Jade Fern Grove white lines, pretty baby

Wardruna's ears pivot as she barks back, having noticed his lingering presence at the bank opposite of her, her tone cool as it reaches his awaiting ears. A smarmy reply to his condescended tone. She speaks something about his lack of understanding and his ears swivel once more and cup forth, attentive, atop his skull as he awaits her next words with a twitch of his lips partially amused and partially feral as he anticipates what she’s got up her sleeve for him. Wardruna does not expect what does tumble from her lips and thus his reaction is, as ever, utterly unpredictable. The anger at her unwittingly touch upon his vulnerability: calling him a blind man so carelessly as if calling anyone a blind man in any sort of sharp tongued jest is funny is abrupt. She has done more than touch upon a raw nerve within him: she’s pressed upon it until it throbs and he wants nothing more than to scream. In agony, in anger. It is the same thing to him now. Agony is what fueled his anger and the result of that agony even now that it is gone in the wake of the loss of sight in his left eye the inferno still burns and boils like hot magma beneath his skin. He catches himself: teetering on the edge of launching himself at her across the water — depths be damned! — or playing the war of words Wardruna believes the stranger thinks she’s so clever at. The language barrier will only make it hard for him to battle her successfully in a game of sharp wits. His grasp upon the common tongue is fluent enough ( he is of a sharp intellect, after all ) but he knows he will never master the elegance of a native speaker ( more-so because he doesn’t care to and not so much that he is incapable ). “Is that meant to offend me?” He draws, summoning cruel arrogance with a haughty snort to mask the ire that burns deep in the marrow of his bones. She didn’t know. Doesn’t know and it is for her ignorance that he hates her so abruptly and without preamble.