#tone check

You had maybe a minute or two before your nitwit cousin and his sad weasel caught up with you and you went up to this guy and just went for it, “Hi, could I...I am in trouble. I’ve been telling my cousin I’m engaged. If he finds out I’m not he’s going to try and force me to marry that squirrely guy in the blue sweater.”

The man in question peeked over your shoulder to see who you were referring to.

“He does, indeed, have a particularly mustelid quality about him.” The man nodded, shrugged his gear over his shoulder and it made you realize he only had one arm. Fucking prospectors, always risking limbs trying to pilfer--

Another time.

“Yes, well, I keep telling him my fiance is just out in the Green, doing excavations, research, things like that and uh...he’s getting suspicious the guy just doesn’t exist.”

“This might be linked to the fact that said gentleman is not, in fact, a part of this reality.” The man just clicked his jaw thoughtfully, “Though maybe he exists in some other somewhere in a parallel truth that we are simply blind to.”

He smiled at you and it was crooked but charming, “I am, of course, teasing you as our perception of something is all that gives value in this world, take our introduction-- you have perceived me as useful to you and even if I have not seen this quality in myself you have, by your very asking, made it so.”

“So that’s a no?”