Chapter 5: Wine and Roses
(Part II)
Flowers aren't the only things that smell nice. She likes fragrances of all kinds. Especially the ones that tell a story. And here, she looks on with wonder at the strange epicurean palette only her imagination could ever color up. Just as with the curious stylist with the black and white hair from earlier that day and all her textiles and textures, she wonders about the stories behind what goes in motion in this kitchen.
'Truffle Salt.'
'Saffron.'
Luxuries of the higher districts. These are things she's only ever heard of in her life. How can a girl help but sneak a peek and a whiff?
And they're…different. The truffle, namely. It's an odd scent that she's never known anything close to. Something about it reminds her of flavors of the roots and soil and the stuff that makes it grow things. And the saffron? It always made her think of gold you can eat, but the little stringy bits in the jar are more red than anything.
Or more like…carmine.
Lucy Gray can't help the little grin that tugs at the corners of her lips at this. Little CC. Well…not so much anymore, she supposes. She wonders if he's been well. If his fiddle is still in good shape, old as it's been. If…if he's managed to avoid the Reaping up until now.
She wonders what it'd be like if she'd had a chance to gift this back home to him. To everyone. She'd sprinkle it all over the biggest dinner she could fix up for them and make some comment like, 'always wondered what your color tasted like…for bits that cost more than a concert.'
Lucy girl, you're losing it. You've got better jokes than that.
She barely even knows anymore. Trees and critters don't exactly make for great conversational company to practice on.
She takes care not to clatter the jars, slipping them back on the rotating rack. Reading the bold typeface on all the lids, half of these spices and herbs are things she's never even heard of. The one labeled 'Sumac' piques her curiosity. The only sumac she's ever known are those nasty leaves that make you itch and give you hives. And Capitol folk just sprinkle this all over their food to eat? She isn't too keen on knowing, exactly. Or...maybe she's a little curious what this stuff actually goes into. She's not brave enough to give it a sniff, though, and puts the jar back with the rest.
'Clove' and 'Anise.' These things at least sound familiar. One looks like funny little flower nubs and the other, cute little flower stars. Ground up clove isn't too hard to find in Twelve, and when someone saved up enough money, they could afford to buy a few spoonfuls. Everyone knows it's great for harvest foods, but the Covey never had the spare money to afford any.
Like the strange little star-like anise pods, Lucy Gray doesn't even know how to use these. She opens the lids for a whiff, and—oh, sweetness, are they strong—something about them reminds her of warm things like stews, pies, and old fashioned candy. Maybe there was a time when she'd had meals with these mixed in. No particular flavor or taste comes to mind, but somehow they're reminiscent of certain memories. Not even that, quite. More like feelings of a sort that she can't quite place from a time that might not have even been hers. Funny how the senses work that way.
What else here? She wonders as she fingers through the rest, collecting a few more—'Cardamom' and 'Turmeric.' And…'Grains of Paradise'? She samples their notes. First separately, then all together. The intermingling layers lull her eyes shut.
Smells like bedtime stories…
Like faraway places. Like old tales of heroes and villains, and all their lessons. She can't help but remember some old book she'd gotten from the library once. By then, they'd have cycled through what few there were in the children's collection over and over already. That was when eleven-year-old Lucy girl felt big enough to look at the other collections the older kids and grown-ups read. She remembers the one she'd always gone back to, with its tattered cover and age-worn spine. It'd seen better days, but she remembers not only the words on those pages, but also all the beautiful pictures that came with each tale told within. For a little girl who loved her colors, she could never get over how enamored the fanciful pen and ink illustrations had her, all muted, but hardly plain by any stretch. For a summer, they'd even had her dreaming she could grow up to be an artist one day and paint beautiful stories just like that.
That didn't pan out, of course. Song and music was her thing, to exactly no one's surprise. Not that it was much different—all starving artists were the same, be it paintings, words, or ballads.
What was the name of that book again?
