Guided Tour [Kenna, Harold]

[Kenna & Fenrir]

DATE & TIME : June 22nd Late afternoon
WEATHER CONDITIONS : sunny
CHARACTERS INVOLVED : Kenna, NPC Harold
PREVIOUS THREADS ? Holding the Fort, Bedside Manner

Kenna put down her hammer and wiped back her short hair. She was going to stop for the day. She looked out the window, it looked good weather. She smiled slightly, though not as much as she would have. She still felt bad for helping with the capture of Scratchet and the way Fenrir had gone about it. She’d wanted to befriend that fiend since she first heard about her, and now it was going to be really hard since she’d now be in her bad books.

She shook her head; she needed something to distract herself with. An idea crossed her head. “I’m off for a bit Fens,” She shouted putting on her jacket, “be back soon.”

She left the house and started walking over to her uncle’s house, where right now only one person was currently being held by him. The Hysterian, Harold. Kenna still felt guilty for bedriddening him; even though he was a Hysterian that had tried to kill her...it had been war, that’s what you’re supposed to do. But she’d never had, and she doubted he had either. The idea her actually killing someone felt so...

She pushed it out of her mind as she finally reached her Uncle’s house. She knocked on the door and aunt, Siv, greeted her in. Kenna went to ask Ari if Harold was able to leave the house for a bit, since he should have the air and could she take him for a walk.

Eventually Ari agreed.

[REDKITEBAIT]

It was that woman again. She who had almost shattered his jawbone into a thousand pieces with that blasted hammer of hers. She could hear her speaking to the old man who had been tending Harold.

She eventually came in, claiming she was going to take the young Hysterian outside. Outside? Harold hadn't been outside since he had been made 'prisoner'. He wondered what was to happen, with extremely negative thoughts. He was still fearful, after all.

Still bound by his wrists, he felt extremely vulnerable. It was better not to resist or try to run away - he was in enemy camp here. And not only with a village full of Vikings, the multitude of dragons would make it incredibly hard for him to escape, and he probably wouldn't get off the island by himself alive.

Harold almost made a yelp, as when the resident blacksmith opened the door outside, a huge scary Monstrous Nightmare slinked it's way across the square. He regretted doing so, as his jaw began to pain him terribly. Only the best Vikings go after these kind of dragons. Harold was nowhere near the best. He shrunk a little, not wanting to go outside anymore.

Were they going to feed him to this dragon? But the beast then left, as a Viking hopped onto it's back, and they took off into the sky. He felt forced to go outside now. He squinted in the sunlight, having been inside for so long.

He decided he should keep his distance from all dragons he saw. That would be a wise move. He moved to Kenna's other side as a Zippleback curled it's way around a nearby building.

[Kenna & Fenrir]

“Hi there Harold,” Kenna said as she went into the sick room where the man was, “I felt like giving you a bit of fresh air for a bit. You’ve been cooped up in here too long.” she unchained him from the bed and tied his hands together, though enough that they weren’t stuck together.

He got up and she guided him to the front door and opened it. He cowered back as he saw a friends dragon walking past the door. she raised an eyebrow as he resisted leaving the house, “Why you so scared? I did say I was going to show you round the village when I could. You’re as safe out here as you’ve been in there.”

As the Zippleback that had helped her make traps walked past she remembered something, “I’ll be right back,” and she rushed back into the house and grabbed the board and writing implement. There was no point being with him if she had no clue what he was thinking.

She walked out and saw him cowering by the wall in fear. Kenna suddenly realised just how terrifying all this must be for him, walking round unarmed around dragons. Had she been of a different kind of kind disposition she’d have taken him back inside. But she wasn’t that kind. She was going to try and get him to not be afraid.

She walked over to him and took one of his hands, “It’s okay, nothing’s going to hurt you.” I untied his hands and put the method of communication into it. “You’re safe right now. I know you don’t feel it, but you are. Come.”

[REDKITEBAIT]

Kenna asked him a question, but he realised he had nothing to reply with. He couldn't speak, his jaw was aching from being healed, plus the yelp he had made earlier. She realised this too, and quickly retreated into the house to fetch the board he had been relying on.

