"Never timed it?"

"Or unwilling to tell," she affirms, a touch teasing.

He laughs. "Of course, of course, no sharing too much information with the dangerous limping archer."

She doesn't reply to that, she just goes back to attempting to basketweave and watching him warily!

He chuckles to himself a little bit and watches the fire with a half smile on his face.

Basketweaving, wary watching of the dangerous limping archer, basketweaving, wary watching, basket—

"Rrgh," she growls at the apparent failure of a basket, and then she shreds it with a mix of teeth and claws and proceeds to... pout. That's definitely pouting that she's doing.

"—something wrong with the basket?"

"Yes." Eutelia clearly makes the attempt to leave it at that, from the pause, but she actually cannot resist explaining: "The weave pattern isn't itself complicated, but finding the correct material is, if I get something too stiff it's too brittle and snaps, and if I get something more soft and pliable I inevitably tear it with a stray claw and the whole thing unravels. I had thought that something that was more pliable when wet that would harden to something more stiff would split the difference, but apparently not."

"Who taught you to weave, and what materials did they use?"

"No one, and I don't know. I got the idea by watching your unfaithful companions. They had baskets."

The corners of his mouth twitch down minutely for a second, but he's probably too far away for her to see that.

"I see. I think straw is the typical material people use for anything that does not have specialised needs."

If she notices, she doesn't comment.

"Straw. From.... stalks of grain?" she confirms.

"Right in one."

"Hrm. So... some sort of grass, then. Do you know if it needs to be dried first?"

"I believe so, but I am admittedly no expert."

"Hrmmmmm," she grumbles, scraping doodles into the rock she sits on. "... Thank you. I'll figure it out."

"Good luck!"

...

She seems a little distracted by his smile.

But she does smile back. A little.

She is also very pretty.

Shut up penis your opinion has not been requested at this time.

He flops onto his back and stares at the stars, resting his head on both hands and sighing contentedly.

Eutelia studies him for a little while, with an inscrutable expression. There's certainly still a wariness to her, but also just a trace of fondness, or at least something that looks very much like it.

"The friend who gave me the bow," he says, after a while longer of looking at the stars, "was a son of... you know. That one god. His mother was Alcmene, and although I never had the pleasure of meeting her, she is told to have been wiser than any other human born of mortal parents."

"Sounds lovely. I bet she was very proud of her son. ... I hope that that god was... kind to her."

"He disguised himself as her husband, to whom she had ever been faithful and honourable. He could not have been too out of character, or she would have noticed, so I believe so."

She makes an unhappy sound, and droops a bit onto her rock.

“... Some comfort, I suppose,” she murmurs. “Though I don’t know if that’s worse or better, in the end.”

"They were together until her husband, who was a man named Amphitryon, died; he did not blame her, it seemed, and they raised Herakles as one of their own. He was, in effect; he had a twin brother, but his twin's father was the real Amphitryon."