She thinks back on it long and hard, but the thing she really remembers is the fact that she'd been terribly irresponsible about returning that book one time. Ended up just keeping it. Last she recalled, it sat under Maude Ivory's bed with the few other treasures the sweet thing loved. And a memory, warm and sweet like all of these smells. Of her and Barb Azure, huddled along with little Maudie in her tiny bed on the colder nights. Sharing their grandmama's old quilt, all mismatched, patched up, and too-well-loved. Taking turns reading the stories out loud until the three of them yawned more than they could talk anymore. Enough to fill—
Right. That was it.
How could she forget?
One Thousand and One Nights.
A story about telling stories.
Lucy Gray smiles. She only realizes now, after so many years, how that book was the very thing that showed her what she was born to be. Didn't matter if it was with paints, with a pen, or with her guitar. No matter what, she'd always been a born storyteller.
Just like that grand lady telling her thousand and one tales.
The story's queen with the fanciful name none of them could ever say right, who won over her king in the end. Who helped him find his heart again.
And…of course, it would be the low, cantankerous grumbling in her stomach to remind her that it exists. Yes, go on and kill the nice reverie. Rude. And also so very perfectly-timed her.
"Oh, hush now," she utters back to that irascible, empty little pit. "I'm looking, I'm looking. I haven't forgotten…" With a frown, she sighs as she consoles her flat, empty belly with a gentle, self-soothing pat.
Twisting the lids back onto the jars, she places each vial back exactly as she found them before returning to what she'd come to do—snooping for scraps. And no, it wasn't as though she'd intended to. The blame was squarely on her sleepless, late-night boredom that led her from her room, through the empty hallways, down the stairs, and around some corner to find this kitchen at all. Surely, she reasoned, being permitted to explore the estate gardens also meant she'd have the same freedom within the manor itself?
Okay…so there was something about letting security know about this or that, but it's already past midnight, and she hasn't seen a single other soul awake in any of these halls. No harm, no foul. Though she couldn't shake the eeriness of it all, wandering the warm, dimly lit corridors and everything quieter than the grave. She doesn't think she's ever known a place that seemed so inhabited feel so empty. Like some strange liminal interval that lied folded between the waking world and a dream. It makes sense that there might be household staff around somewhere, but she honestly doesn't even know if anyone else resides in the massive estate other than the President himself.
From the context of things she's been told, her room and the other residential parts are in the manor's South Wing. All of the business side of things stays in the opposite end, where all the offices and conference rooms are, including the President's. It was either wander off to places she figured she shouldn't be, or go down and stay within the wing.
Where all the lights also happened to be out.
And…lights-out usually meant nobody was home. (Or at the very least, awake.)
Down that curving, carpeted stairwell it was, then. Naturally.
In the dead of night, Lucy Gray kept mindful of every tip of her toes until it'd been clear they made no sound against the sturdy, polished stair treads. The thickness of the carpeting that lined them dampened any murmur of her footfalls, even the heavier drops on her weaker leg. Ever cautious about her inconsistent gait, she held fast to the banister that curved with the stairs, so smooth and perfectly finished that not a trace of its wood grain could be felt beneath her fingertips. Not a speck of dust. No loose boards. No creaking. Nothing at all like the rickety tower of rough planks at their old house back in Twelve. Even the single story separated by these coiling steps felt almost twice as high up as their little Covey home.
Or maybe it was just her fading memory that remembered it that way. When was the last time she set foot in a proper house? This may as well have been a palace by comparison.
The creeping dark slowed her paces as the lighting from the level above dwindled in her descent. One would think having gone through truly solitary years of it, the darkness would stop being such a stranger. It'd never bothered her before that. But that was because she was never truly alone at that old house. And surely, not here in the heart of the Capitol either.
…It's just like being at home again. This is fine.
She finds herself having to say things like that in her head a lot now. Things had to be fine. This place was apparently going to be her home now, if Coriolanus meant what he said.