Left alone for that brief time, Harold didn't know what to do. He didn't even bother considering running away, it was pointless, after all. Suddenly, with a notorious drumming-like sound, making Harold jump with fright, a huge Gronckle buzzed overhead, coming low to land in the centre of the open space. Landed, and the Viking dismounted, they both began to plod down the street to some unfathomable location - of course, come right past the stranded Hysterian. The Gronckle seemed to sense the young man's fear, stopped in it's tracks and began growling at him. This sent Harold in a slight panic, backing away quickly, which only seemed to egg on the Dragon.

The dragon's master quickly pulled at the beast's harness, keeping it under control. There was a muffled apology below the rumble. They quickly left, but that was more than enough to keep Harold rooted, back against the wall of the healer's house.

Kenna finally returned, with his board. In his petrified state, he didn't notice her come beside him until she touched him, making him start. Realising that Kenna was taking hold of his hand, he quickly blushed. She unbound him and presented his means of communication, reassuring that he was safe. He wasn't reassured. He immediately began scratching a message.

Since he had this tool, it had become a sort of token of confidence for him. He didn't have to speak, and he could say what he wanted without being interrupted or taken badly. It was definitely useful when telling the healer what he needed.

He presented the board to Kenna hesitantly. "All my friends have died here. How can I feel safe?"

[Kenna & Fenrir]

She watched Harold as he quickly scribbled a message down for her. She was half surprised when it finally came up. She thought about the half built building that was being worked on right now on the site of what had been Luna’s house.

“Well,” she started, “firstly that was in war time and you guys did break into our village. And secondly, it was human weapons that killed them, not dragon breath or claw.” She’d seen the bodies later and saw the remains of the men and, while it seemed like each had been killed by different weapons, each had been killed by humans.

“Look,” Kenna said, slightly more forcefully than before, “You are safe right now. We don’t hurt our prisoners, no matter what you might think. And even if our village did, I would protect you. Okay? Now come on,” she stood up, holding his hands to he had to come up with her, “You need to walk about and I want to show you around.”

As the two of them started travelling down the street, she started to notice how the dragons recognised they had a frightened human in their mist. She unsheathed her sword and started to death glare every dragon that tried anything, “Try to keep calm,” Kenna quietly muttered, “Dragons are like most animals, they can smell fear. The more afraid you are the more likely they’ll be mean arses to you. They won’t hurt you though...They just like to mess with you.”

[REDKITEBAIT]

Harold went red in the face again as Kenna retook his hand, reassuring that he was safe. She lead him down the street, the occasional dragon snorting smoke and growling as he passed. The blacksmith noticed this, and began to explain how dragons work. Harold listened. He was paranoid about a dragon coming to eat him when he was unarmed. Maybe learning how to defend himself the Berk-way would help. There was no way he could kill a dragon bigger than a Terror by himself.

He began to wonder if dragons were really that dangerous. He participated a lot during the raids, doing his bit for the community, so he knew how deadly these creatures could be... But if Berk could co-exist... Why couldn't Hysteria? It was an obvious advantage they had in the war. He'd probably try to be reconverted if the Hysterians caught whiff that he had been training dragons. His expression looked troubled. He was loyal to Hysteria.

... But he did want dragons to be less mad at him during his stay. He wondered how Berk managed to douse these dragon's tempers. All dragons he had encountered always went for the kill - pure killing machines. In between two houses he saw a Viking petting a Gronckle, which was laying on the floor like an overgrown puppy. The portraits didn't match up.

Finally deciding, hoping he could somehow hide from Hysteria, or wish dearly the consequences weren't bad, he shook his hand free from Kenna's grip so he could write. He scribbled down two words, in the form of a question. His face contorted a little. He couldn't believe he was doing his.

"Teach me?"

[Kenna & Fenrir]

Kenna was surprised when he pulled his hand from hers, why’d he want to-she then saw him writing away. Oh, did he want to go back in? Or was he going to ask something?

“Teach me?”[/color] She hadn’t expected that. He wanted to be taught? Taught to cope with dragon? A Hysterian wanted to do that? “Are you sure?” she asked. When he nodded she thought for a moment. How to go about it?

“Okay, it boils down to one simple rule. Treat them with respect, they’re smart animals and don’t like being treated otherwise. You wouldn’t like being treated like an animal, would you?” says the person who’s holding him captive.

She saw a good dragon to demonstrate, “Snapcrackle!” Kenna shouted. The zippleback turned both its heads to her, “I need your help getting this one to not be afraid of dragons, mind helping?”

