Sleepy Fox Hollow Away, tryna be somebody else

He ruminated in his own thoughts while the Widow bent to her child. Her prolonged look would bother him for some time. He tucked it in the back of his mind, thumbing over it with a troubled scowl. 

When she rose, he stiffened. As much as he loathed her in that moment, he was not so cruel as to hurt a child. At least, not yet. 

Feeling that unspoken implication in the air, Anselm stood alongside Etienne. While the healer sat, Anselm studied the still form of the girl in silence. 

She looked so very different than the woman he’d pinned to the ground. Shame rose in smoky tendrils around his heart, curdling the last of his good will. 

He wanted to break the silence that threatened to puncture the tenuous bond that he and Etienne had painfully established, but in that moment nothing came. With nothing to say, Anselm cast a long glance Etienne’s way before he rounded his shoulders in a shrug and strode off.