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"Hello there," Wilhelmina said to Fléin, who looked like he was very deep in thought, though his beard made it hard to discern the subtleties of facial expression. He glanced up at her but said nothing.
She tried again: "Pondering something, then, are we?" Still, he did not reply. "Goodness, someone's feeling a bit introverted today."
"There's nothing wrong with being introverted!" he growled like someone being forced to wear a Christmas sweater with pom-poms on it.
"I never said there was," Wilhelmina said primly.
Fléin asked the question that had been bothering him for some time: "Why did you vote for SPaM?"
The old woman shrugged. "Does there have to be a reason?"
"For stoning someone to death? I'd say there ought to be," he commented, choosing not to bring up the incident some hundred years ago when the Dwarves had approved of the stoning to death of all those who had died prematurely -- eventually they had realized the futility of this action, and chose to stone writers of generic, uninventive Tolkien fanfiction instead.
"I don't like bandwagoning," she told him, fiddling with a feather in her hat. "I like bands very much, and I like wagons just fine, but the two put together often end in disaster. Trumpets falling off the back of the cart and bumps in the road making flutes get stuck through the bass drum and things."
Fléin cracked a sardonic smile. "That's not what bandwagoning is."
"Isn't it? It makes perfect sense to me." Mr. Swanky chose that moment to emerge from Wilhelmina's hat and climb onto Fléin's shoulder.
"Argh! Take him back, Wilhelmina!" he cried. "That animal has no concept of people's personal space!"
"He's just trying to be friendly," she said reproachfully, plucking the ferret from his shoulder. "So what were you pondering, anyway?"
The Dwarf frowned. "Do you think Alli and Sai are lesbians?" he asked gloomily.
Wilhelmina made a scoffing sound that couldn't quite be expressed through the letters of the English alphabet. "Why would you think that?"
"Oh, I don't know..."
She eyed him sternly, completely ignoring the fact that he was rather a bit older than she. "If you've been sitting here imagining those nice young girls doing naughty things, then you can take your fantasies elsewhere, mister."
Fléin spluttered in shock, a sound that also could not be adequately expressed through the English alphabet without afflicting the transcriber with some degree of mental illness. "Of course I wasn't! I was just... never mind." He sighed heavily, feeling very misunderstood. "I hope we don't kill another innocent today."
"Who do you suggest we vote for, then?"
"Actually, I was thinking about something Anakron said. About how we assume too much."
"Oh? Do go on, my dear Dwarf."
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