“Like what, given their scope for mischief? Let’s maybe keep it to a mammal. No iguanas or tarantulas just yet.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m not cleaning up cow shit. Doubly no for sloths, which are actually the most disgusting creatures ever to exist. But what about… a koala?”
“Sweet pea. You have to the count of five to leave the room before I THROW something at your HEAD.”
Jack lets loose with an enormous laugh, a cackle that seems to come all the way from his toes. “Oh come, you don’t want to damage this masterpiece, do you?”
As they happen to be standing in the kitchen, Koschei lobs a rutabaga–don’t ask how they have a rutabaga–at Jack’s head.
The Master accepts the pastry with an expression of genuine awe.
“I think,” he proclaims after a pregnant pause, “that you may be the most Scottish person I have ever met. How do you do that? Do you bleed tartan? Good God.”