Snippet #1286752

Myr flinched inwardly when Matt pressed the conversation one question further than she would have. If there was anything she had learned from her time on the continent, it was that reading people. especially the implications of the the things they said and did not say, was a crucial skill if one wished to avoid unnecessary conflict. While it wasn't quite so grave an infraction as that, she disliked the blankness on Shadow's face.

The thing was, it wasn't what she would call a tranquil sort of passivity. Something about it bespoke too many pieces of knowledge the man himself could have done without. Blond eyebrows furrowed slightly as she puzzled over the meaning of something like that. Usually, it was a look she saw in old soldiers, men and women with lifetimes of battle behind them. Not so in the young, or at least not until now. Troubling...

But she could tell her concern would be of little practical use to anyone, and so she left it unvoiced. Surely, everyone here had enough to worry about without adding her own anxieties about what might be into the mix. No, the conversation had taken a very serious direction indeed; hardly the stuff of pleasantry.

While it might be the case that some of their party would wish to travel largely in silence, she could tell that with this mix of people, such would not be the case. Perhaps, then, it would be useful to return the conversation to neutral ground of some sort. The trouble was, she disliked useless chatter also, and thus it would be necessary to find something both practical and innocuous to discuss. Sometimes, she wished she were still among her people.

"So what sort of place is this town that we travel to?" she asked aloud. That one at least, was both an innocent question (that probably anyone besides herself could answer differently) and also relevant, since it made sense to know what they were getting into.