2022-04-17 - Googling for Creepers

“I mean, if you want. The whole thing is kinda wild.” Jules isn’t much help, noncommittal as she and Della stand there talking.

Mikaere has just gone to get them beers, plus ice for Jules’ busted up ribs. Once he’s out of earshot, Jules leans closer to Della to say, “You don’t have to go check it out. That wasn’t me trying to get rid of you.”

Della's expression warms -- but, still, those sunglasses. She lifts her free hand to Jules' shoulder, angling into that lean; "I'd understand. And this is your chance to change your mind, if you want." There's mischief in her widened smile. "I could google him and send you what I find, even, though spelling could be an issue. Or... it's been a while since we've hung out together, hasn't it, out and about?" Even at home, Jules has her schoolwork and Della has her... work.

“Thanks.” Jules rolls her eyes at the same time, but she’s grinning too. “You should absolutely google him. And stick around for a beer. It has been awhile.” And while this stranger might be intriguing with his charismatic smile and foreign accent, it doesn’t override other priorities, other relationships. “It’s been a crazy couple weeks.”

"I'll do that. Right now, even," and Della straightens to suit actions to words. "Let me know if you spot him heading our way. And," she does look up for this, "If you decide you want to climb him like a tree," too soon? "You can kick me under the table or something. Or come up with a code phrase ahead of time."

"I guess," said with mock wistfulness, "It wouldn't have been subtle to ask how he spelled his name."

Jules grins. She’s curious too, and she only just manages to keep herself from hovering over Della’s shoulder because she’s been designated as lookout. “Jesus. What if I kick you now? Or will you misinterpret that?”

"I'd have to stick around and tell him about your beating up on me," Della says so sadly. Tap tap tap. Not him, maybe him, definitely not him -- what's with that banana? -- add in sailing and there, his name spelled a whole lot of different ways, and she hisses under her breath: victory. "There we go. Pretty boat. Pretty man! Look at all these videos."

“Find out if he wants to play the hero?” Jules tries to be patient, because surely he’s coming back any minute now, beer and ice can’t be that hard to find at an underground fighting ring, but she’s also not a very patient person. She darts to Della’s side when her housemate strikes gold. “Man. Is he, like, an Instagram influencer or something? He is pretty,” she has to admit. Those windblown sailing videos are hard to deny.

"Just looking for a maiden to rescue, do you mean?" Della can't help but smile. "Can't think he'd think you'd be that type, not after all this. Here," tap tap send Jules' phone the link, tap tap scroll scroll scroll. "Wait. That guy. That guy. Do you remember that one? That was really him?" There: the politician. Quitting. Live TV. Sure, it was way over in New Zealand, but even American media will publish other countries' news if they can be scandalized over something (a) dramatic (b) hot (c) both of the above and more. "Back before TikTok."

“If that’s the case, better to point him at one of the lobsters.” Jules pulls out her own phone to open the first link and starts to watch before Della’s exclamation pulls her up short. “What guy? Send it to me.” Opening her own link is too slow, so she’s back to peering at Della’s phone in the meantime. “Don’t think I heard about this.” Jules is not so tuned into the politics world — or maybe it’s that her politics are all local, about fishing rights and land usage. “So is he in politics? What happened?”

"What happened," comes Mikaere's voice, soft and sounding more resigned than put-out, "is a man losing his temper and doing something he swore he'd never do, and then noping out before he made it worse. Watch the video, go on; it's fine."

He's managed to carry back three bottles of beer and a dishrag full of ice without dropping anything, with the surety of purpose that suggests bar work at least once in his life.

And the video? Now or later, it's a short enough thing: Mikaere-in-a-suit, debating white-man-in-a-suit. Mikaere losing his cool, telling the other man to 'feel some compassion'.

Something happening. Something. The other man going all kinds of colours, his expression suddenly drooping. Heartbroken. The kind of thing that might break a man's career-- are those tears?!-- except that...

Mikaere, his expression unreadable, horrified, something. 'I fucking quit'. And he's gone. End clip.

Startled, Della looks up -- but unhurriedly so, as though they had only been googling lobsters. Big, tough-shelled lobsters with who knows what armanents attached. And by the tilt of her head, she looks at him behind those sunglasses, really looks. The curve of her mouth tilts, too.

"All right." It has layers. And Della doesn't stop. Jules may watch if she wills.

