[If she is at all primly disappointed to have failed in calling him down, then so be it. Surely it can be the first time Wysteria has failed to have her way in something. One must enure oneself to defeat now and again.
So there the conversation ends.
Just kidding. How long does it take to traipse up five flights up stairs? Slightly longer than that, on account of first engineering to steal an entire half of a cheese tart from the party, and then: a brisk rap of knuckles on a door.
If Ellis is not in his quarters, or has already gone to bed, or simply ignores the knock the so be it. Otherwise, he may be subjected to the unannounced visitation of a particularly stubborn Nevarran corpse.]
my extreme lol. what a miscalculation, thinking wysteria would just GIVE UP.
Had someone else come calling, the likelihood of the knock going unanswered would have been all but a certainty. The narrow strip of light at the bottom of closed door certainly indicates someone within the room, but Ellis is reasonably comfortable in the idea that those ignored would move on. He is hardly a bigger draw than the festivities in the courtyard.
However, at this knock Ruadh rolls over on his bed, cropped ears pricking up, sniffing delicately at the air. When he swivels to Ellis, it's to deliver an encouraging boff. The number of people who would prompt that reception are very few and very limited, and neither prone to giving up if they've made it all the way to his doorstep, and so—
The door is pulled open. Ellis is barefoot, laces undone and gambeson shed. His mace is propped by the door alongside his unlaced boots, in concession to the near-yearly tradition of disaster striking Satinalia gatherings. The oil lamp is turned low, meant clearly for the benefit of a person propped up against the headboard where the pillow is rumpled and a book has been laid facedown on the bedding.
Ruadh stretches deeply and theatrically, before rising to trot across the room to inspect the new arrival at the same moment Ellis says, "You'll be missing the party."
"I have already been to the party and have seen Kostos Averesch run headlong into a stone pillar. Unless more skeletons come crawling out of the harbor or Enchanter Julius's elusive red lyrium dragon comes calling, I very much doubt anything more exciting than that is likely to happen. And if it does, one might argue that I'm much better off here than in the courtyard. Here you are, Mister Ellis."
This last bit is to punctuate her passing him the plate with the half of a group sized cheese tart.
"I thought that, given your being too tired to join the festivities, I might at least see a very small portion of them up to you. You will forgive me for not bringing along any of the musicians. Although, popular consensus seems to be that you may be better off without. Hello, Ruadh. Would you like a bit of cheese tart as well?"
Her plain black mask has been pushed up into her hair, leaving her with a funny half face of makeup where Wysteria had drawn exaggerated cheekbones on herself with some heavy dark powder, and had blacked her nose and darkened her lips with the same.
There is a stretch of quiet from Ellis, perhaps processing the amount of cheese tart that has been handed to him or the costume Wysteria has put together or the effect of half a face of makeup. (Or acclimating to her presence here, somehow unexpected and all the more blinding for it.)
Ruadh, however, is undeterred by these factors. Having vacated his nest of blankets, he's trotted over to butt his head against Wysteria's hip in both a request for a proper greeting and perhaps to offer her the single seat in the room.
"You're very kind," is what Ellis settles on. "Bastien did not play this year?"
He is still standing, cheese tart in hand. Aware that this is not a space well proportioned for entertaining.
"No, he and the rest of the Riftwatch players were mercifully spared. You ought to have seen him cavorting around. I think he rather enjoyed being unshackled from his bow."
Her hand has dropped with automatic practice half to fend off further headbutts from the mabari and half simply to oat him on his great scarred block of a skull between his wedged ears.
"Here, let me take at a bit of that tart—"
Obviously Wysteria has brought the knife that had been laid alongside the plate with her, and so it takes almost no effort to take it up and hack a corner off the tart's end. She takes one bite to reduce the square to a into a far more reasonable waning moon before offering it to Ruadh.
For a creature with such a fierce appearance, Ruadh uses his teeth so, so delicately when nipping his share of tart from Wysteria's fingers. A lap of his tongue follows, appreciative.
Having been charged with the management of the plate, Ellis sets to clearing his little side table. Balancing one-handed, the few items occupying the space are set into the drawer (a hand-carved mabari, a folded paper dog, a pair of worn books) so the plate might be set down and cut from as they please.
