Jia wasn’t sure why he looked surprised that she’d never heard of that particular poet. It was the twenty-first century. She had a lot of other things to keep her busy. Dancing, studying, and working were pretty time consuming, especially since she was just an average student. Keeping her grades high enough to keep her scholarships took a lot of work.
Maybe he was one of those people who felt that just because they knew about something that everyone else would, too. This man probably specialized in literature or something. However, when he told her he was “old school,” it was her turn to raise an eyebrow. Was he serious? She wondered if English wasn’t his first language. It could explain the way he spoke. The phrase “old school” had seemed… something abnormal for him to have said, so maybe he didn’t really understand the term? She wasn’t sure how it applied to his being a literature major if that’s what he was.
When he first stated he knew what she was based on her smell, she worried that she’d sweat so much that she must have terrible body odor. However, he went on to state that her race had a specific, underlying scent, and it made her immediately curious what his race may be. Was he a lycan? She wasn’t sure what other races had such well-tuned senses of smell that they could detect a person’s species through it. Animals had great senses of smell, so being a lycan could explain it. Were any other races good with their noses? She didn’t know.
As a dryad, Jia Li’s sense of smell wasn’t any better or any worse than a human’s. She knew that different beings had different scents, but she couldn’t distinguish one from the next unless she was right against someone which was rare for her. She didn’t like to invade others’ personal spaces. She found herself wondering if he liked the smell of dryads or if he was indifferent to it. Did he like the way she smelled as an individual?
Jia shrugged. He was right, but she seemed to fit the dryad stereotype a little too well at the moment. She did feel a little better when he said he eavesdropped sometimes, too, but he actually had a valid excuse. “My hearing isn’t anything extraordinary, so… I don’t really have a good defense for what I did.”
Her head cocked to one side, her wild hair flowing over her shoulder, when he said he no longer danced. “Maybe you should think about taking it up again, even as just a hobby? It can be incredibly relaxing.” She neglected to remark that maybe it could make him happier, the endorphins from it and such. Maybe it could take away the sadness from his eyes, if only for a moment.
Jia felt her stomach clench when he moved closer, and she moved around the tree a little to keep it between them. It would offer her great protection from being grabbed if he lunged for her. After all, if he could smell her and know her as a dryad for that scent, then he wasn’t a dryad himself. That meant he couldn’t push himself through a tree, but if he was able to grab her before she was completely engulfed by the bark, then he could keep her from traveling to the next one.