Emberwood you just don't have any--what's the word--talent.

Saarth saw the hostility before she heard it, noted it in the contortion of the stranger's face and the deepening etch between her brows but it still didn't prepare her for the knife-like words or the repulsed aggressiveness with which the words had been flung. She flinched as if struck (having never been one of the lucky ones able to hide their emotions behind perfect masks), and then embarrassed and flooded with a familiar (but still nauseating) shame, Saarth retreated, giving the stranger the space she so desperately sought. 
Saarthal knew she shouldn't have felt so taken aback by the stranger's reaction, should've expected it, really, but she hadn't and so who was to blame but herself? She could still salvage things, laugh it off - but the damage was done, memories repressed and buried resurfaced, danced in the forefront of her mind; her stomach churned and she felt distinctly sick. For fuck's sake. 
But instead of running off to a river to drown herself and throw up as she so desperately yearned to, Saarthal mustered up a smile. Glancing at the stranger again, resigned, she said: "No, unfortunately this particular quirk of mine was something I was born with, although-" and here she found some sardonic sense of humour, a defensive mechanism more than anything else, "-I would gladly eat spoiled meat if that's what it would take to acquire it - a day or two of diarrhoea is nothing to suffer through compared to being subjected to a lifetime of dick-only diet." Here, Saarth's heartbeat stopped ringing in her ears, the nausea tentatively subsided and she found herself precariously regaining a precious bit of mental footing. "I think I would rather die," she continued, almost drawling, lips tugged into something that was not quite a smirk, but not quite anything else, almost a curl, and then with a questioning tilt of her head, enquired teasingly, almost mockingly, "wouldn't you?"