"I've no wine to offer you," Ellis tells her. He is aware of his own relative state of dress, undone laces, bare feet. Sound still carries up to them through the cracked shutters, the party she should be attending going on without her. "You can sit if you like."
If she intends to stay for any length of time, is what Ellis isn't asking but attempting to determine.
"Oh, that's all right. I've had a few cups already."
With a last pat for Ruadh, she wanders in across the threshold and is abruptly inside the room rather than nearly out of it. His invitation to sit happily accepted, she perches herself primly there near the foot of the bed and makes a great 'come up here, come here' show of patting the space on it beside her for the mabari whole saying, "I promise not to keep you long. I know you're tired."
Ruadh satisfies himself with sitting very close in against her skirts and putting his head on her knee. With a judgemental sniff, Wysteria's attention turns back from the dog.
"Did the gloves I left for you fit? If they don't, I can make arrangements to replace them."
Ellis is looking at her, stepped back once, twice, to take in the entirety of her presence. How she has seated herself on his bed. Ruadh's head on her knee, leaned in against her leg. The glow of the lamplight on her face, where the paint ends and bare skin resumes.
Acclimates to the way this sight closes like a fist around his lungs.
"Aye, they did," he answers. "I'd planned to thank you for them in the morning. As well as the books."
"Oh, the books," has some lofty, dismissive tenor to it as if they weren't so clearly the part of his present she'd paid such careful attention to. Her attention reverts briefly back to the mabari's jowly face across her knee. She pats Ruadh there. "Well, I'm pleased to hear the gloves fit as they should."
Ruadh's triangle ears are pushed softly in one direction, then the other before Wysteria looks back up at Ellis again.
"It's all right if you didn't get me anything in return, of course. I realize mine coming back from Orzammar was all rather sudden."
Amusement cracks through the neutrality of his expression at this assurance.
Across her knee, Ruadh is luxuriating in the attention. This too is a kind of comedy, as it must always be when such a fearsome creature is so plainly disarmed.
"I've something for you," he tells her, very serious.
It is such a foregone conclusion. Of course there is something for her. Ellis had seen to it months ago, without any consideration of whether Wysteria would be present on the holiday itself. Before the nightmares had worsened, or he'd acquired a new scar, or been unbalanced so completely in an elven temple, he had set something aside.
"I'd meant to pass it along in the morning."
This too, very solemnly. If there is humor in the idea that he would make her wait, Ellis is careful to banish it from his expression.
Did she really think he'd forgotten her? No, not at all. It makes some of his solemnity a little funny—too serious entirely for the matter of her having come up here to inflict holiday cheer on him, and now to beg for her present like someone who has been routinely spoiled is all but obligated to do.
So despite his serious lack of humor—no, she'd seen just a flicker of it a moment ago—, Wysteria brightens considerably. A difficult prospect; she had already been quite cheerful.
"Well I'll consider forgiving the oversight if you give it to me now."
There is a little humor in that too, though Ellis is slow to feel it as a counterpoint to all other things weighing on his mind.
Ruadh's snuffling encouragement of her attention continues as Ellis crosses the room, crouches beside the pair of them to draw his pack out from beneath the bed. Knelt there, alongside her hem and Ruadh's bulk, Ellis begins turning over the objects stowed away inside. His fingers pass over the packet of letters which live there, the leather pouch containing certain items Tony would likely recognize.
"Suppose I had left it on your kitchen table?" he asks her, glancing up, all solemn concern for the prospect. "Would you be able to forgive the delay?"
Encouraging though Ruadh may be, Wysteria pauses her perfunctory ministrations to flick her skirts helpfully out of Ellis's way before he hand returns to between the great dog's ears. Fine as the prosthetic on her left side may be—and it is quite an extraordinary feat of engineering—, she has yet to spend enough time with it to comfortably operate the series of switches quickly or deftly enough to to use it for either purpose. Give her a few more hours with it and maybe then.
"After I've come all this way and brought you a cheese tart! Certainly not. But if you're really that unprepared and haven't yet wrapped it in whatever charming arrangement you'd planned, I promise to close my eyes while you describe what your intentions were and then you can set it in my hands and I'll pretend it was exactly like you said."
