“I thought he was Eight’s brother.” Lux can practically hear the sounds of distant protest, and she hurries to clarify, “W-well, they look similar enough! Pale, dark-haired, blue eyes… And I didn’t think they were going to tell me either way!”

“He’s sweet.” A pause. “I don’t mean that in a weird way. He’s - fifteen, right? No. I don’t care what you’ve heard about priests of Nald’thal…” She mutters grumpily to herself for a while. Eventually she comes back to the question proper, “He seems out of place for the Barons.”

“He brings out a good side to–” She stops short of saying a name. Her mouth presses together and thins, and she stares hard at a splotch on the floor. “Everyone in the Barons is on what approximates for their best behavior when I’m around. Shane sets a good example. But that’s more of an evaluation of his skills and less on his behavior, so I suppose - I should say - he has good taste in theater.”

Lux gives a vague flutter of her hand. “Oh, I think I had to explain what ‘titheing’ was…”

Acquaintance, business contact, occasional spriggan-handler

“I think I’ll be seeing more of him. …I won’t mind.”

“The very first?” Lux wonders aloud, absent-mindedly picking at a stray thread at her increasingly shabby gloves. Her chin tucks; strands of pale umber hair fall forward to shroud her face. Her speech comes in starts and stops. “Master Lumont and I met through a wild array of disguises. That is… to say… I knew him by mask, first. Newspaper articles about his firm and the Ossuary receipts of his generous offerings, second. He had been a stoic guardian who watched over a partner of mine as we roamed the Thanalan underground or toured the Ishgard cathedrals. And then he had been someone I was impressed upon by the high priests of the Order to maintain a good working relationship with.

“…And it was because of a mistake I’d made that we were forced to meet face-to-face, given name to given name. So even before I properly saw him, my impression was… clouded.”

“He’s a reasonable businessman,” she says quietly, interlacing her fidgeting fingers together and sitting up straight. “As I expected. He knows not to give something for nothing. Not information - certainly not his trust. And yet…” Her shoulders slump. “He didn’t have to, but he defended my intentions. And … revealed something. I was never intended to take over my family’s business, and the Order has taught me something in the way of persuasion -” If standing on dusty street corners screeching about the values of keeping one’s will updated could be called ‘persuasion’, “-But negotiating is out of my element. I was not expecting to part on equal terms.” She says this like the words taste funny in her mouth, and now she averts her gaze and changes the subject.

“…I wonder what he does. Now that he doesn’t practice thaumaturgy. He has enough employees working for his firm that he doesn’t even need to handle a quarter of the cases personally. I am more likely to find him wandering after Phi… I wonder.”

“He is deeply intuitive. Sharp-eyed. Intelligent.” She cracks a tiny sliver of a grin. “I see why he garnered the rumors he did about his abilities, and the respect of the Order - even without being shown his mastery over aether. And knowing why I won’t ever see it.”

“I don’t like coming into other people’s offices…” Lux trails off. She starts again, “He’s played his cards very well to make it as far as he has. I don’t know when he’ll play mine or… what will be on it.” She makes a noise like the sound of a bird beating its wings against bars, pursing her mouth to whistle a frantic trill. She leaves it at that.

Someone whose opinion she deeply respects, and whose abilities she looks up to.

“I enjoyed speaking to him.” A pause. “I’m sure our mutual business will let us cross each other’s paths again. I’ll do better next time.”

“…I am glad Phi has him. I’d oft wondered what she was like outside of our joint wanderings and - I’d imagined much worse. I would’ve been angry if her freedom was restricted or bound in any way. …It’s not. She wouldn’t stay if it were. That has to say something.”

It takes Lux a minute to settle on a single word, and she spends most of the time with her gaze averted, steadily flushing a mottled shade of red. When she finally opens her mouth, it’s to exhale in a ragged rush and finally offer, “Confused.”

“I was… impressed, truth be told, by a man who could waltz in to a meltdown of thaumaturges and laugh as easily as he does. And then resentful - who was he to downplay what we do and how angry we become? And who was he that Dirge didn’t immediately Flare him the same easy way he would do others who spoke out of turn?“

The longer she spoke, the more her expression settled towards her usual neutral stoicism. The corner of her mouth jerks abruptly out into a fanged grin; she issues a sharp bark of a laugh and shakes her head. “I didn’t figure it out that first meeting. Tracked him down to the Gold Court and his first impression of me was that I was wanting protection, wanting gil, and then wanting a date, all in short order.”

“I should’ve known. Of course he knows what the price of tangling with the Void is. And of course he’s paid it - in blood. It’s right there staring you in the face - that mask he always wears… He spends a lot of time cracking jokes and trying to distract you from it, of course. You, and everyone else, and himself…”

“The most?” Lux pressed her mouth into a grim line. Although she’d had no problems ripping into the darkest parts of the captain’s history just moments prior, now she had settled into an uneasy silence. She muttered something about lipstick and books before finally pitching her voice loud enough to say, coherently, “I like brunch.” She refused to elaborate.

“…His idea of settling debts is running away from their collectors. That only works if the rest of your crew is willing to run away, too. And I’m not.”

Captain, friend, and someone Lux would gladly have by her side (or… in the background, apparently not paying attention, cracking the occasional one-liner) during adventures

She is very gingerly toeing that line between openly referring to him and the rest of the Black Cats crew as ‘family’. The word carries a lot of weight for her.

“I’m slowly learning not to take myself so seriously. There’s a lot I’m learning from him. I’m sure he’ll learn something too.”

“Frankly, if Nald’thal wants to reach him, He should talk to me more and Kharn less…” Lux sounds wistful.