Soft come the dragons

Cue: Koo over-thinking everything.

When Ariston made a comment about his hypothetically full stomach, Koontz felt suddenly confused and then awkward. She looked at him quizzically, yet swallowed her baffled query. She had thought it was the mutual assumption that she alone would eat beforehand, after which they would hunt together. It seemed he had meant they would both help themselves to Pitch's cached meat. Now, however, he wanted to skip that altogether so that he wouldn't have to hunt on a full stomach. Koontz felt obligated to forego it as well now, which meant she would have to hunt on an empty one after all. She supposed that that was the point of the whole endeavor...

Blinking hard and feeling suddenly ill at ease over all the misapprehensions regarding whether to eat prior to hunting, Koontz tried to speak lightly as she said, "Okay, so, we're hunting. Now." It was as much question as statement, though it lacked inflection. She seemed to find her answer in either Ariston's face or behavior, which took the edge off her perplexity. More smoothly, she repeated, "We're hunting now," and smiled as if made happy by this development. She just felt relieved at hammering out the plan and impatient at all the unnecessary confusion.

To erase the remaining awkwardness, she grabbed onto his joke. "I will," she said, "and I won't," she added hastily regarding possible loss of bladder control. Feeling conversationally clumsy again, she tried to recover by agreeing, "Mo could kick anyone's butt at hunting. Don't compare yourself to her; it'll only make you feel bad about yourself." A crooked smile slashed across her gray face and she swallowed as she faced forward and continued walking in silence for the moment.