Only a man who feels his own wit challenged would feel the need to say so.
[ Unremarkable, that's what she'd decided he was. Clever, certainly, with a thinly-veiled arrogance and a hawk's eye. A higher sense of himself than could ever be deserved, surely, and a detachment that she does not believe runs bone-deep. The sort that speaks of fear.
The names he speaks do, in fact, mean nothing to her, and she can refer to no faintly-sketched map in her mind to try and make sense of what the titles mean, or to which 'north' they refer to. She studies his face for a moment longer and then returns her attention to the bowl of berries, selecting another and chasing it with a sip of tea. Regardless of where precisely he came from, the arrangement of the privileged and the enslaved could not be so different from what she knew.
And while he may think to preempt the next few questions that naturally rise to her tongue, she does not abandon them so easily. ]
Why has she rescinded her claim? I have never known a shepherd to willingly surrender any part of her flock. Were you a recalcitrant sheep, or only a disappointing one? [ An unremarkable one, as it were. But even sheep of ordinary stature and spirit were made to serve. ]
no subject
[ Unremarkable, that's what she'd decided he was. Clever, certainly, with a thinly-veiled arrogance and a hawk's eye. A higher sense of himself than could ever be deserved, surely, and a detachment that she does not believe runs bone-deep. The sort that speaks of fear.
The names he speaks do, in fact, mean nothing to her, and she can refer to no faintly-sketched map in her mind to try and make sense of what the titles mean, or to which 'north' they refer to. She studies his face for a moment longer and then returns her attention to the bowl of berries, selecting another and chasing it with a sip of tea. Regardless of where precisely he came from, the arrangement of the privileged and the enslaved could not be so different from what she knew.
And while he may think to preempt the next few questions that naturally rise to her tongue, she does not abandon them so easily. ]
Why has she rescinded her claim? I have never known a shepherd to willingly surrender any part of her flock. Were you a recalcitrant sheep, or only a disappointing one? [ An unremarkable one, as it were. But even sheep of ordinary stature and spirit were made to serve. ]