He huffed at her wording, terrible occurrence, not much care nor concern there. He pushed his head down as something terribly sad and broken passed through his face. He sifted on his feet, a small anxious movement as he tamped down the feeling and let it simmer and twist into something easier to handle. A friend had given him the lizard. He let out a frustrated breath through his nose, “Yeah, maybe it’s better that way,” he said, his voice quiet and tight, head still tipped down. His knuckles turned white inside his pocket.
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. She was the same as ever, impassive, disciplined, blank. Even though he knew it was just the surface. He didn’t do this often, come back to people and he did remember why.
His jaw tightened as he fought to breath into the simmer and turn it into embers that spread through his body, warmed his tight muscles and made them relax. He turned to face her fully, “Good, I was afraid I might run out of pressing concerns,” he said, the corner of his mouth twisting up.
“It most likely is,” Sophie agreed, her head moving up and down with a couple of nods. She did not know what it might be like to have a pet, though she had never enjoyed the idea much. Considering what her schedule used to be like, she thought the idea of having one would just be cruel to all parties involved. “If it makes you feel any better, freedom is the best thing you could have wished for it. They’re out there in the world. They aren’t caged or trapped,” the brunette continued. Pep talks were, by no means, her forte, so, she was merely pointing out facts that her rational mind could acknowledge as something positive.
Sophie still stared into the depth of dark eyes without much certainty of where she was going, however, reaching a destination seemed imperial. The fact that he could still see the situation with some kind of humor was baffling to her, for whatever was it that she had in mind, clearly didn’t resemble what was in his.
A hand moved through the wooden railing in his villa, her fingernails drumming through it, the percussion sound it produced punctuating the sentences inside her head, and as if to keep up with the frantic rhythm in which it went, her fingers began moving faster through the wood. Until…
“Ouch,” the sound stopped, and Sophie retrieved her hand, seeing the splinter that had lodged on the pad of her ring finger. Promptly ignoring it, the first mate drew a deep breath inside. “Pressing concerns may change. May adapt. Though they never leave us. Even if you choose to leave them behind, they linger. In the back of our minds. In the silence of long woken nights,” she mused. Sophie knew exactly what she was talking about and the sort of concerns she referred to, and she wondered whether Eli would as well. “But they’re always there,” she stated. “Though I believe you’d know this is not what I wish to talk about,” Sophie became more serious.
