Firefly Glen the grand optimist

What's this?

His head canted as he observed, unseen from a vantage point did not afford him the best of views. But Dirge was a sharp creature; he understood swiftly that there was a history here that spoke of another time, perhaps well before him. What exactly that history entailed he did not know, but there were volumes upon volumes to simply be read from the distant dance both parties partook in.

It was Hydra who he watched at length, at first. Her agitation was a mimicry of the one she had met him with before but there was a depth there, a hesitation that seemed to quiver with the tension that spanned from her to him—him, this proverbial stranger, this previous suitor. Dirge's gaze roamed over him too, only to bore into him as though he could see into a great void in the pattern of his winter coat.

He felt a tension arise him in that was considerably new, if not a long buried feeling he had not felt towards Hydra until then. It was not anger but a branch away from such, a path that could lead towards it far easily than another, and the name jumped to life as he rolled his shoulders: jealousy. Such an emotion did not loosen or hasten him from his post; Dirge was nothing but an opportunist and a showman of his own workings—he emerged slowly, projecting his own station and confidence as he came to follow after Hydra. However, his gaze did not receive her, but stayed on the stranger.

And like any respectable showman wishing to make a point, he lingered close enough to offer her suitor the parting words he so wished to hear: "Go." She may have been a pit viper ever poised and coiled and he a snake charmer, but the venom of his tone would not be mistaken.