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She may have pre-emptively rejected Nis's offer of comfort, but a little cute animal - well. That was another thing entirely. Tagg was accordingly scooped up into her arms, babied without shame as she recovered the rest of her composure.

"Pal loves to play," she said at last, sounding a little more like herself already. Whatever had shaken her up, it hadn't gotten past her tendency to drag herself out of her own feelings rapidly. "And she's pretty good at playing gently, like with Petitcru, so I'm sure they'll get along, if Tagg wants to get along. And if he doesn't, I'll shoo her off."

She turned, then, to head back towards the bailey, still holding the otter, although possibly that was only because she feared the state of her emotions if she didn't.

"We can eat on the boat," she said, as if she hadn't already made that clear. This, too, was just prattle to fill a silence with something non-dangerous. "No masonry required - I brought everything I could think of that wouldn't taste gnarly after an hour in subspace. I don't think it's going to rain after all. The sky's clearing up, I think - maybe it all blew off before it could get heavy enough to fall. And I brought a speaker but I didn't think to ask what music you like so I hope you're into nu-metal and shoegaze and s**t, otherwise we can have silence. Thank you for your help up there," she added, turning away from the idea that there might be more than one meaning in that gratitude.

They were, in fact, emerging under a sky that while still cloudy was quite a bit clearer than it had been, as if to smile on their picnicking efforts. They were also greeted by the hellish sounds of Pal's enthusiastic greeting, and Joy relinquished custody of Tagg to Nis as a result, pulling a few things from subspace - a bottle of wine, a couple of cans of White Claw; some wrapped sandwiches - and then immediately powering down, as she often did, with a suggestion that she found some relief in doing it. The food was squirreled away in one of the other bags she'd brought along with the rest of the food before she stepped out into the bailey and the chaos of Pal's arrival.

"Be good!" she called out, catching hold of Pal by her topmost muzzle as she hurried down in front of her guests, as one might hush an over-excited dog. The monster was doing frantic tippy-tappies as it detected a possible new playmate, but was - as Joy had promised - restraining her enthusiasm to polite whining. "You could maybe - hold him up for them to get a sniff," she suggested, as this had worked well enough for Petitcru. "But obviously, either way, she's not exactly gonna be hopping on the boat with us, so if it doesn't go so well, she won't be pestering us."

It had not occurred to her until that moment that her own wisp had been pointedly absent. She wondered, wretchedly, if it too knew that she was being a miserable hypocritical b***h, and punishing her for it.

Pal, having given Tagg a thorough sniff-over, immediately threw herself into a play bow of fearsome proportions before tearing off to get her zoomies out with tight laps around the bailey, bellowing out her dozen-dog cries of excitement as she did it, so that Joy had to raise her voice over the din.

"She already spends half her life in a state of heartbreak that she can't get into my lap," she said. "But she gets over it quick."

Like mother, like daughter, maybe.

"If you feel safe setting him down she'll chill out and they can chase each other while they follow us down to the river," she suggested, wrinkling her nose as she watched the beast sneezing and dancing in anticipation of playtime. It gave her an opportunity to lift her eyes to the ramparts as well, scanning them for some lone watchful figure with his arms folded behind his back - a pang - or else with one hand resting on his side for the weapon that was not there. It was a little too obvious that she was looking, but look she must, and therefore she did. She did not see him, but she fought off the wave of guilty gravity this threatened to create.

"I hate country music," she added, turning to Nis with a little clap of her hands as if to commence proceedings and causing the writer of this post, who thinks country music gets a bad rap but absolutely hates mainstream country herself, a great deal of pain. "I'm from Kentucky. You either end up hating it or it becomes your entire life. You'd be surprised what a redneck I was, I bet. Never had a truck, though."

Pal was, as promised, surprisingly gentle despite all her large ungainly enthusiasm, sneezing and play bowing exactly like a dog as they made their way down to the river.

On the way and as they climbed into the boat and supplied themselves with drinks, Elaine filled her in a little, in broad strokes, on her background: poor, rural, isolated, not unhappy. A town with nowhere to hang out but in your friend's car outside the Burger King; parties in the middle of nowhere ("Although not as much as a pocket dimension," she observed wryly); the fact that she used to go hunting and had, in fact, been hunting just a few months before during a trip home.

None of it was framed with regret, but maybe it explained why Elaine - independent, a little nerdy, a little alternative, constantly feeling out of place and choked as if by the kudzu by her narrow world - had felt the need to leave for somewhere like Destiny City, where the horizons had been broader than she'd bargained for. It had not been her first step towards inventing herself - she alluded briefly to moving a few times before landing there - but there was something maybe a little poetic in her leaving to make a new version of herself, sculpting it out of willpower and self-discipline, only to have yet another one that she hadn't asked for thrust on her when she wasn't expecting it.

"I even changed my name," she said with some chagrin, as they pushed the boat off the pebbled shore with one enameled oar, leaving them to drift towards the middle of the river, where they could drop the anchor and bob on the reaches of the current. The seagulls made things a little more exciting, but they apparently knew by now that to dive bomb the canopy would not yield much in the way of reward, and only made occasional a*****e attempts on their picnic fare. "It was Misty. Misty Lynn. Can you imagine."

Her eyes were scanning the banks as she said it, looking, probably for some ghostly figure under the trees and seeing only Pal offering up a couple of farewell barks to the three of them before trotting back off into their shade.

"What about you? Do you have secret pickup truck history, or is that just a work thing?" It was, clearly, an invitation for her to share, as well, the shape of her upbringing. "Tell me where little Myth partied."

"I don't think I would have thrown you into any dumpsters," she said after a pause, putting away a cherry and leaning over to spit the pit into the water. She stayed there, leaning on her arm on the edge of the boat and looking down at the fish darting below them. "You at least outgrew being a stuck up little s**t," she added mildly, less bothered by this assessment of her less-than-stellar character than certain other recent actions that she had genuinely detested herself for.

"Mine was at my own house," she said, after another pause, apparently alluding to Myth's truck nostalgia. "Something else to be generally disappointed by and leave behind," she added with a snort. "Not that things are looking that much up around Destiny City sometimes." This escaped her before she remembered why this was a topic to skitter away from, and so she did, turning it neatly. "But at least I've been lucky enough that it's not anyone rubbing my nose in it that I read more than they do. I think I would have broken a nose," she finished lightly. "Maybe we still could. I've already threatened to use my powers for evil against one friend's ex. I could be persuaded to it."