There was a certain something about the way she blushed that automatically made Rhocanth decide that Miss Bethen was quite pretty. Actually, as he looked upon her pale features now tinted with pink, her light eyes, and the contrast against her dark hair, not to mention the exotically long limbs all of these human woman possessed abundantly... strikingly pretty. He also liked the way she carried herself. Maybe it was bias now that he knew she liked books, apparently a great deal, but he felt very compelled to get to know her further. He also began to feel a little more self-conscious, aware that he had been smiling in an awfully silly way a moment ago, and his teeth felt a little dry. He stopped, trying to hide wetting them back over behind his lips.
"That's very impressive!" he encouraged her. She had his full attention while speaking of the tower library, especially when she mentioned that it was so large as to be able to house all the others combined. Rhocanth doubted he had ever seen so many books, imagining now a veritable mountain of them, and this surprised him as well as he considered the Shaperate to be very large. It must have been a human trait to think so... tall.
But Bethen switched topics all too soon, bringing his mind back to the Shaperate once more. He would have happily discussed the tower library in further detail, but it seemed she had an interest in the Shaperate and this gave him a similar swell of pride. "The Shaperate is the essence of our city," he praised it without reservation. Why hide it? It was true. "All that has come before is recorded there. Transcription is a very, very honored duty. My own ancestor wrote a number of epics of the Paragons. I would be delighted to recite some of them to you sometime... in lieu of visiting the Shaperate itself for the time being, I suppose. It is true that my kinsmen's stance on visitors... shifts often." He left it at that, politely avoiding the heaviness of such a topic. Dwarven diplomacy was patchy at best, being open for some time, and then shutting down tight seemingly on the whims of a handful of deshyr lords. His own relatives couldn't even make up their minds while he lived there, the Garal side being for openness, and the Lynchcar side for conservativeness. It occured to him now that he had agreed with his mother without question. Why should he distrust her judgment? ... but then again, what harm would it be to let such a charming young lady as Miss Bethen observe the Shaperate? Perhaps if his mother knew that surface scholars were anything like her, she would change her mind.
Wait, a dwarf change his or her mind? That sounded a little beyond hoping for.
A sudden tightness made itself known in his chest. He did not like dwelling upon these thoughts, not one bit. The dwarf was relieved, in fact, when Bethen continued on to discuss the tower itself. He focused upon the idea of not choosing to live in the tower, as it had incensed him so easily the night he spoke with Imenry, mostly because he imagined ill befalling dear Signy, a friend. Dwarves had allowed their mages to live amongst their people, gave them honor and respect. ... and things went terribly awry after that, changing the destiny of the Assembly for certain. Rhocanth hadn't felt much bitterness for it. Perhaps fear, as any other dwarf had. A guilty seed of relief when the problem had been... extracted. Disappointment for the loss of the best Paragon they had had in generations, a true living piece of history! But he hadn't wept for his chilly father. He, and his entire culture, didn't know enough about mages to know what to do. Could they be blamed for fear, or for need to protect themselves?