Saffire
She could probably catch her as she heads outside? She's talking to Ireena first. And she's not going to dive head-first back in the Changeling fray, and may go outside where it's less crowded for a minute before heading back in. So Kerys could catch her there after that conversation,  if that sounds good.

Pi
Yeah, that sounds fine! Kerys would make sure Ireena's with someone else first (either Journey or Rio), and then join her! Kerys can't drink any of the wine, but she can smell it at least, along with all the excitement in the air. She'd be grinning as she'd sit next to Jade though, with the comment it's going to take her some time to get used to this look.

Saffire
Jade would kind of laugh at that, and look down at her hands for a moment, like they're almost not her own. "I don't think even I'm used to it." She's had her share of wine, and it takes her a moment to remember that a certain someone tends to not get along with grapes. And after a moment, if Kerys still has her waterskin with her, she'd offer to make it taste like wine for her if she wanted to try it. Without. You know. Vomiting rainbow glitter all over the place.

Pi
Oh! Kerys would brighten immediately. Yes, please.

Saffire
It would only take her a few seconds then. A brief word alongside a quick hand gesture that's starting to become automatic. "I'm guessing this is why you wrote 'grapes' in the margins."

Pi
Kerys wound wince a little, but mutter that it is. And she'd tell Jade that she and Vivian figured it out while she was still under house arrest, actually. He'd brought her some berries, and the grapes made her sick. Taking a swig of the "wine" though, Kerys would groan with delight. "Daylight, I've missed this. Wine was a rare commodity in Kheldell; me and the guys used to fight over any good stuff the Stag got. It's gotta be a year now, since I've had a drop. That spell of yours really is amazing."

Saffire
And that answer earns a sympathetic glance from her. "And where I grew up from we always had too much. Ale more than wine." There was always ale. Almost like it was an insult to not have any ready to pour at your table. Ale is what she's used to, but she's always liked wine better. "I wish I could've mastered the spell earlier. Might've been easier to keep up with Dwarven drinking habits."

Even if the spell's best use seemed to be its ability to get stains out of laundry.

Pi
Don't forget the makeshift air fresheners! Really, Jade, where would they be without you.

Kerys laughs, though, and wags her finger. "Nothing wrong with ale, now. But it was a dwarf who showed me the good old ways of downing a pint, so that might've influenced me some."

Poor Benteth. Kerys doesn't lose her smile, but its further away somehow for a moment there, as she takes another swig of the flavored water. With a hum, she looks back over to Jade and returns to the topic from before. "Anyways... I take it you've not spent a lot of time in your true form, huh? Much less around others like yourself. You doing okay?"

Saffire
She almost laughs at the question. Both of them.

“Looking like this is something I try to avoid. People tend to find it…” she searches for a word. “Unsettling.” Alien. “It’s better to look like anything other than this. The last time I ever spent any time looking like this was when I was a child and didn’t know any better. People don’t tend to trust you when they know you can look like anyone. So you have to choose to be someone else.” She looks behind her, back into the tent. “I don’t get how they can be so cavalier about it. But maybe this is what happens when you grow up surrounded by more than one of you.”

Pi
Kerys doesn't have to consider that for long before she nods, understanding. She can't completely relate, of course; she's never had to suppress her identity so completely. She has just two forms; two tiny worlds to choose between, when both are parts of her. But other people don't always like that... Unsettling they find it, indeed.

It ends up being on a smaller scale, but she thinks it might be enough to understand just a taste of what Jade's been through. And maybe it's enough to hypothesize, too.

"Probably. They're a tight-knit community—a family. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, but their own," Kerys guesses, and there's a strange lilt to her voice. "This is what's normal for them... Even if I bet it's something they only show each other. Maybe they were only so cavalier because they realized you were like them too, and they wanted you to know you weren't alone."

Saffire
VERY tight-knit. They seemed to live in a very closed off land that did not think well of them. How many other encampments were there, besides the one by Tser Pool? How many of them had been there, beneath her knowledge and notice?

“Maybe.” Did they really not care what the world thought of them? She wonders if that’s true. “Is that how your village is? Just how many of you are shifters?”

Pi
Kerys hums lightly, but her response is quick. The answer is simple, and doesn't need thought. "Just the three of us. My mother, little sister, and me."

Saffire
“Three?” Her lips thin for a moment, eyes contemplative. “Somehow I thought there would’ve been more of you.” Just three. That wasn’t many. But still, enough to be a number that meant something.

Pi
Kerys laughs. "If there were, we probably wouldn't be living there. Mom's not a big fan of other longtooth shifters. She's always been a lone wolf, that one."

Saffire
"I remember you saying something similar."