“Sure, anything to help a friend,”[/i][/color] the right head said, the left head nodding. Snapcrackle was a completely tame dragon, but he didn’t look it. Very mean looking, lots of examples of old fights and he had two menacing faces.

“Go to him,” was all she said. She wasn’t someone that gave much teaching, she was like an old ancestor of hers. Throwing everyone into the deep end.

[REDKITEBAIT]

When Harold asked if he was sure to go through with this, it was his last chance to say no. He quickly pondered, before nodding. If he could be unafraid of dragons, maybe he would appear a lot braver back home... Maybe he could show that Hysteria could be just as great as Berk if they had dragons...

He listened obediently to Kenna's first and only rule. He winced a little at the thought of this Viking lass treating him as an animal because he was from Hysteria. No, he didn't want that. So he had to treat a dragon like a person? Hmm...

Kenna's shout made him jump, and turning to look in the same direction he made a funny noise in his throat as this big nasty-looking Zippleback, the same one from before, came slinking towards them. The blacksmith began speaking some garbled gibberish. Harold stared at Kenna. What the hell was she doing? Egging it on? Not having the liberty of being raised alongside dragons, Harold one of those next-generation Hysterians that hadn't learnt Dragonese as a common household language. He didn't understand a thing. He didn't even know whether she was even speaking dragonese, or just randomly speaking random crap to scare him.

The Zippleback made some glub glub-glubbing noises in response. Kenna then told him to go towards the dragon.

What.

Harold's eyes widened, his jaw dropping. He thought he'd have had more teaching than this! He had no idea how to approach a dragon without it trying to strangle him. Especially in this case since it was a Zippleback... He remembered his first encounter with one. He had to get close enough to douse the head that created sparks, but he failed and almost got crushed by the strength of the beast's strong necks. They may look slender, but it didn't mean they were fragile.

Harold took a deep breath and then stepped forwards hesitantly. This was it. He couldn't speak, so he was afraid if he got in trouble Kenna couldn't help him. Why couldn't she have set him up with a Terrible Terror?

The Zippleback had seen pretty much everything by now, and wasn't surprised that the boy (in their point of view) was afraid. One of the heads chuckled. "He looks like he's about to run away." The other head smiled. "Running away is no help to facing one's fear..."

With that, both heads dipped to Harold's eye levels, snaking their way around so that their heads were now between him and Kenna. They could've dilated their eyes to appear 'cuter' if they wanted, but with all the battle scars they wore, and the more recent wounds too, it would have been ineffective.

Harold span around as the dragon blocked his exit. He was now trapped! This wasn't good... Not good at all! He frowned, taking a step back, but by now the Hideous Zippleback was making the space tighter and tighter. There must have been around at least one metre of radius around the Hysterian by now. There was some more glurping from the Zippleback, and one head came forwards from the wall of scales. Not being able to move, Harold could do nothing as the head came closer.

The breath of the dragon stunk. Slightly warm air ruffled his hair. Harold didn't know what to do. Luckily, the dragon did. From the side, one of the beast's necks emerged and tapped Harold's elbow with one of it's flat spines, which made Harold nearly jump out of his skin. But looking back to the Zippleback head, which nodded at him encouragingly, he realised what he had to do.

He raised his hand out. Terrified. He half expected the dragon to bite his hand off there and then - until it lowered it's head so that the base of it's chipped nose horn connected with the palm of his hand. Harold tried to withdraw his hand from the shock, but the dragon followed his hand forwards, not letting him go. Harold's breathing accelerated, staring into the dragon's own yellow eyes, trying to figure out what was going to come next.

But nothing came. The necks that surrounded him writhed, but that was the only movement Harold could see in the corners of his eyes. When he realised nothing bad was going to come, no nasty suprises, he finally noticed what he was doing. He was touching a dragon! A real one! He let out a short muffled laugh, which even he didn't know whether it was out of success of relief that he wasn't dead yet. He could feel his hand rattling against the dragon's horn, his nerves obviously showing.

The Zippleback crooned at him, the corner's of it's mouth twisting into a smile. Harold's eyes furrowed at the detail. He didn't know dragons could smile?! Harold couldn't help but smile back, if only slightly.

After several minutes of getting used to the feel of the dragon's horn, he finally began to move his hand to feel the bone structure. Reaching the tip of the horn, he realised how close he was to the dragon. Under a foot away. His hand slipped down from the horn, and with a little bit more hesitation, he let his hand lay on the scales.

