impossible reasons

As soon as Amalia spoke to him, Loren’s voice cut off. Closing his eyes for a brief moment, he tried to find some last reserve of patience and resilience, but it was all gone, washed away by recent events. At least the dull aches and emptiness inside had been filled with a cold fury. Still, he’d been getting a handle on it. Mostly. He could talk to most people without losing it right away, which was better than when he’d first erupted. Of course, that was just most people: the baker, however, was someone who he vaguely knew, and wasn’t sure had liked him before his transformation. Now he was pretty sure he didn't like her either. At her questions, he simply regarded her for a while. ”Amalia.” Nodding in acknowledgement of her presence, his gaze never left her face. His voice matched his eyes, and both of them were chilly. ”It’s an anthem from the world I left behind. A world that was always at war. One that’s probably dead, now, along with most of the people in it.” Which included most of the summoner’s family; worse than that, the ones that had made it to Caido were also mostly dead or gone now, leaving him all alone. Once that would’ve bothered him, but these days he just accepted it as a fact. Indeed, if no one was going to welcome him—least of all those Naturals, all of whom seemed to possess a natural distrust of Outlanders, and the Launceleyn more than most—than he wasn’t going to act as if they had or should. The question struck him as totally false, coming from the baker. ”Why do you care?” She didn’t even like him, and certainly didn’t trust him. So he definitely wasn’t going to trust in her reasons for coming here. Astra, sensing his distress, simply backed away, giving an anxious bleat. His luxere had seen these signs in him too many times, and knew that chances were the baker was going to get a tongue-lashing. While Astra hated this side of Loren she knew she couldn’t get through to him when he got wound up like this. For his part, he just maintained his cool and aloof demeanor. LOREN Not quite an open book