She says all of it very quickly, and cheerfully, and it's only when he might glance down again that her eyes fall to the edge of his shirt's open collar and Wysteria abruptly asks—
"Oh! What have you done to your neck?" without the least bit of concern or hesitation.
Ellis doesn't flinch, but the question does slow his movements. A subtle tension coils through his body, in the set of his shoulders and the momentary pause while he assesses the quality of the quesiton.
The lack of immediate concern is a boon. Ellis takes it as a cue to respond in kind: lightly, without any hint of gravity in his tone as he draws a parcel from the pack. Doesn't lift to set it on her lap just yet.
"Nothing you need worry about," is meant as a reassurance, to sweep the topic aside. "It's healed well."
It's fortunate that time has passed. While the strip of darkening scarring still starkly new, it is no longer fresh and livid across his skin.
But here he is, fit and fair, so why question the logic of Nothing you need worry about? If the scar looks very brutal there then possibly it's due to the newness of the thing and in comparison to the old one already running along a similar line. And there is the parcel in his hands to consider—
(Managing to deflect Wysteria's curiosity; a rare Satinalia miracle, it seems.)
"You'll have to forgive me for having stolen your very reliable companion. I'm sure Ruadh would have kept whatever it was from you. Is that my present?"
This might be noted: having on hand a gift meant for Wysteria usurps even this line of questioning.
The matter is left by the wayside. Ellis does not need to contradict her: yes, it looks grim. (No one need discuss that it had been very grim.) No, Ruadh would have been able to do nothing for it.
It is not for her to worry about. It is over and done with and the scar will fade in time. In the moment, Ellis pushes his pack back beneath the bed. Rises with a soft exhale of breath to sit beside her. At her knee, Ruadh leans a bit further across Wysteria's knee, head tipping under her hand to illustrate where best he would like to be scratched without any concern as to incoming gifts or topics of conversation.
"Aye, this is for you."
It is a small parcel, loosely knotted with twine, easily unpicked one-handed. Ellis puts it it into her lap, leans forward to observe the unwrapping with his elbows resting on his knees.
There are two pouches inside of soft velvet, ties similarly loosened for her benefit. The first contains a ball locket, delicately engraved. Close inspection might reveal traces of a name that had once occupied the front of the pendant, but has since but obscured by looping, feathered patterns. A secondlocket occupies the second bag, wreathed in pearls, clear glass center gleaming in the firelight. The chains on both are of a deliberately chosen length: long enough to slip over her head without managing the clasp.
Beside her, Ellis' hands come together, right hand over his left. Quietly awaiting her verdict.
Despite Ruadh's encouragement to the contrary, Wysteria does set upon the twine as soon as that parcel is surrendered into her possession. With deft, clever fingers she unlocks it and the laces of the soft velvet bags, and turns each locket in turn out into her lap. The first one with its fine little swirls of filigree patterning gets a pleased noise of approval, and a cheerfully sensible, "Oh, well done Mister Ellis! This chain should suit perfectly well. And it's very pretty. You have such reliably respectable taste in jewelry, you know. I don't know that I've ever said as much before, but it's true."
Yet as if in defiance of that very statement, the second necklace gives Wysteria significant pause as it tumbles out of its bag onto her knee. She turns it over on and regards the glass and pearls in their settings. She hesitates, thumb and forefinger wrapped delicately about the locket's perimeter.
Neglected, Ruadh is obliged to watch the process from her knee. Huffing, put-upon, only quieting in response to Wysteria's Oh.
Alongside her, Ellis clearly interprets this as a sign that the second piece is not to her taste. His hands shift, breaking apart so he might reach to hover a hand over hers while he tells her, "The back piece comes away, with a little pressure. The merchant said ladies put whatever they fancy inside. Pressed flowers, or sketches, or some other thing that pleases them."
And by extension: Wysteria might choose what pleases her.
Though Ellis tacks on, uncertain: "You needn't wear it if its not to your taste. It'll fetch a good price if you like."
It had seemed a step up from the nug necklace, but even so—
That perfect little nug necklace, mercilessly melted down for it's metal and living on now as some fine, integral component in that great brutish gun of hers—
For a moment, she hardly hears him. Yes, yes, pressed flowers and sketches. Something that would please her. It's only when Ellis says this second thing that her attention rises suddenly, her gaze turning directly on him. It's difficult to parse perfectly through the comical half face of makeup but surely there is some genuine emotion tangled there in her expression.
