Firefly Glen but when i go to sleep at night, don't you call my name

he was assigning her manifold forms—oh, she would be delighted to hear tell of them—thinking of all the things she would do with him once she grew bored of him, or after she'd wrung him of useful information. she wasn't thinking of him at all. not in any meaningful way, not in the way through which he had invited fear through the door like a vampire and given it a pleasant guest suite in his stomach before the bloodletting occurred. 

she watched his face plainly, growing impatient with his leisure, but he answered before she felt like sloughing out of her skin from the insipidity of the clock's hand. she set her jaw at his response, tail lashing once through the grass. "mmm, now instead of answering my question truly, you're questioning my intentions, of which i have none, by the way. if i did, your understanding of them would matter little, wouldn't it? of course not. i think we're sidestepping the issue. you were questioning my fear—" she left him some breadth, lest he drop like a fly were she to step up on him, as she rounded on him, but she gave him no brook to interject; the woman did dislike being interrupted. "that only tells me that you're scared of something—and, it's not me who has given you this pheasant complex." 

after completing her languid circuit, she sat in front of him, still entitling riley to his impregnable distance. she wore an expectant expression, one that beggared tolerance for questions of foolishness such as are you dangerous? 

his mental autopsy of what he called her "lurking" went unremarked upon for the time being.

"picture, in your mind, a monster." she instructed baldly, giving him adequate time to do so, like watching a first grader use crayons to draw what he called a dragon but presenting something bearing more of a resemblance to an e. coli sample under a microscope. "now, tell me: what makes it a monster? describe it to me," something with rotting skin with hooks for teeth and a scorpion tail? her, in this evening gown of damask?