to still the echoes of sound. Her eyes softened, and she gently set the instrument aside, unfolding her legs and easing out of her chair. Bare feet padded over the lush rug under the furniture and over into the stone-tiled area Rilien sat at, and she took the chair perpendicular to his, so that they occupied both sides of the same corner.
She knew that if he had bothered to say this much, he likely intended to continue, but he didnāt do so immediately, and so she joined him in his task, sorting the herbs on his table by type so that they would be easier to bundle. Grave errors seemed more like the kinds of things she made than he did, but she knew that Rilien was a mortal man like any other, and surely he did sometimes do things he regretted, orā¦ at least things that he later thought he should not have done. Things that he could rightly call mistakes. What she hadnāt expected was that he would ever let one of them eat at him, as this one must have, to affect him so.
Pushing a loose wisp of hair behind one of her ears, Estella spoke. āYouā¦ well. What I mean is, I know a lot about errors, soā¦ you can tell me, if you want to.ā She made a face at her own inelegant phrasing, but went back to her sorting afterwards. She of all people wasnāt going to obligate him to anything, but she did want to help. Heād done so much for her in two yearsā¦ she hadnāt the faintest hope of paying that debt, but sheād welcome the opportunity to at least do right by him somehow.
As if this had been the thing he was waiting for, Rilien replied almost immediately. "I had always intended to leave Kirkwall one day. Most likely it would be because Ser Lucien was leaving as well, and moving on to something I would be useful for. But it was always going to happen.ā He supposed it wasnāt exactly obvious just how deeply he felt himself indebted to the chevalier, nor the level of loyalty this inspired, because they didnāt act like a servant and liege, though that was the closest approximation to how Rilien saw them that the common language had. It wasnāt only to Lucien that he owed debts, of course, but those were the ones which most concerned him.
He supposed this might be news to Estella, as he was under the impression that Lucien was making his preparations to leave the Lions slowly and gradually, moving other members of the company into more prominent leadership positions and the like, rather than outright announcing his intentions to depart one day. Smarter, when the day in question was not yet certain.
"But I did not know when that day would be, andā¦ā he paused a moment, tying off a knot before continuing in the same flat one. "Even I prefer company to none, at least at times.ā That, perhaps, more than anything else, had been what prompted him to allow Sparrow into his home and his life in the first place. It was the same thing that prompted him to continue to seek out the company of Ashton, and Aurora, and Lucien. It, more than anything, was the reason Bodahn and Sandal worked in his shop, why he would be leaving it to them when he departed for Orlais.
"There wasnāt supposed to be anyone who would want to come with me when I left.ā And that was really the rub of things, wasnāt it? His other friends would understand. They would be willing to wish him well and let him go, because this was the path he had chosen for himself. It was what he needed to do, and they would respect that. They could, because for all he had been and done to and for them, and they to and for him, there had always been something yet held back, something unshared, something detached and distant, unconnected. So, too, it was with Sparrow, though it had been a near matter in his case.
"The fact of the matter is, had this been four years ago, I would have wanted to take her, regardless of the risk.ā His emergent, fledgling feelings had been much more new and shocking to him then. Less something he could deal with, as he could accept and deal with them now. And the one time heād been allowed to feel in full, heād feltā¦ something like love. Something heād been willing to name love, in the moment. He didnāt know if that was the right name or not, and it likely didnāt matter anyway. It was not something he thought he would ever feel again, not in the same way, and even if it had been thatā¦ what was the significance? People fell in love often. Love was common: banal, even. What was less common was what was supposed to come with it: trust, openness, honesty. Rilien didnāt trust Sparrowānot completely, anyway. Her irresponsibility precluded that for him. He was never really open with anyone, and his honesty was situational at best.
"But I foolishly believed the point moot anyway, because people like her do not love people like me.ā It should have been obvious. He was her opposite in virtually every way. There should have been nothing about him that appealed to her on that level. What about a void of feeling could hold any attraction to someone who felt everything so tumultuously? He didnāt understand how it had happened, and that sat almost as ill with him as the fact that it apparently had.
"And now, my error has hurt her, and I do not know how to fix it.ā
Estella was quiet while Rilien explained, focused intently on what he was saying, and what she guessed he might not be saying. It all sounded incredibly complicated, and for some reason, it made her chest ache. She supposed it must be sympathy, though she wasnāt sure if that was the right word. Rilienās Tranquility made all those normal phrases and sentiments much more complicated, usually. And yet she couldnāt help but feel that parts of this were really simple. Heād made friends here, friends he knew he would eventually leave behind one day, and while most of them would get it, Sparrowāand she could only assume that Sparrow was who he was talking aboutāhad apparently expressed a vehement lack of the sameā¦ for what seemed to Estella to be rather tragic reasons.
