@valourslain ♡’d !
` You have been taming your blade all evening. `
Felix is already well aware of this. He has witnessed him sharpening his sword countless times, as like a master with so deft a hand --- or perhaps as like a madman, consumed by his craft. More alike the latter, these days, Dedue presumes, though it's hardly a rare sight to behold: embroiled in this bloody business, even the most well-minded of soldiers have begun to crack. Abusing a whetstone well past its expiry is, he supposes, a lesser sin than most.
And maybe he says it as a gentle reminder to wrest him from whatever reverie has claimed his mindfulness, yet it's spoken as a warning, uttered softly; his demeanour, however, ever stalwart, ever stoic. His eyes flicker from the swordsman, then, fixating on the shifting embers of an ebbing campfire. The last of their march before Enbarr.
I am anxious, as well, he thinks to say, though the sentiment dies just as that: a thought. A thousand or more gambits and gambles await them in the Imperial City: too many to squander, too many to speak on, and yet they linger, weighting heavily on the hearts that will soon hoist righteously their lances, boast proudly of their instruments of death. He knows that Felix will not talk of it, and neither does he wish him to. Instead, he grants him a chance of reprieve, if only out of discretion.
` You will wear out its edge soon enough, should you continue. `