Table for two..

[Perdita Westcott]

Ashan 20th, 721

erdita had a plan. That plan was simple - she was going to hide. Of course, that was more or less impossible since they lived in the same house. She'd held tightly on to his hand as they walked home, only letting go as he opened the door. She watched him, watched his hand as it turned the key in the lock.

In the carriage ride there, she had told him that she wanted them to be together. Except, of course, now she was facing the reality of that and Perdita wanted to hide. Except she wasn't going to hide because she meant it when she said it. She wanted to be with him, she knew that; what she didn't know was quite how to deal with this or what to say. Add in to that the simple fact that her parents had just offered them a very large sum of money in order for them to set themselves up in their skills.

Perdita sighed slightly, as she took her coat off after they'd got in the door and then she turned to look at him. "It's a lot," she said. Perdita's brown eyes lifted to look at him and she smiled, blushed, and turned her eyes away to avoided his gaze all at once. There was so much to say, but she didn't really know what any of it was. Turning, she walked into the living room and sat down. Then, she moved from the sofa to the armchair. But it wasn't comfortable there and so she stood again, then went into the kitchen.

Where she sat at the table.

Sitting, she put her hand out on to the wooden table, her hand moved to trace the grain of the wood. "I like it here," she said. He was there, in the doorway she knew. Leaning against the door frame and looking at her like her head might drop off at any moment. She didn't look at him, yet. "In the kitchen." After a few moments of her fingers tracing the grain of the wood, Perdita frowned. "I like this table," she said. Her voice was shaky, she knew, but that was because she was so very full of emotions. "It's ours." Lifting her gaze from the table to look at him and she smiled, her cheeks flushing.

What was 'ours', she wondered. What did it mean? Who were they as a partnership and how did it change? What, come to that, was together all about in the first place? "I don't understand," she said. It was an all-encompassing statement but it was also very - very - true. She didn't understand his childhood, his experiences, his life. Equally, she knew, he didn't understand hers. But, as she'd learned that night, her formative arcs had been incredibly easy in comparison to his.

She didn't understand. There was no doubt about it as far as Perdita was concerned. Not only did she not understand, but there were many and multiple things she had no comprehension of and almost all of them had the word 'Eli' in the sentence describing them. There were a hundred thoughts in her head and a million emotions in her heart. But Perdita defaulted to her usual baseline, in many ways. She asked him the simple question. "What shall we do?"

[Elijah Lamoreaux]

The trial hadn't played out, at all, like Eli had thought that it might. Not that he'd planned anything out, or dreamed up too many unpleasant turns to the trial...Well, that wasn't exactly true. He had, just a little. He had a very active imagination, which him being an engineer, tended to work for the good. On the other hand, he was perfectly capable of conjuring up worst case scenarios. One might say he was pretty good at that too.

But the worst hadn't happened. Instead, in contrast, things with Perdie's parents had gone well to such an extent that he was starting to wonder if he'd imagined it all. He'd have thought he might, if not for Perdie's constant blushing on the walk home, and all the fidgeting and pacing she'd done since they walked in the door. Eli could hardly blame her. He'd probably been thinking about similar things to her, all the way home. In retrospect, he thought, he probably could have chosen better timing to say out loud, what he'd wanted to say for some time. Not exactly with the words he'd chosen, and he'd probably have chosen a time different than the bits just before her parents came off the boat.

But, he figured, maybe it ought to have happened that way. Unrehearsed, unplanned, even ill timed. But he didn't regret any of it. Left to pick just the right time, they might be too long in the tooth, both of them, before he'd spoken a word. "You gonna light somewhere?" he asked as she flitted from chair to couch to kitchen, grinning a little while pulling off his coat and hanging it up by the door. But of course she ended up at the kitchen table.

It struck Eli as ironic that the place they tended to be most often together, was in a room that, so far as it's official intended use, neither of them was particular proficient in. At all. "Ours," he repeated, by then, standing nearby and leaning a shoulder against the doorway. "I like the sound of that. Ours. Together. Has a nice ring to it don't you think?" Eli thought so, anyway. But when Perdie said that she didn't understand, he straightened up, walked across and sat down at the table beside her. All the while, frowning curiously. "Understand what?" he asked.

That, and the what shall we do, he in turn didn't quite understand. "You mean us? Together?" He was more accustomed to thinking about machinery and tinkering with things, and less, much less about how to read the feminine mind. Even in Eli's somewhat limited experience, he figured that was a task too large for any man young or old. He hadn't exactly planned any of this out, so far as what came first, then second then third. But then again, they hadn't gone about any of it in the conventional way.

