His eyes remained drawn, focused on her, as he listened to her intently. She could see the intelligence in his eyes, could see that he was trying to pluck meaning from her mutterings. He heard her say one of his words, straegoi, and his eyebrow quirked, but what meaning her took from her she could not say. There was one thing she learned by trying to talk to him, though; he seemed patient enough to listen, so he probably wasn’t there to gobble her up or rob her.<br/><br/>He looked at her holding the staff in a quarter grip. It was the defensive grip of a beginner, and yet one of the most effective ways in which one could wield a polearm, offering a wide range of parries; not so many attacks, but a parry from such a weapon could be turned into a counterattack if the fighter was good. Serai was fairly sure the Solar was not so good. He tried to reach for her hand so he could adjust her grip a little further apart, mouth forming a smile, all flashing gorgeous white teeth as he did so. When she only steadied her guard against him and continued to talk her way through the problem, his smile faded, and so did his hand, back down to his side.<br/><br/>When she implored him to wait there, and bounded off, nevertheless he followed her so quickly and quietly he might as well have been her shadow. When she turned around to stand up her face nearly bumped directly into his abdomen. Not seeing the shock this might have caused her, he continued to look on in rapt, studious attention, making a face each time she tried to a phrase from her book, each more befuddled than the last, until at last he held out his hand, palm out, in the universal sign of ‘no more!’ effectively shushing her.<br/><br/>He was no more than paces from her now, when he put out his hand, as if he wanted to see the book.<br/>