“Oh, that’s, no,” Gale started, mildly mortified, trying to find a way to gracefully backpedal from that accusation. (It was so easy, really, to alarm the man and put him on the back foot.)
“That’s not what I meant— I relish any opportunity to— I mean, a distraction from our perpetual predicament would be welcome.”
Like a nervous tic, his hand reached up and pressed his fingertips against his chest, that tell-tale bruise at the neck of his robes. He knew, intellectually, that the tadpole was squirming and burrowing somewhere behind his eye socket, arrested in stasis as it was; the orb in his chest, however, was a far more present concern. A permanent dull ache, a pain crawling up his neck and down his arm like liquid fire. So. For better or worse, he was well-accustomed to that sense of finding distraction from the blade(s) hanging over their heads.
“I mean only that I’d be a terrible valet, huffing and puffing beside you. But if you don’t mind the shopping excursion taking a bit longer and being a bit more inelegant, then by all means. More time spent with you is lovely. And even better if there’s less hacking and slashing and death and mayhem and survival and tadpoles.”
no subject
“That’s not what I meant— I relish any opportunity to— I mean, a distraction from our perpetual predicament would be welcome.”
Like a nervous tic, his hand reached up and pressed his fingertips against his chest, that tell-tale bruise at the neck of his robes. He knew, intellectually, that the tadpole was squirming and burrowing somewhere behind his eye socket, arrested in stasis as it was; the orb in his chest, however, was a far more present concern. A permanent dull ache, a pain crawling up his neck and down his arm like liquid fire. So. For better or worse, he was well-accustomed to that sense of finding distraction from the blade(s) hanging over their heads.
“I mean only that I’d be a terrible valet, huffing and puffing beside you. But if you don’t mind the shopping excursion taking a bit longer and being a bit more inelegant, then by all means. More time spent with you is lovely. And even better if there’s less hacking and slashing and death and mayhem and survival and tadpoles.”