He could choose to be comforting, but what was the point in sugar coating this particular reality? Better to lay out the bare bones and the broken glass so that you could better pick your way through the mess later.

"How about we play a game while I patch you up then? You tell me one of your secrets, I tell you mine," he suggested, opening the door to the house.

It wasn't anything very special, and it felt like the kind of new that was to fresh to have been properly lived in and was being broken in. A dragon chirruped from where it had perched on the edge of a fish bowl containing what was possible the angriest and ugliest fish one had ever seen - a miniature eldritch nightmare colored red.

"Rigel, I warned you already, if you play with Chekov, he'll bite you and then you only have yourself to blame," he chided the dragon, as if it were perfectly normal.