foots and doors

"Let me be your bookkeeper," Minoth pleads. Lora has to check herself, at the very idea of him earnestly beseeching for anything at all. Minoth, the Flesh Eater to exemplify all others? Mr. Independence, the savant of private and self-directed initiatives even when under threat of exactly no danger? "Keep me on for something. I'll make myself useful."

Lora stares at him, tongue touching the roof of her mouth repeatedly as she tries to make sense of it. Count the tics, one, two, three...

No, no. Even if she'd drifted off into fairyland, completely zoned out of the current conversation, Minoth's face is too serious and uncrafted for her to remain in disbelief. She is only assuming what she thinks she knows to be true - hasn't Minoth himself taught her never to do so? She's the queen of awkward misunderstandings when she desperately doesn't want to be, all the time, every place.

The facts. The facts. What are the facts? "You want to be...kept on? At an orphanage?"

Minoth nods, grave. "I am an orphan, you know."

Well, in a sense. It could be argued. Amalthus might sternly yet blithely remind him that he is no such thing, and he cannot claim it, but Lora's of the mind for taking people as they are and as they say. If Minoth says he's an orphan, then he's got no place else to go.

But here?

"I don't understand why you're asking, all of a sudden," says Lora. She tries to be as pleasant as possible. Maybe she succeeds. Minoth smiles, but it's more of a wince. "Our friendship shouldn't have changed at all, just because we're not traveling together anymore."

Minoth's commitment to the idyll of circumstance is deep as much as it is broad, then, one can see.

"I just..." Then he turns his head to the side, scoffs, waves a hand. "Forget I said anything."

Oh oh. Bad news, that one. But Lora's heard it enough times out of her gangly gaucho friend (oh, it's an endlessly applicable description, she likes it so much) that it hardly fazes her, anymore. Like a bratty individual of smaller stature that's chosen a set of boundary-pushing actions merely to garner attention, they play with the ebb and flow.

Minoth knows how to do that. Oh, Maestro knows how to playact, alright.

She really has to resist the temptation to have a last word - to remind him, say, you know that back to square one is right where you wanted to be, don't you? You know I won't forget, but I will? You know I'll still love you, wherever on Alrest you roam?

"You know you're just like a child, sometimes?"

Minoth wheels on her with a massive sigh, about to light into her at the audaciously declarative nature of her question. Rhetorical, they call that.

But he doesn't. He just sighs again.

You're worse than Addam, is what he doesn't say, but Lora knows he's thinking it. He's predictable, like that.