āDo you love her?ā The question was out before she could really consider the wisdom of it, but though she felt a bit awkward about it, she didnāt think it was a bad question to ask. Rilien probably didnāt do it much, but other people had to take their personal feeling into consideration when deciding how to handle a situation like this, and she knew he had to feel something about the whole thing, else he wouldnāt beā¦ off like this.
That was really the question, wasnāt it? It was the very same one heād been asking himself since heād last spoken to her, and the answer was not as straightforward as heād thought four years ago. Because heād seen people in love now, watched them interact with one another in all kinds of settings, and in the same span of time his own limited emotional repertoire had expanded, changing his simplistic understanding of what happiness was, or what was required for something to count as a friendship.
After some hesitation, he shook his head slowly. "Not enough.ā Looking up from his work, he met Estellaās eyes, trying to read there whether or not she understood. "What happens to her matters to me. I desire her happiness and enjoy her company. I am willing to sacrifice a great deal for her sake. ā¦I thought that was just itāthat all of that was what people called love. And perhaps it is, of a sort. Butā¦ no, not enough.ā Never once had he considered staying, and never recently had he contemplated taking her with him. That was indicative, and he knew it.
This was swiftly moving into territory that Estella had absolutely no experience with. She didnāt think sheād ever been in love, nor almost-sort-of in love, and she wasnāt exactly sure what to say. But heād gone to the trouble of telling her all of this, and so she tried to place herself in Sparrowās shoes as well as she could. Itā¦ wasnāt exactly easy, seeing as how sheād never really had a conversation with the woman, though theyād met incidentally once or twice, like at Ashton and Nostarielās wedding. Maybe anything she could say would really be the blind trying to lead the blind, butā¦ she at least knew a little bitāor a lot, ratherāabout being rejected, if in different contexts.
āIām not sure thereās anything you can do to fix it, exactly,ā she admitted. āI meanā¦ she loves you, you said, and you donāt love her, or at least not in the same way, soā¦ I think the worst thing you could do would be to pretend that you do, or let her hope that you might.ā She finished sorting the herbs, and pulled her legs up onto the chair, hugging her knees to her chest and propping her chin on them, still making eye contact with him.
āI donāt know how clear you made things, when you talked about this, butā¦ if you left anything ambiguous, I think you should probably rectify that. Just, umā¦ maybe be kind of gentle about it. Itāsā¦ Iād hate to hear something like this from someone I loved, but better that than still thinking there might be a chance for something.ā She frowned slightly, hoping it was the right thing to suggest. āAnd then, I guessā¦ give her as much space as she wants to deal with that.ā
Actually, he supposed it was significantly worse than not making things sufficiently clearāSparrow had run off without giving him any time at all to answer after she said it, and he had not sought her out since, in an attempt to give her the required time to come to terms with his eventual departure.
For someone who usually had his affairs in precise, logical order, Rilien was beginning to see that heād managed to make quite a mess of things.
Fortunately, Estellaās advice was as he expected: sensible and forthright, two qualities that she shared, and he felt a little bubble of appreciation well up before it swiftly faded, as all emotions did in him. His intellectual recognition of the favor sheād done him did not dissipate, however, and he nodded slowly. "I believe you are correct. I will endeavor to do that.ā Having something to do was vastly preferable to having too much time to dwell on his conundrum, and the proposed solution was certainly within his capacities.
"Thank you, Estella.ā
She breathed a soft, relieved exhale and smiled at him, just a small one. It was good to know sheād seemed reasonable, because she wasnāt sure if she was really just rambling like a fool. āItās no problem, Rilien. Though, uhā¦ if itās okay with you, I like it a bit better when youāre the one telling me how to do things. Youāre much better at it.ā It was a joke, mostly; she was happy to help him, obviously. But being the person giving advice was an unnerving feeling. Like if she messed it up, anything that went wrong would be her fault somehow. She wasnāt sure how people who did a lot of teaching or advising or important decision-making could stand it.
"Very well. Your minor chords were offāshow me your finger arrangement.ā Just like that, the topic moved back into familiar territory, and Rilien wasnāt sure, but he thought he felt a littleā¦ lighter.
