RORY
i told the stars about you
She was passionate at least, and there was nothing anyone could say differently about that. She had obviously spent some time considering it, though he wondered idly why she hadn't said these things at the meeting already. Was she afraid of losing support if they knew they would be cycled out so soon? Then again, he didn't think it would've made much of a difference for him—he'd been too pissed at the whole world to want to be cooperative."Just don't switch things up too quickly, if you finally manage to get people comfortable with this idea," he mused quietly. Training (gentling, really) animals his entire life had taught him how vital stability was.
The rest of her plan was .. problematic. Again, animal training. Rory was silent for a time, licking his fingers clean before grabbing a rag. It was still moist from some other unholy purpose, and carefully he began to clean the last of the stickiness from his hands. He liked her lack of ambition when it came to law-making, her lack of ambition when it came to change, but that was also the one big flaw in her plan. And briefly, he grappled with himself: should he even point it out to her? Or should he just wash his hands of this, step back, and watch this whole project sink?
He thought of Evie's brittle agreement to sit on this Council. He thought of everything he didn't know—that vast and terrifying and possibly oh so dangerous world out there. In the end, he was too honest not to help her, even though he worried what would happen when this project was no longer in her hands.
"If it's one thing I've learned when training horses, it's that if you want to get them used to something new, you have to expose them to it," he said quietly, folding up the messy rag with more care than the task actually required. "While I approve of that sort of low-profile lawmaking, if you want people to become used to a Council, and to accept it as their, well, decision-making body the day some foreign representative rides in here.. then you need to get out there."
He sighed and put the rag aside. "If someone trades unfairly and you tell them to go work on somebody's farm—what if they don't want to go? Are you ready to back that up with a show of force? Because it will come to that, sooner or later. Humans are not as kind as horses, less honest, too."
Was he honestly telling Maea to strong-arm his—their—people? He couldn't believe what he was doing, and the gaze he leveled on her was tired. "Is it a riot if no one got hurt?" he mused, something wry creeping into his eyes even though all he felt like doing each time someone said 'riot' was sigh heavily. It hadn't been a riot. "I'm not too keen on doing that again, but I don't know what sort of ideas I might've planted in someone else's head. But the way I see it, you have.. well, two major options. One is to just beat everyone into submission, which will endear you to absolutely no one and just might get me back into 'riot' mode. The other is to start small. Don't say all that much about law-making and forced punitive labor, but say that.. I don't know, people can bring their disputes to you, and gods know there's no shortage of disputes here. Meddle just enough. Settle these disputes with the council. Make sure your decisions are followed up on, but again—be prepared that you will have to use violence."
He shrugged slightly, spinning the awl again.
"It's the price for power, you know. You'll just have to decide if it's worth paying it."
