gilded cage

"You're chary of the flagship, Lora?"

If Lora had grown up, somehow with her same collection of characteristic traits, among what might be deemed polite society, she would be weary of this topic from the first. She would think, oh, this again, they're apt to be on me about overcoming my fears. Does it really bother them so much? Why can't they just let me live?

But Lora grew up in the borderlands, away from normative mores such as these insistences would be. Yes, she is wary of the police and the fire. Yes, she is not just awkward but awe-struck - in a bad way, corresponding to some other, better circumstances where awesomeness is a thing of great fear.

Jin has indulged her. None could say whether or not he should have. Hugo approaches her gently, from a place of null understanding.

"Well, yes," says Lora, "it's, ah... I've never liked authority."

There's a glister of apologetic tone to the final product of her hemming and hawing. This recognition of he to which she speaks is also somewhat playful; didn't you, Your Majesty, say that you too bear a conflicted resentment of authority, and the way you must both wield and embody it?

"It's only my soldiers there," replies Hugo, to assuage her. "It's perfectly safe."

Ah. It'd be one thing if Hugo could not respond in kind, if his station kept him from engaging on the level. But does he really not know? Has he truly never rebelled, and thrown panic as a ballast weight over his shoulder?

And yet, she sends Jin anyway.