The quest chain sat unopened in the corner of Rama's vision for three days before he let himself look at it properly.
Not fear, exactly. Caution, the discipline of a man who'd learned, across seven years of institutional crisis, that unexamined notifications rarely improved with delay, but examining them too quickly, before there was room to actually respond to whatever they revealed, tended to make things worse rather than better. Three days gave him nothing except distance. He took it anyway, working through his days at the well and the stone wall with the small blue icon sitting untouched at the edge of everything he looked at, a splinter he'd decided not to dig out yet.
Tonight wasn't for the quest chain. Tonight was for something Sekar had been circling for a week, waiting for their daughter to fall asleep before finally saying it outright.
