#goldfinchfreehold

"It doesn't help that Rutgers isn't really the prestigious name my dad would have wanted to see me at. If I do poorly here..." He trails off, and shrugs uncomfortably. "Could have gone to dad's alma mater.. but I didn't want to leave. Not really." A slight snort. "Wonder if I'd be in that pile of letters if I had."

A frown. "I don't know. Shit. That's an awful thought."

She makes a frustrated gesture. "I get it. She's got real capital-T Trauma to deal with. But still, sometimes I just want to shake her, y'know?"

"Then find someone bigger than her to shake her." He says, wryly. "Or let me do it. I'm smart enough to get out of the way before she swings, and I can climb higher than she can reach." A glance up at the ceilings of the studio. "...usually."

A brow. "You think I can't take a hit or two?"

"Not saying that." He says, "But I wish it hadn't come to it."

"I'm glad it did." Bitter. "She's not going to realize she's hurting someone until she actually hurts someone and can see it. With May, she's refusing to look at it."

"She ran off. Doesn't sound like she faced whatever happened here." He points out.

"Yet," she counters.

“Yet.” He allows.

"I'll see if she comes home tonight. If not, I'll find out where she is." Symon whispers.

"If she doesn't come home, should we give Jaymes and Tove a cover story? So they don't worry?"

"She's a grown ass adult." He protests mildly, but... "Trolls. Yeah. I'll think of something."

She nods. "Let me know what it is, if you do, so I don't contradict you by accident."

A pause and a sigh. "Thanks for hearing me out."

"Hey, I'm a slug. We're always listening."

Slow blink. "Always."

Troll or not, that actually gets a shudder. "Yeah. I figured you might just do something unspeakable to me. No questions asked."

"Sylvi.. we're friends. We might not be might and guile, like me and Dags, but... give me a little credit, right?"

"Well, sometimes friends break your jaw, too." A shrug. "I give you plenty of credit. Hell, I'll even give you credit for style today. Looking sharp."

His cheeks go a bit dusky grey-bruisey. "Uh. Thanks."

"What's the occasion?"

There is a pause, a little too long, before he answers. "...Job interviews."

A blink. "That's what the cologne is for, too?"

He starts slinking towards the door. "If you see any openings, uh, like, let me know."

"Uh huh. Sure." She's not fooled. "I hope you hear from her, Symon. See ya."

He nods and.. well, he's not fleeing, but that's an expeditious shuffle away.

She watches him go. Well, that's going to require further investigation. But not right now.

((End Scene))

Seems a busy day at Goldfinch, as Gerd enters in after helping at the lodge

Sylvi's sort of puttering about aimlessly. She doesn't really want to leave yet, but she doesn't want to go downstairs while Siv and Piper are still sleeping.

"Hey, Gerd," she says.

"Hey, heroine" Gerd says "I owe you"

"I might call that debt in at some point," she warns with a grin.

"Siv tells me you wanted to know what the hell that was all about, but Thanks to you two , I'm free and clear "

"Well...yeah." She takes a seat in one of the studios. "I feel kind of bad for what I did, and I want to know why I did it."

Gerd winces slightly at something, then says "Well, to put it short I got suckered... for the longer version..." And she shares it all, how she ended up on the hook to a lodge and thus compromisedd by their Ailil liege that that time, they hadn't admited

Sylvi listens and considers this. "When you were dealing with them, did you ever encounter a thane named Hap?"

"Hap? " She ponders "Oh, he was the guy with the eyes?"

"Yeah. He's the one I had to distract."

"Oh.. yeah, he didn't administrate. He was on guard. Oh man, he is really alert normally, I can see why he had to be distracted. "

"Yeah. I had to pull out almost all the stops. So I got him talking about the Lodge, and...he's really not happy about what's going on there."

"Yeah?" SHe gets curious

"What can Hap do about it though?"

"Not much, on his own, as far as I can see. But I was expecting that everybody there was, like, Ailil-friendly, that they were practically going to be wearing evil-guy goatees."

Gerd arches a brow, "I know you know better than to assume everything is so cut and dry. " Then sympathetic "So you feel bad for tricking a guy who might be decent and in a bad fix"

"Well...kind of, yeah. He seemed nice, and I didn't really realize that some of the trolls there got caught up in a bad deal, like you did. Kind of feel like...I don't know..." she pauses "...overthrowing the Ailil court there."

Gerd blinks "You want to over throw the Ailil strangle hold on a troll lodge we just stole from?"

"Um...yeah." She shifts a bit. "Not saying I have the faintest idea how, but they deserve better."

Gerd reminds "Their chief swore to an Ailil lord. He can't just break that"