Then why the fuck do people still make such a big deal about it says that crinkle of consternation in his brow, but Stephen also, for once, doesn’t just blurt out the first blunt thing which comes to mind. Points for effort all around.
This is not the sort of thing they tell you in the rifter orientation. The history books don’t devote much space to it. The few medical textbooks he’s found don’t delve into it; non-human physiology is quite glaringly omitted, for likely obvious reasons. And there’s no guide to what to say here in terms of response, knowing there are complicated feelings here about her mother, complicated feelings about her mother’s line, that branch of the family tree already bloodily and awfully hacked off—
So what he settles for, in the end, is simply a pragmatic: “Got it.”
Which is the scholar replying, before there’s a pause and then the man tries to muster a thought together, an attempt made: “And it’s not nothing, I think. You’re still of her line, even if it’s not in… every respect. I see that portrait in the foyer every day; you look very much like her.”
no subject
This is not the sort of thing they tell you in the rifter orientation. The history books don’t devote much space to it. The few medical textbooks he’s found don’t delve into it; non-human physiology is quite glaringly omitted, for likely obvious reasons. And there’s no guide to what to say here in terms of response, knowing there are complicated feelings here about her mother, complicated feelings about her mother’s line, that branch of the family tree already bloodily and awfully hacked off—
So what he settles for, in the end, is simply a pragmatic: “Got it.”
Which is the scholar replying, before there’s a pause and then the man tries to muster a thought together, an attempt made: “And it’s not nothing, I think. You’re still of her line, even if it’s not in… every respect. I see that portrait in the foyer every day; you look very much like her.”