Love, Moonlight, and Family Pressure

Dinner kept shifting between hospitality and exposure. Jonah tried to help Ash by keeping Faephine occupied in conversation, but the strategy became sincere almost immediately. Faephine was interested in the moon, in the Creator, and in the questions Dr. Greta Wunsch studied at New VQU. Her possible transfer was not only about following Eveline or escaping Point Pringle. She wanted to learn from the people now gathering at the rebuilt university. That made her harder to dismiss. Ash was still uncomfortable, especially after Storm Boulder's earlier comment about Faith and Eveline. Faephine was not cruel, not foolish, and not obviously wrong for Eveline. She was simply there, part of a life Ash had entered late. Then PP3 made it worse. With the casual force of an elder who believed his own romantic mythology should explain everyone else's life, he announced that Eveline and Faephine were destined for marriage. They had loved each other since childhood, he said, just like he had loved Schnookums. The room tightened. Ash asked the question that mattered: was that what they wanted, or what PP3 wanted? Eveline did not reject Faephine. She admitted she loved her. Faephine had been her best friend, her first kiss, and someone who had saved her more than once. But love did not erase pressure. Their bond had been wrapped in family expectation for so long that Eveline could no longer separate the heart of it from the cage around it. She called it complicated. Ash, awkward and honest, told her he wanted what made her happy and hoped the complications would not get in the way of that. It was not a grand confession. It was something gentler and more painful: an attempt to care without demanding an answer. Across the table, Pointer chose to lie beneath Jonah. The party had come to dinner for a wagon and a route to Stormcall. Instead, they were learning that Point Pringle's most dangerous machines were not all made of metal.