A threat! It was casual, playful, and absolutely lethal, dropped between them like a coin onto a table!
Noah's eye squinted.
He did not panic, but he moved carefully now, with the caution of a man who had walked into a room full of monsters and just discovered the one being in it who could point at him. He wove the frequency of his own Provenance together with the Mantle of THE Meta-Fictional Protagonist, threading a narrow private narrative between his existence and hers, a channel only two authors could share, and he spoke into it.
"I am Osmont," he said. "I am curious about you, and your narrative. That is all."
His gaze swept the gallery of gathered gazes, the sea below, the hunters converging. "Though you seem to be in a predicament where even as a manipulator of narratives, you… might just lose."
…!
Calliope's reply came bright and fast, colored with something like joy!
Hah! Now that would be something new. Something worth writing.|
