Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was a good thing Glaucon had no intention of eating those cookies, anyway. He was not much of a fan of sweets. The dog's sudden burst of movement ended up more of a shock than an annoyance, enough that the god yelped in surprise and instinctively tried to scoot over to the side. It almost made him lose his balance, and now a hand pressed down at the edge of the table -- shaking noticeably both from shock and weakness -- was the driving force in keeping him upright. Which was a tenuous grip at best, given how capable Hector was at rocking the table with his own excitable weight.

"You could have asked," he said, through gritted teeth.

He wondered if his sister was somehow behind this, or if Alice was this fiery on her own. "I'm starting to see why she was drawn to you."

Glaucon took a deep breath, that ended in a bit of a sigh.

"My host would have said the same thing."

He righted himself again in the chair, and flexed his cramping fingers; his gaze lingered on them for a second before returning to the teacup. It would have been better cold. But it was still alright.

"I imagine you would have gotten along well. He didn't take well to being commanded around, either, if it wasn't for a good reason." Kyrjadis probably would have enjoyed his company too, he imagined. David had good instincts.

"His unwillingness manifested in a form that ended up helping to save many lives," he explained. There was a bit of pride in his voice at that.

The question struck him as strange, and visibly brought some of the fire back into his eyes, though not in an arrogant or hostile way this time. In response, he simply offered, "If you ran into an important figure in your life, who you haven't seen in many years... thousands of years, even... would you not want to talk to them?"

Well, this was going to be awkward. It took a moment or two of sorting out his words before Glaucon said much of anything.

"It... will be good to see you among the reborn, Kyrjadis." The statement was half-uncertain, half-forced. Try as he might to resist it, he found his fellow deity of Justice to be somehow... intimidating. Or even discouraging. And he had no clear recollections of the past to tell him why.

"There are very few in the Pantheon who are so fortunate to see their other half restored. As the Verdict guides the Sword, and the Sword acts in the spirit of Justice, this will be our strength as we restore our glory alongside that of mortal society." He chanced a look around the store, outside the window, to see if there were many more people milling about. There were a few. As the years passed, there were bound to be more.

Yup, this was awkward. With Alice as the intermediary, he had no way of trying to gauge whether his words were of any value whatsoever to Kyrjadis. In face of that, he willed himself to continue. "My door bears our shared symbols, should you or Alice ever wish to visit." Though he highly doubted the mortal would take up that offer.

Sigh. So much for being polite being rewarding. Most gods, he figured, would welcome such a greeting -- it was a gesture of hope and goodwill and solidarity, not just a simple hello. Didn't he get that across? It looked as though he was wrong or, at least, Kyrjadis simply didn't care.

It felt like it was going to be the norm for dealing with his sister.

Now he just wanted to get out of here. This was a dead-end encounter. But he absolutely did not want to be the one leaving first. That would only make things even less pleasant than they already were.

"Let's not start that debate." In spite of himself, he reached downward for his cane, praying to the sleeping Crown that he wouldn't knock it over and thus out of reach. "It probably wouldn't end."

"I've always existed through words... she manifested through actions. Or, so I recall. It's to be expected." And he felt sort of foolish for trying. But at least his fingers had found their destination, wrapped around the handle of the cane, so that was one milestone reached.

The next one was actually getting up.

"We've reached a standstill, here. I... should leave," he concluded. And so he started to remove himself from the chair. Somewhat slowly.

"I doubt we'd have much to talk about either," he replied, wearily. It was almost approaching some acknowledgement of guilt about the poor turn the meeting had taken, but still lightyears away from anything resembling an admission. An air of defeat was seeping through his stony demeanor, regardless. This conversation was a bad idea. Leaving his room had been a bad idea.

It had ended up a stark reminder of just how powerless he still was. And so, desiring the refuge of his quarters, he made his way for the door. "Another time, perhaps. Or perhaps not."

This was going to be a tiring walk.