Sunspire Mountains all the butterflies have turned to vultures in my stomach

"he calls me peaches" 

if esmé's brows could lift far enough to touch her ears, they would have the instant riley divulged this piece of information. she opened her mouth to interrupt, but clapped it shut. for once, waiting for the inside-joke to be exposed.

there wasn't any. how very vexing.

she particularly loathed men who coquetted with the young; they were the pustules on society's back, and she wanted to personally lance every-one of them. 

he pressed on and she tried to follow the maze of A Day in The Life of Riley but the boy inevitably ran ahead of her, leading her around corners that were for all practical purposes dead-ends. "then i thought i scented you. so i followed it. i was at this place with the soggy trees resting," her eyes narrowed. his nose must have been like one of the furbies your aunt (no? just mine? ok) kept in the kitchen that randomly turned off and on, because she had never passed any "soggy trees". the fuck was a soggy tree? a moldered log? 

alas, she reluctantly let him run his mouth to the end of its chain without interrupting because she was concerned he might actually forget the rest of it and she was curious about who'd laced into him.

just some wolves? huh. to her dispapointment, he was stingy with the gory details, and by the end of his tale, esmé was left with an expression that only this gif can convey.

"sounds like you've been busy." she finally said, puffing her cheeks out, not really knowing where to start with this one. there was a lot to muck through, and while riley himself could casually collapse through a blackhole and she wouldn't think twice about it, sis was nosy and his recent exploits had bussed her to a place of indelible curiosity.  

"this guy, the one who calls you ... peaches," she squinted one eye. man calls a boy barely out of adolescence peaches? nop. didn't sit right with her. unfortunately, she had no idea where "red scar" or "red sands" were, and she didn't want his disarrayed curriculum on geography. "tell me more about your time with him, hmm? he gave you food? was the other man with him, or was that a separate encounter?"