He hadn’t been careful enough with his phrasing, not monitoring his choice of words with fey specificity. So the corner of his mouth twitches, rueful, pressing: “Had I come to see you in the orchard yet?”
He doesn’t exactly expect them to start slinging spells at each other in the middle of a public space, but he’s hopelessly paranoid even under normal circumstances, and so he’s on his guard. Wanda’s winsome mile is convincing. (He’s always been convinced by her. He’d bought it, whole-sale. Perhaps that’s part of what stings.)
If they’re from divergent worlds, like two trains running along on separate but parallel tracks, he realises his behaviour must be baffling. But Stephen can’t shake the feeling that she’s a cat playing with its food and he’s the mouse. She’s more powerful than him back home and he knows it; there was a reason all he could do was run.
“I was asleep in my room at the Sanctum Sanctorum. I’d recently come back from Kamar-Taj, which they’re still repairing after you attacked it.”
He doesn’t exactly intend to sound so prickly — he wishes he weren’t — he wishes it wasn’t like this, and he’ll likely regret his guardedness later — but he’s been caught wrongfooted today, surprised, offguard, not expecting this ghost with all his attendant baggage about it and her.
no subject
He doesn’t exactly expect them to start slinging spells at each other in the middle of a public space, but he’s hopelessly paranoid even under normal circumstances, and so he’s on his guard. Wanda’s winsome mile is convincing. (He’s always been convinced by her. He’d bought it, whole-sale. Perhaps that’s part of what stings.)
If they’re from divergent worlds, like two trains running along on separate but parallel tracks, he realises his behaviour must be baffling. But Stephen can’t shake the feeling that she’s a cat playing with its food and he’s the mouse. She’s more powerful than him back home and he knows it; there was a reason all he could do was run.
“I was asleep in my room at the Sanctum Sanctorum. I’d recently come back from Kamar-Taj, which they’re still repairing after you attacked it.”
He doesn’t exactly intend to sound so prickly — he wishes he weren’t — he wishes it wasn’t like this, and he’ll likely regret his guardedness later — but he’s been caught wrongfooted today, surprised, offguard, not expecting this ghost with all his attendant baggage about it and her.
(He had, after all, failed her.)