Elayra smirked in satisfaction from beneath her tangled mass of hair at Ghent’s reaction to her threat. If Drust noticed, he gave no indication.
	Drust’s gaze shifted from the flames only when Ghent leaned forward in interest, flicking to the boy for only a moment.
	[b]“I bet you guys had some pretty cool adventures,”[/b]
	Drust’s lips twitched again in something somewhere between a smile and grimace, as if his mouth had forgotten how to truly smile. “Your father was a great man. But he always had a knack for finding trouble.” Amusement dusted his otherwise stiff words, his gaze growing distant in silent reminiscence.
	The Knight blinked, drawing himself back to the present when Ghent broke the silence. He nodded in a poor attempt at encouraging the boy’s next questions.
	Whatever either of them had expected to be those two questions, what left Ghent’s mouth was not it.
	Drust looked fully to Ghent with a disbelieving scowl and twitch of his neck.
	Elayra groaned. “[i]Seriously,[/i] dodo brain? [i]That’s[/i] what you want to know?”
	“Tichari aren’t pets, [i]boy,[/i]” Drust snapped, an extra edge in his voice. “They’re messengers of the Spiritayum. They deserve respect. Not enslavement.”
	Rolling her eyes with an exasperated sigh, Elayra placed her piece of half-eaten jerky with the others. She sat the cloth on the ground beside her and sheathed her dagger. She forced herself to her knees, then reached her better arm into her pack.
	Thinking of Ghent’s unusual backpack in as great detail as she could, it took her only a moment to find it. Her fingers closed around one of the cushioned straps of his pack. With more effort than she would have liked and no small amount of maneuvering, she managed to pry Ghent’s pack from hers. She let it drop to the ground beside hers, too weary to do much else after fighting it out even if she had wanted to.
	She plopped heavily back into the indention she had made in the plush grass. She retrieved her jerky, glaring at Ghent. “Happy, Featherhead?”
	“I trust you’ve brought provisions?” Drust asked darkly, doubtfully, eyeing the skull-patterned backpack. It looked out of place between the Wonderlanders, a modern item dropped into the center of the wrong era.