Maybe it's for the best - that she doesn't apologize, that it's her own interrogation and not something passed down to her from one of the half dozen voices trying to talk her down across the sending crystals (he isn't deaf). In any case, it's an answer that suits him enough to take the question more seriously than the evening or her perfectly true but unrelentingly earnest criticism of the festivities might otherwise merit.
He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--
"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."
This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2018-11-14 11:42 pm (UTC)He lets her mind the cups, the teapot, the murmuring of the water as it comes into its heat. After a meditative tug on his beard, some habitual smoothing of the whiskers at the corner of his mouth--
"Then let's say that freedom to people like you and I would be the luxury of being held accountable without exemption." There is a heavy ring on his small finger. He sets to turning it. "Nothing done because the life you were given or the requirements of what we call civilization told you to do it. If the world were a free place, we could all come by our consequences honestly as opposed to being handed them by someone else."
This, from by a man who has undoubtedly done any number of less than polite things which he might be held accountable.