It's a belated success; the sharpness of the vampire's words let her know that she's done it at last, found a way beneath Lenore's skin, cracked her composed exterior. This is the fracture point against wish she's learnt to push, and if she keeps going now what will happen? Maybe Lenore or one of the guards will hit her like she's some shitty barking animal, and she'll have the cold satisfaction of the only kind of win she's ever really known. The oppressive silence that closes in around them feels - to her - like everyone's full and undivided attention.
It takes her a moment to realise that it's a hollow victory. She's lost as to why this feels different and bad, why there's little of the grim righteousness her provocative words usually earn her. She's accustomed to being spoken to as though she's a particularly stupid child, or worse, something barely human altogether. Lenore's scolding is a mild thing compared with the harder words she's been pelted with before. That she's served a side-helping of guilt with her scolding, that she feels vaguely like she's failing a test-- it's a surprising thing.
"Been there, tried that, didn't work," she's aiming for bored indifference, having never uttered an apology before in her life. An apology in Drearburh would only have conveyed weakness, earnt her further scorn. Somehow though, there's a touch of the chastened in her words, "It's just what everyone said. I'm relaying what I've heard."
She considers relaying the common maxims of Drearburh whilst she's at it; vampires are the scourge of humanity, to make a deal with vampires is to act as traitor to one's own species. These are the only opinions she has ever heard on the matter. For reasons that have yet to fully take shape in her however, she does shut her mouth this time.
no subject
It takes her a moment to realise that it's a hollow victory. She's lost as to why this feels different and bad, why there's little of the grim righteousness her provocative words usually earn her. She's accustomed to being spoken to as though she's a particularly stupid child, or worse, something barely human altogether. Lenore's scolding is a mild thing compared with the harder words she's been pelted with before. That she's served a side-helping of guilt with her scolding, that she feels vaguely like she's failing a test-- it's a surprising thing.
"Been there, tried that, didn't work," she's aiming for bored indifference, having never uttered an apology before in her life. An apology in Drearburh would only have conveyed weakness, earnt her further scorn. Somehow though, there's a touch of the chastened in her words, "It's just what everyone said. I'm relaying what I've heard."
She considers relaying the common maxims of Drearburh whilst she's at it; vampires are the scourge of humanity, to make a deal with vampires is to act as traitor to one's own species. These are the only opinions she has ever heard on the matter. For reasons that have yet to fully take shape in her however, she does shut her mouth this time.