Once again, he was surprised. During dragon raids, he had never thought much about how scales felt, but he always thought they were slimy. This wasn't true at all! It was dry and incredibly smooth to the touch. He let his hand run down the neck a little ways, until his fingers met with a groove in the flesh.

Twisting his head, he saw his fingers had found a scar. It looked recently healed, and the way the beast's skin shivered slightly as he touched it meant it still hurt a little. His hand let go as if it was electric, his face horrified.

They had just been in the war, so that was Hysterian doings. His people's doing. He was making a mountain out of a mole hill, since this wound was barely a scratch compared to other wounds, but it struck home nontheless.

The dragon had proved it wasn't dangerous. It wasn't going to eat Harold even though he stank of the enemy that was the dragon-murdering Hysteria. It fought because it had to, to defend it's home. Just like humans did.

"Everything we know about these guys... is wrong!" He managed to mutter, despite his restricted jaw. His face was horrified. He rumaged for his board. He wondered if the dragons knew how to read. He presented the board to the dragon, holding it up so it could read. It chuckled, before taking the board in it's mouth and slinking under it's brother's neck to give it to Kenna.

"He wrote something." He said to Kenna. The board marked 'I'm sorry.' The other head came to replace the one that disappeared. It had a lot more scars on it than the other one. It's head looked sympathetic, yet wise. It didn't help Harold feel any better. He was sad and angry at the same time, of his people, his island and most of all himself, who had been so ignorant to not have explored the possibility that dragons could be friendly. He was upset that the dying Hysterian Leader (he's unaware that Baldr's the boss now) was so against dragons. But for what reason?

[Kenna & Fenrir]

She knew that he would wish he was able to talk to be able to ask to get out of it. But in a way, his lack of a voice was a blessing to him in disguise for this. Snapcrackle was tame and a lovely guy, but he looked like Gramr himself (Norse equivalent of Cerberus, no multiple heads stuff but his isn’t much of a looker). He was perfectly safe with Snapcrackle, even if he didn’t feel it, and since he couldn’t stop any of it he had to confront his fear.

He was frozen for a few moments, taking in what he had just been told to do. He finally took one step...and stopped. Kenna smiled at the dragon’s comments, glad Harold couldn’t see her do that, and watched as the dragon did what Harold should be doing. The dragon encircled him and watched him intently as he looked in fear as she was separated from him.

She could feel the fear that came from Harold as the gap around him slowly shrank and he was forsed to get closer and closer to a dragon he had no idea about. This was why he’d chosen Snapcrackle, he wasn’t someone you could run away from.

A neck tapped Harold, making him jump and looked at the head connected at it. She smiled as he started to extend his hand out to the dragon. The two touched, which seemed to suprise Harold so much that he tried to withdraw, but Snapcrackle wasn’t having any of it. The two stayed connected as they looked into each others’ eyes.

And then, after quite a bit of time, Kenna started to feel it. The fear was going, not because he wasn’t afraid, but because he was getting another emotion come in. Exileration. He laughed slightly, though whether it was glad to not have been killed or glad he’d beaten his fear she doubted even he knew.

Then Snapcrackle smiled at him, which seemed to take him a back, and Kenna couldn’t help but giggle slightly as he smiled back. Eventually he started moving his hand down the snake like neck of the dragon.

As he did so, she finally took account of the world around them. People were watching the dragon and Harold. Everyone knew about what Kenna had done to the surviving Hysterian raider, so they knew that the guy must be him. Kenna was really intreeged by everyone’s reponces. Some were disliking of how Snapcrackle was being so nice to him, in those people’s minds he should be scaring the man senseless. Some walked passed, trying to ignore the foreigner. And some saw the scene and just took it as it was, a man trying to get past his fears.

Kenna looked back and saw he’d noticed a relatively new injury. One she knew Snapcrackle had gotten in the battle. She could see the horror in Harold’s face as he realised that that had been caused by Hysterian hands.

"Everything we know about you guys... is wrong!"[/color] she heard muttered. She realised just how odd it must feel to meet your boogie men and realise that they’re just humans that can fly and breath fire. He started to write something and showed it to the dragon. He laughed and took it to me. It wasn’t too stupid a thing to do, because it was known for Dragons to understand runes, but Snapcrackle wasn’t one of them.