Rounding the first corner, it'd been nearly pitch black if not for the ambient light coming from where she'd wandered. Opting against exploring deeper where it'd only gotten darker, she stepped through the closest doorway without knowing where she was. Pawing blindly at the wall, her little fingers found what felt like switches near the entrance. A full-handed press into their recesses awakened the lights all at once, startling her vision already adjusting to the lack of it. Alarmed, she fumbled around some more until all but one of the hanging lamps overhead were extinguished.
Well, Lucy girl, you've done it.
She wasn't keen on burning anyone else's eyes wide awake to a whole shining lighthouse. With a calming sigh, she looked across the space she'd just stumbled into to see a perfectly homogenous room of cabinets, counters, and appliances in uniform geometry. From the placements of the smallest settings to the entire arrangement of the fixtures themselves.
Her tummy responded faster than she had, thrilled at the prospect of finding some morsel to fill up on.
So here she's found herself now, like some starving, unwelcome waif rummaging through a stranger's kitchen. The incessant pit growls again a third time, as though to usher her to find sustenance already and that she's loitered about enough here over her musings and daydreams of home.
All right, all right. Hold your horses…
Maybe a glass of milk would suffice, figuring she can't exactly cook something up at this hour anyway. She doesn't even know if she can. There's a…thing that looks like it's got an oven door at the front of it. Maybe that's the stove. Without any obvious dials or knobs or anything that even looks like burners on it, she isn't even sure how it works. Where does the flame even come out of? She moves on from the rotating spice rack beside the maybe-stove to explore a few of the cabinets overhead. Eventually, she finds one that's filled with beautifully crystal clear glasses arranged in three neat rows that number almost twelve. There's an empty spot among them that she realizes must belong to the identical one her little rose sits in on her window sill. Something uncanny makes her smile then, as she reaches for the one next to it.
Close by, there's a taller appliance with double doors that she's sure has got to be a refrigerator. It's just hard to be sure with everything being so perfectly clean and practically featureless. How the cabinets and their doors and handles are finished and flushed with hardly any discernible cracks, seams, or hinges. How everything looks just the same on the outside. Same general shapes. Same, spotless obsidian and chrome surfaces. It's all so clean and lovely that she feels she'd soil everything with her poking about.
But she is hungry. And not in the way she was used to out in the woods. Something about being near all this food again. More of it than she's ever seen or known in her life. And it's a feeling she hasn't felt before, knowing that she's starving to have something in her, and feeling like none of it can even stay down. Just the thought of it already upsets her insides a bit, and nothing seems all that appetizing anymore.
She needs to get something in her, though. She can't keep skipping out on meals the way she's been, and it frustrates her that they don't listen when she says she can't eat anything they make, no matter how good it is. But maybe she ought to just see what's lying around, at least.
The refrigerator doors open with a hefty pull she needs to put some weight into. It's not as full as she imagined it would be, but—all right, there are carrots, some lettuce, half a cabbage head—maybe she can toss something together with these. Luckily, there's a knife block in plain view, though no cutting board in sight. It's fine; easy enough to make do. Another quick rummaging of the cabinets yields a bowl, and she starts with slicing her finds straight into it.
And ohh…it cuts like butter.
Even the kitchen wares here work better than the old stuff they kept in Twelve. The best knives after Barb Azure gave them a good whetting couldn't hold an edge like the one in her hand. She knows then to be careful, since even the slightest knick might slice her finger clean open—
Lucy Gray's heart nearly bursts.
The sudden click of the lights and all the added brightness that came with it jolts her to the bones, sending the blade clattering to the floor. Her shock sends her whirling around, only for her elbow to catch the glass cup she'd set out nearby after it. Her gasp is clipped frozen by her own horror as she watches the crystal shatter into pieces, all jagged angles and edges flung gleaming under the full lights overhead. Wide eyed and wracked with shallow, panicked breaths, Lucy Gray stares appalled at what she's just done.
It would seem that the sudden shock isn't hers alone, shared by the hapless intruder who had stumbled in on her, gone completely unnoticed while she remains completely transfixed over the mess. Taking a moment to register what just happened, Coriolanus lingers in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway. It'd struck as a bit unusual for one of the lights to be left on at this hour. But with his focus swiftly on the one thing he'd come to fetch, it hadn't crossed his already hazy senses that anyone might actually be in here.