"No. I like it," is sharply insistent. A blatant refusal of it'll fetch a food price, though she's certain that it would. Like so many of Ellis's gifts, this one is far, far too fine.
Her attention drops back to the pearl and glass lock. Distantly, she is aware of the heat of embarrassment burning at the back of her neck. What an absurd little thing to be struck by and after all this time
"Forgive me, it's not that. It just reminds me something." She could say nothing further, but it's Wysteria and so that's not actually true. "My mother had—has, rather—something very similar."
Nothing comes immediately in response to this. Ellis couldn't have known. Wysteria has said precious little of her parents to him; Ellis can hardly envision them, much less any specific pieces of jewelry either of the might have worn.
Yes, it is gratifying that she likes it. That he's chosen well, to her taste.
But still—
"There's nothing to forgive," he tells her, watching her in profile, marking the flush at her neck, the expression half-hidden by so much paint. "Is it a good thing, that it's a reminder to you?"
His hand, having hovered alongside the locket to provide demonstration, withdraws by degrees. Not all the way back to the space between his knees, but no longer within range of taking hold of the chain or the locket itself.
Her reply is a strange combination of a laugh and a cry all together like turning a tap on backed by too much pressure and what spills out is confused and all at once. Wysteria checks herself the split second after. It's a brief flash of Every Feeling, plain in her face only because her hand is too occupied with the locket to think to cover her face.
(A blessing in disguise, that; imagine all the black cream makeup she might smudge between her face and hand.)
"Yes," she hurries to say. "It's good. Or I think it is, anyway— She has little flowers pressed inside hers. I don't have any idea what they're meant to be. It's possible she just liked them, but I'm almost certain that couldn't be the case. She's a very particular sort of woman you know."
She hardly thinks of her parents. Or her cousins, or her great assemblage of uncles, or truly anyone in Kalvad much at all. And she doesn't feel at all poorly over it, and only sometimes does she wish very much that a letter from her mother might miraculously and inexplicably manifest itself among her weekly packets of mail.
Wysteria scoffs at herself.
"Oh, listen to me! How ridiculous I'm being. And to you of all people! No, you must forget the whole thing."
Meaning, he won't forget it. And she needn't apologize, or brush it aside. Very slowly, Ellis sets a hand over hers above the lockets. Bent fingers, light touch, measured and careful but meant as a comfort regardless.
He is very fond of listening to her, regardless of topic. Even that glancing aside towards Ellis' own parents isn't enough to change that.
"I thought in the spring, when those yellow flowers in the garden come up, we might press a few. Until you decide better what you'd like to keep in it."
There will be many options. And she'll likely come to some decision that Ellis couldn't predict at all, but in the meantime, he can offer this very minor suggestion as Ruadh rumbles a whine at her knee.
They are fine little yellow flowers. They will look well with one of the dresses she wears most often in that season. She had been thinking of using some of her money to have the bodice embroidered with some sort of accent already now during the season when the garment otherwise is relegated to being folded up in a trunk and scattered with cedar chips to discourage the insects. It would be very simple to request that the embroideress use some colored thread meant to coordinate—
Is such a comforting line of thought, drawn directly from out of Ellis's suggestion. Yes, they might do that.
But rather than say so—the dress and it might be altered to match some as of yet unconfirmed contents of a locket isn't really the point, is it?—, Wysteria instead turns her face to regard him very directly. That brief prick of heartache and homesickness hasn't been sufficient to bring any legitimate tear to her eye, but it is evidently adequate to produce the solemnity necessary for her to recognize and say:
"Thank you for being so kind to me. I know that I'm often difficult"—she has invaded this very room, after all—"But it means a great deal."
There are so many other descriptors he might apply to her before ever arriving at difficult.
His hand tightens just a fraction over hers, still gentle. Still easy for Wysteria to tug her hands away from him, should the contact cease to be a comfort and become an annoyance.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeskip?? what do your whims desire here
surprise
[If she is at all primly disappointed to have failed in calling him down, then so be it. Surely it can be the first time Wysteria has failed to have her way in something. One must enure oneself to defeat now and again.
So there the conversation ends.
