Stuff a sock in it, clown!

Mythra was an innocent girl, really. She'd seen so little of the world, despite making such a broad sweep of it - and nominally on foot - starting from the very jump of her first risen sun.

That was where her problems came from, really. After all, if you were exposed to the horrors; nay, if you were the horrors, and had never been quite properly equipped to deal with them, how could you be expected to likewise un-horrifically cope?

Minoth, meanwhile, had seen war. Had seen a house full of dead people and an asphyxiated baby, anyway. Had seen human experimentation and situations were one was stripped full-bore of their choice, due to guilt and conditioning and all of those other grisly factors.

If the Aegis War was indeed a war, Mythra felt that she had seen and experienced very little of it, no matter how much destruction she seemed to cause everywhere she went. It was a difficult proposition, wasn't it? But she'd keep trying, she supposed.

She'd learned well enough how to accommodate Addam. Perhaps tolerate. Perhaps irritate. But they got along without getting at each other's throats, most of the time. She and Milton tended much more to the carnal sibling instinct to do sworn battle, dutifully and without a single ounce of grace, every day.

And dealing with Milton and Addam wasn't war.

Dealing with Minoth and Addam, however?

Well. Mythra was right down in the trenches, wasn't she?

Addam liked pet names ("love", "darling", "dear": the gaggy stuff). Minoth liked calling names ("clown", "joker", "prince" but affectionate-derogatory: the funny stuff).

Mythra knew that it would probably serve her best to just get used to it, and not ask questions. It wasn't that she didn't understand unnecessarily sentimental human customs. She understood affection just fine - rarely did she get it, and when she did it was undercut by a hot layer of shame, but she understood it.

Some things still confused her, however.

For one thing, Minoth, with his horror-seeing eyes, one blue and one brown, was overall the picture of someone very mature. Mythra could very easily imagine him as a frog-faced old man, which one wasn't supposed to be able to do with a Blade - not even the Aegis! He looked like he'd been born an old man, spent a short stint of time acting adolescent and new to the world (like her), and then swiftly become crochet again.

For another, as part of that same sequencing, Minoth looked like he'd be very much offended, even devastated, if his long hair and special attention to grooming, perfume included, meant that he'd be taken as, regarded as, a woman, much less (or more) a girl.

So that was where Mythra's confusion lay. Purely logically based, without any personal biases laying into it. Because she swore she'd heard it, and it gave her an awful pause.

"Minoth," she asked, and heard him stiffen at the molecular level, as if he knew it was coming, which he definitely didn't, because he might have seen war, but he couldn't see the future, "why does Addam call you babygirl?"

Every pupil and pore on Minoth's face shrank. His eyebrows tilted inwards, diagonal-distorted icons of pure fear. Even the scar seemed to bloat out into a nigh-unrecognizable shape, but for the fact that Mythra would recognize that mark anywhere, anytime, anyhow - even if Minoth did someday turn into an old man, and she was still around to see it.

(Where was she going, anyway?)

Then Minoth dismissed his panic and returned to normal. Mythra wondered if he wasn't just hiding it, but that had been a pretty dramatic change. Maybe he was a good actor, after all?

"He doesn't."

Huh. Doesn't he? Mythra had no reason to doubt her hearing. She'd heard plenty of mushy, teasy things whispered in the night, when they thought she was sleeping, which was stupid, because even if she was sleeping, she was always listening, just in case there was a directive waiting to be picked up, or other environmental feedback to catalog.

Maybe they should all just stop talking for a while, and see what happened then.

Before Mythra could make objection to Minoth's response, however, Addam provided clarity, with kind eyes and bright cheeks. Much as it distressed Mythra to see him in this strange, unreachable state, where nothing seemed to faze him and everything was glorious, it was a little endearing. More than a little, actually. It was cute. She'd thought it before, and she could probably be convinced to think it again. Minoth could do that, to him? Could she do that, to anybody?

But anyway. Addam's feedback: "Quite right! I call him 'diddums'."

Oh. Huh.

"I...thought that was just a normal expression. A stupid one, but. Normal."

"No, Mythra." Minoth shook his head, eyes still slightly glazed. "When he says it, it's very, very gay."