#Sparrow allowed it under the condition that he not tell the children the truth

[the-sparrow-sings]

Ben Finn X HoBW is such a good ship oh my god.

I used to draw little comics about my fave HoBW and Ben’s relationship when I was a teenager; I’m pretty sure I still have that sketchbook somewhere at my Grandpa’s house and I think it would be fun to redraw some of it.

[tsaritsa]

for the serpent has died and i’m leaning by your side (5/6)

this fic can also be found on ff.net and ao3.

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He hates being reduced to the role of civilian – a convalescing civilian, even more. He hates the red tape that surrounds his recovery; hates that Riza still hasn’t come out of her coma like the doctors said she would.

The aftermath of the Promised Day isn’t pleasant for anybody involved.

She's still for days. He watches her breathing, watches the rise of her chest in slow, steady beats. She runs like clockwork – to the point where he can use her to count the time. Fourteen inhalations is equal to roughly a minute. He watches the drip attached to her left side. Every nineteen and a half seconds releases another bout of her medication. He watches the sparrows that cluster outside the window, chattering for the stale bread he throws them when lunch comes around. He counts the tiles in their room, their sides, and how many squares he can find within. She grows paler with every hour, the anemia becoming painfully clear. The blood did not take; and now Riza Hawkeye is fighting a battle on two fronts when one nearly killed her on its own.

He wakes at nine and watches her for fifty-five minutes before a nurse comes in to take him for his daily physio. Some days they do eye exercises: they practice focusing at different distances, reading unidentified texts at quick speed, exposing him to light in bursts that make him vomit on more than one occasion. Nobody is particularly sympathetic to his plight – they simply wait for him to finish kneeling over the rubbish bin before they pick up where they left off.

Sometimes they work with his hands and fingers: practicing cursive and basic shapes with different pens and paintbrushes. This kind of rehabilitation is harder because he has an actual injury hindering his progress, as much as he hates to admit it. They focus on hand-eye coordination; he spends time with the young children in the hospital, threading gaudy beaded bracelets for all of them that takes him more time than he’d like to admit to finish. They’re sweet children, and it is both humbling and sad that they’re the ones who give him the most affection. One girl called Daisy is absolutely besotted with him and demands that he plait her long silken hair every day – in return, she gives him sloppy and spit-smeared kisses all over his face. He’s not entirely sure how this is fair payment for his services but the nurses tell him in low tones that her parents abandoned her once it became apparent she would not be completely cured of her illness, and that this is the first time she’s responded so well to an adult who isn’t her doctor.

It’s easy for him to forget that there’s life that exists beyond his own, that there are problems that he can’t solve so easily with paperwork and his signature. There is nothing he can do for a girl who is barely six and already learning truths about humanity that he is still coming to grips with.

The wounds are still healing, but each day he feels like he is retaining more of his fingers – by the end of the fifth day in hospital, he is able to grip a pen for an entire page of cursive writing with only a slight twinge in his muscles. The doctors and nurses clap for him, and when they return him back to his room for lunch, she lays there, just as unnaturally still as when he left her, her steady breathing the only indication that she is alive, and not an unusually pretty but sickly doll.

"How long will she be in a coma?" he asks the nurse. She shrugs, and checks off the paperwork on his clipboard before leaving the room. He knows she has been under a lot of strain – and he had managed to read over her own clipboard before the doctors realised what he was doing. His men hadn't been lying to him – Riza had been quite literally put through the wringer, but the extent of it was still unfolding.

She'd already had one seizure during surgery, he thinks grimly, and her chances of another one were alarmingly high. Her blood was still reacting badly to the Rhesus-positive donation, and in hushed whispers he heard nurses talking about how there was now a complete national shortage of O negative and A positive blood anywhere in the country.

What stung even more was that he couldn’t even help. A donation for an O negative person could only come from another O negative – and the doctors were even on the fence about their decision to give her O negative Rhesus positive blood, (despite the dick that had dropped by to seemingly gloat about his decision to all but poison her).

Anything more, they whispered, and we would kill her.

He hates being reduced to the role of civilian – a convalescing civilian, especially. He hates the red tape that surrounds his own recovery; hates that Riza still hasn’t come out of her coma like the doctors said she would. He waits, and watches, and wishes, but nothing changes. There are still fifty-eight tiles in the ceiling. The sparrows still ask for food when he knows the Elric brothers are also feeding them, a few rooms down.

Riza still breathes, fourteen times a minute.

Edward comes by late Thursday afternoon. He looks lighter than Roy has seen him in years – finally he looks more like the young man than the soldier he had been pushed to become.

