Alfred had been anticipating something like this, and he'd turned the matter over in his mind as he made his way through London and eventually the Sanditon, but he still hadn't come up with a good route forward. There were plenty of things he could say, of course, but if it were to serve as proof it had to be something that no one else might have already known or picked up by chance, and something that was significant enough that it couldn't have just been guessed. He had the feeling that if he could just touch her, she would know, but it wasn't as though he could ask for that. She still had a wand pointed at him through the crack in the window.

"Yeah, alright," he said, to buy himself time to think. He chewed the edge of his thumb and accidentally drew blood — fucking fangs — and shook his hand out with a mumbled curse. What was he going to say to Zelda? The stories behind his tattoos, maybe — he'd only shared those with her and Jo. The tattoos themselves had been remarked upon in Witch Weekly, though, and he honestly hadn't caught up with whether they'd made their way through the gossip mill since then. That might not be safe enough. Something from the Sycorax expedition, if there was anything he'd told her that hadn't been either printed or alluded to in that terrible memoir? Or...

"Oh, wait, I'm an idiot," he remarked as an idea struck him. It wasn't a matter of telling her anything at all, if he could show her instead. He didn't know if this would actually work or not — he hadn't tried any magic today and things were off — but he thought even if it didn't, she might recognize the gesture. He muttered a chant and lit a small fire in the palm of his hand.

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