The Feral North

She felt marginally better when he made mention that it would interest him. It was always interesting meeting new writers, even if she wrote a lot of fact and less on opinion. Everyone was different, writing styles and method. Thankfully in her line of work, she didn’t need to wait for the mood to strike in order to write. She wrote what she saw, what people needed to hear, and that was all there was to it. She did know that others were not so lucky, and that writers could go through a huge dry spell where nothing would ever get recorded on paper. That sucked. Surely writing something was better than writing nothing, most felt the same about that which was why she didn’t feel bad about offering the stranger a chance to write with the paper. Maybe he would end up surprising her, and it would be fun.

However the conversation quickly changed to him having a stroke because her nerves were acting up. Sure, she was nervous, meeting new people always did that to her. But her nerves were more centered on her stutter. If it wasn’t for the speech impediment she was sure she would be a social butterfly, maybe... probably not. “S-s-sounds g-good.” She could look at it like a perspective as to what to expect from him, what she could hope to see breathed into the paper. “I-I-I’m s-s-sorry once m-more.” Kae couldn’t remember if she had already apologized for her stutter or not. Her eyes lifted to his face, a soft smile found her then. Was he implying that he too was a bit shy or nervous? It did make her feel a bit better, even when she didn’t think he had any reason to feel such. That was often what others told her too, nothing like a dose of your own medicine.

Deciding to break the silence and possibly start feeling more at ease around him, she started softly with the questions, trying to focus on making her stutter disappear. “H-h-how l-long h-have you been w-w-writing? Any p-p-published w-works?”