Elibrie had been unsettled since her talk with R'him. It had started off well enough, all things considered, but then she'd messed it up terribly, and she felt awful about it. In her very regimented little world with its strict hierarchies, she was absolutely the one at fault for things falling to pieces. She was, after all, the reason there was a problem at all, and R'him, being both a bronzerider and in no way responsible for the incident in the first place, didn't owe her anything. She should be grateful that he'd tried at all. That she'd lost her composure really wasn't acceptable, and she'd been giving herself a hard time about it ever since.

Kesucianth had been doing his best to help, of course, but given his nature couldn't refute all such feelings - after all, he wasn't so different, and would also have been blaming himself. But he did at least try to reassure her that she had been very brave, and tried very hard, and had not actually done anything wrong. Things just hadn't gone right. With his help, she'd gotten herself together enough in time to get to lessons without looking a mess. Once she'd finally made it through the day, she'd curled up tightly with Kesucianth for comfort and eventually fell asleep that way. Her sleep wasn't the best, but that wasn't unexpected at this point. She'd have been surprised if she had slept well.

She'd then spent the day waffling back and forth about whether to try to talk to R'him again - she needed to and to some degree even wanted to, but she also didn't want to mess it up again. While she was by no means unstable, she yet cried very, very easily when it came to certain subjects, and after she'd failed to hold it in last time, she was even more self-conscious about it. She was afraid she'd do it again, but she also didn't want to leave him hanging. It really wasn't fair to him. It was all rather a vicious circle of thoughts that kept chasing each other around, and after a few days, she finally resigned herself to just getting it over with. The worst that could happen was that she cried again.

Which...was pretty terrible, at least to her, but she wouldn't be able to stop beating herself up over the first time if she didn't try again (while potentially adding something else to beat herself up about). So she waited for what seemed to be a decent opportunity, and with Kesucianth all but glued to her side for support and Lullaby again on her shoulder, she approached her classmate as the picture of nervous contrition. "Hey," she said softly, her gaze firmly down, "Do you...want to talk again?"

Uta