#(( things like ''oh yeah the merkingdom valves my serfs over my own friends''

[royalreef]

@archivalwrite || Continued from here

She stretched her hands outwards, gesturing again only once to call another serf over to her, and immediately they withdrew a cloth to begin to clean Miranda's claws for her. They tilted their head low, reverent, eyes cast down to their work, polishing each scale and working short, webbed digits around each pad on her palm. The otter didn't look up to Liam, switching instead between soap and wet cloth and another cloth and polish and finally a scented oil, content to keep work on attending to Miranda's hands, ensuring they were clean to perfection, instead of attempting to broach a conversation that they understood they were not a part of.

Miranda, who was still acting as though all of this was so mundane that she did not even have to pay it her full attention, something which Liam himself could attest to — looked down at the ground, less at the serf which was tending to her, and moreso like she was peering through them, looking at something which was not there simply to not look back at Liam.

"I mean — it would not be so hard, I do not think," she mouths the words down at the top of the serf's head. Maybe they are listening. Maybe they are not, because their ears are folded down, small as they are, nearly hidden beneath all the fur covering their body. Miranda certainly would not care either way, because this is not a secret she has to be wary of around her own staff.

This is not a secret either, but the aftertaste of secrets is still in her mouth, wrapped around her tongue, and she has yet to fully chew her way back out of it.

Would the serf even understand the profundity of the secret at hand either? Probably not. Things were different, when she broached the legal boundary between the Merkingdom and anything else left, and the space between Liam and Miranda and the serf was vast.

"It has only been... What, seven years since I first obtained a phone? And I do not truly use them when I return home either... Whoever else would I talk to if not you? It is not as though anyone else within the kingdom has any number I could collect."