"If there's nothing else you have to tell me don't let me keep you."
"I do genuinely want to keep talking to you," he says, softly. "But if you'd like me to shoo, I do have things to do so I won't be - weird or unbearably upset or anything."
"I'm not busy," she says. "But you're busy. It's up to you what ratio of hanging out on the phone versus, I don't know, attending the hasty wedding of the happy couple or calling the bounty posters who now owe you money or whatever, you should be doing."
"I - well, yes. I should probably be doing those sorts of things." Pause. "... I missed you a lot, are you okay?"
"I - this is really stupid, but there was a - person earlier, who touched a new artifact and it made him say something kind of horrific and there was no reasonable way he could have known it. It was sort of scary, I'm - glad you're okay."
"Do you want to tell me what he said?"
This is different from asking outright? Isn't it? Maybe?
"Basically that everything with the knife was going to go horrifically wrong and that I was a failure and wouldn't be able to either save my sister, or keep you from -" He winces, making an audible little pained sound. "- being cut."
"Well, you got the knife. And I'm fine. I've just been showing up at classes and doing homework and - stuff."
"Yeah," he says. "So it was probably just - saying something another person finds really horrible when you first meet them, or - something. I'm glad you're okay."
"Yeah. Wow, that poor guy, he's going to have a tough time making friends, isn't he."
"Pretty much. I don't hold it against him, but it was - unpleasant."
"Were you?" says Aldaras, sounding - somewhere between gooey and in love, sorry that he worried her, and genuinely touched.
"Yeah. If you'd touched the knife after being necklaced it might still have gotten you, if order of operations matters."
"It - might have. But I'm all right." Pause. "I'm sorry for worrying you."
"It's okay. I just thought you might have wanted to know."
"Thank you," he says, genuine and lovingly and sounding like he wants to hug her and tell her she is the best person in all the world. Also probably some of the adoring looks.
"I'll be back at Drofnfjord soon," he assures, in the same voice. He can't wait to see her again.
(The new happy couple wander by, engagement piercings fresh in their left ears, holding hands, pausing every four steps to kiss eagerly.)
"Yeah, I'm..." He sees the happy couple. "... Looking forward to it. Sorry, the - couple I mentioned earlier are now engaged, that's a bit..."