People can stand what is true,

for they are already enduring it.

- Eugene Gendlin

“What does a girl do for fun around here?” Jessica asked Grace.

Grace gave her a face that Jessica had learned to interpret as, you’re too highly ranked for me to say something bad, but I have opinions.

“Fun?”

“Yeah. Like I know that there is a tavern or some such thing down in Frost Haven, and we have the hot springs here, but like…?” Jessica gestured trying to explain herself, “ Like if you were going to go on a date, say for instance, or a girls night?”

“A date? Girls night?”

Grace’s face was so easily readable that Jessica was concerned that something had happened.

“You know like, we go shopping and maybe have some drinks? Ever heard of it?”

“Does the Elder speak of romance and courting?” Grace blushed.

“Yes, what else did you think that I meant?” Jessica snorted.

A long look between the two made Jessica itch to raise her eyebrows.

“Look, Grace. I don’t really have friends here.”

Grace raised a hand.

“I understand. No one will treat me as their equal because of this made up system where when you have more power, you are automatically someones superior, or some such.”

“Does it not work that way where you come from?”

Now it was Jessicas time to blush.

“Well, in some ways yes, but we don’t… we don’t have cultivation.”

This in itself wasn’t shocking to Grace. At least she didn’t appear to be shocked. Mundane people without the spark fighting each other with weapons of metals and others, well, Grace had paid attention when she spoke at least.

“It’s more like you follow the smartest people, and then sometimes the people elect an asshole that you don’t like but you get over it and…”

Jessica realized that she was about to relive some of the trauma she’d had in the real world and she wanted to put it behind her.

“Anyway, so what about it. Do you want to have a girls night?”

Grace looked for a second like she was going to say no, and Jessica felt like she had made a terrible mistake. Blending her personal life, what little she had with her professional one? It had always gone badly before, but Grace herself was on the cusp of becoming and elder. It shouldn’t matter, should it?

“If the Elder commands, then yes.”

“This isn’t a request from Elder Jessica,” She said,”This is an invitation… from Jess.”

“Jess?”

“Could you call me Jess today? I’m a little… well I just need a break from this and I would appreciate…”

Grace’s shoulders relaxed.

“Jess? Did you want to go get lunch in Frost Haven and then, perhaps what did you call it? Shop?”

Jessica smiled.

***

It was their second glass of wine that made Grace realize that this wasn’t a test. Hearing Elder Jessica talk about double entry accounting at length before; well whatever that was? This was the opposite.

“So there’s this wizarding school, you see and this half giant Hagrid, with this awesome gruff voice,” Jessica said, doing her best to pretend to puff up.

“Wizarding school? It that like cultivation in your world?”

“Yes, but only in books.”

The tavern in the general store was mostly unoccupied and Grace had only been here the once before. When she had first trekked to become an initiate, she had a meal here. They’d taken her as soon as she’d been tested and a lot had changed.

“In books? So it’s a story about martial heroes and princesses?” Grace nearly swooned.

“Well, not so much martial and there are a lot of gray anti-heroes, but yes. Anyway there’s this Harry Potter guy and he’s a genius, and…”

Grace nodded along to the story. It was apparent that she really cared about this and hadn’t really had a chance to talk about it to anyone in a while.

“...anyway so they form this Conspiracy, this Bayesian conspiracy, Harry and Draco do and of course they have to have cloaks with cowls and…”

“Apologies, but cloaks with cowls?” Grace said.

“Yeah, like a Yak fur coat, except it obscures your face because it goes up and over. It’s soo cool.”

Grace thought it sounded cool, but it would probably itch. Already she was considering cutting her hair short as most of it had gone white and blue, rather than her natural black. A side effect of the cultivation, she really didn’t understand how she had the same hair as Jessica, but hers always looked more presentable. Perhaps it was a fifth realm thing? She would ask someday.

But this? She could have a cloak with a cowl made. It was a simple thing to ask the tailor, not that she understood.

Jessica took a sip from her wine.

“It doesn’t sound like there are princesses and romance in this book. Are there at least dragons?”

Jessica paused to think.

“Well in the original one, yeah but they looked a bit more like wyverns. Are there dragons in this world?”

“What is a wyvern?” Grace said, alarmed.

“Oh you know, like a lizard with wings and shit, except it only walks on it’s hind legs.”

“Dragons look like snakes with legs here. Is it not that way in your home?”

Jessica stared blankly back at her.

“I didn’t tell you that there weren’t dragons in my world? I swear that I may have mentioned it. But hold the phone, you’re telling me that there are real life dragons on this planet?”

Grace pursed her lips. In some ways Jessica, no Jess was like a child, wide eyed and happy to be in a new world. In other ways, she was like a confident older woman.

There was nothing she enjoyed more than that Jess, she suddenly realized. Grace narrowed her eyes, to try to tell if this was one of the girls nights Jess had talked about, or if it was one of those dates and truth be told, she didn’t know.

