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Brisa nodded. "It can do. Fugu's help has done me plenty of good. Got me to take better care of myself. Lotta kinds of therapy ain't so dissimilar to persuasion, though. You'll well know that our Dave ain't easily persuaded of shit." Humour to cope with concern. And gods, she was concerned...

"Depends on which kind yer talkin' about," said Brisa, wondering if she was going to have to restrain the idiot fella she'd taken to calling 'Dad' just so he wouldn't do himself a nuisance. "Fer instance, a common form of therapy fer emotional wellbein' is just to talk about yer problems. A...

"Sounds like important work as can wait 'til tomorrow," said Brisa, firmly. She returned with the coffee and a smile. "Howdy, Mia. He's not his best, but would y'mind stickin' around t'give a better chance of him takin' any of my goddamn advice?" Her tail flicked and she tipped her chin at...

Brisa got to work making a new coffee. It occurred to her to make it with particular effort, maybe add a slice of nomel or something, to give Dave something to be pleased about but the best thing was probably familiarity and straightforward rapidity. "Y'ain't fine, an' I don't wanna hear a word...

Brisa frowned, and shifted in her seat, leaning towards Dave. "Dad, you're not okay. Y'hear me? Y'need some goddamn rest. Look, lemme fix ya up another of those coffees." She moved to head over to the kitchenette again, snagging his mug with one paw. Fuck. Okay. She needed to make sure he...

Brisa made a mental note to talk to him more about Jean and the others later. Not now. Salt and sand... "Y'ain't the first person t'be unsettled by memory loss an' what it could mean fer our motivations," she said, drumming her claws on the couch. "We wanna believe that what's important to us...

Brisa nodded. It had stopped being a vague suppressed yearning months ago already. She'd talked about it frankly enough to plenty of Cibus natives, including in interview. So. Sure. "Yeah, the only things tyin' me to my home are my estranged blood family, this golett who I was givin' some aid...

"Well, like I said, she's scarce these years. Lotta folks ain't got much picture of her at all. But she don't figure into their way of doin' things." Brisa scratched her cheek with one paw. "Somethin' tells me they'd find issue with her the way they do with me."

Brisa had given up arguing with that sentiment a while ago. Dave wasn't about to start caring about the wellbeing of townie assholes any time soon. Besides, it felt kinda good to hear someone fight her corner, even if it was just with invective into empty air. "Yeah, kinda," she replied...

Brisa laughed. "Somethin' like that." Wind and weather, he sure did get pissed off whenever something wasn't fair. He and Pa were alike in that way.

"I guess. Bein' a Legendary ain't like holdin' public office. Zeraora don't get no say in how things are run or whatever. More like emergency services, y'know?" She grinned drily. "Besides, I'm not eligible t'run fer public office back home anyway."

Brisa shrugged again. "So far as I can tell from all the fuckin' folk tales an' scraps of old journals I could find, Luz could offer the successorship to someone she considered worthy, or someone could approach her with the intent of becomin' an aspirant." She smiled vaguely at something her...

Brisa sighed, and mvoed on from the topic of Dave's poor kid. It was hard to know how to reassure him about anything, anyway... "Yeah, so the stories say. I heard once that Zeraora Luz has been around a few centuries, and that there were a different zeraora before her. In Cibus it's a matter of...

Brisa listened, and nodded, and winced in empathy as Dave related the story. When he was done, she dipped her ears and flicked her tail. "Shit, that's just all kinds of dreadful," she said, dumbly. "I'm sorry, too." She paused, thought, swallowed. Another of Dave's kids, a half-human who...

Brisa shook her head. "I knew y'had kids besides Mia. Nothin' much about 'em, though. Somethin' happen to her...?" She couldn't help but look sympathetic before he'd even said anything. Looking at him hungover and in need of a bath, it was easy to assume everything about his life had gone to...

This topic again, with that weird hostility Dave had sometimes about stuff. It was true enough. Nobody else had unleashed a legendary form, as such. Well, there was Celeste, with his rainbow wings so reminiscent of Ho-oh's. Not quite as unsubtle as her own shift, to be fair. She shrugged, and...

Obvious enough, then. At least to some. Was she being too obvious? Yikes. Brisa grimaced and contemplated just how badly asking someone out could go. She'd read some dramatic enough rejections in her romance pulps. Or there were . . . the couple times she'd ever given someone a love confession...

"Yeah, she seemed antsy. Figured she needed t'feel like things could be normal, so obviously I got her t'hit the Colo. Been meanin' t'have a more considered conversation, though..." Brisa's ears flattened back and she bowed her head. There'd be no hiding after a reaction like that, oof...

Yeah, that tracked with everything Starr had ever said. Brisa was good, and her fears of being a danger were unfounded. Starr had actually harmed people, terribly, deliberately, irrevocably. Starr sure believed that. And she wasn't stupid, either, but... She sure did more than just hurt people...

Brisa nodded, and hated that most of what she felt was relief, that Starr had let on to someone that she'd killed people – you always kinda believed that, huh – and that person had been Dave, and he'd taken it this way. This way, and not . . . worse. "Thanks fer havin' her back," Brisa said...