“Hi Colonel Butt,” he says, dropping himself down unceremoniously at the foot of Roy’s bed. Roy scowls and leans back into his pillows, crossing his arms gingerly.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Fullmetal?” He tries to keep the fondness out of his tone, but it proves too difficult – despite all the shit he’s going through – what Riza’s still going through, motionless and entirely unresponsive next to him: he is honestly so happy for the two boys. He still can’t quite get over seeing Edward with two arms made of flesh – it has already started to tan, gain muscle mass even after only a few days since he got it back. Roy’s hesitant to acknowledge that he has always viewed them as surrogate sons, in a way – besides being grossly inappropriate to say so while he was their direct superior officer – he was also well aware that Edward would find it difficult to accept the admission without publically rejecting it.

Perhaps when all the dust has finally settled he might be finally given the chance to do so, but until then Roy will hold his tongue. There’s an unconditional understanding that the boys already know, but there is a distinct difference between making an educated guess and being told.

Edward shrugs, drawing his legs up to sit cross-legged. “I thought you could use some company,” he says simply. He jerks his head in Riza’s direction. “Any change since last time?”

Roy shakes his head. “I don’t know whether to consider that a blessing or curse now,” he confesses. “A blood transfusion didn’t go well…so now it’s just a waiting game to let her body sort itself out, I suppose.”

“Well that’s shit,” Ed says bluntly. “She’ll pull through though. You best be prepared for the lecture she’ll have ready for you when she wakes.” His face splits into a wide grin. “Don’t think anybody will want to be around you guys for a while after that.”

Roy sniffs, and raises his eyebrows disdainfully. “If you’ve come to make fun of me, you can piss off, thank you very much.”

Edward leans an arm against the attached table at the end of Roy’s bed, poking at the food leftover from lunch with disinterest. “Whatever Mustang. I know you hate it in here just as much as me.”

Roy adjusts himself against his pillows, sighing heavily. “Can’t fault you there, kid. Has Alphonse been allowed to leave his quarantine yet?”

Edward makes a face, picking away at the stale bread roll. “We’ve been trying to figure how we can sneak him out to see something other than a hospital room but I think the nurses are onto us. They keep barging into the room like they expect us to be shooting drugs or something.” He laughs a little, but it is tinged with sadness. “Al’s been…not too well. The doctor gave him a vaccination for smallpox and the – what’d he call it? – DTE or something-”

“DTP,” Roy cuts across him smoothly. “Diptheria, tetanus and…pertussis, I think. You two didn’t get any when you were younger, did you?”

Edward shakes his head. “Winry’s parents used to be the go-to doctors for vaccinations because they always had shipments coming in from the big cities with their automail parts, but after they died people stopped getting them. It was too expensive.” His face drops suddenly. “This means I have to get one too, don’t I?”

Roy nods and tries to hide his smile. “I’d recommend it,” he says. “Get them all done in one go so you don’t have to worry about them later – they’re useful if you’re thinking about travelling abroad.”

Edward makes a face. “I’m done with travelling,” he says pointedly, and Roy raises his eyebrows in a sure you are way.

Edward sighs absently, pulling the bread roll apart. “I miss Win,” he says after a long pause, his long bangs hiding his face from Roy. “Like, she knows that we’re okay and that Al’s got his body back but…” he trails off, pulling the bread apart more roughly now. It crumbles under his grip easily, scattering over the remains of the unidentified meat they served for lunch today that Roy only took a bite of to decide he’d instead wait instead for Breda’s daily excursion to the deli down the road.

“Can she not come visit you here?” Roy asks carefully. He knows the young mechanic can be a touchy spot for Edward – knows and understands how important she is in his life.

Edward shrugs in a noncommittal manner. “It wouldn’t be the same, you know?” His voice is half wistful, half defeated. “Like, all the roads and railways in the East have been trashed and I know I’d be able to get her up here no problem but…it wouldn’t be right. Neither of us is in any condition to have lots of visitors – Al especially – and I don’t want to make her worry any more than we’ve already made her do. We’ve caused her enough pain.”

“I don’t think Winry would see it like that,” Roy says reproachfully, sitting up a little straighter. “She’s always going to be worried about you, whether you’re back home in Resembool or off saving the world – which, by the way, thank you for that. You’re considered family in every sense of the word and it’s not going to change all of a sudden just because you have. If she’s anything like you’ve described to me, she is going to be immeasurably happy for you. Like we all are,” he finishes pointedly, watching the younger man duck his head, red blooming through his cheeks.

