...it struck at the root of intentions, not at the flower. And both root and the flower were important to him, one having to do with what one meant … - C. J. Cherryh

While the world had been under kif guns, they had tidied up the house, cooked dinner, and started replanting the garden. Pyanfar lowered her ears at the thought, how little real the larger universe was to downworld hani, who had never thoroughly imagined what had almost happened to them; who heard about the terrible damage to the station as they might hear about some earthquake in a remote area of the globe, shaking their heads in sympathy and regretting it, but not personally touched — worried for their own kin, of course worried; and there would be hugging and sympathy at homecoming. But they set the world in order by replanting the garden and seeing Kohan fed. Gods look on them all.

What is, is, and that's what we know. What will be is a fine pursuit, but fraught with too damned many possibilities. Fortune-telling, I tell you, is not what it's surmised to be.

Given ignorance in the mix, stupidity was at least as common in politics as astute maneuvering;