>>5785414>>5785402>>5785109>>5785086>>5785029>>5785019>>5784984You could not help but follow your father’s mysterious message to the long-lost source, of course… And if you were thus traveling, to meet a man unknown to you, it wouldn’t hurt to have some friends along for moral support.
“You want me to meet your father with you?” Izirina asked, confused. “Why? And… Do I have to?”
She REALLY lacked social graces, you reflected. Nevertheless, she was probably your closest friend, besides Pearce, and the one you spent the most time alone with. You knew each other in a way that it was impossible for people to know each other when they largely or exclusively interact in a group, as was the case with you and Blanchette, Efron, and Testa. And she meant well.
“I need someone to keep an eye on Muffins,” you said, for you knew the key to Izirina Henzler’s strange heart.
She immediately nodded, demeanour shifting instantaneously as she gently stroked the snake-head of the chimera in question beneath his chin.
Logan Pearce, reliable childhood companion that he was, put up no such fight. He was odd in his own way. As the they of you (or four, or perhaps six, depending how you counted Muffins) trekked across Hawksong, you caught his eyes on you repeatedly, looking you over with oddly-intense scrutiny.
“Pearce, what in the name of any god who’s listening are you DOING?”
“Trying to imagine what a human version of you would look like,” he replied.
“I AM a human version of me,” you noted brusquely.
“Half,” Izirina astutely corrected you.
“Yes, well, imagine that half, and that half again,” you said, by now a little annoyed at both your friends teasing you—even if you were reasonably confident that Henzler didn’t know she was doing so.
“You’re just so small and lean I always think of you as an elf, you know?” Pearce remarked, expression carefully neutral.
“Actually, many elves are of human height, and can even grow to be quite tall,” Izirina noted. “The shortness isn’t endemic.”
“Huh, then maybe your dad is a manlet, huh, Tips?”
“Tips?” Izirina parroted, eyebrows raised.
“DO NOT,” you wheeled on her and pointed, “call me ‘Tips’. It’s bad enough that Pearce does it,”
“oh, you know you love it,” he said, no longer bothering to hie his smirk, while Izirina frowned.
You turns back around, fixing your scholar’s hunch to walk taller while trying not to look as if it was a deliberate effort.
(You suspect, in retrospect, that you failed.)
