There’s so much to cover.

  Maybe the most important part was not how we briefed each other on our own experiences, or individual reactions to certain revetions. Though it would probably help to go over certain expnations we sussed out or got from Milk.

  And, it’s usually a narrative convention to withhold at least some of the pnning the heroes do just before their biggest fight. But not until after the stakes and the risks are id out and an argument has been had about them.

  But what stuck out to me the most, and comes the easiest to mind when thinking about that meeting, was just how awkward Cassy felt when she started trying to talk about Felicity. Especially Felicity’s retionship to me, about what were lies and what were not. And, of course, how Cassy now knew all of Felicity’s feelings and thoughts.

  Mind you, I’d figured out much of this on my own. And, you’re owed an expnation and I’ll get to that.

  But that emanant emotion that Cassy was feeding to me. It wasn’t simple like other emanant emotions. It was just as rich as any human feeling. Which was distracting all on its own. But it also told me volumes about what was going on with Cassy, even when her words failed her.

  Maybe especially when her words failed her.

  So I held up a hand to forestall her while she was struggling with the word for “the” at one point. She was just trying to talk about Felicity’s missing memories that had been taken by Croc-face, and whether or not they had any strategic value. And I could sense that Milk was about to answer that.

  But then I said, “I know that this is going to carry extra meaning for all fans of anime out there, but try to ignore that. Cassy, you and I can have a teacher/student retionship. It’s what we should do. We both have a lot to teach each other, of course. But I have somewhat more to teach you, and I think the model for human teachers is a pretty good one for how we each should approach that.”

  She looked startled, and then defted. And nodded while looking down at the table we were seated around.

  “Milk’s been doing the same thing for me, and it’s been good,” I said.

  “But,” Cassy said. But her words and thoughts obviously jumbled up before they got to her verbal cortex, and she just shook her head.

  “You don’t have to expin. I can feel those feelings you’re having,” I told her. “And they are definitely something you can untangle and deal with one at a time, at your own pace. And I’m not going to help you do that, other than to give you the room to do so, OK? I really don’t know what it’s like to be you, after all.”

  Ayden and Greg just watched.

  Milk was watching too, from the gss I’d made it, just without eyes.

  Cassy nodded and said “Yeah.” And then grinmaced, saying, “It’s not like I can talk to a therapist about this, though.”

  “You can talk to us,” Greg said. “Just to say it out loud. Maybe when Synthia’s not around.”

  “But it’s so embarrassing,” she whined. “It’s like a kink that’s not even mine, but now I have it and it’s part of me.”

  And that’s when I remembered all the little bursts of emotions she’d been having every time someone mentioned something about feeding, the risk of being eaten, or hosts. Which were all constant subject matter of the night. That seemed like something that could be very confusing and maybe a little dangerous.

  “Oh,” I said. “Hmm. Maybe I should address that specifically. I’ll be careful, Cassy.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you to?” she turned to me, raising her eyebrows and pulling her lower lip down and back. I didn’t need that expression to know she was worried.

  “What I have to say is really simple and won’t reveal anything,” I told her.

  “I’m just not sure I can handle my emotions if you dash them right now, is all,” she said.

  “Then I won’t dash them,” I said. “Let’s just talk about this at length, ter, just between the two of us. Or whomever you’d like to invite as a chaperone. I’d recommend Milk, but you don’t know it very well yet. But we can just see what can be done, OK?”

  She took a deep breath, “OK. I think that will work.”

  And then we successfully got on with the rest of business.

  Later, long past when people usually go to sleep, Milk accompanied Greg and Ayden outside while Cassy remained to talk with me. The boys had decided to head back home, to get some rest, reluctantly leaving Cassy in Salem. But Cassy insisted that she needed some intense monster-only time with me and Milk, and I’d had to agree with her.

  It’s not usual that emanants get around to teaching each other things that we know. Certain groups of us kind of do that, but as peers. And otherwise we just learn how the world works by existing in it and interacting with it.

  But Cassy was special, and I’d decided she needed to be protected. And the habit of many lifeforms of educating their young seemed really powerful to me. I’d always admired it.

  Of more immediate importance was that I wanted to help Cassy deal with her emotional hangup, so that we could safely move forward with the Chord affair.

  She slumped back sideways in the diner booth and pulled her feet up onto the seat, holding her knees. She was not a small woman, but I’d made my booth rge enough to accommodate Greg comfortably, so she got to enjoy a posture she’d probably st done like this in her youth.

  And even if I hadn’t already made the furniture big enough to accommodate her, I would have changed it to do so.

  Then she muttered, “It’s not like I’m into vore now. But Felicity’s feelings for you were weird, and are still weird. And sometimes it feels like vore. Like my brain is turning it into that.”

  She just kind of jumped right into the deep end of it all with that, and then looked hopefully at me.

