Emli gazes up at Han, eyes filled with half-lidded fire. Han gazes back at Emli, and there is nothing [i]but[/i] fire. Everywhere. All around them. The exits are blocked. None of them will escape. She will die, taken tragically before her time, and she won’t have the dignity of proper last words, for all her thoughts are and ever will be: Screaming.

Is it any better when the slave-girl shows her mercy, and changes the toipc? It is worse, actually. She speaks of a world Han could never afford to enter. She touches that hated [i]thing[/i] with honor and reverence. Moments ago, Emli stood within a scaffolding of a person that stood fast, no matter what mysteries were yet to be discovered. Now that, too, is gone, and Han cannot identify the pretty, girl-shaped creature running a hand along her bare side.

You ought to thank the slave-girl, scribe. A better distraction you couldn’t have asked for.

She recoils, from fear, from shock, from the terror of the unknown, and her head lands precisely where you commanded it to. You reach over so naturally, so easily, that she would have sworn you were as a statue until your fingers were already working through her hair. Now it is too late. For her. For you.

Before she can speak, you are drawing out the cost of a week’s worth of forced marching, of foraged meals, of sleep pried from knobby roots and hard earth. You break apart trigger points, one after another, and she cannot relax [i]more[/i] than this, and yet there goes another, come to shatter her thoughts anew. Your fingers glide through her hair, maneuvering so carefully through the knots that they may have never even existed. Long, smooth, steady brushes, gentle pressure sliding down her head, tickling the back of her neck as you pass.

But though she shivers under your fingers, though a haze threatens to swallow her mind, her body is a mass of tension, a coiled spring. The sound stirring in her throat might as easily be a growl as a purr. You tease a knife by the blade. You only continue because this dragon permits it, and she has yet to settle her mind. She has [i]questions,[/i] scribe. She is so full of questions she might burst, and you sit beside a bomb.

Why are you touching her?

What are you going to do with her?

(What does she want you to do?)
    
”Who,” she blinks sleepy eyes. “The hell are you?”

How will you answer her?

[Rolling to Figure Out A Person: 3 + 1 - 2 = [b]2[/b]]