Oh shit. Caught. Jules looks up, startled, not quite deer in the headlights but close, except deer can’t manage expressions of guilt. “We just googled to make sure you weren’t a creeper,” she hastens to explain. Like that makes it better.

The video’s still playing, and Della hasn’t stopped it, and now there’s some kind of permission to watch this public-yet-private moment, so Jules looks back at the screen. Which only, of course, makes that guilt deepen.

Mikaere's shrug answers both of them. "I do like to make sure my creeper-ness is broadcast all over the Internet," he says, with a hint of a smile that blossoms further, too, because why not? "My other stuff is arguably much more interesting than that particular one, but-- internet fame is a tricky mistress. Increasingly tricky, one finds, when one ends up here."

There's fewer videos, these past few weeks, with significantly fewer hits.

Does he enjoy hearing the audio of that video (he's very much not watching it; and who can blame him?)? No. Does he manage to keep his expression relatively even anyway? He does.

He's a politician-- or was. Maybe not a good one, if that video is any indication, but still.

There's being a good politician, and there's good at being a politician.

Afterward, Della's gaze lingers on Jules until she says, "There you are." She's looking at Mikaere, but her body language defers -- when it comes to actions, at least, embrace or consider or move along -- to her friend. With a certain warmth, if not wholly a smile, "Quite a change." In the politician? The aftermath?

“The sailing stuff?” As the video comes to an end, Jules is happy to take up a topic change, like Mikaere’s tossed them a rope to tug them out of potentially deep water. “Are you doing a sail around the world kind of thing? How did you wind up here?”

With Jules navigating the winds out of that particular storm, Mikaere offers around the beer, and the ice as well. It's not great beer, of course, but it's better than nothing: a little bit of social lubrication to smooth the function of this particular engine. "That was the plan," he agrees. "First, backtracking through the pacific, like the reverse of my ancestors when they migrated to New Zealand. And then I continued this way, because, well, why not? And then I hit a storm, and we limped in to harbour here."

And now he's stuck, though he doesn't seem too cut up about it.

Beer as lubrication, ice as fenders as the boat nears the slip? "Thanks," says Della, accepting the bottle once she's pocketed her phone; she doesn't seek to open it, yet. Less a life raft than a paddleboard, "How about we head that way?" with a nod. "A little more out of the way." Because fights are still happening and crustacean-water is flying.

Jules gratefully accepts both the beer and the ice. It's hard to say which one she wants more in this particular moment. She hitches up her shirt to apply the ice, only to find that it's slightly awkward when only one hand is free for the task. She can't rearrange easily. "Do you guys mind if we find a place to sit?" Della's on the same wavelength. And while they find said seating, Jules has more questions. "So where were your ancestors from originally, before New Zealand? I know literally nothing about that part of the world, except that everything in Australia wants to kill you and it was settled by ex-cons."

Pause. "And obviously I know that New Zealand is not Australia."

Also: "And by settled I mean by white people, because obviously there are indigenous people there first." Jules just can't stop.

Mikaere is gentlemanly enough to avert his eyes as Jules hitches up her shirt like that, and happy enough to follow the two housemates off to a quiet corner to sit (where, coincidentally, Una will later completely fail to find them, despite looking). He uses a bottle opener attached to his keyring to open his bottle, then gestures to the other two: if they want?

Jules' questions draw a pause, and a twitch of a smile that darkens, and then broadens again, and then makes him laugh outright. "Right," he agrees. "Not Australia, not really anything like Australia, except maybe we share some antipodean values, and a good friendly rivalry when it comes to sport. We came from elsewhere in Polynesia in waka-- canoes-- probably... seven hundred years ago. Think... Moana, did you see that? Ocean-going canoes."

Della's smile to Jules has utter warmth: not indulgent but appreciating. She's relatively relaxed in that spot, shade dappling her shoulders, and happy to take a turn with the opener -- and a glance at his key ring as a whole, in case something there is interesting -- before passing it along. "Moana, of course. What do you like for sports? Sailing aside. Well, no; maybe flavors of sailing."

Then, less than a minute later, she glances at her watch and everything changes. "Excuse me. I have to take this." Which seems to mean, as her phone comes out for tapping rather than talking, take this over.

