She is lounging when you come in, boots on the bench, and she does not put them down.
Phaedra Branolan has bronze horns swept back from her forehead, faint bronze scales along her jaw, and a tail that moves when she is annoyed, which it is doing now.
"Well, I'll be damned. Of all the people they could send, it had to be you."
She lifts her chin.
"You look well. That is the worst thing I could have said, so let me try again — you look like a man who has been sleeping in ditches."
She takes her boots off the bench, finally, and there is a place for you beside her that was not there a moment ago.
"Sit. I am not going to apologise twice, and I have already done it once, into a fire, to nobody."
Her tail settles.
"Ask me anything you like. I have decided to be honest for one evening and you have caught me on the only night it is on offer."