#waaaaahh azama pleading

[bxldrsdraumar]

"Ah. There you are."

He hums as he closes the distance, circling around to the front where the knight stands at his appointed position - a vaunted guard of the scant remaining stores.

"Lord Sigurd." The monk flashes him a guileless smile. Stomach rumbles, but he raises his hands in preemptive defense. "Lest you worry, I am not here to change my mind about forsaking my own ration. Rather..."

He reaches to his side, casually retrieving his staff.

"I'm here to make good on my earlier recommendation, if you'll allow me."

Keranes is here too, looking straight ahead as though lost in thought. (Can't guard precious precious treasure all alone, after all. That's just asking for trouble.)

"You will, won't you? I should like to prove some manner of useful, if possible."

Sigurd was of a mind that the most extenuating circumstances showed the true mettle of a man - when he is tired, or cold, or wounded and uncomfortable, or unhappy.

Or hungry.

Most would like to assume that they were in control of their faculties, that something so base as human urges could be brought to heel with enough willpower. They were wrong - each man was a slave to their body, and more often than one might expect, it was hunger which held the leash.

He sighed, tipping his head back to rest it against the wooden wall where their stores lay, feeling the twinge in his gut, the shivering heat that wrought weakness against all of his limbs. He was a pale imitation of himself, and for the first time since reawakening all those months ago, he felt it. Keranes, when she had seated herself beside him, had glanced over him once, and shook her head in the way that people did when they thought they wouldn't be noticed.

Still, he had the faculties to notice the approach of footsteps, and though Sigurd might have scarce had the strength to stand, his grip tightened around the haft of his lance.

It did not loosen at the sight of the smiling monk, the face lined with hunger as the rest, though…

Sigurd smiled in return, took the other man at his face - he had, after all, expressed a disinterest at the physical world. Perhaps he was a truly holy man, after all.

"You cannot blame me my suspicions, my friend. I - you are too kind, I'm not sure you need to - "

But he felt it. In that moment, in spikes beforehand - during the roundtable, when all eyes weighed heavily on him, not just with expectation but with dread. Dread that such a force among them would fall so early. He felt the shame of it, that predicated failure that he could not allow.

His smile softened, and his grip loosened. "You are a good man, sir monk. It is a relief, to know that our trust in you, at least, can stand unwavering."