the monsters turned out to be just trees

hope keeps us breathing, just to kill us in the end

Glancing down at the offered cloth, the alchemist couldn't help but smile crookedly as he accepted it. "I am normally the one doing that." He said under his breath, proper speech still feeling more or less impossible with how thick his throat currently felt. Questions he wanted to ask bubbled on his tongue; inappropriately timed but bright in his mind, if only because he felt he could ask them and expect an actual response.

But...selfish as it was, this strange moment was at least close to what it was Remi needed. Loren would likely spontaneously combust given access to the alchemist's thoughts—a good thing that he wasn't an attuned—but this was helping. It was a chisel against an iceberg, but still it was something.

Raising the cloth to his eyes and scrubbing at them hard enough to leave patches of red around his eyes, Remi's breath caught in his throat as he looked quizzically up at the summoner. "And if I win, will you finally admit that I am cuddly and adorable, then?" The alchemist asked in a crackled voice as he met Loren's gaze.