The now of it all, of course, is shameless opportunism. A lingering curiosity that she's circled for— it must be years, now, surely, that she's known him? Val Royeaux, which he cannot help but love and she has been very able to help loving the places that made her; it is, maybe, of a kind with the same curiosity that she has about faith, but less abstract. More particular, more individual.

Like poetry, the perspective is the point. That it is him looking, the way that he looks. The familiarity of something just grown and known,

tricky to share, he's right. But the willingness to try feels like encouragement, or at least not discouragement in her interest in knowing him better, so accordingly: she is encouraged. Visibly, in her easy pleasure at being indulged at all, the way that she relaxes where she had been evincing caution a moment beforehand. Ah, the slope of her shoulders says, this has been defined as: allowed.

“A real one?” she asks, following his finger to look up, shading her eye to do it. “Just a living monkey, in a house?”