Just kidding. How long does it take to traipse up five flights up stairs? Slightly longer than that, on account of first engineering to steal an entire half of a cheese tart from the party, and then: a brisk rap of knuckles on a door.
If Ellis is not in his quarters, or has already gone to bed, or simply ignores the knock the so be it. Otherwise, he may be subjected to the unannounced visitation of a particularly stubborn Nevarran corpse.]
my extreme lol. what a miscalculation, thinking wysteria would just GIVE UP.
However, at this knock Ruadh rolls over on his bed, cropped ears pricking up, sniffing delicately at the air. When he swivels to Ellis, it's to deliver an encouraging boff. The number of people who would prompt that reception are very few and very limited, and neither prone to giving up if they've made it all the way to his doorstep, and so—
The door is pulled open. Ellis is barefoot, laces undone and gambeson shed. His mace is propped by the door alongside his unlaced boots, in concession to the near-yearly tradition of disaster striking Satinalia gatherings. The oil lamp is turned low, meant clearly for the benefit of a person propped up against the headboard where the pillow is rumpled and a book has been laid facedown on the bedding.
Ruadh stretches deeply and theatrically, before rising to trot across the room to inspect the new arrival at the same moment Ellis says, "You'll be missing the party."
rookie mistake
This last bit is to punctuate her passing him the plate with the half of a group sized cheese tart.
"I thought that, given your being too tired to join the festivities, I might at least see a very small portion of them up to you. You will forgive me for not bringing along any of the musicians. Although, popular consensus seems to be that you may be better off without. Hello, Ruadh. Would you like a bit of cheese tart as well?"
Her plain black mask has been pushed up into her hair, leaving her with a funny half face of makeup where Wysteria had drawn exaggerated cheekbones on herself with some heavy dark powder, and had blacked her nose and darkened her lips with the same.
no subject
Ruadh, however, is undeterred by these factors. Having vacated his nest of blankets, he's trotted over to butt his head against Wysteria's hip in both a request for a proper greeting and perhaps to offer her the single seat in the room.
"You're very kind," is what Ellis settles on. "Bastien did not play this year?"
He is still standing, cheese tart in hand. Aware that this is not a space well proportioned for entertaining.
no subject
Her hand has dropped with automatic practice half to fend off further headbutts from the mabari and half simply to oat him on his great scarred block of a skull between his wedged ears.
"Here, let me take at a bit of that tart—"
Obviously Wysteria has brought the knife that had been laid alongside the plate with her, and so it takes almost no effort to take it up and hack a corner off the tart's end. She takes one bite to reduce the square to a into a far more reasonable waning moon before offering it to Ruadh.
no subject
Having been charged with the management of the plate, Ellis sets to clearing his little side table. Balancing one-handed, the few items occupying the space are set into the drawer (a hand-carved mabari, a folded paper dog, a pair of worn books) so the plate might be set down and cut from as they please.
"I've no wine to offer you," Ellis tells her. He is aware of his own relative state of dress, undone laces, bare feet. Sound still carries up to them through the cracked shutters, the party she should be attending going on without her. "You can sit if you like."
If she intends to stay for any length of time, is what Ellis isn't asking but attempting to determine.
no subject
With a last pat for Ruadh, she wanders in across the threshold and is abruptly inside the room rather than nearly out of it. His invitation to sit happily accepted, she perches herself primly there near the foot of the bed and makes a great 'come up here, come here' show of patting the space on it beside her for the mabari whole saying, "I promise not to keep you long. I know you're tired."
Ruadh satisfies himself with sitting very close in against her skirts and putting his head on her knee. With a judgemental sniff, Wysteria's attention turns back from the dog.
"Did the gloves I left for you fit? If they don't, I can make arrangements to replace them."
no subject
Ellis is looking at her, stepped back once, twice, to take in the entirety of her presence. How she has seated herself on his bed. Ruadh's head on her knee, leaned in against her leg. The glow of the lamplight on her face, where the paint ends and bare skin resumes.
Acclimates to the way this sight closes like a fist around his lungs.
"Aye, they did," he answers. "I'd planned to thank you for them in the morning. As well as the books."
no subject
Ruadh's triangle ears are pushed softly in one direction, then the other before Wysteria looks back up at Ellis again.
"It's all right if you didn't get me anything in return, of course. I realize mine coming back from Orzammar was all rather sudden."
