“You’ve scraped the soles of your feet straight to hell,” he gritted at me.
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“Your feet are scraped to hell,” he semi-repeated.
“Noctorno, I’m fine.”
“What, by the gods, were you bloody thinking?” he demanded to know.
“I was cleaning.”
“Yes, love, you were cleaning a cave which,” he leaned into me, “by all that is natural, is dirty.”
“But we’re living here!” I sat up to lean into him. “So, being humans and with opposable thumbs and the ability to cogitate, means we can better our surroundings so I’m doing that.”
“And injuring yourself in the ridiculous process,” he shot back.
I felt my eyes narrow. “It isn’t ridiculous. There are dead bugs in the grass under the bed we sleep in! That is pure ick!” I shouted.
“If you weren’t so bloody stubborn, you need clean rushes, you’d bloody well kiss me and I’d give you some bloody shoes!” he shouted back.
“I don’t want to bloody kiss you!” I yelled.
“Then you should have sat on your arse and kept your feet healthy and clean!” he returned on his own yell.
“I did that yesterday and I can’t do it again. It’s boring and my mother told me only stupid people get bored and I’m… not… stupid,” I fired back.
He leaned back and his brows knitted. “Your mother told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Your mother didn’t tell you that,” he declared bizarrely decisively.
“Yes, Tor, she did.”
“She did not.”
“Yes! She did!”
“Bloody hell, woman, she’s sweet as syrup and wouldn’t harm a fly but Dara Goode isn’t smart enough to think something like that much less enunciate it.”
I scrambled to my feet, planted my hands at my own h*ps and snapped, “Are you calling my mother stupid?”
“Gods, Cora, she’s beloved but she’s not bright. It’s not nice but it’s well-known. Even you told me she’s dull as a post,” he retorted.
“I never said such a…”
Oh shit.
I never said such a thing because the Dara Goode in my world, my mother, was not dull as a post. Nowhere near it.
But the other Cora probably said that about her mother.
Blast!
“God!” I exclaimed, looking at the ceiling. “I hate the Cora of this world! She’s an utter… oof!”
There I was again on his shoulder.