"At first Lith wouldn't believe me even if I told him that the sky was blue unless he first looked up himself." "Really? Was my little brother such a bitter prick even as a child?" Were those words coming from anyone else, Tista would have dismissed them as an insult and taught the liar a lesson. "As I remember it, Lith was sweet and caring to a fault. "He woke up first to let us find the house warm for breakfast and helped Mom with the chores. Lith always took care of me and started working from a tender age to help the family make ends meet." 'Fuck me sideways.' Solus inwardly cursed her own big mouth. 'Tista has no idea that Lith was never a child or that what she experienced was just a mask. I'm so used to talking with Kami about everything that I forgot no one else knows about Derek.' To add insult to injury, Tista was staring at Solus with eyes full of pain. Tista knew how deep the bond between them was and if Solus was slandering Lith and betraying his trust, then maybe she had led him by the nose all along. If Solus was telling the truth, it meant that her brother wasn't the wonderful person Tista believed and that would have been much worse. "He indeed was kind and caring." Solus nodded. "But put yourself in his shoes. He was just a boy who had found a mystical talking stone that asked him to keep her existence a secret. "Lith was torn between the need to hide the truth from you guys and the fear that I might not be a good fairy like the one in the bedtime stories. "It just took us a while to know each other better and develop trust." Luckily for Solus, the years spent with Lith had deeply ingrained into her the ability to spout lies off the top of her head and tell them with her best straight face. The only problem was that she lacked the necessary practice to also be at his level. Tista wanted to believe Solus so she didn't notice the many clues about her deception while Dawn had no intention of nailing Solus and ruining their relationship. "It makes sense." Tista nodded. "Now that I think about it, Lith had to be an odd fellow since he was little. Had I been the one to find you, I would have told Rena and asked her to keep it a secret. "Of course she would have told Mom the moment I turned my back and in the blink of an eye the entire family would have known." "And I would have been there with you and begged you not to every time you were about to talk, just like I did it with Lith." Solus replied. "What were you saying about Lith not trusting a talking stone?" Dawn helped her to change the subject, already glad to have confirmed that Solus' real body was that of a stone. "That it took us a long time and lots of mind fusions to trust each other." Solus was so glad of the help that she didn't even notice her own slip of the tongue. "Mind fusions?" Tista and Dawn said in unison. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂 Nyka's eyes were wide and her mouth agape as well, but from inside Dawn's mind nobody noticed. "Yeah. We did it a lot back then. Sometimes even dozens of times a day." Solus nodded. "By fusing our minds Lith could check that I wasn't trying to manipulate him and that I had no hidden agenda." "Shouldn't that have fried his brain?" Dawn was flabbergasted. "If you really are like a Horseman, the load of information from an ancient being is too much for the mind of a child." "Not really." Solus shrugged. "I had lost most of my memories so my mind was blank. I learned more from Lith than he from me. Anyway, after a few months of that-" "A few months?" Dawn spat out her food, making a mess and drawing once again the attention of the other patrons. "Yes." Solus started to feel embarrassed even though she had no idea why. "At that point, we had grown close enough to not need full fusions and limit ourselves to partial fusions-" "Are you making this up?" Dawn spat another mouthful out and then put down her fork, tired of wasting good food and making a mess of their table. "Can I please finish a damn sentence?" Solus snorted and Dawn nodded for her to continue. "Yes, partial fusions are a thing. You just need to think about a specific memory you want to share, focus on it, and then start a mind fusion. "This way that particular memory gets shared first and you can safely cut off the link. That said, after a bit more time, even partial fusions became a rarity. We took each other's words at face value and used them only if we argued or to share a very complex subject. "The good thing about partial fusions is that it allows you to share not only your knowledge, but also your impressions and theories at the same time. This way Lith could literally look at things from my perspective and I from his without wasting time with mind links." "Good gods, no wonder you are so messed up." Dawn passed a hand over her forehead and Tista nodded. "If you two fused your minds so often it means that you know everything about him and he knows everything about you. "And I don't mean things like what's your favorite breakfast but your innermost thoughts and feelings. It also means that the boundary between your minds is paper thin. That your thoughts freely flow from one to the other." "Correct." Solus nodded. "Why are you so surprised? Isn't the same for you Horsemen?" "Absolutely not!" Dawn cut the air with her hand. "Mind fusion is a last resort to teach something to our hosts quickly or bring them up to speed about our projects. If I had used mind fusion so often on any of my previous hosts, I would have either hated their guts or fallen in- Fuck. This sure explains a lot." "Wow, you are pretty dumb for someone so ancient." Tista shrugged. "Is that so obvious?" Solus whimpered as her cheeks flushed. "Yes." Tista replied. "Everyone in the family got that after the mind link about your origins. That and the fact that Kamila broke up with Lith because of you made things straightforward." "Say what you want about me, but I think this is the solution to Dawn's problem." Solus cleared her throat. "If you fuse your mind with Zepho, he won't be able to deny the truth anymore. If you want your feelings to reach him, you have to do it." "Do you realize what you are asking from me?" The Horseman sighed. "It's a very intimate connection that shares your weaknesses, self-doubts…. And I almost forgot who I am talking to." Solus realized how her relationship with Lith was weird even for cursed objects' standards and blushed even harder. The realization killed the conversation and they spent the rest of the lunch in silence.