Oh, gods. The woman isn’t speaking too quickly–hells, maybe she was told that Shiren didn’t have much experience with this dialect in advance–but Shiren still finds herself hesitating to parse through the words.
She doesn’t know why Mifune sent her here… but then, she doesn’t know why Mifune does half the things he does until long after the fact. Shiren can feel the kids’ eyes on her. It’s… not the most reassuring thing in the world to her.
The assassin looks down, as if only just now noticing the assortment of weapons strapped and buckled and concealed in her clothing. She doesn’t need them, per se. She knows she doesn’t need them.
Doesn’t make it any easier to let them go, though. She considers, for a moment, keeping the hidden ones to herself–but that would involve trusting mages to tell her in advance if they could tell she was more armed than she ought to be. So, trusting mages.
Shiren carefully avoids looking at anyone for too long, busying herself with her weapons instead. “So what is there around here that needs protecting from?” The words feel like they come out wrong, or in an odd order, or something. (Two birthdays here and she’s thrown off by someone not speaking the exact same form of Ionian that she learned. It feels somehow shameful.)
Karma watches as she removes the knives one-by-one, eyes mixed with amusement and concern. Certainly, the guards in the Placidium keep themselves armed, but she has never seen so many weapons equipped on a person at once. She never saw the need for it, either, for peace was their way of life.Â
Perhaps that’s why this woman is here, Karma thinks, to learn less violence in her heart.
Karma carefully holds the weapons, focused on keeping them all in her hands and saving her skin of cuts. She urges the children to make way to the armory for her.
“Wild animals look for food near the villages,” Karma says, hanging the knives between slots. “And there are bandits, but they are rarer.”
It takes a few minutes, but Karma manages to fit them all into the armory. She’s not used to handling sharp weaponry. She turns back to the woman with a smile.
“I am Karma, by the way. You speak our language well.”
Shiren watches her blades being put away with as much concern as if they were her own children. (Or maybe more so. Gods know she has never known what to do with those, let alone how to feel about them.)
She looks up when the woman—Karma—speaks again, startled. A quick flush of heat flashes over her cheeks, equally confused and paradoxically embarrassed at the compliment. “I—” I'm still learning, but it's not exactly her place to decide her fluency above someone who grew up with it, is it? “Thank you,” she says instead. “I'm Shiren.” She pauses, but does worry somewhat that silence will only encourage Karma to ask questions, so she speaks again. “What do you do here?”
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