Of course, Mori has an added level of complexity since she’s sleeping with the captain of Eighth Squad, who seems to be Kaoren’s closest friend. Mori was more than cheerful when Eighth (and Seventh and Squad Two from Kolar) arrived today, but from my point of view it wasn’t good timing. Exhaustion, headaches and children have meant a relatively chaste engagement, and I’m not in the mood to watch Forel purring over Kaoren. Even though I know he doesn’t want her to, I still can’t stand it when she puts her hands on him – while congratulating him on our engagement, no less.
I’m so going to ravish Kaoren when he gets back from his training run.
Kaoren’s given Ys and Rye a schedule of things they have to do other than lessons, and also set achievement expectations for their spelling tests. I think that might be what won them over. Not only allowing them to learn to read, and taking an interest, but requiring they do it well.
Going to ravish him a lot.
Stories
Kaoren ended up having to go off to a Captain’s meeting, and came back really tired and not a candidate for ravishment. I’d spotted the meeting being added (I’ve learned to keep an eye on his calendar), and so I managed to shrug off being disappointed about it. I don’t want our relationship to always be him supporting me and never the other way around, so I just gave him a foot rub and wasn’t surprised when he fell asleep almost immediately. He spent a lot of time with me when I was all headachy and trying to sleep, and so got to be headachy and unable to sleep as well. Except he didn’t get to spend all day in bed to make up for it. I’m going to have to revive the sleeping on the couch discussion.
I distracted myself waiting for him to come back by asking Mara for some recommendations for children’s books, and browsing through them to pick one to read. Kaoren had also set bedtimes for the kids, and to reinforce that with Sen (who is very difficult to keep in bed) I decided story time would be a good addition to the routine. I think that worked well, particularly since Ys and Rye could treat it as a continuation of their lessons. Not a bad story, either – it’s called Caves of Nonora, and is set back in the underground era on Tare, where a bunch of kids finds a huge hidden kingdom of blue people beneath their island. A chapter conveniently seems to be Sen’s staying-awake limit, putting her to sleep nicely, while Ys and Rye were totally fixated.
I’ve spent my whole life reading books. I vaguely remember Mum reading to me in our own bedtime sessions, and our house is practically a library. The way I think, the way I act, most of that’s because of the books I’ve read. Caves of Nonora is Ys, Rye and Sen’s first book and my voice was a little shaky reading it because I kept thinking about that, and about all the books which were important to me that I don’t have to read to them.
The talent school building is at habitable stage, and they’re going to move in children they’ve identified tomorrow morning, then hold an orientation session in the afternoon. It’s not going to be anything like so controlled an environment as the Setari school – the idea is not to turn them into Setari, it’s to make sure they have enough control of their talents to not accidentally set buildings alight – and if they have family their family will be living with them. The school will be connected to the Setari building through the medical section and kitchens, and is set further back from the lake, with its balconies looking mostly toward Pandora.
Since almost all of the Nurans have refused the interface, school is going to be a major part of Pandora for a while. KOTIS Command is hoping that eventually Tsana Dura and Tsana Ridel can take over, but until then it’s going to have to be face-to-face classes, which will take up a lot of resources.
I’m worried about the school, unsure how Ys and Rye will be received. At least, because they’re using the interface, Ys, Rye and Sen will attend only the physical and psychic classes, and will simply be supervised during the day while they do interface lessons.
Saturday, August 30
Away team
Fourth and Seventh were assigned to go Cruzatch-hunting in the Ena today. They started fairly late, well after lunch, but still aren’t back. I was trying not to be fretty about it, but knew they were officially overdue when Lohn and Mara showed up to sit with me. It was nice to see Mara out of medical, and I talked to them for a while, but I was just fretting too much and asked if they minded hanging about while I wrote. They’re watching a movie.
I’m climbing the walls, of course. Fortunately I didn’t start to get really worried until after story time was over – there’s no way I could hide the way I’m feeling from Sen. Ys and Rye are awake, but snug in bed lost in their virtual classroom.
This has been a day which began well, but slowly went downhill. Kaoren and I started out very happily making up for lost time, then having a fairly unresolved discussion on what to do when I’m sick to prevent him from having to suffer along with me. Neither of us wants to sleep in separate beds, but Kaoren said he’d think about a row of pillows in between us.
During the morning we had technicians in to reshape the kids' apartment so there’s three largish single beds and a bit more privacy for them, but keeping them still in the one room. It cost them a chunk of their lounge room, but I think it works out well this way. It was a bit hard to gauge Ys and Rye’s opinion of the changes, but Sen remains unreservedly positive about almost everything which we do.
This afternoon, though, after Kaoren had gone on his mission and we headed over to the talent school, Sen stopped being her usual chirrupy self. The identified children and their families had been brought over just after lunch and moved their sparse collection of belongings into their assigned rooms – the school apartments are similar to the Setari apartments, but with two or three bedrooms each. Then everyone gathered into a small lecture room, filling the rows of scoopy whitestone benches. There were more Nurans than I was expecting, about forty in all, a couple of them adults.
Nils, bruises fading, was playing my escort. I’m not altogether sure if I’m required to have a guard even in the talent school, or if he just tagged along out of curiosity. He seems to find the kids endlessly entertaining.
When we walked into the room there was a little flutter of suppressed reaction, but that was nothing to do with Ys, Sen or Rye and all about what I’ve started to think of as The Nils Effect. The squads are relatively used to him, but anywhere Nils goes – among civilians or KOTIS staff who don’t see him day to day – The Nils Effect produces a mass wave of Profound Awareness of Nils. Even wrapped up in Kaoren as I am, there were a few times today when my heart suddenly started racing because Nils had leaned forward, or brushed my arm, or done entirely innocuous things which triggered PAoN.
The pinksuit in charge of the school handled her PAoN very well – glancing at us as we came in, going an interesting shade of purple, then carrying on as if Nils wasn’t in the room. Except purple. We sat up back, with Ys and Rye between us and Sen between them, and all three were quiet and tense, not even paying attention to Ghost, curled in Nils' lap.
One of the Nuran Setari, a man called Serray, spoke first – all in Nuran, which I struggled to follow. But he was just explaining how this residence was different, that the primary focus was one of controlling their stronger talents. Some of the older children might already have received training within their houses (house seems to have been the major social structure on Nuri), but they would be given a review and further training to verify they had full control of their abilities. They weren’t being trained to be Setari, but skilled talents would be useful in many aspects of Muina’s development. Those family members who were here who did not have strong talents would also be offered talent training, if they so chose. All at the talent school, as with the rest of Nuri’s survivors, would be receiving language and skills training, to allow them to find a role in Muina’s settlement.