picking you up

"Fine." Minoth shook out his wrist, his arm, and then his whole shoulder and chest, for good measure. Lora watched him, and smiled. "You're more than a match for my strength, involuntarily waning as it may be," he tacked on with a coy, faux-plaintive eyeroll, "but I said experience."

"Measured in years? Well, I've twenty-seven."

"Seventeen."

"Fine!" Lora began cracking her knuckles, brightly. "Say seventeen. And you've got...?"

It was down to years spent in the wild, on your own, fending for yourself - could Jin and Lora be counted separately? if they could, then she wasn't alone, but say they couldn't, and say it took a lot to even harness such a bond with such a Blade - and not time idled stocking shelves at the Heblin country store (or unstocking them, if you thought about Haze, but it wasn't likely that Lora was going to, just now). Nor studying, nor teaching. Nor keeping the accounts. Nay, that was and had been the lot(s) of Addam and Flora.

Woman at arms, he'd said. And, well, there were arms ("To arms!") and there were...arms.

Minoth liked to think his were fairly well-muscled. He hadn't checked in a while, though. Didn't feel like it. It didn't take much fortitude to lift woodland insects and assorted fauna, but hey, if Aegaeon could hide his strength, so could Minoth. Right?

Another pitiful comparison. Minoth, the failed experiment, versus the ever-noble Crest of Mor Ardain.

The predictable conclusion, Minoth thought, was that he was being taken...stock of. As usual. Less so than actually being engaged in conversation. That was the uncharitable interpretation, but it wasn't mean-spirited - did Lora even possess the capacity? No, it was the most loving and perennial of tender grills.

Cued by the final crack, Minoth admitted, to his historical recollection, "None to speak of."

"No...!" Lora cried, drawing out the -o and throwing down her inflection. "Two, I thought you said? And seventeen over two is...is..."

"Is just about exactly how badly you beat me."

"Awww, is someone a little bit of a sore loser?"

"Would a sore loser stand here before you," Minoth swept his arms out at the ground between them, "and say so?" Or...not say so? However the math worked out.

"I'm not sure," said Lora, reaching up to ruffle his hair. "See? You're not so scary."

"I never said I wanted to be scary."

"Oh, you want to be all big and tough, but you're really just as soft as you say I am!"

"Aren't you thinking of Jin?"

"Always," replied Lora fondly, and the next thing Minoth knew, he was the mechanism for Lora's next test (and feat) of strength, hefted in a bridal carry and then subsequently tossed over the knight's shoulder like - what else? - a sack of potatoes.