bethen avilla ; the circle mage (bethe) wrote in thedas,
Beth felt her face warm, cheeks flushing in spite of her desire to seem unconcerned by his remarks. He was teasing her, and even if he meant it flippantly or innocently, she had never been good at taking comments lightly. Especially not from people who barely knew her. He was kidding, of course, but it was difficult not to feel slightly embarrassed even by something so silly. Once again without a proper witty retort, she pretended not to hear him and looked down again at the list she had made on parchment, strands of dark hair falling into her face like a protective veil.
While the apprentice had lapsed into silence, something else did not. The soft scuttling sound resumed even after the last syllables of Constans' sentence were absorbed into the stone. It was faint, but audible enough that it was cause for concern. She stopped scribbling mid-sentence, gently placing her quill down to listen again. Again, there was a gentle scrape and patter of...footsteps? She put a finger to her lips. "Shh..." she hushed him sharply, brow drawn together as she whipped her head around to look at him. But before he could mistake her frown for a personal reaction to him, she whispered, "Do you hear it?"
Suddenly, there was a crash, the cacophony of several glass objects smashing from a height. "Oh, yes, that was definitely me," she said dryly as she got to her feet, peering around the corner of the dusty shelf that obscured her view of the rest of the tunnel. She saw nothing, but stepped a few feet across to where her staff was leaned, grabbing it just in case. "I think there's someone in here." Or something, but she didn't want to point out the possibility of their being trapped with some unknown beast or worse, a spirit. Maybe he wasn't being too far-fetched when he mentioned ghosts.