15S R4 W2 Wednesday Night

[joinhands]

[Dance parties aside, it's been a long dark day full of noise and clutter. Krone is just sitting there on the sofa of the parlor, leaning just far enough forward that her fingertips brush against the coffee table and she hasn't actually relaxed at all into the deep upholstery. Her eyes trace the room's numerous new trails of sawdust.]

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[joinhands]

Anything is better than those infernal larvae, that's for certain...

[With this resentful aside established, she picks up the desert fork - used to it. But she realizes there's no chair on the other side of the table so she has to move to the side to make room for Eric and his sculpted legs. That act of scooting over, Krone now does but is not used to. The awkwardness of the situation is giving her a bit of frisson.]

[yonosoymaria]

[Were they anywhere but here, he'd be bold. Were they anywhere but here, he'd "accidentally" sit down too close. But were they anywhere else, they'd be two different people, wouldn't they?

So, instead, he perches graceful as can be a handspan away.]

"Larvae"... it may sound strange, but that reminds me of Versailles.

[joinhands]

[Krone bats her eyelashes, which disguises the almost grateful way that the lads of her fingertips press down against the fork that twists around its long axis in her grip, like a ballet dancer as an acrobatic fish or maybe a hummingbird.] Is that supposed to be a teeming underbelly metaphor, or just plain phonics?

[She turns to the right angle facing him. Their shoulders brush.] Is this word association~? I love word association~!

[yonosoymaria]

It's almost all three of those, but it's also rather unfortunately literal.

[He smiles, but busies himself with cutting the cheesecake - too perfectly small to divide into proper slices - in half, and setting each half on a plate. The way she swirled that fork through the air was evocative, like to the deceptively tiny motions that would set a dancer's Loie-Fuller-homage "wings" fluttering before "flight".]

You accepted the nature of my world without question, and for that I'm grateful, but... this may be harder to believe. A proper explanation would also make clear why I have said certain things, I think.

[joinhands]

[Unfortunate is evidently right. Krone keeps her doe-eyed frown fixed on Eric's face even as she dutifully places her fork on the plate, not touching the smaller or at least more triangular cheesecake slice, and hooks her thumbs around the rim drawing it right in front of herself.]

If these are creatures with different endurance from humans, hatching from eggs instead of indefinitely hardening their skin with blood of all things makes more sense in my experience. [She folds her hands in her lap.] Try me, Eric. [The hem of her long skirt brushes against his bare leg.]

[yonosoymaria]

[Eric can't suppress a bit of a shiver at the touch of her skirt against his skin. It strikes him, belatedly, that all these little gestures Krone has made could well be flirting. He has been a fool to convince himself otherwise.]

It... will take more explanation than a lightly made comment should. I need to go far back. [A sigh.] And it will explain something I said earlier.

[He takes a bite of the cheesecake, taking advantage of an excuse to pause and try to collect his thoughts.]

I was... before the war, before everything, I was engaged. Her name was Gwendolyn. I felt as though she pulled me downstairs to meet you, earlier. Ghosts like that are rare, I've never met one, I know it wasn't her, but... it was her death that set me back on the road that lead through Versailles.