Spoiler: OOC:
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We'll deal with all these little scenes in this bundle, like we were doing back in Verezzo for a while!


When the flying machine has touched down in Griffone's yard and Cestié is inside rambling excitedly to his old friend about the escapade, you and Bella have a chance to talk. And talk quickly escalates to stern talk.

You lay it down for her - the Skaven, and their terrors, and how vividly and helplessly you are able to imagine the harm to come to her forced through what you have been through. But Bella has some fire of her own, and shoots back her defences at you with a fusillade of Tilean gesticulation.

"How can you ask me to be okay watching you go into such dangers while I sit aside? What if you had died, or been taken? How could I live with myself, having sat back? We can help each other, Taalia! I know you want to protect me, but I cannot just wait miles away while you march into such terrors! You asked me to come with you on this journey, and I'm grateful as can be - but I left everyone else behind to come with you! You and I - we don't get to leave each other behind!"

She cries too; so you are not alone in your breakdown as you clutch your friend. This, it seems, is her own line; her own trauma. She feels about being left behind just as you feel about being caged. She can bear it in a moment when there is no other option but not for much longer than that. Bella is a girl whose family was her life, and whose life got up and left her behind. She found her strength and formed new attachments in Bella Collina, and dared to pin some hopes on Bertuccio - but in the end, after his own traumatic suffering, he left too. When you invited her to join you on your journey with Signore Cestié, she made the choice to let go of those roots she had put down in that little town and cleave to you - Cestié too, but principally you. Her trauma may not be as profound as yours, if it is even savoury to try to quantify such things; but people are not rational about their feelings. You express love for her by trying to shield her from the violent and terrible parts of the world which have defined the majority of your life; she expresses hers by you by striving to find her courage and confront those things as well - to be more like you.

It is an intractable problem, the solution to which is not easily discernible.

* * * * *

A great feast and a great host of squealing young Cestiés later, and you find occasion to sit next to Augusto. He is quiet through the meal, though he eats plenty; he smiles politely when you call him 'handsome', and then awkwardly when you remind him of the difficulty of getting him back.

"I... appreciate it. Really. I feel terrible about everything."

When you commend the value of family to him, he nods as if accepting it... but does so in that way that people do when they aren't able or ready to take something completely to heart. He reminds you of the troublemaker boys, before the big battle on Silo Road where fighting for their lives snapped them out of boyhood. Augusto is a young man fumbling through the world, looking for his place and for meaning in it. The fact that he was recently captured, carried off, tied up, and very nearly throat-cut and fed to a troll at best or snatched up by marauding skaven at worst is undeniable and known to him. But the reality of those things is still making its way toward him, trundling down the track of slow understanding that has to be digested in nightmares and bad decisions until one day it will hit him and make sense. Then he'll probably have a breakdown and have an opportunity to reevaluate his life. You've done your part - impressed upon him words that, hopefully, he will remember at that time and understand properly.

On the other side of the table, you see Maso, limping a little still as he aches from his battle wounds, take a plate of the moleche and some butterfly pasta up the stairs, for Papa Cestié. This time, you note, there comes no shouting and acrimony from above. That is a good sign. As Augusto gives you his lost smile with his bruised, far-off eyes, you can only be thankful you arrived when you did, and hopeful that this particular son does not wait so long to be really reconciled in his heart to his family.

* * * * *

The family comes out to see you off. The huge clan sprawls out on the green out front of Griffone's house to see Maso's magnificent flying machine in action as you prepare to move on, and they are not disappointed. The children bounce and shriek with startled delight as you pedal down the hill from the farm and then circle back around in the air, and Maso is sure to do a few big circles close enough for them to see the three of you waving back, before finally levelling out and heading north-north-east, towards the mountain pass.

But just as you find your heading, Bella calls your attention to a rider below, waving a yellow scarf in the air as he rides hell-for-leather along the road after you. Even a fast horse is not as fast as the machine flies, so he is rapidly receding; but through the spyglass, you recognize the rosy cheeked young Bartomar, Man of the Roads - the Imperial expatriate who once delivered a missive to Polo for you. As he stands in the stirrups, it seems to you that his waving is quite frantic.