But if there was one thing he'd realized that trial, it was that Perdie's experiences in life were different than his. To a very large degree. No doubt she'd grown up wealthy and was at ease with it. She'd probably been sheltered somewhat, or even a lot, from the seedier side of life. But now, even though she hadn't explained just what she meant by not understanding, he had to wonder just how sheltered she'd been. About, well, certain things.

She hadn't given him much context to go on. So it was difficult to come up with any conclusion but one, that being the most obvious in his mind. "Well," he said. "We haven't really gone about anything in the ordinary way, have we? There's no reason to assume that we have to. I guess so far as what we should do, and when, it's only so much as you want, as slowly as you want." To be honest, he'd been imagining what it might be like to kiss her for a while. In fact, quite a while. But she seemed suddenly as jumpy as a young doe in springtime, and the last thing he wanted to do was spook her.

But that didn't answer her question of course. And he still only had assumptions to go on. "I mean, did your mother and you ever talk about, well, you know, things mothers talk to their daughters about?" He'd been privy to those conversations a time or two, even if he hadn't meant or wanted to, having overheard them carried out while well kept mothers and daughters had shopped in the tinkerer's shop. That was only in bits and pieces though, so he'd only assumed right or wrong that the rest of those conversations might involve more intimate things. But still, Eli had to ask. "Have you ever been kissed before?"

[Perdita Westcott]

hen he asked if she was going to light anywhere, Perdita made a small noise, somewhere between a meep and a harrumph. He'd heard it before, when her mother had been describing their philosophy on Perdita being a miracle. But, she said nothing coherent ~ because she had nothing coherent to say ~ so she just made her way to the table. Sitting there, looking at the table, Perdita listened to him. "It does," she said, when he said that 'ours' sounded like it had a nice ring to it. She did like it, that word, that idea, that reality.

But she didn't understand it and she said so. In fairness to Eli, he wasn't a mind-reader and Perdita knew that she wasn't being entirely clear. "Yes," she said, confirming what it was that she didn't understand. "I mean us." Them. The two of them. "Together." He didn't know what was going on in her mind and Perdita really had no clue what was going on in his. the pair of them were so very different and yet, the two of them were here and they worked together. She didn't know why, but she knew that it worked.

Eli shared his thoughts on it, and it caused her to smile. No, they hadn't gone about anything the 'right' way, or the usual one. It made sense, in truth. Nothing about them was usual ~ from the way they'd met, to how they'd ended up being attacked by a group of muggers and then - they'd gotten drunk and woken up on the flutterbus from Rharne to Desnind. But did she and her mother talk about things which mothers and daughters talked about? She didn't answer that, because she was trying to form the words. And then? THEN? Then he asked if she'd ever been kissed. Perdita's cheeks flushed a deep red, more than usual and she felt the heat on her face.

"I loved school," she said, her voice cracking slightly. Clearing her throat, she continued. "I had no friends." There was no self-pity in her voice, she didn't see it as a bad thing. "I'd come home and we'd make baskets, Mother and I," she explained. Lifting her gaze, even though her blush had not abated, Perdita looked at him with a serious expression. "We talked." It was important that he understood this. "About everything. Anything." Just a small smile flickered over her face. "History, science, books." She gestured slightly, her hand moving out and her head shaking, just a little. "Not boys."

A frown wrinkled her forehead, then. "We didn't talk about boys," she had to be clear about that - had to be honest. "There were more interesting things." History. Science. Books. All much more interesting subjects. But more than that. "Boys weren't relevant," she'd had no interest, no questions to ask. Had her mother tried to raise the topic? Not that Perdita could remember, but then maybe. She couldn't say for sure. He didn't understand, he couldn't understand - because it was so very different from what he had experienced.

None of which, of course, answered the question which he'd asked.

"I've been kissed plenty of times," she said, an-almost defiant lift to her jaw, a tilt of her head. "Plenty." Then, she smiled and admitted the details. "My father. My mother. My uncle. Grandparents, too." He'd sat next to her a few moments ago, so she put her hand into his. "I read books," she nodded. "About biology. Does that help?" Turning in her chair so that she was facing him, not looking at the table, Perdita was quiet for a moment as her thumbs gently moved over his fingers. "I don't understand," she said. "I understand the theory, I read it." Her brown eyes regarded him carefully. "But I have all these feelings," she mumbled. "And you are more interesting than history. Or science," maybe even books, she thought, but didn't say. "I think about you, all the time," she admitted. "about kissing you, or your arms around me when we woke up in the flutterbus." She never talked this much. It was, she knew, his fault. "You're a distraction," and if she sounded a little accusatory? Well, then, it was fair enough. She felt it. "I have all these feelings. You made them."

