You'd think he'd asked her to move to the Fallow Mire, with the anxious way her face twists, teeth set to chewing on her lower lip. Her thoughts are such a tangle it feels impossible to tug anything useful out of them, a mess of anxiety and intellectualizing and compulsion, and the longer she makes Stephen wait for a response, the worse it gets. This is a conversation, she has to do something, he's going to figure out she's not worth spending the time onβ
"Did youβ"
Ness cuts herself off, grimacing, face red and eyes on the table. She intended to agree, and leave it at that, and steer them to a new conversation topic. Back to the runes on the cuff, maybe, or showing him how she can prestidigitate stains out of fabric. She still could, probably, if she thought about it enough.
But gods, she wants to know.
"Did you mean it?" She looks up to meet Stephen's eyes, then back to the table, and then, slowly, back to his eyes, searching. Desperately, stupidly hopeful, embarrassing, juvenile, selfish.
no subject
"Did youβ"
Ness cuts herself off, grimacing, face red and eyes on the table. She intended to agree, and leave it at that, and steer them to a new conversation topic. Back to the runes on the cuff, maybe, or showing him how she can prestidigitate stains out of fabric. She still could, probably, if she thought about it enough.
But gods, she wants to know.
"Did you mean it?" She looks up to meet Stephen's eyes, then back to the table, and then, slowly, back to his eyes, searching. Desperately, stupidly hopeful, embarrassing, juvenile, selfish.
"That I'm good at it. You mean it?"