PC: CALEB

[headmt]

Comments

[katzepaw]

A sword seems like it has a little more versatility, though.

[headmt]

Suppose you can blind someone perfectly well with a sword.

[katzepaw]

And if it doesn't take, easy to try again. [. . .] You know, I'd lend you vouchers to get the sword. More useful if there's a fight for you to have one than for me to have some weak little cantrip.

[headmt]

[Oh. That's nice? That's really nice.]

I-- Maybe? Let's see how free they are with these things. Ideally we can get you something better than a cantrip, too, right?

[He tilts his head.]

If I pay for the-- thing that turns my blood to ice, suppose I wouldn't even need a real sword. You know the one of mine is just made of glass.

[katzepaw]

Ja, sure. Well, you give me the vouchers back down the line and I get magic. Let's just get something quickly so it isn't all on Beauregard if something happens.

[headmt]

[A little off the forehead two fingered salute at that.]

Sure.

[But,]

You do your tasks, then? Your extra credit?

[katzepaw]

I did them. One left to ask, if I'm going to do all four, but I'm not asking you because I agree these are stupid.

[headmt]

So you're going to do all four?

[Hrgmghrhm. He doesn't want to.]

[katzepaw]

It sounded like if you did the one related to your dorm, it could be better, so I thought might as well.

[. . . Sighing.]

If you need to ask me any to get them out of the way, I can't promise I'll answer well.

[headmt]

Well. If you want to twist meanings, suppose we've already had a conversation about a conflict.

[Does that count?]

[katzepaw]

I suppose it could count.

[headmt]

Great! Done. Then I'll just go ask a teenager their ideal future - happiness for my family, yadda yadda yadda - easy enough.

[katzepaw]

Do you really think that's such a simple question?

[headmt]

Quite the opposite, actually. Think it's about the most impossible question in the world. Ideal for who? You? Me? Everyone else? Am I just going to want something different when I've reached this so-called ideal world?

Who's to say my world isn't ideal right now? It isn't like I'm unhappy. Well-- Perhaps that's going a little far. My world's a bit shit at the moment. But on the whole, well. It's not so terrible. Enough gold to get by. Decent enough company.

[katzepaw]

[Hearing him lay this all out just makes him feel a little bit impossibly sad. For how alien this contentment sounds to him and for the fact that it was squandered; that someone left him dead in a road and he doesn't even know it. But - ]

Bit shit at the moment?

[headmt]

[Or it's just a portrait of an unambitious drifter with the occasional kind impulse. A con artist, a flim-flam man, but not the worst. Coming from a foggy haze, going nowhere.]

Maybe an overstatement too. Suppose everything's alright at the moment. I'm getting in my head, I think.

[katzepaw]

I am probably not the one to ask if you are too in your head.

[Being one of the gloomier guys around.]

[headmt]

[He huffs a laugh at that.]

Probably not.

[...]

Don't think we've ever talked this long about anything though.

[katzepaw]

No, we probably didn't.

[. . .]

I, uhm. . . I hadn't spent very much time in the company of other people in a very long time. Other than Nott, but even then. . . it took a little while to remember how.

[headmt]

Doing fine, then. I wouldn't worry about it.

[katzepaw]

. . . Question. Do you have any idea what a pinky promise is?

[headmt]

[Somehow I had no fucking idea how to answer that for like. 10 minutes.]

Can't say that I do . . . ?

[katzepaw]

Neither do I. Ah, well. I'll have to keep asking about.

[headmt]

[What is happening here.]

This homework or something?

[katzepaw]

[Tapping the side of his nose.]

Shouldn't say more in case I need you for it.