As he relaxes (dangerous, like the more experienced warriors she knows, like the warlords who survive more than a month), eyes on her like she's some sort of threat to calculate and respond to, Helen stiffens briefly. Then her shoulders go back slightly, her head up, a gesture she has been taught to signify dignity.

It comes across as defiant, and it is that too. "There," Helen says, bending the pink nostrils of the trunk toward Joris. "Demons do that, don't they? Am I a demon, Joris?"

(She knows they do. Not all of her research in Milliways has been about doors.

She isn't sure that she isn't.)