Malcolm Bright

She just looked at him for a moment. It was a much less dressed up answer than she'd been expecting, somehow. Maybe she was just from a world where nobody was straight about their real feelings about anything.

"It's not exactly what I pictured for him," she admitted, then glanced down at the floor between their feet. "But since it seems like it's better for him than the way anything I pictured could have turned out, that's probably a good thing." She took a breath and looked at him. "You said you won't let anything happen to him?"