Herbalists' Cache Over grass and over stone

And then someone else appeared on the scene.  Someone he didn't know.  Her being unfamiliar was probably a good thing.  It meant that she wasn't part of that consortium of witches and demons (or whatever he considered them now... Tyrants?) that ruled Elysium.  On the other hand, he didn't live in a cave but he did exist in a pretty hermit-like state, but self-imposed and seemingly enforced by the pack.  It hadn't done him any favors.

It made  him awkward and kind of blunt.  It meant he missed her embarrassment entirely and just said, in a kind of normal-but-maybe-a-little-positive kind of way, Oh, uh.  Hi.  Who're you?  If you wanted a socially stunted dork, Mali fit that bill pretty well.  He wasn't expecting to see some random girl out here -- honestly he was kind of expecting Mahler to just appear out of nowhere again because that and that other grump-o-matic were the only people he'd met outside the pack.  To a certain point he kind of expected everyone out there was some big grey-black dude with an attitude.