<span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">Cria’s tongue slid over her lips to taste their kiss as she watched Miri touch her own. The taste of true power, of one of her own kind, was an unexpected pleasure, one she had never come to expect among the short lived mammals that crawled on two legs. Blackened lust flared in her eyes but no other expression disturbed the mask of her face as took in Miri’s short-lived shock and then the scandalized tremor of one that felt suddenly naked, stripped of the veils that hid her secrets. Cria blinked in that moment, for the fact of it spoiled her intent. This one was in her own dark corner, hiding from the very same light that Cria had been, but in loathing rather than rapture, and Cria had just put a beam of light on her face. Thus it was that Cria matched Miri’s civility. “No reason I give you will be better than the one you give yourself. It may be because we are united in goal, or it may be because I will withhold nothing from you, or it may be because you and I are uniquely alike. Regardless of the reason, you will, because it is in your nature to trust, and I only say so because it is not in mine, nor that of my kind, for the very reason you just gave Dartanden. I think neither one of us, Miri, Head of House Sur, would respond kindly to another who would keep us chained or bound.”<br/>
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Cria moved away from Miri to take a seat on one of the couches. She crossed her legs while draping her arms over the back of the seat. “But it would not be wise to compare Dartanden to myself. Where the true form of his head would scarcely fit within this chamber, I could hold this entire complex comfortably inside my jaws. I was ageless before his claw stretched forth to pierce the shell. My power under my mistress could swallow up this entire city and not elicit a ripple upon the surface of her mind. I am vast, and he is summarized in three syllables. His conflict is of no concern compared to the consequences of the life of the child swaddled here. Shahazen’s last vessel must survive. So says my mistress and so I am here.”<br/>
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She paused to admire the simplicity of the rules and consequences of the House. “The House is good and well served by its Head. That head should know that this one has taken naps longer than the lives of all her living relatives combined, and with fewer resources than necessary to feed her for a day. However, the one I have come here to protect would be better served in your care than mine. I have no request for the House. My request is for you. Dorant, the one behind me, however, does. His request is to be present in the life of that child, and so we seek lodgings in the house, to live as expected for our present forms. So long as the enemies of that child do not know we are here, we have the deadly advantage of surprise.”<br/>
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Cria paused, then rose from her seat. “I think, should these terms be permissible, that time presses the dying, and perhaps ours would be better immediately spent in assistance to the wounded. Please show me to those who slipped beyond your ability within the last day.”<br/>
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