Back in the Death House. She had mentioned that her mother had hated her family, for whatever reason. It was a sentiment she could understand. It's not like you could usually choose your family.

"Does that bother you? To grow up never knowing that side of your family?"

Pi
"Mm... I took her very seriously when she'd scold us about it; if she was that strict, shifters like me must be really bad, I thought. But a part of me was lonely. I always longed to be around people like me."

She's pack-minded. Without other shifters, all of Kheldell basically became her pack, and with them gone... Well. This is her pack now, and she loves everyone in it. And yet...

"Culturally, there was always something missing. I think it's normal to want to know who you are and what you came from... And to have that sense of belonging."

Saffire
"That part oddly never bothered me."

Not to say there wasn’t a curiosity. To maybe meet her mother or her father and see if maybe they had cared, if there was a resaon they had left her. To see what Changelings were like. To maybe meet one one day, and see if they were anything like her. A curiosity she remembers trying to sate in the books she read when she thought no one was looking, what little there was. The amount of which hadn’t surprised her. In the end, they were everyone and yet no one at all, so what records would there be? They were rarely Changelings. Instead, they were elves and dwarves, they were humans and orcs and genasi and everything else in-between. That was how they lived: in the shadow and in the skins of other races, filling in the gaps others left for them to take.

“I never needed to find people like me. What was important to me was being a part of something, whatever that was. To be someone. To be anyone, really, so long as they were worth something to someone else. I could’ve been someone’s son as easily as I could have been their daughter.”

Pi
Even though it's difficult to understand, Kerys ponders over that heavily and with great care. If it's that easy to slip into a role, couldn't she do that here? If she wants to be part of something, why not this lively group of people welcoming her with smiles and open arms?

"These Vistani look at each other as if they can find home not in their warm beds, but in the eyes of the person standing next to them. I can't think of a purer example of belonging."

She knows if their situations were flipped, she'd be hard pressed here. There's nothing she's wanted more in her life than to be part of something like this. She could see herself being very happy here, so it's difficult to understand Jade's reservations.

Unless... Could that be it?

"It could all be yours too, you know. But..." Kerys presses her lips into a line, brow wrinkling. A thought's occurred to her, and she's not sure she has any right to give it voice. Cogs turning behind her eyes, it takes her a moment to think of a delicate way to phrase what she wants to say.

"You belonged somewhere else, once before."

Jade has told her of her family. Kerys never realized they weren't biologically related until today, but still—they were Jade's precious family. A mother who had passed on. A loving, if somewhat overbearing father, and a talented older sister, both slaughtered before her eyes. She belonged to them first; has traveled all this time seeking to avenge them.

Could that be it? Is she not ready to move on?

Saffire
“Yes, once.” That’s an interesting way of putting it. Once. It made it sound like that part of her life had happened a very long time ago, and not just a couple years back and still relatively fresh in her memory.

“That may not be true anymore, but it was.” Once. “And Jade was never a changeling. She was never a vistani either. She was very much a dwarf, despite being only half.”

Jade was never a lot of things.

“And I certainly couldn’t tell you the first thing about being a vistani.”

Except the few things she's learned from passively watching and listening to Arabelle. And Arabelle is more of a force all her own, of which it's better that there be only one.

Pi
...Kerys would be lying if she didn't admit this is hard to wrap her head around. One the one hand, finding a family like this is everything she could have wanted if she were in Jade's shoes; on the other, she knows from hard experience that connections aren't so easily replaceable. People aren't so replaceable.

There's a lot of things Kerys wants to ask. Maybe Jade can't tell her the first thing about being a Vistani, but wouldn't she like to learn? If only so she could impersonate them better? It's a valuable in that could be used.

They knew of her mother, too. There's all kinds of things to learn about her history, and maybe in the process real affection could be formed there. It wouldn't replace what she's lost and it wouldn't be the same, but she could have a family again. Does she want to close the door on that?

But ultimately, what Kerys ends up asking is selfish.

"You'll be staying with us, then?"

Saffire
She smiles at that. “Were you expecting I’d leave?”

That had never been on the table for her, staying here on any permanent basis. Not yet. Even after everything. There are things she wants to ask, and wants to learn. If only to fill in a few more pieces in her life that have always been missing. She might not know who Rae is deep down, but in the scheme of things, that is not important. The people who need her matter more. And she knows who Jade is, and that matters more too, even if she’s a poor reflection of who Jade should be.

“I don’t think my place right now is here. I may be related to these people, but they are not my family. Not yet, anyway.” Perhaps one day they would be. She had nothing against them, and liked them insofar as you could like someone you just met, and feel a certain fondness towards them. A sort of automatic kinship she supposes most races feel to their own species. Not strong, but still like a weak magnetic pull marking you as something of the same. “Perhaps it’s wrong of me to say, but you are closer to family to me than they are.”

