"Okay.  Is there anything to that that I wouldn't guess?"

"I... don't think so but I don't know what you'd think of."

"I shouldn't talk to anyone else unless they ask me a question, and I shouldn't speak to you unless... I have something to say?"

"And if you do have something to say, you can - you can come off like I allow you a lot of liberties but not like that's not what would have to be happening, you know? Depending on the setting you might also have to kneel on the floor or something."

"Okay."  He fidgets.  "I think I can do that."

"Also like there is probably some level of Splendor and social sophistication at which I would not have to uphold the cover with crude jokes but it is not my level of Splendor and social sophistication."

"..............Okay.  I don't know whether I can look, um, unbothered, about that."

"You can look, like, flustered, but not - act like you expect that to matter -"

"Yeah, okay."

"Yeah. Sorry. It's just there aren't that many reasons to have a human."

"I'm getting that."

Sigh. "Do you think you need to, like, practice first at all?"

"That might be smart, I guess."  He... kneels?

She plops her hand on his hair. "Yeah I won him in a bet. Wouldn't you like to know what he's for," she says to an imaginary drow patron.

He can stare at his knees while his face gets very red very fast!  His shoulders kind of hunch up but he's careful not to shrink away from her hand.

"Chapter's the same price as last time. None of your business why I brought him, I don't have to explain to you why I do anything with any of my stuff, do you want to buy the installment or not?"

....What does he do if he has something to say.  He looks up at her and attempts to convey this with his face.

"One sec. Yeah, what's up, boy."

"Uh, is this, um, on top of us saying I wrote them, or did we decide not do that."

"Pretending you wrote them is different from advertising it. It would be pretty weird, if you had written them and I were in fact keeping you for this purpose, to go around bragging about it. So I'm bearing it in mind as a character note but won't bring it up."

Nod n - her hand is on his head.  He will hold it still and use his words instead.  "Okay."

"Anyway," she retrieves her hand, "I think you'll pass all right."

"Okay."  Nod.  He resumes being substantially taller than her instead of not-that-substantially shorter than her.

She brings him along with her to park in the venue from which she intends to sell chapters, and scritches his hair and mostly ignores him and makes a crack to a random woman about how he might be quiet now but you wouldn't believe how much use his tongue sees back home. They sell all but one of them.

This makes him feel pretty pathetic, and very aware of how pathetic he feels (...and is), but never leaving that one set of caves can't be good for him, mentally or physically.  And anyway, the alternative is reading at home next to the halflings, who also think these things about him.  Next to Belmarniss at least there's light.

....Maybe that goes a little way to explain why he doesn't feel as bad about this as he really, really ought?

(But he doesn't think so.  Once he thinks about it.)