I.
She sat down not as far from him and definitely not with ears as long trailing behind him like the stray bits of string that dangled from his robes. He stared at her so intensely he trembled in his seat. This was not the man they told him about, he seemed so frightened and out of place. "What did you do in the steppes?" she asked him, her voice a gentle cold fuzzy sweet peach. He merely sat there across from her in the same position, one leg spread out under the table while the other was tucked against his body and he hugged it close as if it were in pain. His nose twitched and his mouth opened but for a few minutes the only sound that came out of him was a strange click, click coming from his throat. "I only sit here and do the sun stuff," she continued to say. "I don't know what you saw up there. But that's not why you sit here before me, is it." "I'm tired," he only managed to say, slumping over.
II. [ten minutes later]
"I'm sure that's it." Her tone was strangely defiant. She had ready finished her tea five minutes before their conversation really started moving but she still held her cup up to her lips at irregular intervals. "I'm tired." "How long has it been?" "I don't know." He sat up straight again. "It's not my business there but I want it to be. I feel like it has to be." "Well, who else will do the sun rituals, Klaus?" She smirked at the question. "I think I killed a bodyguard." "You think?" She feigned surprise. "There was a lot of yelling, and--suddenly he was just at me, like, rabid. I only saw some blur in a white coat behind him. She caused a lot of the noise." He rubbed the end of one of his stringy ears. "I'm tired," he said again. But he still sat perfectly upright, eyes open wide like bright new marbles.