Grey's joke was met with a flash of warning from both Mauve and Elowen. It wasn't that either of them were particularly offended by what he said, at this point they had both suffered through enough of Grey's mouth that a little vulgarity barely even registered anymore.
No, their reactions were aimed at something else, and it didn't take Grey long to realize that something was probably the old woman standing with them.
She was short, definitely two or three inches shy of five feet, and the slight hunch in her back made her look even smaller. Her hair was long and silvery, but not in that dry, wiry way old people usually got when age started sucking the life out of them, there was a real luster to it that caught the light whenever she shifted.
In one hand she held a bulbous cane that looked like it could have passed for some wizard's staff if someone had bothered making the damn thing a few feet longer.
