"You killed Conner!" Alistair screamed, his face full of rage. "How could you?"
Randi's back bristled as she stood her ground, staring up at the tall Templar. "No. I killed a Demon, remember?"
"Who was inside a boy! The son of Arl Eamon for Andraste's sake!"
"Yes, a boy who was an apostate, and a summoner of demons!" she replied, getting angrier by the minute.
"But… Oh never mind, you're just splitting hairs here. The fact of the matter is we could have found another way, but you didn't even try!" he retorted, rubbing his hands over his face in tired exasperation.
Silence greeted him. He removed his hands from his eyes to see Randi staring at him, perplexed.
"What does hair care have to do with this?" she asked, in complete seriousness.
"Huh?" he asked in return, totally lost, a feeling not new to him since meeting Randi.
"You said we were 'splitting hairs', as if we were parting our hair, or in the case of a man, their beards, in preparation for braiding," confusion still evident on her face. "What's that got to do with killing demons?"
"Andraste's knickers! It's an idiom. An expression… it wasn't literal!" he replied, exasperated.
"An idiom? A human thing then, yes?" she asked, her brow furrowed as she tried to understand. "What does it mean?"
"It means we're arguing about small points that don't relate to the subject at hand. You know, like you say 'toh-mah-toh', I say 'toh-may-toh', that kind of thing."
"What's a 'toh-mah-toh'?"
"It's 'toh-may-toh', and it's a fruit, though many people call it a vegetable."
"You just told me I should say it was 'toh-mah-toh', so stop correcting me! I'm doing just what you told me to do," she said, glaring at him. "And why do humans call it a vegetable if it's a fruit?"
Alistair sighed. "Because they eat it like a vegetable, on sandwiches and stuff."
"Why do they eat a fruit like a vegetable?" she asked, confused. "You humans are so strange!"
"I have no idea! I didn't come up with the usage for 'toh-may-tohs'."
"Who did?" she asked, curious once again.
Alistair threw up his hands. "Look! I don't know and I don't care. Let's just drop it, okay? Go! Leave me alone! You're making my head hurt!"
"Okay," she said before turning to leave.
As she walked back to her tent she couldn't help but smile. Count on men, regardless of race, to fall for the old misdirection trick to get them sidetracked from their train of thought. At least she didn't have to worry about having him yell at her for killing that stupid boy anymore.
