She seemed genuinely fascinated. “Go, tend to your mount, make camp here for the night, and when you are ready you must tell me of this great saga,” she said softly.
Whether witch, ghost, or creature, he was delighted to have an opportunity after brooding alone upon it for so long to talk of his great passion with someone new and eager to listen. Next to himself, it was the subject he loved to talk upon most of all. And, like the subject of himself, it was a subject almost nobody else wanted to hear him speak about.
She seemed very patient and understanding, even interested, and he was so very, very lonely. He knew not if she be nymph or goddess, demon or sorceress, but she was something right now that he needed very, very badly; the one thing he could not even steal in these trackless wastes.
She was an audience.
The wind which had been constantly swirling and twisting and screaming through the wastelands paused as well; the very air seemed impossibly frozen, the night still, yet oddly expectant. Although incredibly weary, his voice echoed from the dark walls unseen beyond the firelight with the strength and vigor of youth as the very experience brought forth his last reserves of energy, saved for just such an occasion as this.
And yet, there was still enough of the gentleman in him that he paused, after telling the Forty-Seventh Tale, realizing that he was getting so carried away he was not only imposing upon her hospitality, he was, worse, starting to improvise the tale after so long a time. And so he reached for his water flask, drank, and said, “But I have imposed far too much, and you have been gracious to hear me out beyond measure.”