[ panicking gets you nowhere, but in dutch's experience, that's rarely stopped anyone from panicking. the kind of people who panic are not the kind of people who make a cost-benefit analysis beforehand about whether it's useful to panic or not.

still, she's glad he's not one of the panicky types. ]

Whiskey's good in general. [ close enough to some variants of hokk she knows. ] And port. But they're really focusing on beer with this one.

[ she lifts her glass to indicate the point, stepping a little closer. to anyone else, it might look flirtatious —and who's to say that it isn't?— but her next words are matter-of-factly: ] You got here on a bus, didn't you? Nurses, straps, the whole abduction deluxe treatment.