mary ate a little lamb

Tyrian schooled his expression into a careful neutral the moment he started to get the feeling Lachlan's answer was going to be a serious one. He hadn't expected a serious answer and if he had known he was asking for trouble he would have started with something else, if only to keep Lachlan's mood buoyed and to steer them clear of any awkwardness. Not that he was unsympathetic to Lachlan's troubles. He was and he wanted him to be well and happy in all things as Lachlan just felt deserving, but from experience he knew how hard it could be to lift a conversation out of solemnity and he didn't wish that on Lachlan either.

"Oh? I'm sorry to hear it..." But was he, really, as it opened up the possibility of recruiting Lachlan to Fireside should their relationship progress further... Tashi had introduced him to a tongue in cheek term for when one group recruited the member of another group and caused them to leave home. 'Sheep stealing' it was called and it was, to the budding sheep farmer, a good term as he mostly had no qualms with being a sheep stealer himself. Both of the woolly variety and the wolven. But working an unattached wolf was easier than an attached one so he'd take his "sheep" honestly whenever the chance arose.

The sudden swing away from the solemn pulled a surprise laugh from Tyrian. Lachlan, it seemed, could handle solemnity better than Tyrian."I knew it," he said as though vindicated. "No one squares up with a bear without an ulterior motive."