And even if Kerys isn't family, she at least is someone very close to it. Just as Vivian is close. And Journey. And Rio is family without her having to think about it, and she would not leave him. Even Ireena is someone she feels closer to. And not a single one of them shared her blood or could change the color of their eyes.

“I know you, and I care about you.” And when she looks at Kerys, she can even see a sliver of herself in her, if, perhaps, for reasons that weren’t fair.  “These people are still strangers to me.” Friendly strangers, who seemed to care about her despite never having known her. That fact alone is still very strange to her.  “They are a people I don’t know.”

Pi
...Oh

It's not until Jade voices it that Kerys realizes that yes, she was afraid of just that. This life could be wonderful for her; if Jade decided to stick with the Vistani she would support her—this life could be wonderful. But she would miss her, so completely.

So to hear Jade say that no, she'll be staying with the rest of them instead? To hear Jade call her close to family?

Kerys does not cry, but her eyes do mist up. She drags a hand under her nose and sniffs hard, and rises from where she's sitting to scoot closer to where Jade's at. She hopes that's enough warning, because unless Jade resists, Kerys intends to hug her.

Saffire
It is enough warning. And even if it wasn’t, she has no intention of resisting. Even so, she still tenses slightly at the embrace, the sensation and warmth of it something she’s not used to. Like it’s a word she’s heard before,  and is very much aware of, but hasn’t yet come to appreciate or fully understand the meaning of.

How is she supposed to handle this?

Do nothing? No. Of course not.

So she hugs her back, short, and more awkward of a gesture than she’d like it to be. But it’s the sincerity that matters, she figures, as she pulls back an inch.

“I take it you would’ve missed me.”

Pi
"You have no idea," Kerys admits with a watery laugh, pulling back awkwardly the rest of the way to let Jade have her space. She's too forward, she knows—always has been—and gets attached far more quickly than most others are comfortable with.

"I wasn't going to say anything. I should be encouraging you to stay with the Vistani and try giving them a chance... That's what I came here to do, even though I really don't want you to go."

Breathing out through her teeth, she wipes at her nose again and rubs her palms together; flashes Jade an embarrassed smile.

"I still feel like I should be doing more, honestly. But if this is your decision, I'm glad."

Saffire
“You came here to tell me I should stay.”

Does that surprise her? No.

“Maybe I would, if things were different.”

They seemed like good people. And they likely could give her things she never had. A family of sorts that would never be bothered why what form she took. They were not dwarves. Her life here would be very different. Maybe it would show her the life she should’ve had, before things had gone wrong. “But I think we all have things we need to do first. Maybe once everything is over, it would be something worth considering.”

Jade certainly would not be content to just stay here, as things were. She could not stay here and be Jade without feeling wrong. It would be too big of an exception to make. And she's already made exceptions that worry at the seams a little.

“But I meant what I said. Family seems to matter a lot to you.” As, she imagines, it does to most people. It matters to her, certainly, it’s just… different. Maybe it’s hard for Kerys to see how someone wouldn’t gravitate towards those who were like you, and seemed willing to have you, and not prioritize them over a group of people with which you seemed to hold very little in common. The value of that connection is something she must see as something potentially greater? She can understand that. The dwarven part of her would understand well. Your clan was one of the most important thing a dwarf had in its life. “So maybe it looks like I’m making the less optimal choice by not staying with people I have ties to. Like I’m brushing off a part of who I am.”
She shrugs her shoulders.

“I just don’t see it that way.”

It was something that was perhaps harder to explain than it should be. Though Kerys would probably understand better than most. More than anyone else in their small little group, certainly. Perhaps even more than the those like her, those who could be anyone they chose. She doesn’t know enough about them to make that assumption. Of course, if these changelings were anything like her at the core, they would understand. At least a little. Even if the Vistani part of them did not.

"We'll see if I'm wrong. But I don't think so."

Pi
"Yes. Though in some ways, it's less that and more..." Kerys frowns, thoughtful. "I'm used to a larger pack. The more family you have, the more you know there's always someone to turn to. That's why every person in my town became part of my family; in many ways, the Vistani feel much like that to me, only—"

Better? No, no that's not it. Maybe it's that their forwardness and welcoming nature, at least so far as Jade was concerned, remind Kerys of herself and the way she wants to be accepted, and to see her "pack" treated in return. But she doesn't know how to put that into words.

"Well, at any rate, I know I'm a bit strange in that sense. I've known many who were far more at ease with just one close friend to confide in, then they would a crowd of them. I suspect you're much like that, so your intuition is likely right on. You should always trust your gut, with these things."