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Hvergelmir gave a pleasant shake of her head, unflapped by the notion she'd gone to any trouble. "I like to help," she answered. "I think it can be really rewarding."

The subject of Mistral was an easy one, too -- and a topic that paired well with some of the other goals Hvergelmir was already lining up in her head for this conversation. "Mistral is a knight of Mercury -- and like me, she's a non-combatant, though of course we're a lot different. Making tech like this is what she does, and I mean, I could never -- I don't know the first thing about anything like that. She is brilliant. What I do is mostly talk to people -- listen to people. You see how the mark on my shoulder matches my ring? That's the seal of my Wonder. I swore an oath not to fight Negaverse agents so they could feel safe talking to me."

She paused, leaving a space for Mont Blanc to start processing so far.

Hvergelmir nodded. It was the usual first question most people had; she was accustomed to it by now. "Yes," she said. "It's a risk -- but that's the point of it, that's the only way it means anything. If I take an oath of non-violence in order to create a safe environment for agents to talk to me, then go around with someone who has no oath binding them, it ruins the whole point. It's no longer a safe space. I might as well not have an oath at all, for all the good that would do me."

She smiled, since it was evident he was concerned for her well-being. "And I have a few tricks up my sleeve, if I find myself in a pinch and need to get away," she said, passing her hand over her summons ring. Light shimmered over her shoulder, and a pale blue caribou, dappled with starlight, appeared at her side. It gave Mont Blanc a wondering look, as though to say: and who might you be?

Hvergelmir put a hand up to settle it against Eikthyrnir's jaw, staying the great beast's curiosity. "I swore an oath in another life," she said, "so I knew I could do it now, too. I was at my Wonder, and I found a piece of the Code -- the force that binds us together as knights, I guess you might say -- and it showed me an image of a book with an old oath I'd sworn. All I did was follow the same basic template to swear a new oath. I think all that matters is that you swear an oath and ask your Wonder to hold you to it, by whatever terms you set." She cast a brief glance to her own shoulder, to the mark there. Hvergelmir had promised her own life as surety of her oath -- but it didn't have to be that. There were lesser promises a person could probably make.

"Eikthyrnir is my partner, so to speak. We found each other at my Wonder once I'd come into my full powers. Manifesting a creature like Eikthyrnir takes energy to maintain -- but it can be very useful. All the summoning partners I know of have different talents, so far."

She ran her fingers lightly through the caribou's blue fur, concentrated -- and both beast and knight disappeared in a faint glimmer of starlight, reappearing a few feet away on Mont Blanc's other side. "So you see -- there's not much danger that Eikthyrnir can't get me out of."

Hvergelmir leaned up to kiss the caribou on its soft snout, then dismissed it back to her Wonder. She refolded her hands in front of her and studied the Saturn page seriously.

"So, then. Why shouldn't I want to talk to Negaverse agents? They're people, just like we are. Tell me -- what is it you think the Negaverse is fighting for? Why are they trying to kill you?"

Hvergelmir shook her head, visibly somewhat disappointed -- but she didn't appear to be disappointed with Mont Blanc. When she sighed, it was a sound borne of resignation rather than disgust, a confirmation of the unfortunate state of the world.

None of this was surprising. None of it was untrue or unsympathetic. This was the sorrowful state of the war: people fighting because everyone else was fighting, and they were scared and wanted to live. People protecting their friends. The war was waged regardless of any understand of why it was being fought.

"It's true that they've done many awful things," she agreed, tucking her hands together under the folds of her cloak. "And I understand your desire to protect yourself and your friends. But that is not why they fight you -- that's why you fight, why you defend yourself."

She frowned, recalling faces and voices in her mind, things people had said to her.

To Mont Blanc, the Negaverse was a group of evil beings, assaulting him and his friends, murdering others or enslaving them against their will.

To Hvergelmir, the Negaverse was Kairatos, resplendent in red, free and defiant, who'd been an angry young man taken in when he was vulnerable. It was Titan's hammer cracking the pavement when he cast it aside to come and kneel at her feet -- Titan who'd granted her safe parley and told her with honor and conviction that he served the rightful throne of earth and fought only to turn back the invading horde. It was Zippeite, still very much a child, who'd been frightened and defensive as a wounded animal, but who'd spun around crying with glee to see the light of a million stars in the depths of space. It was Teide, a lost child from a struggling family sent away to a reform school, trying to be brave and wise and strong because she'd been conscripted as a teenager and told how good and noble the work they had to do was -- who'd thought that the evil she'd been taught was a part of her, and she was somehow flawed. It was Avalon who'd been alone and threatened with her life. It was Vespa who'd run as hard as he could and been chased by all the fury of the Dark Kingdom. It was Dionysia's sad, dark eyes looking out of Quartz's face, his shoulders stooped as he brought her water. It was Buddingtonite who'd saved her life when she was still new. It was Bischofite who'd come to her disfigured, regretful and so very, very lost. It was Persephone who had begged the Negaverse for any release from her anguish. It was Schreibersite who'd been homeless and hungry. It was Wolframite, who'd been collared for holding too keenly to his honor. It was Kerberos who had risked his eternal existence to free her from captivity. God help her, it was all of them.

