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“That’s the third subject you’ve lost so far,” Palland said. “What are you doing to them, Vasiht’h?” “You’re assuming I’m doing something!” “Yessss, I am,” the Seersa said, folding his arms. “Because if you give a healer-assist a guilt-free excuse to sleep, by the Speaker-Singer they put their heads down on a pillow and black out like a freshman after a party binge.”
“You know how ridiculous this sounds, doesn’t it?” “That I’m messing up my research project by doing impromptu talk therapy with my subjects?” Vasiht’h smoothed the fur on his forelegs and said, “Yes, I know.”
“No more fixing your subjects.”
“Vasiht’h? Why does your concern have a flavor?”
“Oh, Goddess, Sehvi. I’m sad. But I can bear it. Does that make me callous?” “It makes you useful, I’d think,” was her reply. “If everyone fell apart at the least bit of sadness, who’d be left to pick up the pieces? You’re sad, right? Should you really have to become completely nonfunctional to prove it?”
I knew some people who needed this explained to them
chrism,
“And if there is no path to the sun but a twisted one?” Jahir asked. “Then still, you grow toward the light,” she said.
At last, Jahir spoke. “The goddess… likes cookies?” “Brains need a lot of carbohydrates to function,” Vasiht’h said. “And She does nothing but think.”
Leina covered her face. “Ugh, Brett, could you be any more tasteless.” “He could,” Luci said. “Doesn’t change that he’s right.”
“Not that I’m biased or anything, but we make good subjects, right?” “You do, yes,” Vasiht’h answered, though whether the children’s hospital staff would be any better at sleeping than the general hospital’s was beyond him.
“There’s a misanthrope team?” Vasiht’h asked, aghast. “Oh, sure,” Palland said. “Alet. This is the psychology faculty we’re talking about. Half of us teach because we love helping people, and teaching is a way to intersect a vulnerable population and help them get through a critical time in their lives. But the other half teach because they like knowing how people work, and they like proving it to themselves and others. Psychology for them is a weapon, a way to give themselves power
“Doesn’t seem very nuanced,” Vasiht’h muttered. “Hate rarely is.”
“Our choices shape our lives, and until we die we can make new ones.”
“So let me see if I understand this,” Sehvi said, pursing her lips. “Your actual research study is useless, but your post-research survey indicates that everyone who participated is less stressed? To the point that they’re recommending you to their peers, who are now eager to sign up for your second
I love when she sums up a situation
How can that be possible?” “Same way it is for anyone, I guess,” Sehvi said. “They have issues.
Hahahah
“That to make something, one must feel something,” Jahir said. “That there is no creation without a motive force. And that such forces should be positive, or the results become twisted and strange. Which would suggest that love creates the universe, or should.”
But knowing something was very different from living it,
The children took one look at him and said to Vasiht’h accusingly, “You aren’t taking care of him!”
“Should I give him my pillow?” Persy said to Amaranth. “No, he should use mine. His family has special ties to unicorns, remember?” “We should sing him to sleep!” Meekie exclaimed.
Theyre so fucking adorable
and… I need to know that I’m helping someone.” “I thought you were helping your roommate?” “In the sense that I’m keeping him from starving, maybe,” Vasiht’h said. His shoulders slumped. “But he doesn’t really need me.”
It’s probably safer for him not to have intimate friends.” “I don’t care how old you get,” Sehvi said. “It’s never safer to have no friends.”
“You’re going to need more than cookie dough to fix this one,” Leina agreed, snitching one of the chips.
A dire situation indeed
“But what if you’re wrong?” she said. “What if they have a tradition of platonic love? For all you know they revere agape, or even prefer homosexual—sorry, homosocial—attachments.”
That could not be borne. “I miss Nieve,” Jahir said to him, willing him to believe. “But I would not elide her from my life for the brevity of her passage through it. I don’t regret knowing her.”
there is freedom in the stars there is somewhere out there looking up we see a dome but it is only illusion if we could fly up past it we would find out who we were when we were finally alone
“But we know talk therapy works,” Vasiht’h said. “How did we find out?” Palland laughed. “By doing it since the beginning of time?” Vasiht’h frowned. “Not very—” “Sciency, I know,” Palland said.
“He told you so?” she asked, lifting her brows. “Nooooo.” Vasiht’h drew out the word. At her inquisitive look, he said, “I might have done some snooping.
“Don’t you think that’s something you should discuss?” his sister asked. “This is serious.” “It’s only two more months,” Vasiht’h said, shoulders slumped. “Two more months and it won’t matter anymore. We’ll all go our separate ways.” “I really think you should talk to him,” Sehvi said. “And make it harder on him?” “I don’t think it has anything to do with making it harder on him!” Sehvi exclaimed, irritated. “I think it has everything to do with you being unwilling to take the chance!
“You’d set aside a promising residency for your friendships?”
The Heliocentrus residency is worth celebrating.” “Even if I turn it down?” Jahir asked. “Especially if you do,” the Tam-illee said with a laugh. “How many people can say they’ve done that? Not many!”
Perhaps better than a friend: one of those rare people one knows only once in a lifetime.
Loss and sorrow and other things, raw like wounds.