Hiding really would have been a good idea, Perdita decided. But then, she shook her head. "Even if we had talked," she said, her voice soft and more back to its usual. "I wouldn't have been prepared for these feelings. Or us." She smiled, then, her eyes meeting his. "Or you. Especially not you." Lifting up the hand which wasn't in his, she frowned slightly with concentration as she gently stroked his cheek and really paid attention to how it felt - she'd been thinking about it for so long. "You're a mystery."

[Elijah Lamoreaux]

"That's a bit hard to believe," Eli said, smiling a little when Perdie insisted she'd had no friends back in Rharne. "I bet there were plenty who'd have liked to be your friend at any rate. And more fellows that would have given their right arm, were you to give them a second look." But the talks that she described having had with her mother, well, that wasn't exactly the sort of talk he'd been asking about. As for whether fathers had those kinds of talks with their sons, Eli figured that some might. But not where he'd come from. It was just the sort of thing you stumbled through and learned on your own. Not unlike his own approach to his chosen trade, now that he thought about it.

He snorted in amusement though when she insisted that boys weren't relevant. But then maybe he ought to be grateful that back then, she hadn't paid any mind to any of them. Better for him, or she'd have been securely attached more likely, long before the trial they had met. "Their loss, my gain," he declared. But then she insisted that she'd been kissed plenty of times, and went on to list those who'd done it. That, combined with the reading she'd done, caused a wide grin to spread across his face, and Eli laughed.

"That's not exactly the kind of kissing I'm talking about, Perdie. As for the rest, it's not something you need to worry about, this not understanding business. Or something you think about or try to figure out, so much as you just....I don't know, feel it. It's supposed to be a distraction. But it's not a science. Not like the kind that you study at university, at least. And there's no step by step recipe either so far as I know,' he added, still grinning as she reached out to explore his jawline. He'd shaved early that morning, but already it was time enough for the growth to start springing up again.

"It's not like baking a cake with just the right amount of this or that." Not that either of them could bake a cake. He could barely boil an egg with any amount of consistency. "Am I that big of a mystery or that complicated?" he wondered. No one had ever accused him of being that, after all. Eli considered himself fairly easy to understand, after all. But she was the mystery, so far as he was concerned.

So far as he was concerned, they were talking in circles and for Eli, the better way to approach a puzzle was to just do. So pulling her hand closer, he gently turned Perdie's hand over, palm up, and placed a gentle kiss there, then again on the inside of her wrist. And then, so long as she didn't pull away in protest, he leaned in and kissed her gently on the lips. A proper kiss. And when it was done, he pulled back just a little and smiled. "Did your grandmother kiss you like that?" he asked.

[Perdita Westcott]

li didn't believe that she didn't have friends or - more accurately - he said that she would have if she'd given them a second look. Perdita shook her head, stubbornly, but she didn't argue with him. If there were any fellows, as he called them, who ever noticed her, there was a very simple truth. "I didn't notice, if so." But then, maybe that was what Eli meant, she supposed. As for their loss, his gain? Perdita wasn't so sure about that, either. But, "I'm glad you think so," she said softly. It was his gain, according to him. Hers, according to her.

When he asked her if she'd been kissed, though, and she told him, he laughed. He grinned and then he laughed. Perdita blinked and looked at him in askance and then she felt her own amusement start to bubble up and she first smiled, then she, too, laughed. Perdita didn't laugh often - it simply wasn't her way to be so obviously emotional, but she chuckled with Eli.

Talk turned more serious, though, and her finger trailed over his jaw. It wasn't the kind of kissing he was talking about? She knew that, she supposed. He explained that it made no sense, that there were no rules, that there was no recipe. "Feel it?" That did not sound like the kind of thing that she did - not at all. "Instinct?" She whispered that word, trying to make sense of the flurry of emotions she was feeling. They threatened to overwhelm her, but his words made sense in a crazy way. "So, it's like your stuff?" Perdita asked that with a totally serious expression on her face. "Not my stuff." His stuff, after all, was chaotic but wonderful, crazy and all over the place. There was no rhyme or reason to his stuff. But hers? Her was ordered and it followed rules, it was predictable. She was.

Was he that big of a mystery? Perdita beamed. "Yes. You are." She knew that it must seem strange to him, but he was simply so very complex to her that she could not express it. "The most wonderful puzzle." She didn't talk much as a rule, but as he lifted her hand and slowly, gently kissed her palm and then her wrist, Perdita's eyes widened. "Oh," she said, breathlessly. And then, he kissed her. Perdita leaned into him, kissing him back and her hand moved to his hair. A thousand emotions rushed through her, her body reacting to his touch and the heightened emotions of the moment. She lingered there, holding on to him and then, after a moment, they separated and she looked at him in amazement.