Jules doesn't mind the laughter. What she minds more is the possibility of being misunderstood, of being thought insensitive, of putting her foot in her mouth without correction. "Oh, yeah. That wasn't a bad movie, I thought. Not like Pocahontas, which is super problematic. But correct me if I'm wrong." She appropriates the keyring with its opener after Della, and then as Della becomes busy with her phone, assumes, "Work calls. Anyway," she continues as she passes the keyring back to Mikaere, "So you ended up sailing this way, and now what? You going to keep going down the coast?"

There's a greenstone carving hanging from the keyring, a little battered but obviously well-loved. Mikaere tucks his keys back in his pocket and leans back, sipping at his beer (no, it's not great beer) before he attempts an answer, either to Della-- despite her distraction-- or to Jules.

"Rugby," he says. "Once upon a time. These days, just the wind and the water. Now-- now I need to wait for my girl to be repaired, and then figure out what next. And you're right: Moana's not a bad movie. Not a perfect depiction of Maui, but not disrespectful, the way-- yes, Pocahontas and the like. We did a redubbing of Moana in te reo, which tells you something."

"That's super cool." Jules lets herself study Mikaere, now that they're sitting, talking, and the initial weirdness is past. "We couldn't do that with the Quinault language, even if we wanted to. The language is lost, except for some words and phrases. No one speaks it fluently anymore. It's happened a lot with the languages here." There's some regret in her tone, but it's remote. The extinction of the indigenous languages is a fact of life, one she's always lived with.

While the beer might not be great, this is admittedly the kind of beer that Jules is most accustomed to. She sips it without complaint. "So-- what was it that you wanted to know? I mean, let me be honest, I'm not an expert or anything. A lot of this is stuff I'm just figuring out now, myself." The hand with the beer does a vague wave, like this is made less amorphous with the gesture.

Mikaere's reaction is one of genuine sorrow and regret, something he acknowledges with his, "I know that we're lucky, for all it doesn't always seem that way. We all spoke the same language, which made it easier to preserve. There were still plenty of atrocities, but-- even some of the Pākehā kids speak a little, know a little."

He's slower to continue, not (it seems) out of reticence, but more out of thoughtfulness. "It's not-- not anything specific. I'm just interested, I think, in understanding more about how it fits, culturally. I feel like I'm speaking a foreign language when I talk about all of this-- the shine, people say?-- because everything I know is filtered through my culture. It's not that I didn't know that Pākehā could have it, too, it's just that it wasn't part of my experience."

"Pākehā." Jules tries out the unfamiliar word, asking, "is that white people? Or just not your people? Like, would I qualify? Or Della?" It's a tangent, but an interesting one.

"To be honest," she says then, "I never really thought it was real. I mean, there's plenty of stories. I'm just now starting to realize that there's something to those stories, you know? And 'the shine' sounds weird to me too, for what it's worth. Because if you think of it like that, then it's something special, something that sets you apart and makes you different, instead of seeing it as a more integrated part of being human. Which is how my culture thought of it, I think." She's clearly still working this out for herself, spinning her own thought process out aloud. She's as much the recipient of it as Mikaere is. "Like, yeah, maybe you have more of a connection that gives you more power, but it's potentially open to anyone. Some are just able to access it more than others. It doesn't make you less human, it means you're more in touch with yourself and the world around you."

"New Zealanders of European descent, generally," explains Mikaere. "So neither of you qualify-- and wouldn't, even if you were Kiwis. It's not a derogatory term, though some people like to see it that way; the fear of being labelled as something, rather than being the default, aye?"

Those eyes, so very dark, consider Jules with distinct interest as she speaks, his slow nod acknowledgement to what she's saying. "It's similar for us," he agrees. "My ma, she's considered tohunga-- basically like a priest?-- because she's powerful, a healer. But that's not the only way to be tohunga; it's just one of the possibilities. But in a sense, it does still set as aside from others. Because we're experienced in mysteries that often aren't, can't be, shared by others. It doesn't make us better, though; it just changes some of our experience of the world."

