Twice over the course of that conversation the Ambassador referred to Angzal by the formal address “Angzal gan Mreniyaur”. The feelings that the first such instance had stirred were buried by the discussion that followed, but the Ambassador’s inclusion of Angzal’s full name as she bid what could generously be described as her “farewell” dredged them up again. A Mraboran’s full name came from their litter, which was in turn derived from the names of the parents. Litters usually comprised three to six individuals, and were restricted to one per parent pairing, leaving Mraboran to choose between unlimited procreation and monogamy. The majority picked the latter, Angzal’s parents among them. This left Angzal with only four siblings, scattered across the Known Reaches, and none closer than a month’s journey away. So on her way back to the office, instead of dreading the meeting upon which her entire career now apparently hinged, she was composing letters to her brothers and sister; letters she knew she was long overdue in sending.

---

To Rzena’s credit, he did seem to make a serious attempt at hiding the look of glee when Angzal asked him to schedule another meeting with Reyes.

“Could you just, let me know when you’re about to call her to set up the appointment, so I can be out of the room?” Angzal requested. “I want to see neither your face nor hear her voice over the line.”

“That’s a shame, I was planning on putting it on speakerphone.”

“Have I ever told you you’re funny when you’re toying with death?”

At that, Rzena made a sound that was half laugh, half old-man-grunt and returned to the absorbed silence of his work.

To say that Angzal’s first conversation with the Ambassador did not go the way she had envisioned it was to put a mild spin to the fact that Angzal replayed it over and over in her head until she started to feel claustrophobic. The worst part was she couldn’t decide whether she was relieved she hadn’t said all she wanted to, or angry that she chose to hold back. This was further amplified by the fact that she imagined multiple scenarios where she did choose to speak up.

“Is that it? The Thorians are at their weakest and we’re still going to cower in our own corner?”

“I hadn’t realized that the whole reason for our species’ existence had been reduced to being thorns in the Hatvan’s side.”

“So it’s true what they say, the only ones the Protectorate is willing to protect are the ones at its top.”

Although each new invented retort scratched an itch inside her, even in her own fantasies none of these scenarios resulted in the Ambassador being rendered speechless, or sputtering or somehow being put in her place. Rather the long-term outcome was invariably Angzal never getting off this rock again. This was, she admitted darkly, a future that may have already been sealed for her. What she really needed, instead of masticating on the events of the day by herself, was someone she could vent to. Her sister shared some of her frustrations, but had the better sense to keep them to herself when it best suited her. Unfortunately, she was also the furthest of her littermates, and even if Angzal sent her something today she wouldn’t hear back for almost a month. Her brothers, though closer, were decidedly more useless in this respect and would provide no comfort and only the empty platitudes about believing in the infinite wisdom of government. The only thing less helpful than them in this situation was the clock that insisted on dragging this day out past her breaking point.

There was a number of emails sitting in her inbox about a reception with an Imsogon trade delegation, most of which pertained to the menu – frivolous questions that did not mesh well with her current lack of appetite yet were somehow the most palatable of her unattended work.

Despite its gargantuan efforts to the contrary, the work day did indeed succumb to the laws of time and space and concluded. Rzena took his stubborn few minutes before he started packing up, as if this was simply a natural break in his work and he wasn’t counting down the minutes before he could leave. This, in turn, delayed Angzal’s own exit as a result of her own equally tenacious insistence that she never leave before him.

How many thousands of times had he packed up this desk, and how many of them have been any kind of distinguishable from the others? He did it with a distant look, as if he was already gone or had never really showed up, the fur around his eyes already starting to take on a lighter colour, unlike the darkness of the Ambassador’s face. After the day she had, Angzal thought she could see a glimmer of her own future in his expression – spending your days in a far-flung corner of the Known Reaches to provide a voice to your people when they’ve long stopped listening to yours.

“Hey Rzena,” she called out and he looked up mostly with disinterest. “You want to catch dinner or something?”

If it elicited any surprise in him, he hid it well. Instead, he paused, as if rifling in his mind through a normally busy social calendar. “Sure, got anywhere in mind?” he asked.

“Anywhere but here.”

“I might know a place.”