"You're not sworn not to hurt me anymore, I should tie you up to sleep."

He appears to briefly consider whether he wants this to require calling guards and to decide that he does not.

Cor naps.

He wakes up.

He doodles, then -

"Whoever's lurking to make sure I don't run amok, I have an idea I can't sketch out, requires liquid medium. Is the bucket of cow blood still in that room?"

"It probably dried," lurking Elf says uncertainly.

"It was a whole bucketful. It's not fresh enough to work any more, sure, but... maybe it clotted. Can I have some blood to try a draft of an idea. If you need to stop me doing unauthorized magic it can be chicken blood or something."

"I don't know enough about your magic system to know if chicken blood works. Why not ink."

"Viscosity matters. I'm sure I specified mammal blood long before I knew this place was a creepy hive of abuse and dictatorship, ask Curufinwë, it might have been him."

"- okay, someone'll bring chicken blood. We're not - a hive of anything we're just trying to get through the war alive."

"Are you under orders to have this argument or do you just feel like it?"

"Orders are not to bother you I just think you're wrong."

"Do you know why I might have this opinion or is that a mystery."

"Because the King fucks men. It's definitely horrible of him, but there's nothing wrong with the rest of us."

"You have totally and utterly failed to model my thought process on even the most rudimentary level, congratulations."

Lurking Elf falls silent. Chicken blood is brought.

"There somewhere I should go to draft? I need a wall."

"I can find you a wall."

"Good for you."

Lurking Elf, looking flustered, finds a wall.

Cor doodles in soot along the bottom edge, but that's not the point and he doesn't get it very precise.

And then he slathers an arc of blood over it, and more, and more, and more, and more, until it's dripping through the soot and pooling on the floor.

He tsks and repeats himself a little to the right, adjusts the arc shape, manages to avoid pooling.

Nods at it. Goes back to his room.

He is followed.

Of course he is.

He sketches.

Don't interrupt him. He'll get out of his - creative mindset -

Twitch. I know. But - I'm never going to see him again after -

Maybe somewhere out there in the universe there's someone you'll do right by.