Her clumsy fingers picked over the strings almost absently, her fingernails cut down to bare slivers of white above the quick, so that they would not interfere with her playing. It was a beautiful instrument, she had to admit; the first time heād handed it to her, placing her fingers on the strings with that strangely patient, hyper-competent manner of his, sheād almost refused to take it, for fear of doing it damage somehow. She always seemed to be clumsy when it counted, and didnāt want to be responsible for destroying something so well-made, and clearly well-used.
Once she had the chords more or less how she wanted them, she started to hum softly in the back of her throat, the tune an old Tevinter lullaby she remembered only dimly. About half the words were lost to her, but she recalled the melody well enough to at least try recreating it. Occasionally a finger slipped out of place and she winced at the wrongness of what followed, but she would always diligently set her digits back where they belonged and start again.
Perhaps the frequency of her errors was partially attributable to the fact that she wasnāt watching what she was doing, but rather watching him. Sometimes, he would give her a new tune to try and sing it with her, something which never failed to make her feel an odd mixture of privileged and nervousāit was always that much worse messing up when she was also making things more difficult for someone elseāother times, he would work on something else while she practiced, occasionally leveling a deadpan comment at her without looking up from whatever occupied him. Having been under his tutelage for quite some time now, Estella thought she had a bit of a grip on the kind of person Rilien was, and she had to admit that while he sometimes still intimidated her, with all of his artfully-honed skills and obvious perfectionism, she was mostly just glad that she had the opportunity to learn from him. She was never as sure of herself as she was when he said sheād done something well, because he had no reason to deceive her, and he did nothing without a reason.
At present, he appeared to be bundling herbs, tying them together with string. She figured heād probably hang them from the ceiling downstairs when they were done. Tilting her head, she wondered, not for the first time, how it was that one person could be soā¦ graceful all the time. Sheād known refined people before, of course, and she supposed Cyrus might come close to being as naturally fluid as Rilien was, but her brother was inconsistent in a lot of things, including the application of his talents. Rilien was constantly doing everything just so. And yetā¦ she couldnāt put her finger on it, but something seemed off about him of late. Like he wasnāt quite himself somehow. She supposed that if she hadnāt been hanging onto his every word and action when in his company for a couple of years now, she might never have noticed in the first place.
Feeling brave, Estella stopped humming and put her voice to use with a question instead. āRilien? Isā¦ā she trailed off for a moment, trying to find the best way to phrase what her intuition was telling her. āIs something the matter? You seemā¦ different, lately.ā She wondered if she might not be overstepping some kind of boundary here, one she wasnāt meant to cross, but she was concerned. It didnāt strike her as a good kind of different, this change.
And here heād been thinking she was drawing that breath to sing. Perhaps he should have known betterāEstella usually had to be instructed to practice that particular skill, unlike the lute, which she would pluck at more readily, should she find it waiting for her when she arrived. He wasnāt entirely sure why she was so reluctant; she had a pleasant tone, an unusually rich soprano that lent itself well to bardic music. He found itā¦ nice, to listen to it when working on something else.
Alas, she chose instead to ply him with a query, and for a moment, Rilien did not seem to have heard her, finishing the current bundle in his handsāelfrootābefore he acknowledged her words with a flick of his glance in her direction. She looked slightly uncomfortable to be asking, and he supposed he could guess why. But stillā¦ either her observational skills were improving exceptionally well, or he wasnāt being as subtle as he believed himself to be. Seeing as his subtlety had years of field-testing in proof, he supposed he should be congratulating her.
Instead, he set the bundle of elfroot aside and pulled the next towards himself, unwinding a length of twine just as he had for the last. He wasnāt ignoring her so much as he was trying to decide what he wanted to do with the question. It was, in effect, an opportunity to speak with an empathetic listener about his troubles, and he knew that anything he told her would remain with her. All the same, there was a mild stirring of feeling in his chest. He knew that, whatever the reason, he didnāt want to appear uncertain in front of his student. Logically, this made some sense; it was better for instructional purposes the less fallible she believed him to be. But the logic didnāt have anything to do with the feeling, something that he remembered with great clarity now.
More than any of that, though, he justā¦ wanted someone to speak with. He already knew what Lucien would say, and knew that perhaps it would make his friend feel guiltier than he already did for something that was not his fault. He wasnāt sure Aurora or Ashton would see the problem for what it was, and Sparrowā¦ Sparrow was half the problem. So it seemed that Estella was both the person best suited to hear this and the person he most wished to tell, for reasons he didnāt really understand.