It’s quiet in the room for a while. Roy grabs one of the books that Falman had left for him – apparently people in the North had nothing better to do than write lurid and exceptionally long tales of Drachman spies and wily Amestrian woman seducing them with ample bosoms and craft beer. Edward remains sitting at the bottom of his bed, alternating between pushing the leftover food around with a fork and flopping out onto his bed, idly quizzing him on various elemental properties and alchemical theories. It’s a welcome reprieve from what his life has been reduced to – waiting and waiting and waiting with no real end in sight. He knows Edward must feel the same, and he doesn’t begrudge him what little change he can make to his routine right now.

Eventually a nurse drops by and nearly drags Edward off the bed, fussing over him and chastising him for leaving his brother alone for so long. Edward rolls his eyes and gives Roy a pointed look as he leaves, Roy understanding that to mean he might be seeing Alphonse in the flesh (and doesn’t that feel strange to think? To fall of his tongue like it’s a normal thing to say about a fourteen year-old boy?) sooner than the doctors and nurses would have him believe.

this chapter feature some beautiful art by @rebbi-sonnenhell, which u can see on the ao3 version of this fic. i’ll be sure to reblog the art once they publish it bc i am in love with it a LOT

[readbookywooks]

[Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the manner of educating their children. The author's way of living in that country. His vindication of a great lady.] Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a particular treatise, yet, in the mean time, I am content to gratify the curious reader with some general ideas. As the common size of the natives is somewhat under six inches high, so there is an exact proportion in all other animals, as well as plants and trees: for instance, the tallest horses and oxen are between four and five inches in height, the sheep an inch and half, more or less: their geese about the bigness of a sparrow, and so the several gradations downwards till you come to the smallest, which to my sight, were almost invisible; but nature has adapted the eyes of the Lilliputians to all objects proper for their view: they see with great exactness, but at no great distance. And, to show the sharpness of their sight towards objects that are near, I have been much pleased with observing a cook pulling a lark, which was not so large as a common fly; and a young girl threading an invisible needle with invisible silk. Their tallest trees are about seven feet high: I mean some of those in the great royal park, the tops whereof I could but just reach with my fist clenched. The other vegetables are in the same proportion; but this I leave to the reader's imagination. I shall say but little at present of their learning, which, for many ages, has flourished in all its branches among them: but their manner of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans, nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians, nor from up to down, like the Chinese, but aslant, from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England. They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet. The learned among them confess the absurdity of this doctrine; but the practice still continues, in compliance to the vulgar. There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification. It is only to be wished they were as well executed. The first I shall mention, relates to informers. All crimes against the state, are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the emperor for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed. (2) Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there bring sufficient proof, that he has strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, has a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality or condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of SNILPALL, or legal, which is added to his name, but does not descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is upon this account that the image of Justice, in their courts of judicature, is formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on each side one, to signify circumspection; with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a sword sheathed in her left, to show she is more disposed to reward than to punish. In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions. In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts. In relating these and the following laws, I would only be understood to mean the original institutions, and not the most scandalous corruptions, into which these people are fallen by the degenerate nature of man. For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction. Ingratitude is among them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of mankind, from whom he has received no obligation, and therefore such a man is not fit to live. Their notions relating to the duties of parents and children differ extremely from ours. For, since the conjunction of male and female is founded upon the great law of nature, in order to propagate and continue the species, the Lilliputians will needs have it, that men and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the like natural principle: for which reason they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed. Upon these, and the like reasonings, their opinion is, that parents are the last of all others to be trusted with the education of their own children; and therefore they have in every town public nurseries, where all parents, except cottagers and labourers, are obliged to send their infants of both sexes to be reared and educated, when they come to the age of twenty moons, at which time they are supposed to have some rudiments of docility. These schools are of several kinds, suited to different qualities, and both sexes. They have certain professors well skilled in preparing children for such a condition of life as befits the rank of their parents, and their own capacities, as well as inclinations. I shall first say something of the male nurseries, and then of the female. The nurseries for males of noble or eminent birth, are provided with grave and learned professors, and their several deputies. The clothes and food of the children are plain and simple. They are bred up in the principles of honour, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of their country; they are always employed in some business, except in the times of eating and sleeping, which are very short, and two hours for diversions consisting of bodily exercises. They are dressed by men till four years of age, and then are obliged to dress themselves, although their quality be ever so great; and the women attendant, who are aged proportionably to ours at fifty, perform only the most menial offices. They are never suffered to converse with servants, but go together in smaller or greater numbers to take their diversions, and always in the presence of