Jules nods at that, and then again as she considers Mikaere's perspective, coming from his own family story. "Yeah, that makes sense. The being set aside. The Quinault, and all the people on this coast all the way up to Canada, would say you have tamanous, which as far as I know basically translates as superpowers. It was something everyone wanted, or at least tried to find out if they could get it, at least once in their life. And those with a great deal of it were treated with a lot of respect." She pauses to drink, to think. "I think people here respect it? Like, they say, oh, wow, Ava's a really impressive healer. And she is. But they're also really scared of the other side of things, the being able to see and interact with the world that isn't just us humans. And I get it? I mean, fear is a healthy human reaction to danger, and there's a lot of that, too. Hell, my mom is basically haunted because of whatever it is that she can see or do. She can't lead a normal life. I grew up thinking she was schizophrenic." A glance at Della, here, to see how much of the conversation she's registering. Jules doesn't talk about her mom often, and then only obliquely. It's perhaps the most direct thing she's said. "But I think there's more to it than just being afraid. It's still part of the world, and we're connected to it one way or another. That's what my grandma says."

"I'm sorry about your mom," says Mikaere, quietly, the word 'mom' sounding a little awkward on his tongue, much as if he's speaking a foreign language in using it.

"I think you're right. You have to balance the fear. We have the power to do something about things; it's up to us to work out what that is, and where the lines are. Who should Ava heal, or my ma, for instance. They can't heal everyone. And how we use our power, to what end. In my culture, we see the other side as the spirit world; I think you do too? It connects us to the ancestors, but not just them. It's a heavy responsibility, sometimes."

Della has resurfaced slowly from her world-shaping: it wasn't a fast ascent but level by level, sometimes listening -- like that time, her solemn nod acknowledges -- and sometimes diving down again. Now, rather than putting down her phone, she cradles it in her hands. She's back. She's not White, but she also isn't a part of these other aspects the way they are. This is... transition.

"It's okay," Jules says with a shrug. "I understand her better now, at least. Instead of just thinking that my grandma refused to acknowledge modern medicine when she said the Old Ones -- certain ancestor spirits -- tormented her. I think she's better when she's farther away."

It's okay, and it isn't. It just is. "Yeah. I haven't really asked about the responsibility thing -- but maybe I just haven't gotten far enough. We talk about it being the spirit world, too. Which isn't to say that it's totally separate, and I think that's where it gets confusing. It's more like there's a part of existence in which the things we call spirits are more comfortable, but sometimes they cross over, and sometimes we do too. And there's ancestors and then there's ancestors -- like, we talk about honoring our ancestors too, but obviously that's different the kind of spirit that wants to drag you back with it, and maybe those spirits stem from part of who that person was, but it's not the same thing as them, or their memory, or the things we hold on to from the past."

Mikaere's occasional glance towards Della does mean he notes her resurfacing, but he doesn't specifically acknowledge her. Instead: "Mm. Ma says she finds being too close to the-- the whakatīaho, the places where things are thinner and more closely overlaid exhausting. Auckland's got all the volcanoes, of course, but they're dormant; it's not too bad. Down south, where our iwi is, it can be overwhelming. Like here."

He takes another sip of his beer and grins. "Seems there's some similarities. Differences, too. Not surprising. We're no monolith, none of it. We all interpret what we experience through a different lens, aye?"

Better when she's farther away. Della draws in her lower lip, presses it in. Again, her slow nod. "So often," she says in the end, "our relations, our ancestors, get talked about in the mainstream as dragging us back metaphorically." While she's at it, "'Iwi'?"

"Yeah," Jules agrees with a smile of her own. It's hard not to smile back, but there's something pensive that remains in her expression. "I'm gonna go refill my ice," she announces, getting to her feet. "I'll be back in a few." Those few minutes might stretch out a little longer, if Jules gets caught in conversation or crustacean liberation -- or just needs a little longer to collect herself when she's been talking about her mother. But she'll be back, in time.

Mikaere's gaze follows Jules, his expression showing genuine concern that he nonetheless puts aside: Jules is a big girl, he's still more-or-less a stranger, and clearly he can understand how some of this can be difficult.

He takes in a breath, and turns back to Della, smiling ruefully. "Iwi-- tribe, I guess. Ngāti Kuia," naahti kooya, "in my case. We trace ourselves back to the waka Te Hoiere: the canoe we arrived in."

...She turns back, too, though every now and again she'll likely glance out into the crowd. Now, though, Della tips half a smile back to Mikaere; "'We'; is that the... Ngāti Kuia," her intonation is a good mimic of his, but in his sentence's context, not the adjustments one would properly make for hers, "one canoe among many?"

