[ He’s quiet while he does the math, cool eyes locked on across the table, steady, measuring connection at odds with his earlier slither in and out of eye contact. In any other month, at any other time, he might say I’m sorry that happened to you or that must have been very difficult.
I was fifteen and living with cousins outside of town, in the wake of the blight and my parents' deaths as a result. The area was overrun almost immediately; there were Wardens around, fighting. I did what I could to protect my cousins, which was mostly setting any creature on fire that came too close.
[ Adrasteia takes another sip of ale and shakes her head. ]
I was very lucky that no one was paying much attention, or I could have been shipped off to a Circle immediately.
[ Thedosians don’t fuck around with their origin stories, do they? Unsure what he expected, Richard nods on a distinct delay to allow for imagination to play itself out. ]
That is fortunate, [ he agrees, presumably on the subject of avoiding Circles and not her dead parents. ] I’m sorry about your family.
no subject
Here and now, scruffy and ill-rested, he asks: ]
How did you survive?
no subject
[ Adrasteia takes another sip of ale and shakes her head. ]
I was very lucky that no one was paying much attention, or I could have been shipped off to a Circle immediately.
no subject
That is fortunate, [ he agrees, presumably on the subject of avoiding Circles and not her dead parents. ] I’m sorry about your family.
no subject
[ Most of them have dead family. ]
But thank you.