He blinks, watching as Lucy Gray seems distraught in search of something, but his thoughts are too slow to catch up to the chaos of the moment.
"Damn it, Lucy girl…" she utters, berating herself as she settles on a folded rag draped over the edge of the sink. "Coryo…I didn't…" she breathes, stumbling over her words. She quickly starts trying to brush up and collect all the scattered glass shards across the floor. "I'm so sorry. God, that was so stupid of me...I'm such an idiot."
How apologetic even the barest glance she could spare had been. That was enough to move his feet, at last, to cross the marbled tiles over to her. He sets the empty bottle he's carrying in his hand down on the nearest countertop and bends down to assist.
"It's fine, Lucy Gray," he assures her as he plucks the knife from the floor. Discarding it into the sink, he glances between the clutter she's left by the stove and her, still fretting over the mess at their feet. "Really."
"No… No, it's not."
"Just leave it—"
"—I'll clean this."
Her stubborn insistence seems to drown out his words completely, so he crouches again, meeting her at eye level. "Stop. You'll cut yourself."
Lucy Gray continues to push around the pieces with swipes of the rag in her distress, and all a bit too carelessly for his liking.
"The staff can—" he tries again, mirroring her motions with his hands outstretched to steer her attention. Away from the thing she shouldn't be worried about, and instead to what he's been saying to her. "—Lucy Gray, stop."
The resolve in Coriolanus' voice seems to do the trick at last. She pauses, finally hearing him, eyes blinking as she turns them to meet his own with that glass-riddled rag still tangled between her fingers. "Just let the staff take care of it in the morning," he coaxes again more gently.
It takes a moment for what he tells her to sink in. For her to feel okay enough to let go of that damned thing already before she hurts herself.
"I'm sorry," she finally says with a faintest breath. The look she gives is like that of a child who's just been scolded. "I promise, I'm not out to wreck your things like this."
It sounds almost like a joke, but he can tell that for whatever reason, she really means it. Remorse is something she can't pretend, and while there's nothing pleasant about seeing her like this, he can't help but chuckle a bit at all this turmoil over some silly broken cup. He'd been the one who'd scared the living devil out of her to begin with.
"I trust you," he quips back. A small attempt at humor, if only to ease her worry a bit. And perhaps, too, the smallest trace of that boy in him resurfaces in all the time since Lucy Gray has arrived here.
And…maybe poorly timed, as the effort seems lost on her in this moment. She doesn't appear much relieved, eyes staring down at the broken mess with such ambivalence weighing on her thoughts.
"Glassware was always hard to come by in Twelve, you know?" she utters. "Even harder out beyond the boundaries."
And it starts to dawn on him then, what it is she means to say. What it is that has her heart sunken so low for something so trivial.
"Plastic wears. Metal rusts. Even though it's fragile, glass keeps the longest. So breaking something was always a big deal back home."
Of course. All the simple things it'd been so easy for him to put out of mind. It isn't as though he doesn't know it either. He has also lived a life of having to make do. He knows what it's like to be destitute of even the littlest of things. When there are no luxuries, everything becomes a luxury. He remembers too well what that life was like. How much he hated it. And how he'd sworn to himself—never again. This goes for Lucy Gray, too.
"That isn't something you'll ever have to worry about," he assures her. He tilts his head, searching her with his gaze until she returns it. "Not here..."
Even if unwittingly spoken, her words, too, hadn't escaped his notice.
'Back home.'
That place and whatever hardship or misfortune that it'd bred is of no consequence to her any longer. He needs her to understand this. That was no longer her life. No longer her world.
"…Never again."
Her countenance softens at his assurance, but it does little to ease the guilt she feels. It doesn't change the fact that these things are precious, and it doesn't matter that there are still eleven other glasses like the one she's just broken. Nothing to her is ever taken for granted. She knows what it is he is trying to say, but all he sees in those shards is something easily replaceable. To her, even something as simple as that broken cup had value.