Kenna read it and almost cried at it. “It says I’m sorry.” [/i]

“the wound isn’t that sencitive!” [/i][/color] I chuckled at that, feeling my eyes well up. I knew he didn’t mean that. It wasn’t the scratch, it was what it meant to the Hysterian. Ari had told her about what happened in Hysteria, and being brought up like that to find out this would rip your whole world apart. He wasn’t apologizing for touching the scar...

He was apologizing for having been for the stuff that caused them.

[REDKITEBAIT]

Now the first barrier had been breached, Harold grew a lot in confidence around the Zippleback. It looked scary, but it wasn't really. Like a big dog. The other head that replaced the previous one was even nicer than the mischievous brother, who insisted on keeping the contact. The coil that surrounded Harold was loosening and widening, allowing the Hysterian more room.

Harold hadn't felt so... brave for as long as he could remember. He was quickly beginning to feel relaxed around this grinning beast. As the necks began to widen, Harold could see onlookers. Now, usually Harold would have gone red in the face with so many eyes on him... But here he felt strangely at ease. The realisation surprised himself. He looked backed to the dragon apparently called Snapcrackle. Were the dragons having some sort of... therapeutic effect on his nervousness?

Harold tickled the beast under the chin. The head enjoyed it, so he continued further, even adding an extra hand to do the job. His hand moved up towards the base of the skull, just near the beast's jawbone when... the head collapsed! Half the Zippleback's body slumped over, destablising the beast. Harold yelped in shock. What did he do?! Did he kill the dragon? The other half seemed fine.

He glanced to Kenna. Her eyes were glistening. She was upset? Ohhh, this wasn't good at all. His confidence immediately dropped lower than it originally had been. What were these bystanders going to think of him now? He was Hysterian after all, known for murdering dragons without second thought. Some of them were laughing.

He backed away from Snapcrackle, terrified of what he had done. The other head was grumbling slightly at the loss of balance. Instead of dealing with the dead weight, the still conscious side of the Zippleback decided to settle itself down on the ground.

"Ugh. I hate it when that happens. He better wake up soon or I'll make him wake up."[/i] [/color]The conscious head grumbled to Kenna. For a Zippleback, when one head collapses from being tickled in the right spot, it was a lot more troublesome for them than a one-headed dragon.

Harold retreated to Kenna, head bowed. He thought he had failed. He wondered what his fate was now. He saw his apology engraved in the board in her hand. How he wanted to repeat those words over and over right now.

[Kenna & Fenrir]

Kenna realised Harold was right next to her, she looked at him confused before looking back at the Snapcrackle. The head that had passed her the board had just lay down, sounding very annoyed and the other head was out of it entirely.

“What…?” and then she realised. She burst into guffaws of laughter, understanding why he was so scared at what happened, “Don’t worry,” she said once she could talk again, “I should have mentioned, they love being scratched under the chin, but if you hit the right point they go into euphoria and do that.” She pointed at them, “He’ll wake up soon. We should probably get moving with the tour of the place. Hope your other half wakes up soon.” She said as she passed the board back to Harold and got him to move again.

The continued to walk until they reached the main attraction of the village, “This is the Dragon Training Arena, back in the day we used it to house captured dragons for the Vikings in training to fight and kill…Nowadays it’s used for the same propose, but the dragons are either chosen for the job or have been naughty.” She thought about Scratchet, and the training session she could be running soon.

[REDKITEBAIT]

Harold frowned as Kenna burst into laughter. Looking around briefly, he was wondering why people were laughing. What did he do to make them laugh? Surely he would be in serious trouble? After Kenna's fit died down, she explained what had happened. Harold blinked in surprise. He hadn't killed the dragon? He turned to look. Sure enough, he could see the unconscious head was still breathing, still full of life. There was definitely a lot more to dragons than Harold had anticipated. Or ever learnt.

Reassured that he hadn't just killed a dragon, Kenna gave him back his board, which he took gladly. He let Kenna lead on. He took in the sights around him as they went. He noticed that the houses looked a lot older than they did on Hysteria. The village appeared to be build almost on the cliff itself, occasionally planks jutting out over the edge to make passageways to houses and to lower areas of the village. The blacksmith began to take him on one of these bridges, which curled it's way around a huge cliff. From the bridge across the sea to a small rocky island, Kenna took him to Berk's own Dragon Training Arena.

