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The aura struck her first. Sometimes, when she was bored and her mind was wandering -- when she was looking for something to be sour about -- she was of the private opinion that being able to sense people approaching was some sort of numbing agent that sucked some of the surprise and excitement out of life. This, of course, was offset by the entirely logical counterpoint that being able to sense people approaching, and their auric alignment, was also a protective ability that stood to save her life under certain circumstances. It was boring, being able to detect people coming from hundreds of yards off... but it was also, undeniably, super useful. So try as she might to summon up a grudge against auras, Hvergelmir had to admit to herself that it was a silly, stupid thing to do.

She was bored and unhappy, that was all. Everything seemed dull and unsatisfactory when you were bored and unhappy.

And, in any event, an aura did at least mean someone was coming. It was the feel of a knight, which -- well, she didn't really feel like running into any knights these days, especially not here -- nonetheless, it meant she at least wouldn't be quite so bored.

And you were always going to have to run into people eventually, her traitorous mind reminded her. You can't hide forever -- the world still goes on even if Laney Sutton keeps trying to hit the pause button.

When she looked up, it was with relief to see that her visitor was only a friend -- Kairatos, trucking out here in the mid-autumn chill in his short cloak and armor that couldn't have been any warmer than her dress. Her heart gave a sudden lurch she couldn't understand, at the sight of him -- as though she'd seen him far longer ago than just a few weeks, and never expected to again. She didn't want to see anyone just now, not really -- but all the same, she did. She wanted to see him.

It was strange, and she couldn't make sense of it. With fingers pressed to her forehead, she felt the sudden upsurge of a violent headache again, fragmented shades of memory seeming to press her brain apart like they had before, like growing bones stretching against muscle. None of the fragments came together into anything comprehensible, but still, there they were, making it hard to hear what Kairatos was saying. She looked up and forced herself to smile, pretending she wasn't as distracted as she felt.

"Ah," she said lightly, reaching out for one of the cups. "Thank you, you're a prince. At this hour, I drink absolutely anything that has caffeine in it, I promise." Hvergelmir patted the bench alongside her. "I don't think anyone will come, though -- no one has in a while. It's been a quiet few weeks."

She wondered, privately, if it was because more people were having dreams like she was having -- if what they remembered was a girl with no tongue, and the cause she'd called them to fight for, and the horrible, failed end it had all come to. She wondered how she was going to ever convince people to work for the future, once they'd seen it. What was the world even going to come to?

"Did you really?" she said, settling in for a chat. "Dare I hope you might become friends?"

Kairatos's explanation about his meeting with Titan made the coffee in her mouth taste sour. It turned what might've been good news into very unhappy news indeed. Whatever her private, fledgling opinions about the man Titan called his lord, his way of burning bridges was not to her taste. It pained her to think of Titan as Kairatos had described him -- shivering and lost beneath a tree, an oath he'd sworn to someone he loved utterly rejected.

Titan might've seen a proper lord and master in the man, but it was obvious he wasn't anything close to worthy of the kind of exchange of trust Titan was seeking.

It was an issue that hit a little closer to home than whatever Kairatos was trying to explain about the Parallel Universe and the Pyrite Crystal, whatever that was. It was something to do with Zee, she imagined -- but she hadn't heard anything from the guardian cat about it or anything else in a while. Perhaps Hvergelmir ought to get in touch.

"I haven't seen Titan since the last time we ran into each other together," she said, shaking her head ruefully. The Cosmos squire pulled up both her feet on the bench and curled her arms over them. "If he comes looking for you, I'll let you know, but... If we've all been having the same kinds of dreams, I don't know if anyone'll come back here anymore. I guess there's not much point." She looked over, holding the noble lines of his profile in her view. They looked off to her now, for a few split seconds -- like she expected to see someone just a little older, just a little more tired. For a moment, she could remember standing in a creek with him, splashing water at each other as they made a very inefficient pretense of doing the camp's laundry . . . but just like that, it was gone again, replaced by reality: a boy on a bench with her, waiting for people they might never come back. She ran her tongue over the insides of her teeth reassuringly, and sipped her coffee to soothe a suddenly-dry throat. "Do you dream about the future?" she asked, casting her eyes carefully off to the side.

"If that happens, it happens," Hvergelmir said abruptly. It was hard to figure out how she was supposed to respond to people's concern. She'd never really known what to do with it. Say 'thank you' for caring? Feel happy that someone she cared about had been driven to worry by her refusal to do what they wanted her to do? It was all messed up, it was all... it was all weird. Weirder, for some reason, with Kairatos. Weirder because of whatever connection they'd shared in that odd future -- because she wanted to curl up in his lap, maybe, and let him shelter her from the world the way all his solicitous words promised he'd do.

It wasn't a real connection. It didn't exist. And she had no idea what to do with it.

Somehow that just made her feel more alone.

"There are a lot of things about that future worth changing. Worth spending time trying to prevent. Me losing my tongue, it's -- well, I won't say I'm exactly looking forward to it, but there's more to life. I want to focus on saving people's lives."

Or salvaging her relationship with her parents. Or... she didn't know.

"Anyway..." She watched his face again, once again pushing down the urge to touch -- to run her fingers reassuringly over the high curve of his cheekbone. Maybe it was a leftover memory from that future, where people who were little more than strangers now had come to welcome her touch. "I don't remember you failing anyone. Don't think like that. You were a leader, and people believed in you."