"I believeā¦ that I have made a grave error.ā
The silence in the room seemed to her to thicken after that statement, and Estella stopped playing, pressing a palm over the lute strings to still the echoes of sound. Her eyes softened, and she gently set the instrument aside, unfolding her legs and easing out of her chair. Bare feet padded over the lush rug under the furniture and over into the stone-tiled area Rilien sat at, and she took the chair perpendicular to his, so that they occupied both sides of the same corner.
She knew that if he had bothered to say this much, he likely intended to continue, but he didnāt do so immediately, and so she joined him in his task, sorting the herbs on his table by type so that they would be easier to bundle. Grave errors seemed more like the kinds of things she made than he did, but she knew that Rilien was a mortal man like any other, and surely he did sometimes do things he regretted, orā¦ at least things that he later thought he should not have done. Things that he could rightly call mistakes. What she hadnāt expected was that he would ever let one of them eat at him, as this one must have, to affect him so.
Pushing a loose wisp of hair behind one of her ears, Estella spoke. āYouā¦ well. What I mean is, I know a lot about errors, soā¦ you can tell me, if you want to.ā She made a face at her own inelegant phrasing, but went back to her sorting afterwards. She of all people wasnāt going to obligate him to anything, but she did want to help. Heād done so much for her in two yearsā¦ she hadnāt the faintest hope of paying that debt, but sheād welcome the opportunity to at least do right by him somehow.
As if this had been the thing he was waiting for, Rilien replied almost immediately. "I had always intended to leave Kirkwall one day. Most likely it would be because Ser Lucien was leaving as well, and moving on to something I would be useful for. But it was always going to happen.ā He supposed it wasnāt exactly obvious just how deeply he felt himself indebted to the chevalier, nor the level of loyalty this inspired, because they didnāt act like a servant and liege, though that was the closest approximation to how Rilien saw them that the common language had. It wasnāt only to Lucien that he owed debts, of course, but those were the ones which most concerned him.
He supposed this might be news to Estella, as he was under the impression that Lucien was making his preparations to leave the Lions slowly and gradually, moving other members of the company into more prominent leadership positions and the like, rather than outright announcing his intentions to depart one day. Smarter, when the day in question was not yet certain.
"But I did not know when that day would be, andā¦ā he paused a moment, tying off a knot before continuing in the same flat one. "Even I prefer company to none, at least at times.ā That, perhaps, more than anything else, had been what prompted him to allow Sparrow into his home and his life in the first place. It was the same thing that prompted him to continue to seek out the company of Ashton, and Aurora, and Lucien. It, more than anything, was the reason Bodahn and Sandal worked in his shop, why he would be leaving it to them when he departed for Orlais.
"There wasnāt supposed to be anyone who would want to come with me when I left.ā And that was really the rub of things, wasnāt it? His other friends would understand. They would be willing to wish him well and let him go, because this was the path he had chosen for himself. It was what he needed to do, and they would respect that. They could, because for all he had been and done to and for them, and they to and for him, there had always been something yet held back, something unshared, something detached and distant, unconnected. So, too, it was with Sparrow, though it had been a near matter in his case.
"The fact of the matter is, had this been four years ago, I would have wanted to take her, regardless of the risk.ā His emergent, fledgling feelings had been much more new and shocking to him then. Less something he could deal with, as he could accept and deal with them now. And the one time heād been allowed to feel in full, heād feltā¦ something like love. Something heād been willing to name love, in the moment. He didnāt know if that was the right name or not, and it likely didnāt matter anyway. It was not something he thought he would ever feel again, not in the same way, and even if it had been thatā¦ what was the significance? People fell in love often. Love was common: banal, even. What was less common was what was supposed to come with it: trust, openness, honesty. Rilien didnāt trust Sparrowānot completely, anyway. Her irresponsibility precluded that for him. He was never really open with anyone, and his honesty was situational at best.
"But I foolishly believed the point moot anyway, because people like her do not love people like me.ā It should have been obvious. He was her opposite in virtually every way. There should have been nothing about him that appealed to her on that level. What about a void of feeling could hold any attraction to someone who felt everything so tumultuously? He didnāt understand how it had happened, and that sat almost as ill with him as the fact that it apparently had.
