"What's up?"
Gillianis asked curiously, gnawing on a piece of fried pork intestine.
That was a bit too heavy for breakfast.
According to her, she'd always liked eating offal, but the internal edition of Elven Law demanded that refined, elegant Elves abstain from it because it was unbecoming.
That only made her like it more.
At several hundred years old, she was at the perfect age to rebel.
Seeing her "brother" Jia Xiu looking like he'd been victimized, she figured she ought to help him out.
"Are the newspapers in Thaldarian all this ridiculous?"
Jia Xiu turned the newspaper around to show Gillianis.
"No, it's not just the newspapers in Thaldarian. They're all ridiculous everywhere."
"So they just write news like this?"
"Then are you really part of a secret organization?"
"Of course not!"
"That's why they dare write things like this."
Gillianis set down the fried intestine, sucked her fingers, and said solemnly, "If you really were part of a secret organization, they wouldn't dare report it."
"Does Elven Law cover this? Can I sue them?"
Jia Xiu decided to give the law a chance.
"You can, and you'd probably win. But it wouldn't do much good. You'd get a little compensation at most, and they'd print a clarification in some out-of-the-way corner. Unless something unexpected happened, the number of people who saw the clarification wouldn't be a fraction of the number who heard the rumor," Gillianis explained.
That felt awfully familiar.
Jia Xiu felt as if he'd come home.
"So good people are supposed to let the papers make things up about them?"
"More or less."
"What if I'm not a good person?"
The dining table fell silent.
The silence was a little strange.
Jia Xiu was confused. "What's wrong? What do you mean? I only said 'what