Note: Here there be spoilers for Behemoth, cap'n! Delicious, delicious spoilers. *drools* LOL
Still. Don't read this before you read that.
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"Here we are again," Alek says, gesturing with the tip of his saber. Sky, spine, fencing lessons… Volger having declined to participate in favor, no doubt, of further scheming. The Leviathan is crossing the Urals instead of the Mediterranean; otherwise things are remarkably similar to a day over a month in the past.
And of course nothing at all is the same.
"Aye, just like old times," Dylan says, sighing. His posture has improved significantly, but Alek still has to correct it; a trickier maneuver now that there's a perspicacious loris perched on the other boy's shoulder. Alek picks up Bovril and places the creature on the Leviathan's thick membrane, where it's happy enough, as the other loris is sitting among the spectators.
That Dr. Barlow is necessarily part of the audience, too, is just an unfortunate aspect of the loris reunion.
Dylan shifts his feet slightly. "Wonder what we'll find waiting for us in Japan?"
"I have no idea," Alek says as he retakes his stance, but the question fills him with excitement rather than uncertainty, confidence rather than anxiety. He feels like he could handle anything, now. He feels as if he's – well, as if he's an archduke, and not just a prince.
"Waiting," Bovril says.
The other loris chimes in with, "No idea."
"Mr. Sharp," they say in unison, and giggle.
Dylan scowls and drops his point. "I liked those beasties better when they were still eggs."
