Returning home from a quest is always a little melancholy, even if it is successful, due to the breakup of the group which you've been part of and resolution of the purpose to which you've been devoted. Smoke Cat Watching, Springing Doe, and Song the Wolf Calling imagine it must be worse for Amen. #DesertDiamond#Pangaea
"Oh no, ma'am," he answers her, pleased to have found an honorific to fit these ladies who were not his Mistress, yet who did help rescue him. "I'm afraid if I did that, I might die, and while I don't fear death, I certainly do not seek it either!" "A very reasonable attitude," says shaman Smoke Cat Watching, and the blue teen is happy that he can hear no unspoken message of 'for a boy your age' in what she has said. "Why might you die, if you were to wish yourself free?" asks Wolf Calling.
Accordingly, at the first lush oasis where the four companions stop to wait out the hottest part of the day, Springing Doe asks a question that has been nagging at her mind for some time. "Amen, you now wear the diamond that keeps you and are your own master, but you continue to wear your slave cuffs and collar. Why? It seems that you could easily just wish yourself free and dispense with the slave cuffs, maybe even potentially selling the ring if that is acceptable to your djinn conscience."
Everything he has ever known has come to an end apparently, and he needs time to think about, but not brood over, what to do with his new found freedom. It cannot be easy, either, to be parted from his only friend, Ifrit (or a facet of her) and be obliged to travel with three stuffy married ladies with small children to yammer over... er... discuss fondly. Therefore, while trying to avoid uncomfortable topics for the former slave djinn boy, Smoke Cat and her sisters deliberately draw him out.
