"Worry not. I seek out no slights. They find me well enough on their own when intended." More of the dryness, and though he doesn't smile, there's a certain quality of one briefly in his eyes. It's short lived. Pain makes everything effort. He has little enough energy to exert. He takes passing note of how she places herself, nothing overtly odd in it. Why should she bear closeness with a stranger? "You're Rohirrim." Her accent marks her even more than her fairness. "Do the walls of the White City chafe?"
He hasn't intended an intrusive question nor realized how potentially personal it could be until it's out. At the best of times, he's not overly careful with words, not usually in any sort of company that might require it. He lets it stand. It would only be worse to walk it back, and in truth, he's genuinely curious. Of Gondor, he knows plenty, how daily life is spent, what is most valued and least by her rank and file. It had been long since he'd set foot in Minas Tirith before the rout, but it, too, is familiar, or was before the siege. Not only does it feel more a stranger to him than ever before, but he feels one to himself. Fitting that he'd find himself in the company of one whose ways are much less known.
The two of them could be seated somewhere outside of time in this walled garden, bound only by the breath they draw and the undercurrent of agony that's a new constant. He read it in her sway, in how swiftly she folded down to the bench. Of the battle, he still has heard little enough. The healers have been too busy trying to put their charges back together again to gossip and have possibly forbidden others from speaking of it. He has heard no visitors to fellow patients recount what they saw or heard, although more than a few times he has heard the whispers of dread or fragile hope regarding the force that left for Mordor.
His thoughts meander like a river but flow more swiftly. He'd chide himself for his drifting focus if the reason weren't so all encompassing. He feels a cruel throb deep in the shattered limb with every pulse of his heartbeat.
no subject
He hasn't intended an intrusive question nor realized how potentially personal it could be until it's out. At the best of times, he's not overly careful with words, not usually in any sort of company that might require it. He lets it stand. It would only be worse to walk it back, and in truth, he's genuinely curious. Of Gondor, he knows plenty, how daily life is spent, what is most valued and least by her rank and file. It had been long since he'd set foot in Minas Tirith before the rout, but it, too, is familiar, or was before the siege. Not only does it feel more a stranger to him than ever before, but he feels one to himself. Fitting that he'd find himself in the company of one whose ways are much less known.
The two of them could be seated somewhere outside of time in this walled garden, bound only by the breath they draw and the undercurrent of agony that's a new constant. He read it in her sway, in how swiftly she folded down to the bench. Of the battle, he still has heard little enough. The healers have been too busy trying to put their charges back together again to gossip and have possibly forbidden others from speaking of it. He has heard no visitors to fellow patients recount what they saw or heard, although more than a few times he has heard the whispers of dread or fragile hope regarding the force that left for Mordor.
His thoughts meander like a river but flow more swiftly. He'd chide himself for his drifting focus if the reason weren't so all encompassing. He feels a cruel throb deep in the shattered limb with every pulse of his heartbeat.