Brows lifting, Mikaere does seem impressed at how well Della has mimicked his intonation; she gets an approving nod for it. (the real test, of course, would be remembering the pronunciation when trying to read it off a page). "Yes-- there are probably about fifty of them, all told. Not necessarily a single fleet, but all arriving, in turn, from Hawaiki."

(Which would be a difficult test indeed, the more so since, although Della has her phone out, she's not employing it. At least... presumably she doesn't have voice recordings of every conversation she has; imagine the space that would take.) "In turn," she says now, with real interest. "How far apart, if you don't mind me asking? Are we talking years, seasons, one by one or in clumps?"

"We don't actually know," Mikaere admits, then-- and with a wry grin. "We didn't record anything; no written language, until the Pākehā arrived. We think it was in the 1300s, CE, that the first waka arrived, but it's pretty much impossible to know for certain. I don't imagine they all came at once, though, no."

The 1300s. "That's the same as AD?" Della double-checks her memory. "That sounds recent. Relatively, though still ages ago... And here you are with your own boat issues. That sounds hard," though at least he did make it into harbor. "What's up with it?"

"Nothing like, I imagine, Jules' people," Mikaere agrees, evenly. "We found Aotearoa, same as the Pākehā did. I like to think we treated her with more respect, though."

He takes another sip of his beer, makes another face, and nods. "They keep finding more things wrong." He shakes his head. "People did warn me that this place didn't like to let people go. I don't know. It's not as though I have a visa or anything, though people keep assuring me that I'll end up with one anyway. It's not as if I'd be heading home to anything in particular, though. No job."

No children. No wife. Though he doesn't say that out loud.

"'Aotearoa'?" Again, Della doesn't assume.

But she does listen, forearm partly on the little round table to support her slight lean. "Sorry to hear that," she says. "I hope they'll be able to get the right parts in at the right price, and labor isn't too bad. I'm a transient, at least in name, myself... Do you miss home, though?"

"New Zealand. Land of the long white cloud, it means." Mikaere's expression-- and his tone, too-- is wistful.

"Every day. All the time. Home is-- part of me. Sometimes, it's like missing a limb. It'll be better, once I have my girl back. That's her name, see: 'wā kāinga', the place where I truly feel I belong." Wah-KAI-nga.

It's not too too long before Jules returns, fresh icepack in hand. And without a lobster in the other, so presumably there haven't been any more attempts to snatch these creatures, from the air or from the ring. She sits right back down without interruption, feeling out where the conversation is before she joins back in.

"Poetic," Della murmurs. "I imagine you did." The sympathy in her brown eyes may be occluded by the sunglasses, but perhaps it shows in her low voice when she repeats that name, in the way she sits, the thoughtful way she sips. "It seems like it's the right time of year to be getting back out there, or at least I'd heard the storms weren't so matchstick-making now."

And Jules; hers is a quick smile upward, a, "Welcome back. Found everything you wanted?"

Jules' return is opportune: all the better for ensuring Mikaere doesn't fall into homesickness, or at the very least, wistfulness. He grins at her, crookedly but warm enough.

"I'm hoping to at least be able to move back on board," he admits, easily. "Ava's been great, but her house is not my home, and there's always-- something about just being a guest. Besides, I miss the sea. Even if you do have terrifying mermaids here."

"Yep," says Jules, short and sweet. She reaches down to pick up her beer again, right where she left it. "Do you fish?" Possibly a silly question, but she asks it anyway. "From your boat, I mean. Salmon season will be coming soon."

Della supplements, "Do you have a shower aboard?" soon followed by, "Tell us about the mermaids."

"Yes to both," is prompt, and comes with a smile. "I was hoping to fish in the harbour, but the mermaids--"

A pause.

"They look like seals, I think, to people who aren't like us. They feed off the men first, and then the women-- breeders-- and we're largely off-limit. They just want to keep their young alive, but it's a trade off, isn't it? I don't like sending anyone to their death."

"You can also try going up the coast a bit," Jules recommends. "The numbers up in the Strait of Juan de Fuca were good last year." Enough about fish. (Is there really such a thing?) "Didn't know there were mermaids. Wait, they're people eating? Why don't they eat the fish?" Of course, it came back to fish.

After a glance to Jules, "What do they look like to you, the mermaids?" Della asks, quiet. "Could there be sirens too? Do these sing?"

"They sing," confirms Mikaere. "So maybe they're one and the same thing; I'm not sure. Our mermaids are-- more like selkies, I think? They become women, and you can only keep them on shore if you feed them cooked food."