Coriolanus rises to his feet again. "Come on." Hobbling a bit this second time, he clings to the counter for purchase with a laborious groan that might have even seemed comical. "Looks like you were fixing up something here," he remarks, glancing into her bowl of choppings. "You don't have to let me keep you."
Before she manages to straighten herself back up, he's already rounding the counter in search of something in the bottom cabinets there. While he busies himself, Lucy Gray quietly returns to her meager little meal, if it can even be called that. The bowl is only half filled with the sparse greens, but she decides it's enough. Plucking a piece of carrot from the mix, she bites into it. Even with her waned appetite, its fresh crunch goes such a way to help sate the dull, ever-present hunger in her belly. It's grown so quiet that she minds herself with how she chews, but a peculiar something carried across the thin air catches her ears. She follows the sound over her shoulder, past the island at the center of the kitchen, and to the opposite counter where Coriolanus seems to have disappeared behind. It's more than just the clinking and tinking of his rummaging.
There are soft airy notes her ears are picking up on, too. And she realizes—
He's humming.
In all the time she's known him, he had never been one to carry any sort of tune. He's barely even holding one now, and part of her wonders if he even knows it. Music was just never in his veins, and it didn't take a genius to tell. It's something he'd never admitted to, but she knows he only ever barely tolerated her own singing because it was hers. But still. He'd try his best to listen. Even smile for it. Whatever melodies she offered him never seemed to sink in the way it did for the ones who actually wanted them. But it was what little she ever had to give, and knowing that there was any at all meant for him always seemed enough to soften him. That was all she ever hoped for. All she ever wanted.
Maybe he'd found a bit of it in himself while she was gone. It's a lovely bit of thought, no matter how it came around.
Or maybe it's just because something's clearly gotten him so much more…not-so-dour at this hour. Can't exactly call it a 'good mood' yet, but she's a bit keen on poking the bear a little. (And he hardly seems like one now, so why not?) Lucy Gray can't help her probing curiosity. A bit of mystery always made for good little talks, after all.
She nibbles on a piece of lettuce, staring longer than she means to. Sure, that Capitol boy's always had that stiff edge to him that she'd made a sport out of tickling and wicking away at. But President Snow? He's hardly even so much as smiled over the week and some change that she's been here. Her eyes wander across that pretty obsidian shine of the countertops, only obvious enough now for her to appreciate under the full lights. And…what's that her eyes spy, catching a gleam from something that outshines even that? Something that wasn't there before.
Oh, but she does remember Coriolanus holding something when he first came into the kitchen earlier, and everything starts to quickly make more sense to her. His habits. His mood.
"…You empty that bottle all by yourself?" she asks across the counters with a curl on her lips.
Every man's got a vice. Guess a good drink's a popular one no matter where you're from.
Everyone who lived out in Twelve knew this like a fact of life. She might've been the same herself, if she could take the burn and bitterness that always came with the liquor. But seeing what it'd always do to those folks down at the Hob. To Billy Taupe. She'd decided life was perfectly fine without it. She'd always preferred the taste of her sweets a lot more anyhow.
That fair top of curls is the first thing to pop back into view from the other side of that counter before those beautiful blues take their peek, only to spot a patient Lucy Gray leaned against the kitchen island over her bowl of salad, amusement drawn all over her idle gaze. He comes to his full standing height again, placing the fresh bottle of some red stuff he'd fished out onto the counter, right beside the forgotten empty one still sitting there.
Should this surprise her?
Realizing how this must look as he stares between the two bottles, his thinned lips can't help the shifty little smile tugging at their corners.
"Not…all at once." It comes out sounding more like an excuse than he means for it to. Not that he really minds when it manages to draw a humored smirk of her own.
"So you got bored and were out looking for someone to share the next drink with. Is that right?"