Fishing? Her? Certainly not.
no subject
Across her knee, Ruadh is luxuriating in the attention. This too is a kind of comedy, as it must always be when such a fearsome creature is so plainly disarmed.
"I've something for you," he tells her, very serious.
It is such a foregone conclusion. Of course there is something for her. Ellis had seen to it months ago, without any consideration of whether Wysteria would be present on the holiday itself. Before the nightmares had worsened, or he'd acquired a new scar, or been unbalanced so completely in an elven temple, he had set something aside.
"I'd meant to pass it along in the morning."
This too, very solemnly. If there is humor in the idea that he would make her wait, Ellis is careful to banish it from his expression.
no subject
So despite his serious lack of humor—no, she'd seen just a flicker of it a moment ago—, Wysteria brightens considerably. A difficult prospect; she had already been quite cheerful.
"Well I'll consider forgiving the oversight if you give it to me now."
no subject
There is a little humor in that too, though Ellis is slow to feel it as a counterpoint to all other things weighing on his mind.
Ruadh's snuffling encouragement of her attention continues as Ellis crosses the room, crouches beside the pair of them to draw his pack out from beneath the bed. Knelt there, alongside her hem and Ruadh's bulk, Ellis begins turning over the objects stowed away inside. His fingers pass over the packet of letters which live there, the leather pouch containing certain items Tony would likely recognize.
"Suppose I had left it on your kitchen table?" he asks her, glancing up, all solemn concern for the prospect. "Would you be able to forgive the delay?"
no subject
"After I've come all this way and brought you a cheese tart! Certainly not. But if you're really that unprepared and haven't yet wrapped it in whatever charming arrangement you'd planned, I promise to close my eyes while you describe what your intentions were and then you can set it in my hands and I'll pretend it was exactly like you said."
She says all of it very quickly, and cheerfully, and it's only when he might glance down again that her eyes fall to the edge of his shirt's open collar and Wysteria abruptly asks—
"Oh! What have you done to your neck?" without the least bit of concern or hesitation.
no subject
The lack of immediate concern is a boon. Ellis takes it as a cue to respond in kind: lightly, without any hint of gravity in his tone as he draws a parcel from the pack. Doesn't lift to set it on her lap just yet.
"Nothing you need worry about," is meant as a reassurance, to sweep the topic aside. "It's healed well."
It's fortunate that time has passed. While the strip of darkening scarring still starkly new, it is no longer fresh and livid across his skin.
no subject
But here he is, fit and fair, so why question the logic of Nothing you need worry about? If the scar looks very brutal there then possibly it's due to the newness of the thing and in comparison to the old one already running along a similar line. And there is the parcel in his hands to consider—
(Managing to deflect Wysteria's curiosity; a rare Satinalia miracle, it seems.)
"You'll have to forgive me for having stolen your very reliable companion. I'm sure Ruadh would have kept whatever it was from you. Is that my present?"
no subject
The matter is left by the wayside. Ellis does not need to contradict her: yes, it looks grim. (No one need discuss that it had been very grim.) No, Ruadh would have been able to do nothing for it.
It is not for her to worry about. It is over and done with and the scar will fade in time. In the moment, Ellis pushes his pack back beneath the bed. Rises with a soft exhale of breath to sit beside her. At her knee, Ruadh leans a bit further across Wysteria's knee, head tipping under her hand to illustrate where best he would like to be scratched without any concern as to incoming gifts or topics of conversation.
"Aye, this is for you."
It is a small parcel, loosely knotted with twine, easily unpicked one-handed. Ellis puts it it into her lap, leans forward to observe the unwrapping with his elbows resting on his knees.
There are two pouches inside of soft velvet, ties similarly loosened for her benefit. The first contains a ball locket, delicately engraved. Close inspection might reveal traces of a name that had once occupied the front of the pendant, but has since but obscured by looping, feathered patterns. A second locket occupies the second bag, wreathed in pearls, clear glass center gleaming in the firelight. The chains on both are of a deliberately chosen length: long enough to slip over her head without managing the clasp.
Beside her, Ellis' hands come together, right hand over his left. Quietly awaiting her verdict.
no subject
Yet as if in defiance of that very statement, the second necklace gives Wysteria significant pause as it tumbles out of its bag onto her knee. She turns it over on and regards the glass and pearls in their settings. She hesitates, thumb and forefinger wrapped delicately about the locket's perimeter.