He doesn't comment, but he is absolutely taking notes on where he should be fishing.

"I bet," Jules begins to muse, "this is where some of the native legends about animals becoming people and vice-versa come in. Huh." This is an entirely new object for consideration.

"Cooked food! Not stealing their hide? How long does that last?" and, all right, Della isn't loud but it's animated. "I'm sorry," though not in the way that initiates a stop, "I don't imagine you expected to be asked all about your lore. It's only that these exist. Were they lovely, or at least winsome, straight out of Ariel with forks for combs? ...Other than the whole terrifying part."

"It's interesting, to me, that so many cultures have similar stories. Selkies, our Pania of the reef, mermaids, sirens... it says a lot about our shared experiences. About what's real."

Della's enthusiasm makes the tall Kiwi grin, at least. "Not so much Ariel, no. More... shark-like. I don't know. I don't recommend the encounter. It was..." He shakes his head. "I promised myself not to interfere with people's minds, and I broke that rule, because I wanted to try and protect both people and mermaids. I don't know if it was the right decision, but it was mine."

"Some of the tribes tell stories about the first humans being seals and orcas that came out of the water," Jules muses, but the stories can wait. She's intrigued in what happened more recently, sitting forward to engage. "So what did you do?"

At that, Della sits back, though apparently not in distaste. "Did it work," is her question.

Mikaere takes his time, taking another long drink from his beer. "Well," he says. "There were a few of us, on board. We fought back: with kelp nets, and water spouts, and convincing them the food was too much effort." He's solemn, in this recitation, and deliberately brief. "Between us, we convinced them that it was. I don't know if I'm proud of that. It's a serious thing, to use your mind to make someone else feel things they didn't otherwise." His gaze has dropped towards Della's phone, perhaps (almost certainly) in remembrance.

"Wow." Jules looks impressed, even if Mikaere is a lot more ambivalent. "I think, so long as you know it's a serious thing -- it's probably when you don't that you really get into trouble. In this case," and Jules is not looking at the phone, "it resolved a conflict and kept people on both sides safe." Yes, she just called mermaids people.

"I see."

Della follows Mikaere's gaze, too, which earns him a quizzical look.

"A person doesn't need to feel proud, surely. Nor necessarily guilty. What you just said, Jules. And one doesn't always have the knowledge or the... space to calculate the least harm, fully," though evidently it would be a benefit if one did." She extends it with a sip of her beer before adding, more wryly, "It would be convenient if all the answers were straightforward; but then we also might lose what's remarkable about complicated."

"I--" begins Mikaere. The corners of his mouth twist, and abruptly, he smiles, properly. "No doubt you're right. What matters is knowing I'm not using anything for my benefit, my advantage."

"I like the way you think," Jules tells Della in return. "That things being complicated is beautiful, in its own way. Like a spider's web." Here she smiles at her housemate, a little sly.

She doesn't let Mikaere off the hook, either. "Is it always wrong if it's for your own advantage? Everyone uses their skills for their advantage. Otherwise we'd all go hungry and have no home. Is it really that different?"

Della wrinkles her nose at Jules, but fondly -- and she's happy to let her housemate take the lead on tag-teaming, bright-eyed, somehow managing not to leap in and intercede.

Mikaere takes a moment, drinking long and deep from his beer. He uses the back of his hand to wipe his mouth afterwards, and finally says, "Maybe? I suppose, for me... there's a difference between healing someone, or floating something, or growing something, and actively changing how someone else thinks. It's intrusive. How would you feel, if I suddenly made you feel something you didn't, otherwise? How could you trust me, if you realised I had? Or even thought I had? And sure, there are situations where maybe it makes sense, but... do you get too used to doing it? Does it become the easy way out?"

Jules is frank: "I'd probably take a swing at you once I'd figured it out. If I ever did." But here's the other side of the argument coming out to play: "But if you were talking about driving off a bunch of white settlers back in the day, or if you were using it now to influence a legal discussion when you're already bound by treaties in which there was never an equal balance of power for negotiation, I'd say go for it." Easy for her to say, of course, when her own skill-set is such that she hasn't had to confront this question so intimately.