Drink or not, apparently he's feeling lighter than usual, and she's not above taking some advantage of that. She misses having an actual companion to talk to. Or at the very least, someone to tease around just a teeny bit. It's good to know that years of talking to herself or the occasional tree hasn't made her completely inept with actual people now. And it's rather nice to get to smile or even laugh a little. Without the slants or contrivances. Without needing to really think. Here in this world, it feels like all talking is done between layers. Between the words, between the lines. She only likes putting in all that effort for her ballads and stories. Just talking to someone shouldn't be about making up a bunch of things to say, or dancing around the stuff that doesn't get said.
Talking should come easy.
And she wants talking to him to feel the way she remembers it had before. Always so plain and honest. Always so effortless. It only takes the smallest taste of how that all felt again to remind her how much she hates having to don that mask she's made for herself. How much it wears down on her. How much it eats away, plunders, and claims from her, bit by every bit. It even scares her that sometimes, she confuses it for her actual self. After everything he's said and promised, if there was anything Coryo could give her, anything at all he could help her with, it was this. Give her something that makes things feel normal. That makes her feel like she's home again. Like there's nothing more beyond the only two people present here. It isn't anything novel that he needs to go find or buy.
It was simply this.
It doesn't even matter to her that this small thing will probably be gone and faded as soon as one of them leaves this kitchen. She'll hang onto whatever she can get. And what she gets now is how he's beaming at her from where he stands. Bright and wide, and without a care. Just…glad to be there. At least, he seems to be. True or not, she's just making it up as she goes anyway. Filling the gaps where she needs. Just like any other story.
After getting the new bottle uncorked, Coriolanus blithely takes it upon himself to pull two wine glasses from the rack hanging close by before making his way around the counter, joining Lucy Gray from across the middle island.
"Will you?" he asks.
"Hm?" She knows what he's asking, but the question comes right when she's already crunching on another slice of carrot.
"Share a drink, I mean."
She swallows what she's got between her teeth. "Doesn't seem like you're really asking," she remarks, eyeing the pair of glasses he's helped himself to. Unless they're both meant to be his.
Already filling the first cup, he smiles to himself.
"Never had wine before…" she muses, watching the garnet hued liquid deepen as more of it pools into the glass. "It's a pretty color. Reminds me of fine things. Fine like velvet."
Coriolanus slides it to her before filling the second. Instead of paying attention to the stream of liquid, his eyes gaze past his pouring to watch her. He notes how delicately she takes the thing by its slender stem in both hands, holding it like as though it were some holy grail. After smashing another glass just minutes ago, he can't blame her. She probably isn't used to having something so delicate looking between those fingers either, and it's endearing how it shows. He watches, too, how she stares into the drink, seemingly far more enamored with its color than anything else before bringing the rim to her nose for a gentle sniff.
"Smells fine too," she muses warmly. "Fine like roses."
"'D1 Estates Vintage Red.' Panem's finest of wines," he tells her. "Supposedly."
Coriolanus' barely hidden sarcasm does little to convince Lucy Gray either as she laughs. "That so?"
Nero Price's prized favorite. He'd forgotten until just then that the man had shoved a bottle of this onto him at that dinner a week ago.
'Here, have a bottle of this. By the way, can you have the commissioner approve another billion for upgrades to first class train lines?' Go shove another leg down your gullet, stingy old fuck.
A bottle of some overrated swill for a billion-dollar contract to make his already cushy ass even more coddled on those trans-district commutes. Doesn't seem like it needs to be said that it comes with making a business out of traveling, but apparently, the leech can hardly stomach those train rides he's selling. He's just about the worst kind of those insufferable tycoons. The ones who demand everything for no effort, because fuck it all—they've got money. Coriolanus appreciates what wealth brings, but he is not wasteful about it. It's a resource. Finite, just like any other.
While he gives his own glass a bit of a swirl, he idly peruses the bottle's label as well. A barely intelligible calligraphic typeface over a plain parchment colored background, and nothing more. Like it's trying its best to be minimalist but just can't quite get there. It's just as pretentious as the crap it holds. But wine is wine, and he'd been too drunk-lazy to grab another after realizing he'd pulled this one by mistake earlier. And his timing could have been worse. At least now, there'd been someone around to help him finish it.
