He gave Mal a bit of an amused smirk. "Perhaps another time," he said of her suggestion. "Our time is somewhat limited and best used attending to the business at hand."

"And no, we have not met before this, even in that strange dreamworld. I was brought here several moons ago by the same magical happenstance that brought many others. Though unlike them, it was, perhaps, more fortunate than not for myself, for it snatched me from the jaws of death. Were it not for being plucked from my own world when I was, I would be lying broken and unmourned at the base of a cliff, and my body food for wild beasts."

"I tell you this not to seek your pity, for I deserve none; that ignominious death would have been well earned, I assure you. But I felt it necessary that you know before aught else the reason that whatever may betide, I cannot return to the world of my birth; naught but death awaits me there. For worse or for better, this world is now my home. Thus, while I have every intention of putting myself forward for consideration, as you suspected, I feel I must give the matter greater thought than might those who are simply travelers passing through."