Chapter 496: Aura and Authority
Tala and Rane each immersed themselves in their various pursuits, only coming together for meals and to be together at night when the world slept.
Rane set about a project that he’d been considering for years—temporarily taking a break from his work with conveying translucence in a stone medium. He began a creature garden, creating sculptures of the various beasts he’d encountered, starting with the arcanous ones.
They added on a chunk of dimensionality to the sanctum for him to arrange his finished works within. The plan was to augment his work with similar ‘aura’ trickery as with the few statues that he’d made in memoriam, causing any given statue to actually give off a feeling like the beast it represented.
That was the plan, anyway. It was to be a very long running project, but Rane was undaunted.
Tala, on the other hand, dove head first into working with the Talons.
Alat was polite in not pointing out that Tala’s fervor was an obvious attempt to keep her mind off other things, and Tala managed to only spend a bit of time each day in melancholic contemplation.
Rane was obviously concerned about her, but he didn’t press the issue. Sometimes, she wished he would, but she also was self-aware enough to realize that she’d likely have resented him if he had. Regardless, so long as she was able to keep functional, he seemed willing to let her take her time.
Alat was less polite about expressing her thoughts on that. She did not think that Tala keeping herself busy to keep from addressing something with her husband was good in the long term.
Tala ignored her alternate interface for the time being. It’s working. It’s fine.