Kayle pinged his brother Lirin, through the ship's contact system. I could hear little from his muttered conversation but when he returned to us at the bar he assured us his brother was on his way.

Cece seemed pleased enough by the news in her own way, sparing a hesitant smile before her attention returned to the screens behind the bar, most of which were filled with what I assumed were Val' stations or at the very least broadcasts from farther out in space and not our little blue backwater planet.

I watched as the screen behind Kayle's head scrolled through readouts of numbers, a different fair than most of the TVs I'd caught glimpses of on the Aarond Form, though it was no less captivating to the males that had followed us into the Neseve Salle, even pulling their attention away from this for small spans of time. Even Esayr's attention kept returning to one of the screens behind Kayle's head.

Whatever it was he saw in the broadcast was beyond me, though it struck me as more of a news station, and the fact that I hadn't been keeping up with any news --even Earth's-- that wasn't just downright weird, reminded me it was about par for the course as far as I was concerned. "Anything interesting?"

I'd asked the question into the air, for anyone to answer really though I expected it to be Esayr since I was still tucked tightly away beneath his arm. It was Kayle who answered, though, as if he'd heard the question before I'd said it, which for all I knew he could have.

"It's the beginnings of the result of the ship-wide inquiry."

"The poll Laene mentioned the other night?" I turned to Esayr as much as I was able from our position, "I don't remember you getting a poll today."

"I didn't as far as I know, though it was supposed to be a rolling poll, so I might receive it in the next few days," Esayr mused.

"Doubtful. I would imagine it was Damae's engineering, but the interface detailed that it was ship-wide today. I'd imagine you were purposely not included because of your status." Kayle's blonde eyes pulled down into an angry slash.

"That seems needless," I murmured.

Kayle and Esayr both shrugged as one. When Kayle glanced my way it was with a conspiratory look, "It's Damae. He's rarely..." He struggled to find a word to describe the male that I'd never met.

Esayr supplied one easily enough under his breath, "Useful?"

Kayle inclined his head, "Harsher than I was going for, but your English words had too many nuances to sort through sometimes."

That at least made me laugh. "I mean, you're not wrong. It's a common complaint among humans as well." I watched the screen quietly as the bars on the screen shifted more and more drastically, "And when did news about Cece get out on the ship?"

I expected Cece to refocus on the conversation at the sound of her name, but her attention was still riveted on the coin, which she seemed to now be trying to decipher the inner workings of.

"Late last night and early this morning were when I started to receive questions about the information, myself, whether from a comm requests through the ship or curious patrons."

"I'd imagine conveniently in time for that poll?"

"Precisely, though," Kayle paused as a screen that looked frankly just like a line graph was displayed on the screen. It reminded me of those stills in the backgrounds of scenes in movies detailing a rise and fall in the stock market and I had to force myself to not immediately disregard it, "it doesn't seem to have had quite the impact that Damae was hoping. There's a strong trend, surely, but just based on what I'm seeing I'd expect to see a metering out of opinions," he paused to read through some of the minutiae in the tiny lettering beneath the graph, "probably by midday? I'd imagine we'll end up having another date for surveying the popular opinion."

"Not what Damae wanted, but still allows time for negative sentiments to continue to fester." I felt Esayr's sigh all the way across my shoulders.

It struck me that I might be able to ask him directly about those sentiments, could get a feel for how the ideas of the ship were turning, and if there were a danger regarding that scrap of concern about them no longer being barred from the Earth's surface.

Kayle's attention focused on me so quickly that I could nearly hear the thought in the air between us and I realized what I'd done and how visceral this very problem was. I didn't need the mirror behind him to see all the color drain from my face, I could feel it easily enough sinking down into the pick of my stomach with the tangle of nerves that suddenly came to life there.

When his cool eyes hit mine I could feel the faintest tug at something, but just as quickly he pulled his attention away from me, and I felt the faintest foreign thought of apology in my mind, something that was barely more than a whisper when my thoughts were ever loud inside my own head. He hadn't intended to invade, I realized, he was as surprised as I was and I imagined my thoughts were usually unfiltered, having been raised on a planet that really didn't have this particular concern.

Come back. It's ok. You already have an idea so you might as well know. I felt foolish as I thought it, certain I had no idea what I was doing, but slowly Kayle turned his attention back my way, until he met my gaze clearly, one of the few times he ever had. His eyes were unusually blue, similar to the sky on a clear day. Thoughts came forward and I wasn't certain which of us was pulling on them, but I let them go freely, my mind at ease with having someone to share yet another of my concerns with. I realized without a doubt that I trusted Esayr's Riniere implicitly and while I imagine the best option to share this with would have been Laene, I took a shot in the dark and assumed Kayle would know how to shield his thoughts around his own brother.

