It's all very well and good to let oneself fall prey to optimism from time to time. Even he, slave though he his to the whims of whatever short sighted master had shackled him here, finds himself subject to the occassional flight of fancy (metaphorically speaking, though literally whenever he can wiggle it in) on a nice spring day. There's this nice thing humans know very little about called hope, which is the only thing that ever really gets a spirit working day in and day out in the world through the day. Hope your would-be master can't spell; hope you don't get indigestion after swallowing them whole; failing all that, at least hope to be done with your charge early so you can get in a game of cards before anyone notices and assigns you another task.
He's something of a connoisseur. So of course he has no trouble at all recognizing the faintest glimmer of it about Kitty. It's something in the eyes when it comes to humans, he thinks - a good sensible iron practicality actively being betrayed by a softened heart. He'd seen it in the faces of starving farmers after being ordered to carve irrigation systems into the land and before a king's man had come by to collect their new tax on their grain; he'd seen it once briefly in the eyes of a magician in a Moroccan tower as he'd joked about not immediately shredding through his protective wards like paper; and he'd felt it once in a boy who--
As is inevitable3, he stamps it out.
"Not who either of us would have preferred, I can tell you that much. But come," he says. The bird begins to preen a crooked feather. "Why don't we avoid troubling ourselves over any of that for the moment. You're looking well. I wouldn't have said it before, but now that we're both quite comfortable I should tell you the gray quite suits you."
3. Not that he's become a cynic. Ask him again in another thousand years and he might be a little less sour grapes about the whole thing.
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It's all very well and good to let oneself fall prey to optimism from time to time. Even he, slave though he his to the whims of whatever short sighted master had shackled him here, finds himself subject to the occassional flight of fancy (metaphorically speaking, though literally whenever he can wiggle it in) on a nice spring day. There's this nice thing humans know very little about called hope, which is the only thing that ever really gets a spirit working day in and day out in the world through the day. Hope your would-be master can't spell; hope you don't get indigestion after swallowing them whole; failing all that, at least hope to be done with your charge early so you can get in a game of cards before anyone notices and assigns you another task.
He's something of a connoisseur. So of course he has no trouble at all recognizing the faintest glimmer of it about Kitty. It's something in the eyes when it comes to humans, he thinks - a good sensible iron practicality actively being betrayed by a softened heart. He'd seen it in the faces of starving farmers after being ordered to carve irrigation systems into the land and before a king's man had come by to collect their new tax on their grain; he'd seen it once briefly in the eyes of a magician in a Moroccan tower as he'd joked about not immediately shredding through his protective wards like paper; and he'd felt it once in a boy who--
As is inevitable3, he stamps it out.
"Not who either of us would have preferred, I can tell you that much. But come," he says. The bird begins to preen a crooked feather. "Why don't we avoid troubling ourselves over any of that for the moment. You're looking well. I wouldn't have said it before, but now that we're both quite comfortable I should tell you the gray quite suits you."