a professor, or one of his deputies; whereby they avoid those early bad impressions of folly and vice, to which our children are subject. Their parents are suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an hour; they are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them to whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys, sweetmeats, and the like. The pension from each family for the education and entertainment of a child, upon failure of due payment, is levied by the emperor's officers. The nurseries for children of ordinary gentlemen, merchants, traders, and handicrafts, are managed proportionably after the same manner; only those designed for trades are put out apprentices at eleven years old, whereas those of persons of quality continue in their exercises till fifteen, which answers to twenty-one with us: but the confinement is gradually lessened for the last three years. In the female nurseries, the young girls of quality are educated much like the males, only they are dressed by orderly servants of their own sex; but always in the presence of a professor or deputy, till they come to dress themselves, which is at five years old. And if it be found that these nurses ever presume to entertain the girls with frightful or foolish stories, or the common follies practised by chambermaids among us, they are publicly whipped thrice about the city, imprisoned for a year, and banished for life to the most desolate part of the country. Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and that some rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among peoples of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and her companions. In the nurseries of females of the meaner sort, the children are instructed in all kinds of works proper for their sex, and their several degrees: those intended for apprentices are dismissed at seven years old, the rest are kept to eleven. The meaner families who have children at these nurseries, are obliged, besides their annual pension, which is as low as possible, to return to the steward of the nursery a small monthly share of their gettings, to be a portion for the child; and therefore all parents are limited in their expenses by the law. For the Lilliputians think nothing can be more unjust, than for people, in subservience to their own appetites, to bring children into the world, and leave the burthen of supporting them on the public. As to persons of quality, they give security to appropriate a certain sum for each child, suitable to their condition; and these funds are always managed with good husbandry and the most exact justice. The cottagers and labourers keep their children at home, their business being only to till and cultivate the earth, and therefore their education is of little consequence to the public: but the old and diseased among them, are supported by hospitals; for begging is a trade unknown in this empire. And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some account of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months, and thirteen days. Having a head mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide, and three feet make a piece. The sempstresses took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each held by the end, while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat: but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all of a colour. I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes a-piece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors slung on their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a sirloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed ours. Of their smaller fowl I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired "that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness," as he was pleased to call it, "of dining with me." They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs of state, upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise with his white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe, that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor "the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent. below par; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of SPRUGS" (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle) "and, upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me." I am here obliged to vindicate the reputation of an excellent lady, who was an innocent sufferer upon my account. The treasurer took a fancy to be jealous of his wife, from the malice of some evil tongues, who informed him that her grace had taken a violent affection for my person; and the court scandal ran for some time, that she once came privately to my lodging. This I solemnly declare to be a most infamous falsehood, without any grounds, further than that her grace was pleased to treat me with all innocent marks of freedom and friendship. I own she came often to my house, but always publicly, nor ever without three more in the coach, who were usually her sister and young daughter, and some particular acquaintance; but this was common to many other ladies of the court. And I still appeal to my servants round, whether they at any time saw a coach at my door, without knowing what persons were in it. On those occasions, when a servant had given me notice, my custom was to go immediately to the door, and, after paying my respects, to take up the coach and two horses very carefully in my hands (for, if there were six horses, the postillion always unharnessed four,) and place them on a table, where I had fixed a movable rim quite round, of five inches high, to prevent accidents. And I have often had four coaches and horses at once on my table, full of company, while I sat in my chair, leaning my face towards them; and when I was engaged with one set, the coachmen would gently drive the others round my table. I have passed many an afternoon very agreeably in these conversations. But I defy the treasurer, or his two informers (I will name them, and let them make the best of it) Clustril and Drunlo, to prove that any person ever came to me INCOGNITO, except the secretary Reldresal, who was sent by express command of his imperial majesty, as I have before related. I should not have dwelt so long upon this particular, if it had not been a point wherein the reputation of a great lady is so nearly concerned, to say nothing of my own; though I then had the honour to be a NARDAC, which the treasurer himself is not; for all the world knows, that he is only a GLUMGLUM, a title inferior by one degree, as that of a marquis is to a duke in England; yet I allow he preceded me in right of his post. These false informations, which I afterwards came to the knowledge of by an accident not proper to mention, made the treasurer show his lady for some time an ill countenance, and me a worse; and although he was at last undeceived and reconciled to her, yet I lost all credit with him, and found my interest decline very fast with the emperor himself, who was, indeed, too much governed by that favourite.