Reality warpers perhaps? That can be a hard power to work around. If you really did win free of them, you've done something impressive on a scale the likes of which few people in my world can achieve.

[So, you know, there's that. The man deserved applause if reality warpers had been shaping his world and he and others hopefully won their freedom. But to have done it at such a cost could not be easy.]

I'll pardon whatever you wish. It's not easy for me, all the time, to forgive what was done. But I feel that it's important to try. And in your case I think your past matters only insofar as whether you feel guilty or not. You clearly feel responsible for the things you did, and given the circumstances, I can't envision a repeat performance.

[In David's line of work sometimes doing the right thing isn't always a good thing.]

The orange spice is hardly a recommendation from the universe. Just my tea cup. One of the gifts I have here is something called psychometry. I can read the history of objects. Sometimes they have opinions. I find that's pretty common at tea shops and coffee houses. Let me go get those cups and then you can sit around and tell me at length about this Strahl and in return, I'll tell you about the vehicle Forge and I built for that race. Two engineers talking about their work, nothing complicated there.