and if it be true that beasts have reason

Minoth snapped his notebook shut. "I've just thought of something."

"That's never good for me," Malos said, conversationally. It made Minoth secretly pleased that he'd chosen to tag on the specific prepositional phrase that put him in a position of avatar, of identity, in the scenario. Put another way: for you, dear Malos, and not for anyone else? I'm touched.

But, that train of thought aside, Minoth intended to reveal what, in fact, it was that he'd been and continued to be thinking of. He appended, "This one isn't good for any of us. Romantically speaking, of course."

Jin, until now seemingly ignorant (that is to say, actively) of the conversation, turned his head a neat thirty or forty degrees along its neck axis. "Does it matter?"

A more verbose Paragon would have said, "I don't think romance is one of our primary concerns," and meant it doubly as an affirmation that his continual acts of service were the highest mark of his devotion, and there was nothing else necessary to add, or to worry, about them. Still, he was curious. What "romantic" problem could Minoth have unearthed that didn't have to do, somehow, with the practical portion of their overall life mission, in implication or in explication?

Malos had crossed his arms and set his hips and was waiting, waiting.

"It has to do with tropes," Minoth announced.

Jin set his teeth. Tropes? He'd have preferred symbolism, and of course he'd go on to be correct in maintaining that preference.

Malos, meanwhile, clicked his tongue. "Okay." Brusque invitation.

"Specifically," continued Minoth, now really, actuallly, getting on with it, prologue and preamble done, "the trope of celestial bodies."

Silence.

Minoth leveled his pen. "You, Jin, are certainly not the sun. You're probably the moon." The pen flipped over to point, now more directly, at the other Flesh Eater's Core Crystal. "I, Minoth, am certainly not the sun. If pressed, I suppose I could be convinced to act as the stars."

"Eh?"

"Are you doing the math, Malos? That makes you the sun. You, the darkest and the coldest of all."

In lieu of protesting "Am not!" Malos gave an impatient lift of his chin. "Go again."

Minoth was nothing if not obliging. "Say I'm the moon. Say you're the stars. That makes Jin the sun. And Jin is not the sun."

"No," agreed Malos, rather parroted with a quiver of mockery in his voice, "Jin is not the sun."

"However," said Minoth, and then the comma hung.

"However?" Jin prompted, somewhat uncharacteristically; his interest had been won.

"Suns are partial and privileged to the heliocentric theory - namely, everything else in the system - the SOLAR system - orbits around them. Again, I am not the sun." Minoth steepled his fingers, offered an abiding point out. "We're not orbiting around me."

Malos snorted. "You bet your chapless ass we're not."

"And you?"

"Me? What about me?"

"Are you the sun? Our center?"

In bed, yes. In life, no.

"I suppose not."

"So Jin is the sun. But Jin is not the sun."

"This is pointless," Jin said. "I'm going out."

"Leaving us so soon?" Minoth called gaily after him, but his steps were just as flat as ever, which always meant nothing and everything.

Malos was pensive. After a few moments, he spoke his final tasteful piece of the evening: "The sun and moon reflect on each other, and the stars butt their twinkling asses out of it."