The final thought was pulled free of my mind. Kayle had all of it there sitting in his mind pulled straight from my own, I hoped the severity of the consequences of such an outcome translated along with just the knowledge. I imagined it did if only from Kayle's muttered "Kaumne" which I took to understand as a Vallan curse.

What could I have done differently? So that this didn't happen? He turned away from me as I asked and fumbled with some of the drawers behind him until he pulled out a single cloth. The bar was already spotless but he began to clean it anyway with an air of anxiety that I felt a kinship with.

I was left in silence for long enough that I began to wonder if he'd heard me in the first place, but then --with more care than I would have anticipated having someone in my mind would take, I heard his voice in a way that felt novel. You and Esayr are remarkably similar some days.

It was a thought I could have believed was my own, had it not echoed around inside my mind as if the frequency or the timbre of it didn't quite fit in the recesses of my mind.

One of the first things he asked us was for a way for you to block his powers. His voice mused in my own mind and it pulled free thoughts of that day when we'd sat on the floor in the study trying to form some way for me to keep him out.

It worked in a way. He probed at something. I could feel the perusal up until the moment h touched on whatever it was in my mind, then the sensation went blank as if I were numb in one back corner of my mind. You've built yourself a wall and put a fair bit of yourself behind it. Though, pieces that want out are starting to slip through.

How do I keep them in?

That question had his mood shifting a little I could feel it acutely as it filled up my mind and raced down my shoulder blades like a chill.

Apprehension.

His presence was nearly silent, though if I thought too hard about that wall I thought I'd built between myself and Esayr I could swear I could see movement beyond the cracks in it.

This wall doesn't block Esayr. His comment was a quieter whisper.

My own consciousness loitered nearer to the wall, but not far away from Kayle both of us staring at it from our place on this side of it. It blocks me.

All this time I'd been pulling pieces of this wall apart, carving chunk after chunk of it away, I'd been freeing those snippets of myself that I wasn't strong enough to deal with when I'd made it in the first place. I hadn't shuttered out Esayr. I had shut away the piece of me that could feel him.

In all the time I've been alive I can tell you, that those bits and pieces of us that want to be free will rarely sit by idling. In some way or another, they will find their way out. His presence pressed against that wall again in a curious glancing motion I could only just barely sense.

Something roiled, back in the darkness beyond what I could see. What about the things that don't want to come out?

They'll sit more quietly for a while, but even those things still have a tendency of finding their way out.

So the wall is a temporary cure. I didn't ask how long. Even I knew you rarely got concrete answers for matters like that.

A temporary --though no less useful-- remedy.

I just need to figure out how to get it in there. Easier said --or thought I suppose-- than done. I had cracks that were barely the size of my pinky and I couldn't even manage to pull the tenuous thread of that bond out from within them.

When I blinked I was back inside that bar, my attention returned to the room around us and not that quiet inner dialogue that even now seemed more a train of thought than anything else.

Kayle was watching me quietly, his hand had stilled where it had been cleaning circles on the immaculate counter.

Esayr had either given us our space or hadn't noticed the exchange as he watched the screens, though all of our attention shifted as the air around us rang out in a choir of bells, this one more of a fanfare than the simple three-toned one from the previous night.

The mood in the room shifted to something so strong even I was nearly staggered by it. Even Cece had been roused from her interest to look our way for an answer to the question I was nearly certain I already knew.

"That's a true match," Esayr's voice was a stunned whisper.

"And will skew the polling in Damae's favor more than even you," Kayle glanced toward Cece, who merely took the information in stride.

"Another human is coming to the ship?"

"Yes. In the next few days, we'll have another human on the ship." Esayr's hand traced the column of my spine, absently. His face, though, was unreadable as the room erupted into celebration around us.

*****A/N*****

I'm struggling a little bit today. More a product of things going on in my life and with my family that is making it harder for me to focus for long periods of time and by extension made it harder for me to write than normal.

I'm endeavoring to continue to keep the standard pace that I've created for both myself and all of you here since May. I look forward to Sundays, I think, as much as y'all do. While I have ideas of how this story will go there are still things that crop up in writing that surprise me as I write them down.

This part was largely surprising for me as I desperately tried to pull bits and pieces of it out of the air around me in the midst of all this chaos, but I'm actually really happy with it in the sense that I think it's given me a lot to consider for when I eventually edit this monster lmao.

All in all, I hope your day is going smoothly in as much as it's able.

In an effort to remind myself of happier things while life is stressful, enjoy a list of some things that bring me cheer in otherwise sad times: dried flower petals, raspberry or peach sweet tea, honeybees, lemon bars, thunderstorms, coquinas, and a cat's little bean toes.

I'm trying to learn to quantify the good in the same way that my anxiety has taught me to quantify everything else,

~Layla