remarks | (no subject)

[ She doesn't seem particularly convinced. But she doesn't seem particularly bothered by it either. Claret bends over her own knees, hair slipping from her shoulders as she gives it a peer and a prod with her shoe. (If there's blood on the toe when she pulls back, she doesn't seem bothered by that either.)

Idly, she asks: ]

Are you lying?

[Just some dead animal, ugly gray fur soaked in sticky red and most of its entrails somehow still in place. Jacob has seen a lot worse - he's done a lot worse, in the sense of making-a-bloody-mess - but it's the loud awareness that there's a rifle comfortably resting against his shoulder blade that raises the need to avert any blame.]

No, ma'am. [he lifts his hands, disarmingly.] I love animals!

[ Claret doesn't like guns, but that comes with the territory. Her society prefers the precision of a blade when it came to violence — all a gun did was make mincemeat out of what could arguably be worth more if carved up properly (and even a family like the Dukes knows the value of a pound of flesh).

Straightening again she gives the gun a glance and then smirks. ] Uh huh. And that's for what — feeding the pigeons?

Nah - [there's a jitter in his answer, stirred by a brief, nervous kind of amusement.] - it's for making sure I'm nobody's happy meal.

[The vagueness is obvious enough for anyone who knows where he's from, so he leaves it at that. Slight concern manages to pinch his brows again, finger pointing quickly at the carcass.] That thing wasn't your pet or anything, was it?

[ They're not from the same place but, oddly enough, the sentiment stands and Claret understands. It's dog eat dog (or family swallow family) where she's from — the tenet more literal for some than it is for others. (It may bring her no joy to be a Duke, but thank god she was never born a Saint.) ] I don't do pets. [ Titian would torture it. ] Home's not the best place for little fluffy peeps or things with feathers.

[ Still, she's not bitter about it. ]

Kind of messy, don't you think? [ Safety first, but elegance second. Otherwise it's as good as burning paper money, or at least that's what the stories tell her. (Barter is the currency of her world. And when barter fails, there's flesh.) ] You're small. I bet your quick.

Eh. [He shrugs, shoulders dropping heavily at her question. Execution isn't something he comments on; that would imply a coldness that he doesn't really use to cope with what he does to survive. Instead he puts on a tone and face of a young man who won't quite let anything put him down or ruin his mood, which, more often than not, just makes him obnoxious and nearly impossible to be taken seriously.]

Pretty darn quick. [He's almost smirking - but the temporary appreciation of his own ego is interrupted by the reminder that there's an unimpressive dead animal in the room.] Still wasn't me, though. You got that, right?

[ His insistence makes her lift her eyebrows at him in a dramatic, overdrawn sort of way. One reassurance was enough to get the story to stick, but two—

That's cause for curiosity. ] And if it was?

... I dunno. [He just doesn't want to leave it hanging in the air. Always shoot twice: one bullet to knock them out, the other to make sure they stay dead. The same logic applies to pretty much everything else.] You tell me--?