northling | INBOX

No! [She says this like it's the obvious ideal answer.] I am free to share it where I please and there are lots of people with whom I wish to share it. [Like, five or six! Heaps! And Pom gets a double— no, triple — helping.]

[He smirks, feeling her exuberance bleed into him. With a cock of his head to follow, he starts walking her home.]

Tell me your favorites. And not me. I know about me.

Edited 2026-01-15 08:22 (UTC)

What if I wish to talk about you? [She likes talking about Pom. Ask... anyone she's talked to for more than five minutes.]

You talk about me all the time.

[He talks to her for more than five minutes all the time, sometimes multiple times a day.]

[As a mature woman, she sticks her tongue out at him.]

Because that is what I enjoy!

[But after insisting that, she (reluctantly!!) moves on.] Rowan. They are kind to me, and are helpful. And have excellent jokes. They bring me food nearly as often as you. [Hah! Slipped some Pom in!]

And Elijah! He is caring and sweet and bad ass! [This is a compliment — his rear is shapely!]

Gale, as well! Though he will not allow me to fix his Void orb. [Vorb.]

And... [she hesitates.] Rosie has returned. [Which is... complicated. She missed her. Dreadfully. But her return to Karteria is... worrying.]

[Pom hmms in response. He knew Rosie was back, but hasn't asked for any more detail than that. He's not sure he wants to know what happens when someone whose Augmenter broke comes back, especially with how Northly has been acting toward Patho-Gen.

Perhaps he should know, though. He's supposed to be keeping an ear to the ground on that sort of thing, even if the idea rattles him.]

How is she?

Confused. But... I am grateful that she was not here for... [Well, she doesn't really need to say, does she?]

[No. She absolutely does not need to say it. Pom reaches to take her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.]

I just hope she doesn't remember what happened as we remember it.

Edited 2026-01-19 06:41 (UTC)

She does not. She does not remember much until she woke here once again. [She squeezes his hand in return.] Though it is perhaps at odds with my wishes for my own memories, I hope that remains the case.

[Fragments of what happened in October have returned to her, but they are few and far between and only serve to place an itch where those memories should reside.]

[He grunts.]

I can't say which I'd prefer, aside from not losing myself to the Souls at all.

[Which is a very current fear of his; even now he swallows down a pang of hunger. Better not to address it by dodging onto a tangentially related topic.]

Rowan is worried about you, you know.

[Northly flinches, hunching her shoulders.] I am well. They need not worry. I have you and I have them and others also.

You say that.

[There's an implied but somewhere in there.]

It's just... you know you can talk to us.

I talk to you often! [They are talking right now!

She knows that's not what he means. But... ]

We must go fishing.

[She doesn't like thinking about Rowan worrying, Pom worrying. Because she knows he is — knows that he raised Rowan's concerns to bring forward his own. A disguise for his thoughts.]