Though it was a young lady who breezed gracefully into the study with delicate waves of red that could have been remnants of a braid she had not worn for years swishing at her back, there was something decidedly childish about the way she flinched when the door squeaked open, drawing the attention of the man at the desk. He set down his pen and shifted in his chair to face her, unsmiling as expected. In a way, she found that comforting, but it did nothing to still the fidgeting of her fingers over her stomach.

She couldn't hesitate about this. Except she was already doing exactly that, standing there, staring, trying to gather up enough will to pry words from her throat with the sheer force of it.

“...Is something <i>wrong</i>?”

She gasped, “No, nothing!”

Oh, right. Fakir was there. She'd almost forgotten about him, even though he was really the point of this; maybe she should have waited, taken some more time to figure out just what the right way to say this was, something delicate. Something verbal seemed like a good place to start. At least she hadn't lied to him. Nothing was wrong; this was going to be a good thing. She was sure of that.

But for something so important, she needed to think about it. Despite the fact that she was the one who'd come in too early, she couldn't suppress a desire for him to be patient.

He stared at her for a moment long enough to go from agonizing to merely numbing. “Then why aren't you breathing?”