Re: The Cat: Rae and Kratos
Rae had no intention of stirring the man-mountain behind the bar. To anything, but far less physically. She'd no idea if the full range of the gifts her fate afforded her would work: he was old, he was odd, he spoke Greek of old men and deserts and cities lost to time, sand and death. Had she known he thought himself a pawn in a power-game, Rae might have laughed. It would require an unusually large chess-board, after all. Not a pawn, perhaps a knight. He wasn't particularly chivalrous-looking.
"Naturally," she echoed, and she cocked her head. Rae wasn't delicate, bird-boned and waif-like. She was slim, but she was also solid: suited for battlegrounds and so on. The gesture was bird-like, with all the keen-eyed sharpness of a bird of prey, rather than anything sweetly timid. "How did you do it? Did it take help?"
She regarded her glass, and she regarded him, equitably. "You've old tastes, for a large man." And then she did laugh, full and thick and not remotely private.
"You'll have to ask, darling." Amused. "If you want to know."