Lost Creek Hollow there is black coal filling up our homes

Perhaps she was just eager, willing to prove herself and earn a rightful place in their home, somewhere in the myriad of ranks. Or maybe it was just her natural inclination to help others, who was to say. But for a moment he felt as though it were an extended branch of pity, something swung in front of him to bait him to latch on and be carried out. It did not necessarily rub him the wrong way, but the feeling that rose in its wake were mixed and ones that he did not understand. Perhaps, in the end of it all, Mordecai merely played off what had happened to him as a minor thing, when the gravity and reality of it were much more grave.

He did not, however, dawdle for a response. "I'll take it under consideration," he rejoined. "Thank you." Whether he would or not was another story altogether, but even he could agree that he was not quite ready to try himself by crossing that bridge. The best he could manage then and there was making quiet arcs around where he had been holed up, though he felt he went further each time. Coming to the stream was one of those such times, and absently he saw past Root to the frozen runnel and its edging wintry slough.

"So you're a hunter then? Big game, or small?" he went on to ask as she shifted back into his wavering focus.