She was confused and she was fine with that.

As long as she eventually got some clarity, that is.

***

Jessica had at length described how Harry had successfully defeated the the army of the professors games, and she realized that she had been talking non stop for over twenty minutes without pausing.

She stopped, looked at her wine glass, then over to the serving girl, a relative of the Rhee family, and nodded for more wine.

“But enough about me,” Jessica said, buy way of trying to overcorrect her error, “Tell me about you? How are you feeling?”

Grace honestly looked more taken aback at this than at the prospect of any other task Jessica has set before her. It was as if her top lieutenant was unafraid of fighting, and spiritual beasts, but talking about feelings was a shade beyond the pale.

“No one has ever really asked me that.”

Grace shuddered.

“This one has been at this school for years, working her way up and that whole time, nothing. It was always do this, or do that. Come to think of it, since you came here, it has been different.”

Jessica tilted her head. The highbacked bench seating in the corner of the Tavern circled around a small table that obscured enough that they were unseen unless they wanted to wave down a Rhee employee.

“It has been tough, we lost so many,” Grace said, “Men and women, strong people that we all looked up to. It was a black pit and…”

Jessica put and hand on Grace’s shoulder.

“It was just so many…”

They sat in silence for a bit.

Wine arrived, but it’s arrival didn’t change the tension in the air.

“I never know what to say when people die. I used to think, that perhaps the perfect thing would be to say something poetic about their life, like they died doing what they loved, or they lived a good full life. Those things sound hollow now,” Jessica said.

Grace nodded, grabbing the glass with both hands. But she didn’t pick it up, she just held onto it.

Their eyes locked and Jessica could see the pain. She hadn’t meant to call up these emotions and she was angry with herself for not asking the simple question earlier. If she made it a point to ask the rest of the students how they were feeling, would she get the same reaction?

More to the point, did they need to get out their feelings, or were they all little bottled up toddlers with no outlet or a way to express themselves.

She racked her brain, thinking of what the rationalist response to grief was. Did you tell the person that everything was going to be okay? No that sounded a bit too callous.

Did you empathize with the person? I feel what you’re going through? That seemed a bit off the mark.

Did you sympathize with them? Jessica didn’t know who Grace had lost, and with the exception of the Elder she had briefly met, all of the ones that had died in a foolish attempt to deter the divine beast…

“I don’t know what you’re going through Grace, and I probably can’t ever know, but I am here for you, and for whatever you’re going through and for the love of all that is holy, please just call me Jess. I want to feel a bit more normal. We can be friends, right? Friends share things. And care about each other, right?”

She could see that Grace had no words, or at least none that would come out and the silence became a bit more companionable.

Grace held the wine up and took a slow sip.

Her expression told Jessica all she needed to know. Grace had been hurt, and was probably ready to get hurt again.

It was one thing to believe in something or someone so much that when you lost them, you lost a part of yourself. Jessica had always found the meaning in her life when she was with friends and doing things that she loved.

“I don’t know what to say. There is no magic spell that will bring them back from the dead and it was a tragedy, and the best thing I can think to do is to try to prevent this from ever happening again. I heard once that… and I can attest to this, that humans tend to freak out when what we believe about the world to be true changes. The love that you had, or the connection you had, it didn’t change when your friends died.”

Grace sniffed, but she was watching intently.

“I honestly don’t even know where I am going with this so I’ll just say this. Spending my time here with you and my time with the Sect, it has been difficult but I have been pretty happy, and we have done so much.”

Grace nodded.

“Is this the part where you ask me to become an Elder?”

“This is the part where I ask you…”

A loud crash from the backroom pulled them out of their conversation and Grace got up and looked around. She disappeared briefly around the corner as Jessica reached out with her spiritual sense. Already she could tell what she was sensing and nothing escaped a good look.

Someone in the back had spilled a large pot, but seemed unharmed. Grace would take care of that.

Grace returned.

“You’re close, aren’t you.”

Jessica, out of a broad sense of not wanting to probe people directly, hadn’t used her spiritual sense to directly compare powers between herself and others for weeks. She knew that Grace had been at the third realm for a while and then…

“This one is close.”

She felt Graces dantian, which somehow the scout had learned to shield from even her and it was strong. Grace had a core and it was on the cusp of expansion.

“Today close?”

“Close.”

Jessica stifled a giggle. Girls nights were not for talking about work, but if she couldn’t be excited about this, then, what was there to be excited about.

“That is incredible! I’m so excited! If you advance then, I can…”

Graces broad smile gave it away.

“You’ve been waiting for me to call on you, haven’t you. Very well. Was there a formal ceremony previously to become an Elder? If not, we have to get you some new robes as befitting your station and oh, this is going to be great I tell you what.”

Jessica and Grace spent their time in the tavern.

When they left, Jess took Grace to get measured for her first elder robes.