B) wins.

-Light your pipe, darling, the fire would like to see an ember of its family from a distance.

He had been observing his fingers pack moist Westminster Blend into the bowl. Leaving them to work blindly, he looked up and caught the latter portion of what had been a wry smile on her face, saw high-speed erosion massage the tensed muscles back to relaxed expression. Her eyes, though, continued to exude amusement.

How does she do it, he wondered, still watching her, how does she weave allusions to her greater agenda using tools available in the here and now?

-Alright, he relented, with some hesitation, alright, I know it’s been a long interval since we last saw our son. How shall we approach Endinborough?

Endinborough, a place whose name had its roots in the unintended humor of a talkative scurvy sufferer; a poor, toothless bastard. One of several survivors previously part of a mutinous crew, he had entertained his listeners, the tavern clientele, with harrowing tales of stormy minds floating on stormy waters, conveying the narratives in solemn fits of urgency, preceding every trivial event with utterances a toothed person would pronounce as -and then; sending drunks, laughing, to the floor.

The settlement had grown healthily since those early days. Vessels at port brought merchants and laborers, silks and slaves. Livestock grazed nonchalantly under the sun, and their products were sold or traded at market daily. Clusters of limestone houses were carved out of the hillsides. But there existed a consensus as to the limit of how expansive Endinborough could comfortably become, and its streets, characteristically straight and rigid, jostled irritably here and there as one moved further from the Center Square, finally breaking, defiantly, into full-fledged snaking paths that traced the coastline to other townships.

A)
She looked at him directly, saw into him.
-By water, she said, resolute.
-Would you say the same if it weren’t now raining? he asked, wondering if the water of the weather had somehow influenced her by association.
-Yes, she said. I want to feel myself a part of the sea.
-I only wonder, though, if this rain foreshadows a tumultuous time of it.
-Darling, she said, reassuringly, things are not so literary.

B)
-How was it we went last? she asked.
-I don’t recall…but a few puffs of this pipe might jog my memory.
He placed the pipe bit between his teeth, struck a match, brought the flame down to the bowl and drew in shallowly several times, brow furrowed. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and exhaled smoke.
-No, he said, but I now have a pleasant flavor in my mouth, and am welcoming a comfortable fatigue.
-It smells delicious, she said.

C)
Endinborough was one among many exploratory feelers of a conquering, autocratic superpower. It was, nonetheless, an enjoyable place to live. The slaves, even, wished not to return to their jungles. And so, when a transient man traveling by foot arrived there and met a captivating girl offering goat cheese at the market, he opted to make Endinborough his stationary home and court her, rather than beseech her to follow him onward and away. It was only an event as devastating as they had years later experienced that could uproot them, ultimately leading them to resettle where they now sat and listened to muffled rain.