Harold was intrigued. There were a lot of similarities with the one here and on Hysteria. It was dug into the ground, a metal dome-like structure above to keep Dragons from escaping. There were six huge doors barred by giant logs. Some doors rattled. Kenna explained how the people of Berk used it today. They taught how to train dragons? And use it as punishment for misbehaving dragons? Harold thought the concept intriguing.

He jotted something down. "On Hysteria ours is bigger. And the bottom is full of sand. It makes it hard to run away." He passed it to Kenna. He then looked to those rattling doors again. He wondered if not all dragons were friendly... Maybe only Hysterian dragons were unfriendly?

When he got the board back, he wrote again. "Are there still bad dragons?"

[Kenna & Fenrir]

Kenna was just as intrigued with idea of the Hysterian one as Harold was with Berk’s arena. Extra size would be so useful and it’d be so much easier to set up her traps in a sand pit than the one berk had.

She read the new message and was intrigued by that too, “Like I said, dragons are like humans, every one is different and most of them aren’t that friendly to you when you first encounter them. There are a lot of bad dragons even on berk. They just know that our village is protected by dragons and that’s why we don’t get any attacks from them.”

She returned the board again and the two moved back, as she remembered she’d failed to point out two very important thigns to point out. “Man that’s a fail,” slapping herself before pointing up the stairs to the meat hall, “up there’s the mead hall, used for meetings doos and general drinking.” She then turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees and pointed at the house that looked very different to every other one, “and that place there is mine.”

Kenna had never really thought about it up until now, but her house did look so different to everyone else’s did. “It’s a newer building since the original blacksmiths was accidently burnt down when I was 13 and my parents rebuilt it so that it was a house proper house as well as the blacksmiths.” She wasn’t sure why she was saying this, just felt like saying it.

[REDKITEBAIT]

After a tour of Berk's own dragon training arena, they began the trek back to the village. As they came over the bridge back onto the plaza, Kenna made a comment before slapping herself. Harold gave a quizzical look, before she motioned to the huge stone staircase. He had noticed it before, but he had been so distracted about Snapcrackle it made little impact on him. Now he had the chance to look at it in detail. The huge steps and the two bowls of fire at the entrance looked pretty impressive on the Hysterian.

'On Hysteria we only have a longhouse. We built it in stone because Vikings got sick of rebuilding their place of recreation all the time.' Harold couldn't help feel a little jealous of their meadhall. He wondered how big it was inside. They probably used the dug up stone to build the staircase and the plaza. That was a lot of stone.

Kenna then pointed to a building quite different to the others. Half of it looked like a workshop, the other half a house. There was a stone chimney jutting up at the side furthest away from the house. Kenna lived there? It clicked - Kenna was the blacksmith! Of course! That meant she was quite important in the village, making nearly everything the village needed. She explained how the house had to be rebuilt, which didn't particularly interest him.

'It looks nice.' He wrote, anyway.

[Kenna & Fenrir]

“Thanks,” she said when he complemented her house. Kenna then looked up at the skies, “I should probably take you back to Uncle Ari’s.”

As they walked back she smiled at him. It had gone much better than she’d expected. She’d thought someone would have come up and been mean to him, but no one had. She just had to hope she hadn’t caused Snapcrackle to get some grief for being kind to Harold. He’d done amazingly with that dragon too.

They stopped outside of Ari’s house and Kenna knocked on the door. While they waited for one of the residents to open up and let them in she said, “I can come round again tomorrow if you want, give you some more times around dragons. Or something else if you’d rather do…well anything within reason.”

As he started to write an answer Siv opened the door and welcomed the two of them in. Kenna declined the offer, “I should get back to my place, knowing Fenrir he’s burnt the place down while I was out.” She laughed slightly and saw that Harold had finished writing his reply so she took it. She smiled at it then returned the board to him and muttered wryly, “See you around then.” She winked at him then she turned and started to jog away. Turning back to wave at the two of them shouting, “bye!” and then running off for real.

[OOC: sorry for the god modding at the end, I just wanted to finish off the thread on my end and I knew he would have started writing at that point and that whatever you desided he’d write that would be her response to it, be it a ‘I’d love to’ or a ‘maybe something else’ or a ‘maybe another time?’ ]