[It's like trying to catch fish underwater sometimes, reading other people's faces and getting the right feeling from that. Trying to guess if they're sad or happy or just too wrapped up in something he's not a part of, to be all here.

It's like that with just about every person he knows, with a few but important exceptions and it's no different with Riku. They're building something, a kind of fragile friendship resting squarely on saved lives and whispered confessions in the dark.

The feeling of Riku's strange magic coursing through him, and his cold hands in the woods.]

Bullshit. That's exactly what makes someone a nice person, doing nice things. It's always going to be what you do, and not what you say you'll do that defines who you are.

[Goddamn Harry Potter, and the way it sneaks in to even everyday conversations because it's so simple and Quentin frowns at his notes. The meeting is still buzzing around them, so many voices joining in to tell about what they saw in their dreams and everyone is willing to take it as truth. As if it couldn't be one big lie, designed to make them complacent. To make them let their guard down just long enough for the spirits to murder them all.]

And how do we do that? Make them see that not killing us is better than killing us? Leave food out for them? Some of them eat books.