[813] I would never hurt them

Ooh, is the next page going to be a dream or something? I would like that.

Interesting thought about her having a dream. Possibly something that will help her get over the situation with her mother? Repressed memory? Maybe an etheric message left for her if she found out.

On the other hand, I foresee Annie asleep, and Ysengrin taking her to the edge of the forest, and handing her over to Jimmy to take back to the court.

Regarding the dream theory, Tom's comment makes me think Annie doesn't get to rest just yet.

That makes me hope for pages full of forest creatures to feast my eyes upon sometime in the future.

I wonder if she's going to try to peer into the ether to get a look at them all?
Or are we going to see another Surma flashback? We started with one, so I wonder if the chapter will end with one?
I'm excited for Friday, whatever it is!

Oh, I love this idea! I could even see her "waking" etherically, and watching the forest creatures (and perhaps even interacting etherically with them) while her body is asleep. Now that would be an interesting way to walk the boundary between the dream world and the waking world!

I'm surprised that the forest creatures would be scared of Surma's daughter.

Perhaps Ysengrin's word isn't entirely reliable in this matter.

Well, maybe, but we're not given any reason to doubt it. Perhaps they were scared of Surma for the same reason, or perhaps they don't associate Annie with Surma.

Seems like their fear of the Court overrides their interest in the daughter of someone they considered to be pretty okay.

What I'd like to know is whether their fear is because of recent hostility between forest and court (perhaps there was some kind of blow-up over the whole Renard situation?) or if it's just tradition, you know, the mama creatures tell all the little baby creatures that if they don't behave Boxbot will come and get them, even though no one's seen a Boxbot in centuries and the grownup creatures are pretty sure they're not even really real, and then the baby creatures grow up to be terrified of anything that comes out of the Court (because it might be Boxbot in disguise).

That would be odd since they apparently have the same soul, or however that's supposed to work.

Which raises some questions:

-Can all denizens of the forest perceive the ether like Coyote can?

-Is Annie noticeably "the same" as Surma in an etheric sense?

I notice that while Annie's hair seems to be infinite in the ether, the same was not true of the only other human we've seen in the ether; Parley.

Oh man, I never made that connection. "What? I can get my hair WHAT?" "I had no idea you could cut stuff off these bodies!"

I just noticed that Annie has cried most of her eye makeup off.

Very little of what I've seen of Annie says "she would never hurt them." She's clearly willing to "hurt a fly", if it advances her ends. And she'll go for the below the belt shot, or throw 200 feet of fire at you, if she's annoyed at the moment.

Maybe if "never" means "for the most part, unless I was in a bad mood or got defensive, or got really mad, or needed to get in touch with Muut again".