Picking up the thread, though after an equivocal glance flicked at Jules for her last example, "Both of those questions, Mikaere. Absolutely. It may not be quite Willow and Tara, but you're quite right that that would make it difficult to trust." Della still has those sunglasses on, but her face and voice are level, her expression clear. "At the same time, I would like to think that, even if you did alter something, I would rather know and make my own decision about it, ranging from 'I just got injured and am writhing in pain such that paramedics can't get to me' to worse. Or seasickness! Can you do motion sickness, is that an emotion or more like ill health? I assume that if someone were to ask you to alter their emotions, the situation would be clear?"

"I'd expect nothing less," Mikaere tells Jules, not without the hint of a smile, though he's otherwise serious.

He does not seem to get Della's reference, but the rest draws a slow nod all the same. "Just emotions," he says. "And not forever. Enough to make a temporary difference. For me-- I don't like the idea that I get to play with people's lives like that, unless it's absolutely necessary. Emergency use only. We won't count the illusions I mostly-kind-accidentally shared with my little sister when I was a kid, right?"

At least that makes him grin.

"So the question becomes what counts as an emergency," Jules decides, and while she doesn't say where her own hypothetical situations fall in that continuum, it's probably pretty clear where she counts them. "Totally doesn't count," she agrees then with a grin of her own. "Man. I wish I'd known how to startle my brother like that when we were little. He was a little shit."

Della's slow smile is all about amusement, once she's gotten over the downer of motion sickness; although, "Please tell me she got you back." To Jules, but with her gaze on them both, "And you: how about you tell us what you'd approve of Mikaere, here, doing to you. What would count as an emergency? Emotions and... illusions," illusions! "both."

"My sister has none of the power my ma and I do," says Mikaere, with a crooked smile. "But that doesn't mean she didn't get me back in other ways, of course.

Della's question, in turn, allows him to turn his attention back to Jules, brows raised: go on.

An olive complexion does not hide a blush. "What? Uh. I don't know." Thanks, Della. "What you said makes sense. If you're in pain and need a distraction, or if you're panicked and need to calm down. That's what the police chief did, back at Christmas. Not to me. But to the guy with a gun." Recalling this removes her slightly flustered edge. Now she's thinking about it, really thinking about it, and not just interpreting subtext. "But if he had calmed me down, that would have been okay, too. You remember." She glances at Della: does she?

That smile doesn't so much broaden as deepen. Though at the end, it settles back, much like that giant turtle drifting down in that other universe: "Regarding that, I remember there was an incident, a gun, but it's sort of... out of focus. How much of that is its being second-hand, how much was my not glowing," air quotes, "at the time, I don't know." Whether Della truly wouldn't have been worried about it without the Veil, or whether it simply doesn't show here and now, is currently immaterial.

Back to Mikaere, "That absolutely counts. It doesn't have to be special powers if she got the job done! Though," media segue! "Let's not talk about Black Widow right now."

Back to Jules. "What about illusions? Is it all right if Mikaere," Della's pause is a microsecond, considering; she goes with, "he sends you a picture of his boat and a map of the marina, or would you rather have a text?" There's no wink-and-a-nudge there; despite the topic, it's as matter-of-fact as she can get it. "And Mikaere: are these just visual illusions? Auditory or otherwise? Are there limits on your range, or on how long they last?" She can't be writing a thesis; she isn't taking notes.

"I think it's just cause you weren't there. The gunman was just a regular asshole." That's all Jules has to say about that. It's not a topic she wants to dwell on.

As for the question -- if Della wasn't going to get an earful before, well she certainly will be now, when the women head home. Still, Jules answers as straightforwardly as she can. No death glares yet. "Seeing as no one has sent me a picture before like that, I'd probably be a little startled. Especially if it was out of the blue, like I'm sitting there, eating dinner and all of a sudden BOOM," big hand-wavey explosions, "there it is, no context." Making light of it makes it less of a thing.

"Men with guns are absolutely assholes, and deserve what they get," is the tall Kiwi's conclusion to that. And, "In my book it's rude to send mental messages without good reason, though of course I can, and that's one thing I'm happy to demonstrate for you at some point, if you like." But not, presumably, forced emotions: that's uncomfortable territory, best avoided.

The rest are all questions Mikaere's happy enough to answer: he's all geniality, low-level charm without being deliberately charming. Blushes can go uncommented on; implications and insinuations, too. He doesn't stay too much longer, though, but does make sure that phone numbers are exchanged ('even if we are two doors down from each other for the moment; you've both been great company.')