Did she kiss her grandmother like that?! Perdita looked at him in total incomprehension; wide eyes and twin spots of colour on her cheeks. "I..." she said, her lips shaking. "You..." and then, the shaking of her lips turned into a smile and then she giggled. She wasn't sure she'd ever actually giggled before but suddenly all this emotion just bubbled out of her. "No, Eli," she shook her head. "Not like that." Her hand moved again, back to his cheek and she pulled herself as close to him as she could be. "Only you, like that."

There would be things to think about, things to work out - Perdita knew that. There was, in fact, a lot of such things. But right now, she didn't want to think about it. "I feel safe," she whispered, nestling against him, her head resting against the crook of his shoulder, her arm moving around his waist. "And alive. And chaotic," she smiled at the last word. She was quiet against him for a few moments and then she lifted her head and asked, entirely seriously. "Do we need to make cake?"

[Elijah Lamoreaux]

When Perdie insisted that she'd never noticed the looks of the young men around her, if they'd been looking at all, Eli only grinned slightly and shook his head. Judging by all that he'd learned about her since the trial that they'd met, it wouldn't surprise him at all if it was true. Nonetheless..."To be honest, Perdie, your lack of interest...I think they call it being aloof, probably intrigued them all the more." She'd have to take his word for it, of course, if she couldn't see it outright.

But like his stuff, not like her stuff, she wondered. And Eli paused, frowning in thought. "It's one of those things Perdie," he said, trying a different tact. "It's simple, but complicated. There are no formulas or lists of rules to follow, no timelines. It's in here," he said, grinning while tapping his finger gently against the center of her chest. "Not in here," The same gesture to her temple. "You ever been to a circus? A traveling show? It's like riding the trapeze without a net sometimes. Knowing it's a long way down and can hurt like the dickens if you fall. But wanting to do it anyway."

Of course Eli had a hard time imagining himself as being the slightest bit complicated, like a puzzle of more than a hundred or so pieces. But he'd have to take her word for it. As for the kiss, and it being the first of it's kind for her, he grinned again when she confirmed that no, this was not the sort of kiss handed out by parents and grandparents. He laughed and shrugged. "I certainly hope not." But if she was feeling half a dozen things and they were all mixed up? Well, "You're doing it right, then."

But then she asked about baking a cake. And if Perdie had been anyone else, he'd have said that the serious expression was a put on, and she was very good at dry humor. Except she was serious. "It would be a pretty lousy cake if we tried it, Perdie. And no, it's nothing to do with cake. You know," he said after another pause while he contemplated how to move forward. "maybe since your mother is going to be around for a while, there's still time for that talk? Just you and her?"

Truth was, Perdie had questions that maybe he could answer, but at some point that would require him to tell her things that would make it seem as if he was attempting to dictate the terms of how things went between them, and at what rate they got there. Or at least it would seem as if he was laying out expectations and timelines that she wasn't familiar with or ready for. Better, he thought, for another woman to fill in those gaps, rather than him.

[Jackalope]

]

Thread Comments: Is this a kissing thread?! Do we have to read that? Skip ahead to the Fire Swamp bit!

So. Elita’s first kiss. And the realization that they are well and truly starting a whole new stage of life together. And the realization that there’s still a lot they don’t know about each other.

I’m never quite sure what to do with threads like this other than just enjoy them. And I did enjoy this thread. I don’t have a whole lot else to say.

Perdita

Experience: +15 xp

Magic xp: No.

Knowledge:

None claimed.

Renown: None

Loot: None.

Skillplay: Approriate to level.


Comments: I think Perdita and her mother need to have a talk about boys. Soon.

The image of Perdita’s flitting uneasily from seat to seat does a good job of visualizing her unease and reluctance to settle in at the beginning of the thread. But Eli seems to have a calming influence on her, in spite of being a novel and chaotic factor in her environment a “distraction” from her usual order. I really liked how you develop the paradox of how Perdita simultaneously finds Eli comforting and disordering. It’s a complex mix of feelings, to be sure.

You described her experience of her kiss simply but vividly, without any sort of melodrama, which I appreciated. If anything, it added to the sequence. Plus it’s in character; Perdita isn’t the melodramatic sort, is she?

I wonder what a meerumph sounds like.

Eli

Experience: +15 x.p.

Skillplay: Appropriate to level.

Knowledges:

Knowledge:

Renown: None.

Loot: None.

Comments: Did your grandmother kiss you like that?! Maybe Perdita isn’t the only person who needs to have a talk with a parent.

I like how Eli thinks he’s an open book whereas Perdita is the mystery, while she thinks he’s the mystery. Clearly the two of you have some more communicating to do. But it seems like Elita will get there. Eli comes across as caring about Perdita and being genuinely interested in what’s important to her. And I enjoyed reading him reassuring her that it’s alright to be vulnerable and not know what all the rules are, while opening up and being vulnerable himself.

Let me know if either of you have any questions/feedback. Enjoy your rewards!