The tension left him in fits and giggles, in cracking smiles and quiet tears, draining out of his tiny body and leaving him a sodden, woolen lump in a chair. Thank the gods for natural padding, or else he might’ve had a cramp in his neck, lying flopped against the armrest. Dimly, he’d registered Vasilia materializing out of the surrounding chaos, where she’d quickly press-ganged the Alcedi into a moving crew. Difficult to tell someone in a wheelchair that they’ll have to move all their things back themselves. Especially when you moved it all out in the first place. Or did that count as stealing? Hrmm. The statue dog was…somewhere else. Not here. Not a problem. They are alone, on a little island of inactivity all to themselves. Free to do as they wished. Free to do nothing at all.

He cranes his neck, up over his chair, peering upside-down at the mouse laid flat on her back. Jil of the Lanterns, who’d known only one good Captain. Who saw the world through a curtain of her ancestor’s skulls. Born into darkness, Assassins, and Empire. She asks her questions bluntly, forcefully, with a blithe disregard to polite language. He answers without fear. “To be fair, we may have left weird behind several stops ago.” And yet, eating his hat hadn’t seemed such an impossible leap, in the moment. “Maybe a little surprising, true. But I believe you.”

“...so.” His fingers idly play with an errant curl of wool. “Does that mean you’re thinking of crossing? On this ship? There’d be a seat at the table for you too, you know.” And wouldn’t it be nice if the seat was next to his? Captain Dolce would oversee the transition of power as his last official act. Another friendly voice at his side, one speaking for an entire community, wouldn’t that be grand? And, he knew it wasn’t really a matter of odds, but it was hard to think of it any other way, that the more friends one crossed the Rift with, the greater chance you’d still know at least one of them on the other side.

Still. It wouldn’t be right of him to be so greedy.

The choice was still hers, in the end.