"And now, my error has hurt her, and I do not know how to fix it.ā
Estella was quiet while Rilien explained, focused intently on what he was saying, and what she guessed he might not be saying. It all sounded incredibly complicated, and for some reason, it made her chest ache. She supposed it must be sympathy, though she wasnāt sure if that was the right word. Rilienās Tranquility made all those normal phrases and sentiments much more complicated, usually. And yet she couldnāt help but feel that parts of this were really simple. Heād made friends here, friends he knew he would eventually leave behind one day, and while most of them would get it, Sparrowāand she could only assume that Sparrow was who he was talking aboutāhad apparently expressed a vehement lack of the sameā¦ for what seemed to Estella to be rather tragic reasons.
āDo you love her?ā The question was out before she could really consider the wisdom of it, but though she felt a bit awkward about it, she didnāt think it was a bad question to ask. Rilien probably didnāt do it much, but other people had to take their personal feeling into consideration when deciding how to handle a situation like this, and she knew he had to feel something about the whole thing, else he wouldnāt beā¦ off like this.
That was really the question, wasnāt it? It was the very same one heād been asking himself since heād last spoken to her, and the answer was not as straightforward as heād thought four years ago. Because heād seen people in love now, watched them interact with one another in all kinds of settings, and in the same span of time his own limited emotional repertoire had expanded, changing his simplistic understanding of what happiness was, or what was required for something to count as a friendship.
After some hesitation, he shook his head slowly. "Not enough.ā Looking up from his work, he met Estellaās eyes, trying to read there whether or not she understood. "What happens to her matters to me. I desire her happiness and enjoy her company. I am willing to sacrifice a great deal for her sake. ā¦I thought that was just itāthat all of that was what people called love. And perhaps it is, of a sort. Butā¦ no, not enough.ā Never once had he considered staying, and never recently had he contemplated taking her with him. That was indicative, and he knew it.
This was swiftly moving into territory that Estella had absolutely no experience with. She didnāt think sheād ever been in love, nor almost-sort-of in love, and she wasnāt exactly sure what to say. But heād gone to the trouble of telling her all of this, and so she tried to place herself in Sparrowās shoes as well as she could. Itā¦ wasnāt exactly easy, seeing as how sheād never really had a conversation with the woman, though theyād met incidentally once or twice, like at Ashton and Nostarielās wedding. Maybe anything she could say would really be the blind trying to lead the blind, butā¦ she at least knew a little bitāor a lot, ratherāabout being rejected, if in different contexts.
āIām not sure thereās anything you can do to fix it, exactly,ā she admitted. āI meanā¦ she loves you, you said, and you donāt love her, or at least not in the same way, soā¦ I think the worst thing you could do would be to pretend that you do, or let her hope that you might.ā She finished sorting the herbs, and pulled her legs up onto the chair, hugging her knees to her chest and propping her chin on them, still making eye contact with him.
āI donāt know how clear you made things, when you talked about this, butā¦ if you left anything ambiguous, I think you should probably rectify that. Just, umā¦ maybe be kind of gentle about it. Itāsā¦ Iād hate to hear something like this from someone I loved, but better that than still thinking there might be a chance for something.ā She frowned slightly, hoping it was the right thing to suggest. āAnd then, I guessā¦ give her as much space as she wants to deal with that.ā
Actually, he supposed it was significantly worse than not making things sufficiently clearāSparrow had run off without giving him any time at all to answer after she said it, and he had not sought her out since, in an attempt to give her the required time to come to terms with his eventual departure.
For someone who usually had his affairs in precise, logical order, Rilien was beginning to see that heād managed to make quite a mess of things.
Fortunately, Estellaās advice was as he expected: sensible and forthright, two qualities that she shared, and he felt a little bubble of appreciation well up before it swiftly faded, as all emotions did in him. His intellectual recognition of the favor sheād done him did not dissipate, however, and he nodded slowly. "I believe you are correct. I will endeavor to do that.ā Having something to do was vastly preferable to having too much time to dwell on his conundrum, and the proposed solution was certainly within his capacities.
"Thank you, Estella.ā
She breathed a soft, relieved exhale and smiled at him, just a small one. It was good to know sheād seemed reasonable, because she wasnāt sure if she was really just rambling like a fool. āItās no problem, Rilien. Though, uhā¦ if itās okay with you, I like it a bit better when youāre the one telling me how to do things. Youāre much better at it.ā It was a joke, mostly; she was happy to help him, obviously. But being the person giving advice was an unnerving feeling. Like if she messed it up, anything that went wrong would be her fault somehow. She wasnāt sure how people who did a lot of teaching or advising or important decision-making could stand it.
"Very well. Your minor chords were offāshow me your finger arrangement.ā Just like that, the topic moved back into familiar territory, and Rilien wasnāt sure, but he thought he felt a littleā¦ lighter.