Kitalia shrugged. “Still undecided. I mean, you are proving to be quite the burden overall.”
“Are all Ylveryan as humorless and as straightforward as you?”
“Not at all,” she replied with no trace of a smile playing at her lips. “In fact, I am known as something of a comedian where I grew up.”
“Ylveryan parties must be some of the dullest things in the world then,” Kre remarked. “All that proper talk and humor as dry as… well… uh… something really dry.”
“Your wittiness humbles me.” She grabbed a couple of small rocks from the ground and carefully arranged them in front of her.
“Are you casting some sort of magic spell now?” Kre asked nervously.
“Yes, it is a magic called geography. It would do well if your people actually learned it.”
Kre returned a puzzled look, as she half-expected he would, so she continued. “I am simply marking out some notable landmarks with the rocks, so we can discuss our next move.”
“Oh. That kind of geography.”
“There is but the one kind,” she said with a sigh. “How your educators survived you all these years is beyond amazing.”
She placed her final rock and looked it over quickly before nodding in satisfaction. “All right. We are here, a good way south and west of your city of Sandort here. Your military base is north of us here, and if we continue east from here for about a week, week and a half walking, we will reach the highway, right here near the…”
“I suppose, yes,” she said, shaking her head at his interruption. “The highway is indeed near the coast and such a good boy you are to know that. However, I was going to say that heading due east from here would put us dangerously near one of the Ranger’s main waystations for this region.”
“Oh. You don’t have to be so mean about it you know. It’s not like this map is really that great. I mean, you have two roads here.” He gestured at a nearby stick.
“Well, no. That stick there would just be a stick.” She stood and stretched her arms and back. “Okay, I shall be back momentarily. I need to have some one-on-one time with a tree.”
Kre’s eyebrows perked up instantly. “So, the rumors ARE true about your people and trees,” he whispered, almost reverently.
At nearly the same moment, Kitalia must have realized how her words might have been interpreted by the ill-informed mind of a teenaged Tehynshin boy. She hung her head and took a deep breath. “I mean, I need to use the restroom. I begin to understand more everyday how our two people often find themselves at war.
“While I am gone, please look over the dirt map and see if you can learn a bit more about the lands your people claimed for their own.”