Her, "Oh," seems involuntary.
no subject
Alongside her, Ellis clearly interprets this as a sign that the second piece is not to her taste. His hands shift, breaking apart so he might reach to hover a hand over hers while he tells her, "The back piece comes away, with a little pressure. The merchant said ladies put whatever they fancy inside. Pressed flowers, or sketches, or some other thing that pleases them."
And by extension: Wysteria might choose what pleases her.
Though Ellis tacks on, uncertain: "You needn't wear it if its not to your taste. It'll fetch a good price if you like."
It had seemed a step up from the nug necklace, but even so—
no subject
For a moment, she hardly hears him. Yes, yes, pressed flowers and sketches. Something that would please her. It's only when Ellis says this second thing that her attention rises suddenly, her gaze turning directly on him. It's difficult to parse perfectly through the comical half face of makeup but surely there is some genuine emotion tangled there in her expression.
"No. I like it," is sharply insistent. A blatant refusal of it'll fetch a food price, though she's certain that it would. Like so many of Ellis's gifts, this one is far, far too fine.
Her attention drops back to the pearl and glass lock. Distantly, she is aware of the heat of embarrassment burning at the back of her neck. What an absurd little thing to be struck by and after all this time
"Forgive me, it's not that. It just reminds me something." She could say nothing further, but it's Wysteria and so that's not actually true. "My mother had—has, rather—something very similar."
no subject
Yes, it is gratifying that she likes it. That he's chosen well, to her taste.
But still—
"There's nothing to forgive," he tells her, watching her in profile, marking the flush at her neck, the expression half-hidden by so much paint. "Is it a good thing, that it's a reminder to you?"
His hand, having hovered alongside the locket to provide demonstration, withdraws by degrees. Not all the way back to the space between his knees, but no longer within range of taking hold of the chain or the locket itself.
no subject
(A blessing in disguise, that; imagine all the black cream makeup she might smudge between her face and hand.)
"Yes," she hurries to say. "It's good. Or I think it is, anyway— She has little flowers pressed inside hers. I don't have any idea what they're meant to be. It's possible she just liked them, but I'm almost certain that couldn't be the case. She's a very particular sort of woman you know."
She hardly thinks of her parents. Or her cousins, or her great assemblage of uncles, or truly anyone in Kalvad much at all. And she doesn't feel at all poorly over it, and only sometimes does she wish very much that a letter from her mother might miraculously and inexplicably manifest itself among her weekly packets of mail.
Wysteria scoffs at herself.
"Oh, listen to me! How ridiculous I'm being. And to you of all people! No, you must forget the whole thing."
no subject
Meaning, he won't forget it. And she needn't apologize, or brush it aside. Very slowly, Ellis sets a hand over hers above the lockets. Bent fingers, light touch, measured and careful but meant as a comfort regardless.
He is very fond of listening to her, regardless of topic. Even that glancing aside towards Ellis' own parents isn't enough to change that.
"I thought in the spring, when those yellow flowers in the garden come up, we might press a few. Until you decide better what you'd like to keep in it."
There will be many options. And she'll likely come to some decision that Ellis couldn't predict at all, but in the meantime, he can offer this very minor suggestion as Ruadh rumbles a whine at her knee.
no subject
Is such a comforting line of thought, drawn directly from out of Ellis's suggestion. Yes, they might do that.
But rather than say so—the dress and it might be altered to match some as of yet unconfirmed contents of a locket isn't really the point, is it?—, Wysteria instead turns her face to regard him very directly. That brief prick of heartache and homesickness hasn't been sufficient to bring any legitimate tear to her eye, but it is evidently adequate to produce the solemnity necessary for her to recognize and say:
"Thank you for being so kind to me. I know that I'm often difficult"—she has invaded this very room, after all—"But it means a great deal."
no subject
There are so many other descriptors he might apply to her before ever arriving at difficult.
His hand tightens just a fraction over hers, still gentle. Still easy for Wysteria to tug her hands away from him, should the contact cease to be a comfort and become an annoyance.
"You needn't thank me. For any of it."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
put a bow on this y/y
yy