  “Ah,” I said. “Felicity always hid her feelings from me as well as she could. Better than anyone I’ve met before, as far as I know. So I had no idea. Just guesses.”

  “I know,” Cassy said, her eyes turned toward me more than her head was, moving up and down as she watched my reactions to her words. The bouquet of emotions I got from her said more.

  “Let’s start with where you and I began,” I suggested. “Without Felicity.”

  She nodded.

  “To be crass and frank, at first and for the most part still, you were a source of food for me,” I told her. “You weren’t food. But you generated it, like a flower producing nectar. All humans were, though now I’m focusing on feeding on emanant emotions. So now it’s all monsters, for the time being. Does that make sense?”

  She nodded again, and said, “I understood that when you first expined it.”

  “Right. So. I also knew what you were going through. Possibly before you figured it out yourself. And I didn’t discourage you developing feelings for me, as a best friend by human standards, because in the grand scheme of things it seemed mutually beneficial to me, and I liked you. And I still do,” I expined.

  She smiled, but her emotions changed only a little. There was still a lot of worry and confusion there.

  “I’ve done this a lot. I have a lot of experience with being friends with humans for a few years at a time. Sometimes for most of a lifetime for them. But for me, it’s pretty close to the same, of course,” I said, watching her face and choosing my words carefully based on the emotional impact of the previous words. “But it’s still worth it, every time, no matter how short it sts. But a human can never be my life partner. I’m not alive, in any case. But, also, for me, it would be like marrying a gnat. Right? And we also just don’t have feelings of attraction like that, typically. Certainly not sexual. Which I’m sure you’re discovering.”

  “Yeah. From Felicity’s memories. But I’m still human, though.”

  It was my turn to nod. “But you’re also turning into an emanant, and will be fully emanant when your body dies, unless someone eats you in the process. So now that whole dynamic is different, and we get to spend more time together if we want. Right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d like that, Cassy. I’d like that very much,” I told her with a smile. “I think I’m ready for a constant friend in my existence. A friend that is you. Perhaps, with time, a partner of sorts, though I still think we should focus on the student/teacher dynamic for your comfort and safety. It’s still a partnership of sorts, just one that recognizes our differences. And when I say 'teacher', I mean a good one. Not someone who exerts their power over you, but rather recognizes it and uses it as sparingly as possible.”

  I was kind of alternatively bringing her emotions up and down, trying to temper an uplifting sentiment with a cautious statement, and visa versa, so that I could help her feel reassured while walking her through my reasoning and my own feelings.

  Mind you, I didn’t really understand my own feelings regarding all of this. They were way more intense that I’d realized, and complicated, and fairly new, really. And they weren’t all for Cassy. A lot of them were Felicity, who Cassy now embodied in a way. So, I was falling onto reasoning as a way of controlling myself as well.

  “Does that make sense to you?” I asked. “Does that work for you?”

  “I think so?” Cassy said. “I know I’ve got a lot of feelings, but I also know that they don’t have to be answered, either. But they’re really big. Also, I’m half Felicity now, I guess?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “There’s also one other obstacle, though I think I consider it a small one at this point. Even without Felicity, you’d be a teratovore. And I’m an affectivore, the kind of monster that would usually be your prey.”

  “Oh. I, uh, ate a little enthalpiphage st week. It was just an enthalpiphage, I think you call it.”

  “That’s not really any better,” I told her calmly. “I mean, it happens. And you’ve gotta eat what you gotta eat. But Milk’s an enthalpiphage and it cims that I really am too, or close enough it makes no difference. Cassy, what we are, what we eat, doesn’t define our personhood.”

  She really defted at that, and muttered, “Right.”

  “That applies to you, too. What you are, and what you eat does not define your personhood. You said it was little, like equivalent to a fish or a bird I’m guessing?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can, if you want, confine yourself to eating those types of emanants, just like how you eat chicken as a human,” I expined. “And you can survive very well by doing that, too. And it will make me feel a lot more comfortable around you. But, like, Felicity? She ate monsters who were the equivalent to wolves and humans, who were trying to prey on her little flock of sheep. And she was a person, too, who was trying to gain my trust.”

  She thought she had a gotcha to that, and sat more upright, turning more toward me, “Even though she was doing that for Chord, to trap you?”

  “Yes. Even then,” I replied. I didn’t even point out that it was more complicated than that, for Felicity. Cassy knew that. She’d told me. The important point was that even people who did atrocious things and who betrayed you were still people. Though, Felicity and I had argued about whether or not emanants were people, I guess.

  “OK,” she said, slumping back. She wasn’t really accepting the argument, though. Just letting it happen more than anything. It would probably take a lot more time and quite a few more reassurances to help her become accustomed to what she now was.

  “Do you think,” I questioned gently, “you might now be up for telling me, in more detail, what Felicity’s feelings were like?”

  “Oh, fuck.” Cassy bonked the back of her head against the windowsill.

  theInmara