Ryullusion looked at her with such a calm expression that Kit knew he couldn't possibly understand how he'd just shaken her heart.
His beautiful face looked ageless as he said softly, "Ordinary hearts can break a thousand times and keep beating."
Kit's tears changed from a trickle into a flood as his words hit her.
Once the words had started they poured out of him, "It doesn't matter if they are real, because you are real, your affection is real. Maybe I don't have any right to talk about love, since I've never had a successful relationship, but I've loved the same person for most of my life now. Love is complex, love is selfish, and yet love doesn't have to be kept, or returned, or anything to be true."
"Who?" Kit demanded brokenly through her tears.
His mouth opened again, but for a moment nothing came out. It was obviously not easy for him to tell her, but he took another deep breath and said quietly, "My partner of over 40 years now. My bandmate, my light, my muse."
Kit stared at him incredulously, and sucked in a deep snotty breath of her own. The full motion console didn't come with tissues, and her tears were real. "And you never said it?" she asked disbelievingly.
--
Ryullusion startled them both when he laughed. "A thousand ways," he replied with real amusement.
Kit rubbed at her tears and gazed at him uncertainly.
Ryullusion glanced at the merchant who was deep in conversation with an argumentative player, and then said wryly, "But even in the real world, sometimes you fall in love with someone who can't love you in the same way. She found her own love before she was even Aishin's age. And I suppose that I love him too, in a way. I know that I stopped being able to really be jealous of him after the first time I felt sympathy for him."
Kit shocked him when she hit him. She punched him in the shoulder and said, "Liar. You have so many successful relationships. 40 years as a partner? Your son? Even I like you a lot. Idiot."
Ryullusion gazed at her uncertainly and then he laughed again. "I guess you really do have to try to teach something if you really want to learn it. Here I am trying to explain that it's okay for you to acknowledge your own relationships as they are, and you're showing me that I should also do the same."
"Do we have a relationship?" she asked in a more subdued voice.
"As much as I care, I don't think I can like you like that?" he told her hesitantly.
"I'm not asking you to!" she protested. But she wrapped her arms around herself and didn't look him in the eye when she asked, "Why not though, I'm that awful?"
Ryullusion tucked his instrument into his inventory and stepped forward to wrap his arms around her. "Of course not, you're just that young, silly girl."
"I'm not young," Kit said sharply, but she didn't push him away.
"Could you fall for MatchlessMinion?" Ryullusion asked dryly, with his lips almost against her ear.
"He's a sweet kid, but he's half my age, it's not the same," Kit protested.
"It's exactly the same," Ryullusion corrected. "You're a sweet girl, but you're half my age." He hugged her harder and then stepped back to give her a wry grin.
--
Kit gazed at Ryullusion with surprise and then glanced guiltily toward the traveling merchant. His familiar warm smile met her gaze and her heart ached. She really didn't care if the bard could like her, she just wanted that comfortable place beside that warm smile.
The traveling merchant walked over to her and said cheerfully, "It's good that you have a friend to share your adventures with this evening Kit, Ryullusion. What can I assist you with this evening?"
"I don't know," Kit whispered.
"Do you still want me to try to answer your earlier question?" the merchant questioned.
Kit gazed at him blankly for a moment and then she remembered. Her face tightened and she nodded.
"My dearest friend, no man can go against the will of the Jade Emperor within his Empire, no matter how important his promise is," the merchant explained gently.
Kit gazed at him longingly. Hearing him call her his dearest friend both hurt and was nostalgic at the same time. That was what he'd called her right before he'd told her that his kisses were reserved for his wife. Her hands reached for his out of habit, and it was a shock when she felt the console's gloves tighten as he squeezed her fingers briefly and then released them, instead of holding them like he had as her husband.
"Who is really the Jade Emperor anyway," Kit grumbled as she looked away from him.
The traveling merchant's expression was thoughtful as he went still. Kit wasn't watching him, so she didn't notice that he didn't even seem to be breathing for a moment, and Ryullusion had turned away to give them a moment of privacy when Kit had reached for his hands.
They both turned back to look at the merchant when he said, "I can't answer that, aside from repeating what everyone knows: that he is the true ruler of the Empire, and first among the gods. But I can suggest a profitable task for a craftsman who has interacted with the members of Endless Song previously?"
Kit took a deep breath. This what what the merchant did for people, besides providing needed items at critical times. He was just acting as he normally did. "Okay," she agreed without asking anything else.
Ryullusion asked, "Who, and what do they need?"
The traveling merchant gave them a cheerful smile and said, "His name is Ikadars, and he's trying to build a workshop. First he needs the boundary set, but then he hopes to lure some of the oasis turtles into residence."
"I might be able to perform a song that could draw the turtles," Ryullusion said uncertainly. He looked at Kit and asked, "But can you handle setting a boundary on your own? I have no idea what that takes."
Kit nodded, even though she couldn't bring herself to speak again. Her throat was too tight. Suddenly she didn't want to look at the traveling merchant's cheerful smile anymore, but she'd had a lot of practice with setting boundaries for new buildings during the last few days.
Kit avoided looking at the merchant as he gave them his usual succinct instructions to begin the quest, but as she followed Ryullusion away, she couldn't stop herself from looking back at him. Even though he was already assisting the next player, he still looked up and met her eyes.
Something eased deep inside of her somewhere. Maybe his promise was still true, maybe his affection for her really hadn't changed, even though under the rules of this world he could no longer express it in the same way.
She thought of the crumpled message in her inventory that said: "You are still loved." She thought of the way Ryullusion had laughed when he'd said he'd told the person he loved in a thousand ways. She thought of the measuring gaze of the snow leopard cub that they had rescued, who had grown and then transformed, revealing himself to have been another of the hidden gods like the traveling merchant actually was.
And as she followed behind the graceful elven bard who walked across the sand toward a place he'd never been, with such enviable confidence, she wondered who that crumpled message had really been from.