“Thus by lack of specificity regarding portion size am I slain. Or rather, left to starve. Incidentally, why couldn’t we have fought over breakfast? In their presence, one or both of us storming out in a huff... far less misdirection required.” She crosses her arms, leans back a bit.

The relax of posture lessens the physical anticipation that is building, inevitably, between them; the grace of it is for Myka a relief. Almost always, but especially today, she needs more runway than Helena does. “Because neither of uns can sell that, not when we’re in the same room and not actually fighting. And even this time, Pete accused me of a cover-up. Said it’s always worse than the crime.”

“Is it? What was the crime, then? Presumably not ‘misrepresenting ourselves to steal time.’”

“It should’ve been that; ‘steal time’ sounds more crime-y. But actually they went with wasting time. That’s what they worked around to, once they got over being disappointed we aren’t becoming jewel thieves.”

“Oh but we could—”

Myka cuts off that glee with something that is not exactly regret. “We could not.”

“Are you certain?” That’s a wheedle.

Charming, but: “We don’t need to.”

That occasions a not-quite-pouty jut of lower lip. “Well of course no one needs to become a jewel thief. Unless one has no other way of making a living, I suppose. Which would seem odd, wouldn’t it... surely there would be other career paths. Although it isn’t inconceivable one might be coerced onto the nefarious path.” She pulls up, like she knows it’s a dangerous verbal wander.

Myka’s been trying, lately, to acknowledge, then shift, those rather than ignore them (as she tended to do in the past, for fear of pain). She’s glad to be able to perform that shift now. “What if I were to coerce you onto a different path? ‘Coerce’ loosely defined.”

“I believe you have done, haven’t you? But—as Pete would say, ‘back up’—why were jewel thieves invited to the party?”

Here we go. “Because of diamonds.”

“What about them?”

“Their metaphorical utility. The extent of it.”

“Ah. Our ‘argument,’ I presume? We do disagree about the most stimulating topics... diamonds as metaphors.” Helena shakes her head, an exaggeration of amazement, as that sly smile once again steals over her face.

“Their formation more than themselves,” Myka says, for accuracy... well. Accuracy only in the sense of keeping her stories straight.

“The production of the gem via pressure?”

I know something you don’t. It’s always a surprise. “Except that isn’t scientifically accurate.”

“Isn’t it?”

The avidity again. Myka would like to imagine she’ll “blow her mind” as Pete would have it, leading not to Helena being mad at her but grateful for new knowledge. And so: “I won’t go into detail, but it has to do with crystallization. Table salt–esque, but carbon in the mantle. From the mantle.”

“Precipitation? Distillation? More common, as processes... thus perhaps indeed of more pedestrian metaphorical utility. Was that your putative position? If so, I certainly understand why my failure to agree might have been considered a crime.”

The wrinkle in Helena’s brow is all it takes to suffuse Myka. “See,” she says, and now she’s the avid one, the one who can’t hold back. “This is why.” This is why. Steve would have no trouble with this either... which demonstrates, hugely and unfortunately, that she’s made him into her internal lie-o-meter. Obviously that has to stop.

“I can’t say that I do. See, that is. Why what?” That’s genuine confusion.

“You will. See, that is.” There a real satisfaction in being able to ape Helena, ape her to a purpose, even if that purpose has to remain obscured. For just a bit longer. “What I’ll say for now is, we have had that disagreement. In the past.”

“Have we?” That’s further confusion.

Speaking of metaphors: “Implicitly,” Myka says. “Diamonds. Pressure. Whether a difficult situation was necessary for a positive outcome.”

“You’ve eased my mind considerably. I’m not you of course, but I might nevertheless have been concerned about my failure to recall. And I do take your point, given my position as the... purveyor. Instigator? Of a number of difficult situations.”

The verbal wander again... and again, Myka has a different path to hand. Today of all days, a different path. “Anyway, come downstairs.”

Helena lowers her eyebrows and opens her hands. “The entire point of the subterfuge was to avoid the assemblage, was it not?”

And now Myka is just a bit giddy. “Was it? Anyway, they’re gone.”

Eyebrows reverse; hands do too. “Are they.”

Myka nods.

“Then why in the world would we go downstairs?”

“I have something to show you.”

Flirtatiously: “Couldn’t you show me something here?”

Myka’s certainly not immune to that tone, and under other circumstances... but no. “Not the same thing.”

“Aren’t you being strangely insistent about this?”

“In a way.”

“Is this ‘thing’ time-dependent?”

Productive... “In a way.”

“Are we playing Twenty Questions?”

“In a way?” Myka is giving Helena reasons to wonder, and Myka herself wonders, briefly, if she could have made a better plan... too late now.

“I suspect ‘animal, vegetable, or mineral’ would not yield a useful answer.” You have no idea, Myka thinks toward that, but Helena doesn’t receive the psychic emanation; rather, she says, “Do you feel well?”

Myka goes back to what was working: “In a way.” With a twist, one that she hopes will be enticing: “In another way, check back with me after a bit.”

“After what bit?”

Yes, she’s enticed, but trying not to seem so. “The bit that happens downstairs.”

The glory of the back-and-forth. If Myka didn’t also worship their physical connection, she’d be happy to talk like this forever. But this and that happiness aside: how well will she feel after that bit? No better than this, surely... but, perhaps, somewhat differently well than this? In another way, so to speak...

Impossible to predict.

Helena’s reaction to Myka’s leading non-answers, however, is not. She heaves an obviously fake long-suffering sigh and says, “I don’t know why I reward you for such nonsense... however, my curiosity is piqued. I suppose I had better accompany you downstairs after all.”

“I suppose so.” She offers Helena her left hand, palm up, as if inviting her to waltz; Helena places her right hand delicately—she can be so delicate when she chooses (with that hand, with her self entire)—inside the invitation, in acceptance.

Offering and accepting: Myka lets a certain hope rise that their hands, now together, are a precursor.