Bramblepoint a bruise is a lesson... and each lesson makes us better

He felt her eyes on him, and in another life, he might've been keen to latch onto her apparent admiration, perhaps tease a dance or dinner out of her. But the year had left him tired, and ill-tempered towards the games men and women often played. Their dinner would be void of candlelight and jazz; they'd run through the drive-through, and dine-and-dash, before twilight broke to night.

Tuathal fell in step with her.

"Here?" he repeated, surprise evident in the sharp lift of his brow. "Hell no. You'd gotta be a loon to settle anywhere in these Wilds." He paused. "Shit - do you?"

Until this point, Tuathal had only taken her as a fellow passer through. She seemed too normal to be anything else -- taking the long way around rather than breaking through the thickets, politely accepting the proposition of a stranger -- though maybe he'd been too quick to judge.