Hvergelmir's memories -- dreams -- of that time, their maybe-future, were still a soggy, jumbled mush, in large part. They came together slowly, though, it seemed, like sections of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Here, the corners, building into the frame at the edges; there, a recognizable section that matched the picture on the box; elsewhere, a pile of pieces that went together but hadn't been arranged into a portion of the picture yet. She could remember enough, though, to think of it differently than Kairatos did. Enough to offer him, at least, some assurance about his absence when the camp was sacked, and what blame he deserved for it.

"You weren't part of the Guard," she pointed out with gentle care. "It wasn't your job to be there. You were part of our Mainstay, and you can't be everywhere at once." With a small, teasing smile, she added, "No matter how stubborn you are, you can't solve all the world's problems. And sometimes..." Hvergelmir let out a breath. "Sometimes the job is more important than our personal attachments. That's hard -- it can be the hardest thing in the world -- but it's the right thing. People who can't make that choice might be able to save the people they care about -- but they can't save the world. And somebody's got to."

She watched as he reached around his neck to draw out a tiny vase, black lacquered, on a long necklace. It meant nothing to her at first, despite his assertion. Then she stretched out a hand toward it.

There was leather-skin under her fingers, living and soft and warm and slightly wet. Her hand was trembling -- the heat of the great beast's breath puffing against her palm -- and she looked up to meet Kairatos's eyes as though to ask, 'Is this really safe?' He smiled knowingly and reached out to lay his hand over hers, both their fingers interlaced over Asterion's broad snout. "He won't hurt you," the Mars knight reassured her. She believed him immediately, though she shivered a little all the same.

"Asterion," she whispered, low and awed all of a sudden. Her skull was pounding with the stretch of new memories forcing their way in again and the distraction of trying to pay attention to what Kairatos was saying. It took her a minute to focus --

I'm actually scared to ask if you want to go get a cup of coffee or something.

Hvergelmir looked down for a moment, confused -- certain that she wasn't grasping the conversation correctly. Why would they need to go out for coffee, he'd brought coffee --

Oh.

Oh, he meant . . . Oh.

"Um," she said breathlessly, the sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Hvergelmir stared at him like a deer trying to make sense of oncoming headlights. "Uh. No one's ever asked me out for coffee."

Hvergelmir panicked at the immediate realization that she had not given the correct response. In fact, she'd taken what was probably a nerve-wracking situation for Kairatos and turned it into something deeply awkward. This was far from the kind of thing a person did who was, like, a worthwhile romantic prospect for somebody. She immediately felt unworthy of the prospect of saying yes.

Maybe it wasn't a problem in that other life, she thought. Maybe without a tongue to help me along, I spent less time sticking my foot in my mouth. Maybe people who liked me in that future only felt that way because of what happened with -- because of what happened. Pity makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe this is all just . . .

A mistake. Maybe it was all just a mistake. Maybe he'd take her out for coffee and see that -- and then where would they be?

That thought alone was almost enough to compel her to turn him down -- the fear of not being whatever it was he thought she was someday going to become. It made her freeze up inside, anxious and overwrought -- like flashes of memory she got at her Wonder, thoughts of being some other woman she had to choose either to grow into or not to. Either prospect was chilling. Knowing the future, in some ways, was cruel.

Still.

Still . . .

"No," she said nervously, her voice hitching. "I mean, yes, I -- I mean, um. Coffee, yes. Yes, coffee. I'll go. With you."

Satisfied that she had now thoroughly demonstrated that even with a tongue, she had no idea how to use it, Hvergelmir latched onto the same thing Kairatos had: Asterion. The great bull.

"Are you going to try soon? Summoning him."

In her acquaintance so far with Kairatos, Hvergelmir had come to think of him as sort of perpetually sour, at best. He'd described himself, in his prior existence as Realgar, as an angry young man with something of a grudge against the world, and that fit within her view of him, too. He had an easily roused temper and emotions that seemed difficult to contain in bad circumstances -- and they generally seemed to run into each other in bad circumstances. And even in her faltering memories of the future, she remembered him caring and stubborn and a little wild, but also always somewhat grim, like someone who knew the best possible outcomes had already passed them by.

Now, for once, there was no Mistral tragedy, no Dioskouri massacre, no tense conversation about the Negaverse or hostile standoff with Alois or Titan. He didn't look like an angry scarlet knight of Mars -- he just looked like a happy little boy. It was odd, but sweet. Hvergelmir tried to fix the image in her memory.

"I have to check with my family," she said, taking Kairatos's burnt fingers and sandwiching them soothingly between her own cooler ones. It felt natural -- and it came to her that that was an instinct from her borrowed memories of the future, where she'd spent a good chunk of her time cleaning and tending his tar burns long after he'd started to lose feeling in parts of his hands. "They have busy schedules, but I'm sure I can find a time. I'll send you a note."

This was the third time, at least, that she'd fussed over his injuries just in this lifetime. There had been his broken shoulder, and then the damage from Castor . . . "You have a knack for getting hurt, you know," she observed a little shyly. "Trouble seems to follow you around."

Thoughts of Titan made her heart clench. She curled her fingers around Kairatos's as though seeking comfort, which she supposed she was. Would she see him again? What if he remembered the future like they did? What if he didn't? What if he didn't want anything to do with her?

"I'd appreciate it -- thanks. I don't know if he'll want to see me, but . . . it would be nice to know he's okay, even if . . ." She shrugged. "Anyway, yeah, I'll, I'll send you a note."

Hvergelmir set the knight's hand back in his lap, and folded both of her hands in her own. "So, um." Subject change. She had to say something, preferably something unstupid. "Do you know a lot of Mars knights? Are there a lot?"