<span style="color: #b3b300">“Emotions aren’t some finite thing, and if someone does return your feelings the sense you’ll get far outweighs anything you emotional investment you feel you made. You can’t put a number on emotions, but I can tell you that when I worked up the nerve to confess my love to my wife and she said she felt the same I was walking on clouds for months. That was over thirty years ago and to this day I still look back at the moment and it fills me with happiness. When you find someone, a true friend who genuinely cares for you, you’ll understand. If those people hurt you and didn’t try to apologize or make it right they were never your friends.” </span>He shrugged and smiled.<span style="color: #b3b300">“Then you’re a very rich Gnome who found and used an Orb of Deception to look like a Human or High Elf. Oh, dear, you can’t just tell a retired demolitions and artillery expert that. Now I have to see you drink actual rocket fuel. But I didn’t mean literal fuel, I know some truly terrible brews made by overly adventurous Gnomish brewers.”</span><br/><br/>While Ashia was snuggling with her family, she would hear Chiren’s pained cry for her. When she teleported to her daughter’s side she was find herself in Ras’ dinning room. Ras and Emily were talking over toast and coffee while Chiren sat on the table between them with a small plate of mashed up meat. In her hands was a tiny cup off coffee that made her cry every time she took a sip from it. Emily and Ras were both watching her with amused looks and stifled laughter. If Ashia tried to take the cup from her daughter Chiren would yell and pull her cup back.<span style="color: #99ccff"> “She won’t give it up but she hates the taste of it. It’s just regular coffee, she’s safe.”</span>Ras held up one finger to his lips and turned his torso to Ashia could see the sleeping infant cradled in his arm.<span style="color: #99ccff">“Chiren begged me to bring her here for food, she was refusing to eat what I gave her.”</span>For as long as Ashia had known Ras this was the first time she had seen him looking genuinely exhausted. With the curse on him now mostly lifted he gave Ashia a friendly smile but didn’t say anything to avoid upsetting her further.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>