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							- Eberhardt "Papercat" Von Kvotzburg frowned, and his eyebrows knotted
 
- into perfect curls and settled underneath the rolling wrinkles that
 
- had arrayed themselves on his expansive forehead. His hand gripped the cold
 
- metal of the creaking, weather-beaten chair. His eyes darted—up, down, up,
 
- down, left, down, up, up, down...
 
- "Aye, I'm afraid 'tis true," she said as she sipped the paper cup
 
- filled with overpriced coffee-like beverage. Her nose, shaped as it
 
- was like a ski ramp, twitched in anticipation of the impending
 
- caffeine.
 
- "When did you start talking like a pirate?" he asked.
 
- "There be a lot ye not know about me," she muttered. "Be that as it
 
- may, ye know not of the treasure that awaits ye—the treasure that
 
- awaits us all as we traverse the shores beyond—"
 
- "—are you still talking about the grocery store?"
 
- "Aye." She tested the temperature of the coffee with a tiny, noisy
 
- sip, and then shrugged and threw back the entire cup without so much
 
- as a flinch. "There be stranger things in the world than ye know,
 
- Papercat. Much stranger things that may set their sights upon ye."
 
- "You're aware that 'ye' is a nominative—not an objective—pronoun, no?"
 
- "Shut ye the fuck up," she said with a slow, lilting cadence and a
 
- haunting glare. "Let we get the fuck to the store of grocery."
 
- And frankly, it would have been an okay grocery run if not for the
 
- kraken.
 
 
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