Re: Woods: Claire/Daniel
After a moment with Claire's suggestion, Daniel was slightly more sympathetic to the idea that someone had broken into the store. Ever so slightly. The flood had seemed to him to be very real, the sensation of the current tugging his pant legs, the icy rise of the waterline over the landscape, the lowering appearance of the graying sky... Daniel shook his head as if to clear the memory away with physical action. He replaced it with thoughts of the now with almost physical effort. "I sent Jude to check on Mimi," he admitted. Perhaps it was a contradiction to panic over interlopers and then invite in one that was practically interloping as a profession. "He said she was fine." Daniel trusted that Jude would not lie to him about his cat, and had described her behavior well enough that Daniel's mind was at ease. "The girls are gone." Daniel might still be on some mad rampage if Harper or Ceil had still been present in the shop.
"I won't," Daniel said, not offering the glasses back but not putting them on, either. He withdrew into the scarecrow folds of the cloak entirely so his face was out of sight, and shut his eyes instead. He kept the glasses wrapped in his fingers. "They are only cute on small girls." At least there was some humor. Daniel was trying very hard not to touch his arms or face as the tingling began to sear. Perhaps it was starting to heal... but no. It wouldn't until night.
Her offer of removing the pain made him appear again from under the cloak, the ebony glow of his eyes now gone, leaving the pale white and bloody cornea on his left. "Absolutely not. I forbid you to do any of that pain-stealing." In evidence of this harsh command, he edged a little away from her on the bulbous arch of the tree roots.