Tarrin didn't escape unscathed. Jenna unleashed her temper on Jesmind, but Tarrin got it from Sapphire. She railed at him for quite a while about keeping himself safe, about not antagonizing Jesmind since Auli was probably antagonism enough, and how he had nearly ruined her day by nearly getting himself killed at Jesmind's hands. Tarrin tried to explain, tried to tell her that it was all just a big misunderstanding, but she wouldn't hear of it. She somehow managed to make him feel guilty over the inconvenience and hardship his actions had placed on her, rather than the fact that he'd just gotten into a fight with someone that it was not wise to annoy. Then again, Sapphire was a dragon. She'd had that me mentality long before she'd met him. Big and powerful creatures tended to think that the whole world revolved around them anyway.
Others weren't quite so fast to chide him, however. Allia came in for a visit not long after he returned to his room, and she told him that he should have hit her harder. Keritanima blew the whole thing off as yet another in a very long string of spats between the two of them. The circumstances had changed slightly, she had joked, but the end result never did seem to change.
For his own part, he was a bit sorry that it had come to that, sorry he'd made that mistake, but he wasn't sorry about holding his ground. He knew that if he knuckled under to Jesmind, she would just use that crack to split all his defenses in half and overwhelm him. Jesmind seemed incapable of taking him seriously, and he was pretty sure it was that Were-cat mentality that the others had described to him. They based almost their entire society on personal strength. She considered him a part of that society, but since he had lost all his strength, he had comparably lost all his position. She saw herself as over him now, and she probably was very upset that he wasn't obeying her. After all, to her, it was what he was supposed to do. She was thinking of him as a Were-cat, not as a human, and that was where all the problems were coming from. It was even worse because she didn't even want to think about treating him like a human, he was sure of that. He'd gotten to know Jesmind pretty well from Jula's descriptions, and he knew that if she told herself to think of him as a human, it would hit on that very raw nerve about his precarious position, at least in her eyes. If she thought of him as a human, he may decide to stay so. That was an irrational concept, but he knew, he just knew, that it had gone through Jesmind's mind at least once already. Unable to accept him as a human but unable to treat him like a Were-cat, it left her in a very bad trap. And it was a trap that was only serving to drive the two of them apart. Tarrin wasn't the Tarrin she'd once known, and his change in personality was not meshing well with her treatment of him.
That was what was so frustrating. She could understand it all and be assured if she'd just talk to him, accept what was going on, but she absolutely did not want to do that. She didn't want to know him as a human, she didn't want to see any side of the problem but her own. She was not going to budge from her position, and that position was that he was a Were-cat, and by all the gods, he was going to be one again. That also frustrated him, because he was sincerely curious about her. She was the mother of his child, after all, and he had the feeling that if she'd just talk to him, they could be friends. But she didn't want to deal with him at all, not as a human. She wanted the Were-cat back, and that made her totally reject him as a human.
They were simple things, but he had the feeling that he was right. It certainly explained alot about how she was acting. He described his feelings to Triana when she came to check on him not long afterward, and she could only smile at him in that strange way of hers and nod in agreement.
"You're full of surprises, cub," she said. "I thought alot of what you are came from the Were in you. I see that was a wrong conclusion. You're probably one of the most remarkable humans I've ever met."
Tarrin was rather thrilled by that complement, and the fact that she seemed to have accepted the fact that for right now, he was human. "Why won't she listen?" he complained. "Why won't she understand?"
"Cub, there's one simple constant in the universe, and that's that there are absolutely no bounds to that cub's stubbornness. She's dug in her heels, and there's nothing that anyone can say to move her. Not you, not me, not even if all the gods came down from the sky and wrote it out for her on a steel tablet in flaming letters. The only thing that's going to change her mind is her. And that's going to take time." She snorted. "Jesmind was born with the two worst combination of traits. She has a short temper and a wide stubborn streak. They've gotten her in no end of trouble over the years."
"I can imagine," he sighed. That really was a bad combination. It meant that she was very easy to anger, but her stubborn nature would make her unwilling or unable to forgive or forget. There were probably a long line of people she'd once called friend, but were now on her black list because of past slights that any other Were-cat would have forgiven long ago. "She's easy to anger, but she won't get over what made her mad."
"Exactly. There's one example of that that you'll remember when you get your memory back, and that's Rahnee. She and Jesmind were best friends, then Rahnee seduced Jesmind's mate at the time. That's not too serious among our kind, but it is against the rules, and Jesmind had a right to be angry. But where most females would have let it go after a few rides, Jesmind wouldn't. She wouldn't talk to Rahnee for over a hundred years because of that. That's how she is, cub. You can't change her, you just have to learn to work around it."
"I don't think I'm going to be able to do that," he sighed.
"Probably not," she agreed. "And since you can't change her mind, the best thing to do is just avoid her. She's more angry with herself right now, but even that won't last long if you show up."
"Why is she angry with herself?"
"Because she almost hurt you," she answered bluntly.
"She wouldn't have hurt me," he said dismissively.
"I'm glad you think that, cub," Triana sarcastically, said with an intense stare. "It's a good way to get your neck broken. Jesmind will hurt you if you make her angry enough. It won't matter how much she loves you or how careful she's being. It's all a part of our natures, I told you that. If you enrage her, nothing is going to protect you from her. She's tried to kill me several times, and she meant it when she did it."
"Why would she do that?" Tarrin gasped.
"Because I made her that mad," she answered bluntly. "And if she'll take a swipe at me, cub, don't ever think that she wouldn't do the same to you."
Tarrin was a bit worried about that statement. "Maybe, maybe I should avoid her for a while," he said in a hesitant voice.
"I think that's a good idea," Triana agreed. "And if she confronts you, keep what I said in mind. It's alright to stand up to her, but for the forest's sake, don't get physical with her, and don't do whatever it was you did that set her off this time."
"I know what happened," he said glumly. "It's my fault, Triana." He quickly told her about his error in choice of words, which turned a rather innocent exposure of the falseness of her threat to refuse his rights to see Jasana into a very real threat against her rights to her daughter.
"That would do it, alright," she grunted. "You hit the one nerve bigger than her love for you. I suggest you don't do that again."
"I won't, I promise," he said fervently.
"Good. I'll be back later, cub."
"Alright," he acknowledged.
When Triana left, he was a little less assured of the whole thing. He knew now that Jesmind could be dangerous, but only if he did something very wrong. The problem he could see now was that he wasn't sure what was in the forbidden zone anymore. He'd got her mad and said some bad things to her. He still did not intend to break off his frienship with Auli, and that was certain to infuriate her. So maybe what Triana said was for the best. Maybe just staying out of Jesmind's way was the best thing to do. If he wanted to see Jasana, Jula could arrange that for him. Her or Mist. Either way, he could continue spending time with his children without having to worry about saying something in passing that may get Jesmind just that mad.