[It's low, the long hum Zevlor lets out. Drags on longer than just consideration could ever possibly merit, and comes with the most weary, unsure glance from over the flat top of his spectacles.

Shooting holes in Fenris' determination now is akin to kicking a puppy, he's very quickly realizing. A very noble, very earnest, very hopeful green-eyed puppy.]

You know, there was a time when Astarion— much, much younger than you'd been when he brought you here— realized he could very easily pull, with some effort, the little jar of candied cherries from its shelf beneath the bar. At first we'd been keeping it on the lowest rung, you see, and once we caught him the first time we started moving it higher and higher—

[His hand raises, in horizontal alignment with the floor, in order to mimic successively higher shelving.]

—to which he then responded to by stacking shallow crates on one another and climbing onto them.

His hands were so small then, we thought he wasn't capable. Or at least, after the first few attempts that surely he couldn't go any higher. Yet inevitably he did, and so we spoke to him. Scolded him. Told him he'd be sick if all he ate was cherries, and that in time he'd fall and break his neck.