Yes, HR, it was definitely more interesting to send Auraugu after the Bough than to send anyone else; Auraugu makes everything better, and honestly, how smart can you be if you don’t know that?

HR’s frustration echoes Phil’s and my own, in more ways than one. We likewise had a plan for the encounter with the wood elves, large parts of which were demolished for reasons we ourselves could barely understand at times. And while we were happier with the results than HR is, our uncertainty about whether we could end the series well had never been higher, and our need to take that out on each other had never been greater.

And yet Carol echoes us too, because the only way to keep moving ahead with this big project to which we’d tied our destinies was to keep acting like everything was normal, no matter how many angry blowups were punctuating our discussions.