They were people, to her. They were all people.

She had seen some of the best in each of them, in what few moments they'd had together. And it had been reason enough.

"They're told, when they join the Negaverse, that the senshi are aliens who've been sent to conquer the Earth on behalf of the Queen of the White Moon. They're told they're defending their planet, their home, their way of life. Most of the people I've met are brought in when they're at their most vulnerable, or against their will: they find people who are starving, or frightened, or angry, or heartbroken -- or they threaten their lives -- and they offer them relief from whatever gives them pain. They tell them they're part of a community, a family, a clan. They prey on vulnerability and they make good, hardened soldiers out of it." She looked away, let out a slow breath. "I talk to them because sometimes, no one else has. Because no one should have to decide the course of their life with a sword pointed at their chest and a whip at their back. Because sometimes, when you've spent too long with people who force all your choices on you, you forget how much you need to be around someone who makes you feel safe. They're people -- and some of them haven't had a chance to remember the best of themselves in a very long time."

She looked up at him with her eyebrows raised in question, as if to say, Now do you see?

Hvergelmir shook her head again -- but this time, unperturbed. Reassuring. "No one can be all of it," she said. "There's no one who saves everyone. Who helps everyone. Who makes everyone feel good and safe and happy, whatever side they're on. That feeling you have in your heart -- like it hurts impossibly keenly to know you're letting someone down about something very important -- I live with that feeling every day. It hurts every day. I have blood on my hands of people who've died because I swore an oath that forbids me from protecting them. That's what I can't be because I chose to be something else: I can't be a protector. That feeling never gets any easier -- but you learn to trust yourself. You learn to have faith in the work you do, that it matters. I have to believe that the people around me are better protectors because I'm carrying a different part of the weight. I'm freeing them up to focus on what they do -- and honestly, they do it much better than I ever could. I've dreamed of the future you saw, too, and there were awful things . . . but good things, too. Things we'd learned to do that made us stronger. People found roles that supported each other -- lots of things other than just fighting, dozens of things. We were resourceful. We learned how to become the things we wanted to be."

She wanted to touch Mont Blanc's face again, hug him, maybe stroke his hair -- but he seemed so upset, and it had jarred him before. Hvergelmir was conscious of already having overstepped herself. "So now," she said, "I'll tell you my secret. The secret to how I found what it is that I do -- and how we're going to know when we find what it is you're going to do. It's this:

"I didn't choose it because I thought I'd be good at it. I chose it because I thought I would feel good about doing it."

Hvergelmir chased a hand around one of the edges of her cloak, feeling its texture -- remembering the way the threads had all come together, warp and weft, on her loom. "I didn't think I'd be any good at it at all, actually," she admitted. "I just thought that someone ought to be doing it, and nobody else was, and I might as well try. It was worth doing by somebody, and I figured it wasn't like I had anything better to do. I wasn't any better at anything else. And at least this made me feel . . . right." She smiled bracingly. "That's what we're going to do," she said. "That's how we'll know when we've found you the right thing. We'll find the thing that makes you feel the most like yourself. The place where you feel like everything's okay, and you know that at least that one thing is the thing you felt good about doing. I have a few ideas . . . but I want you to -- well -- think of it like homework, in the meantime. I want you to start listening to yourself. Try to pay attention to how you're feeling. See if you notice yourself thinking, this, at least, I can do. That's all it has to be, and it doesn't matter what you think that about. Do you think we could start with that? Will you take a few days and maybe see if you can try that every so often?"

Hvergelmir, sensing an opportunity to meddle, dove in with aplomb. "You could ask Aegir," she suggested with a wide smile. "He's got a habit of patrolling by himself after he's been at work all day and is exhausted. That's about as worrying as anyone gets -- he could use someone to keep an eye on him."

She'd messaged Thraen about it too, but it never hurt to have more than one iron in the fire. Besides, what she hadn't mentioned was what Aegir had confided to her: that he purposely worked himself to exhaustion. It was a dire situation.

Someone needed to intervene before Aegir got himself killed.

"For now, let me know how things go with Mistral -- and we can meet again in a week or two? I'm in North End Park on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nights to keep the hours for Negaverse agent visitors -- but on other nights I'm mostly free. Just message me with your signet ring?"

Mont Blanc was quite upset by the news about Aegir, so Hvergelmir tried to keep her reaction off of her face -- but inside, she was smiling. If Aegir was going to be protected from his own bad habits, then this was a job well done on her part. She was glad she'd suggested it.

And maybe -- maybe -- it could serve as a trial run for what she thought might suit the tall knight to do as his vocation.

Hvergelmir accepted Mont Blanc's hand cheerfully.

"It's been a pleasure," she said sincerely. "Be well, and get home safely, alright? I'll see you soon."