Elriss presses her face into her hands as everybody talks at once. The headache is deafening. Stupid hangovers. Yeerks should be immune.
<I feel okay,> pipes Rose cheerfully.
<Ugh. Shut up,> mumbles Elriss.
"Where's Haviss when you need him," she mutters to herself. The sound of a shattering glass punctuates her conscious and she groans and finally looks up again, blinking. "Two Advil, please, hon," she says to the Bartender who is, conveniently, standing right next to her when she opens her eyes.
"Hon," she says sweetly, if distractedly, to Ike, "the Yeerks get along just fine without a higher power behind us. Not that I'd turn down the help," she says thoughtfully. "Your god sounds awful nice and all, but in the end I'm sure it's just another one of those things where we're considered evil enslavers of other races and all that. Human religions don't leave much room for Yeerks." Her lip curls when Ike excuses himself to go talk with Mar. Ugh. So he's still hanging around this place.
She laughs and turns to James, "It wouldn't be difficult to be more homogenous than humanity. Hundreds of opinions... who has need of so much disagreement?" She sneers as she speaks, the irony in what she's saying almost entirely eluding her. She looks to Myitt, "But a 'democracy' might not be the right word. Conjures too many images of bureaucracy and... voting and whatever." She thinks for a moment, "What we do needs a different name. It's lightning fast and brutally efficient. No question about what direction we're taking. No question about who makes the decisions. No question about when their people think they're wrong. The Light knows what's in its members' heads."
Her mouth snaps shut and she turns slowly to face Renlath. Her eyes narrow as he abruptly stands. "Oh, leaving so soon?" she says, her tone falling halfway between pouting and threatening. She throws back the pair of Advil on the counter in front of her and follows it with a swig of her greenish water. "I wish you wouldn't. I feel like we still have so much to talk about."