the firestarters always get the burns
and the good guys never get the girl
She'd looked at him like he's a ghost, but either he hasn't noticed or perhaps he doesn't want to. There's a joke following, and she tilts her head at him, pondering an answer to the question, an answer that is not an offended one, that isn't secretly angry that he just up and left without note, and barging back in like nothing ever happened. As if he doesn't look like he's been to the top of the mountain and just had decided to roll off it until he was back down. So, instead of answering immediately, she purses her lips a bit to withhold any sound, refusing to be upset and angry, but she can't be jolly happy either. Not just like that.
But he's already eyeing the new wings on her back - the ones she got about... a year and a half ago? It was definitely the fall, or maybe around first day of winter, before this last one. The fall in which he must have met Nymf but, after which he had seemingly disappeared. She hadn't seen him since summer, but - what's wrong with him? One minute he's the Svedka she knows, then there's something completely alien in his eyes, and then he's just smiling at her lazily like nothing happened.
And it leaves her subconsciously frightened, and she doesn't know what she should say or do. Would anything make it better? Surely not talking to him at all will make things worse, but all of a sudden she's unsure and can hardly move, just stare at him, then nod. "Some time ago now." A year. More. But something withholds her from saying how long exactly, telling him what he'd missed.
Her voice wasn't as confident as it should have been. Her eyes search for an indication that he has any consciousness at all about what just happened, but it seems that is not the case. She takes a short, deep breath. Perhaps there's a gentle way to nudge him, a subtle way to tell him she's not too happy he's just disappeared from the face of the earth for so long. "So where have you been?"
@[Svedka]