"What have you got in your hand? Something to bash me over the head with?" @vulosp from ozfer!
hannibal sentence starters ; accepting
"It is a shillielagh," Valeriu said bluntly, holding the short staff firmly in his hand. A gnarled piece of heavy blackthorn wood, ending in a leaden knob. He stared down the stranger fae, eyes narrowed, lips peeled back to reveal sharp fangs, his chitinous mandibles peeking out from beneath his cheeks. "It has a lot of uses, a cudgel is one of them."
As if to accentuate those words, he swung the stick lackadaisically, back and forth. He felt the weight of it in his hands, in his shoulder, before finally coming to a stand still so that he could simply lean on it.
The voices needled him with their incessant whispers scraping his ears. They spoke of betrayal -- it must have been the book-keep, or the butcher, one of them must have told. Or perhaps the spies of the Wild Hunt hid in the form of birds, of grasshoppers, of bats, following him from haunt to haunt, cave to cave, abandoned house to abandoned house.
Everything was a potential threat. Especially those who looked like his kin. Where once Valeriu saw beauty and peace in the forests, he now saw a sea of eyes. Where once he felt kinship in his fellow fae, he saw only potential enemies hiding in the shadows. The thrumming sound of gossamer wings on the wind filled his nightmares.
The sight of one so close to his kind sent his hackles on end, his mind reeling with possibilities, and he took stock of each before the stranger fae. A spy? A bounty hunter? What connection did they have to the Hunt? How close were they? Surely, they were closing in -- day by day, the walls closing in more and more. The noose tightened. The derelict house providing him sanctuary was quickly becoming a trap for him to become cornered in. He should have left a long time ago.
Standing there in the doorway to the derry, he felt like an arrow caught along the tension of a bowstring ready to loose, down to the minute shaking of his hands. He tried to hold steady, but blood was rising in his ears, the voices rising. Valeriu swallowed his fear, his bloodlust, his paranoia -- for now. If this one was a spy, they were a quite sloppy one, barging in on his 'home' like this.... and that itself was a enough to stay his hand from spell or weapon. "Tell me why you are here, and if I'm satisfied with your answer, maybe I wont bash your head in for trespassing."