"Siblinghood was only one of various metaphors," she admits, uncomfortably, "but it was the one that seemed most frequent." The Warden turns away and begins sorting through his bag, and doesn't see the discomfort on Harrow's face deepen briefly into something a little closer to disgust, another small piece fitting itself into the monstrous whole taking shape in her head. "I think the Emperor took a kind of...satisfaction in thinking of us as his children. In more than the oblique ecclesiastical sense, perhaps."

Her face is back to something approaching normal by the time Palamedes sits down again and begins writing, and though Harrow raises one eyebrow at the cartoonish sketches he draws midway down the page, she listens intently to the train of his thoughts as he verbalizes them. "A cycle," she says, looking from one notepad to the other. "Rather than a storehouse of energy. Something that can be shared and thus replenished. It's a far more sustainable solution, so...why not?"

Only one person can answer that, she supposes, and He's not here. The thought sits heavy in her chest.