"I was trying to say that I saw something that mattered and I needed someone to hear it," Mireya said. "That's all I was trying to say."
"We heard it," Aisella said. "We heard you."
"You heard it and you dismissed it," Mireya said, and there was less edge in it than there had been twenty minutes ago.
"We heard it, but we reached a different conclusion," Aisella said. "Those are not the same thing. You understand that distinction; you're intelligent enough to recognize it."
Mireya was quiet.
Nerith had turned back to face the wall. Her eyes were bright, but the control had been reinstated, and the leaves had slowed to something that was less like trembling and more like the motion of someone breathing carefully.
"I'm not angry at you," Nerith said, and she said it like someone testing whether that was true and finding that it was. "I'm just—tired of being told that the things I believe are the things I'm least qualified to speak about."
"That's not what I meant," Mireya said.
