Mycroft takes in the younger Ilde, the effusive silver-haired man at her side, and the stunning manor that serves as the video's setting. The entire production says a lot about Ilde, leading Mycroft to contemplate the importance of specific context.
Particularly interesting are her and her father's appearances. Compared to the way Ilde looks now (blatantly unreal), both her younger self and Mr. Featherstonehaugh seem solid and true. There is still something otherworldly about them, something indefinable, but it's not illusory. Even though they're on a video, Mycroft somehow knows he's seeing what they really look like.
She was part human then, he remembers (and with the memory of that conversation come flashes of other things—but not now, not here, it's already so loud). He wonders which existence she would choose, were she able. She had spoken of her humanity as something that had been taken away—as though she'd been a glass of humanity half-full and not a glass of fae half-empty—and so Mycroft has his theories.
“It was a beautiful home,” is all Mycroft says in the end, though he says it with sincerity.
As he does so, he lets something come through in his expression that speaks to the presence of deeper thought, to the fact that he's seen more than what's on the surface here. It's such a personal thing for him to have seen, for her to have willingly showed him, and yet she's not truly aware of how revealing it was to do so. The least he can do (the very least) is show her this tiny piece of what lies underneath.
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Particularly interesting are her and her father's appearances. Compared to the way Ilde looks now (blatantly unreal), both her younger self and Mr. Featherstonehaugh seem solid and true. There is still something otherworldly about them, something indefinable, but it's not illusory. Even though they're on a video, Mycroft somehow knows he's seeing what they really look like.
She was part human then, he remembers (and with the memory of that conversation come flashes of other things—but not now, not here, it's already so loud). He wonders which existence she would choose, were she able. She had spoken of her humanity as something that had been taken away—as though she'd been a glass of humanity half-full and not a glass of fae half-empty—and so Mycroft has his theories.
“It was a beautiful home,” is all Mycroft says in the end, though he says it with sincerity.
As he does so, he lets something come through in his expression that speaks to the presence of deeper thought, to the fact that he's seen more than what's on the surface here. It's such a personal thing for him to have seen, for her to have willingly showed him, and yet she's not truly aware of how revealing it was to do so. The least he can do (the very least) is show her this tiny piece of what lies underneath.