01-15-2008, 11:35 PM
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Sorry for the delay and pitiful length. My muses are not feeling so energetic. Couldn't imagine? Oh, but it was only instinct! At least, it had been, long before they all could speak human languages and walk on two legs. Nature did indeed lose some of its ferocity when you defied it in such a way, if only as a result of being too shocked to react. He glanced at her with an appraising eye. He deserved her brush-off, or would have had he gone any further with his smartassing, but lords above, was that ever impolite! Poisoning him and then acting as if he were naught but a fly on the wall. Well, then. He padded through the snow, tail curled like a sled dog's. It was a delicate situation, he supposed — after all, the odds that someone offering to walk with you in these parts had ulterior motives was uncannily high. Even so, if that was what troubled her, she probably would not have mentioned the deathly nature of her plants, instead biding her time until he collapsed and then doing things to the corpse that he'd rather not contemplate. Maybe she looked down on him for not having been able to tell? He should have been looking down on himself for that. His knowledge about humans and their culture, while abundant (some might say excessive or even obsessive), certainly had less practical use than her own of botany. Of course, his knowledge was all the more useful in this area, and in the winter, to boot. (Although, she was not quite right in her assumption, as even if he had known a quicker route he'd have forgotten it after so long.) His mood had planted itself firmly on a swing (and no rusty, squeaky old thing, either — this was a sparkling new little red number), so that he now hovered between his pre-encounter melancholy and his post-encounter gaiety. A balance like that was very given to subtly dark devil-may-care grins playing across his jaws. "Don't you? Oh, I'm hurt," he mused, and though that undoubtedly didn't help his case, he couldn't resist. Granted, it wasn't all sarcasm, as the volatility of immediate reaction brewing in the pit of his stomach could attest to, but he'd prefer to ignore that if he could. "Not that I can blame you. I haven't even introduced myself." But then, what was there to introduce? Naturally, he'd wait for her to take the bait, and if she didn't, all the better for him. He really should not have picked such a ridiculous name. "How easy is it to like a character that doesn't even have a name?" That was spoken with some bitterness behind it, but he dropped the thought before it could make itself at home. |