"Give it a try."
Lucy Gray peers up from the brim of her glass, tilting like a tease near her lips. "Offering me the best for my first taste? Won't that spoil the experience a little without a proper build-up?"
His smile widens, baring just a sight of his lovely teeth. There's an irony here that lingers just beneath his levity. President Snow rarely ever shares his wine. Something unspokenly known to all, that his guests are wary of any offering of his dubitable Schrödinger's glass. It means only one of two things. Only ends in one of two ways.
And how could Lucy Gray possibly have ever known? It almost seems naïve of her to accept this one so easily from him. But when he looks to her, he glimpses that soft, familiar ease that had always warmed her eyes from his memory. Effortless and tender. Like her natural state of being, something she still defaults to with hardly a thought. When there's no reason for her not to. It relieves his heart to know he hasn't killed that part of her either. He remembers, too, how long he's missed it. How much he cherishes it. And how, then, does he mean to continue keeping it safeguarded and alight there in her?
Coriolanus takes a long sip from his own glass as he watches her sample hers. Awaits her verdict on it with a curious regard. The small scrunch of her nose tells him enough, and he can't help the little snicker that escapes him, musing over the thought that even her virgin tastes can tell it's bad. Part of him sneers at what that says of the pretensions of Panem's elite. There are even commonalities among their lot that know little beyond the labels they make for themselves—sell them garbage and call it gold, and they'll throw everything they've got for it. Funny, for people who claim to have so much of it already. But those are the kinds who make his job a bit easier, something he can't exactly completely disparage.
Lucy Gray giggles to herself as she tries to down that first sip she's tasted with some effort. "It's, um…a bit tangy?" she describes unsurely at the unfamiliar layers of flavor. "Definitely…different from the hard stuff they pour for you at the Hob."
"Can't tell if that's supposed to be a good thing or not," he quips. If he weren't already halfway under the table, he can't imagine responding much too differently himself.
"It's not like I'm the best to be asking. You know me. Never cared for anything even a little bitter," she comments before picking at her bowl again for a leafy chaser to clear the tartness from her mouth. She settles on one of the more fibery chunks to have more to chew on.
As he amuses himself watching her, he only realizes then that she's been poking at that bowl with her bare fingers this entire time. She's too dainty about it for him to believe it's become some uncivilized habit picked up in the wild or anything of the sort, so he resolves to remedy this. On his side of the island are several drawers. "Utensils are…" his slight inebriation makes him hesitate between the second and third ones, "…here, by the way." He presents her with a fork from its immaculately sorted wares, giving nothing away of his silent relief at not opening the wrong one like a dumbass.
Somehow the gesture brings such amusement to her, and she accepts it like it's the sweetest thing a boy could do for a girl. How nice it is to be able to shovel mouthfuls at a time now without looking like a complete wild hog.
"Good to know," she answers with a modest smile. There's a story she remembers as she picks some more at the mixed choppings with her new piece of silverware. A fancy of a thought on a tangent from what they're meandering on about. Just like how all beginnings of these things seem to go.
"Know something funny? See, I can barely even handle tea," she shares, beaming warmly to herself as she recalls. "Always got grief from Barb Azure for wasting our honey in all the cups she ever tried fixing up for me, no matter how mild."
Yes, and he remembers, too, that she usually only took honey when there was no sugar around. He listens on with another drink from his glass.
"Well, I stopped making a habit of it when she had me agree to start replacing any extra I used. What was I going to do—busk around for some honey money?" she mused. "So…harvesting, it was, from the wild combs out in the woods."
Seeing the man stop dead mid-swallow, eyes wide in attention at this brings a generous swell of laughter erupting out of Lucy Gray then.
"Obviously, I'm no beekeeper. Took only one stab at it to make me nearly quit the gold stuff for good."
It's easy to forget how infectious her amusement can be when she's telling her stories. It's how he finds it so easy to mirror her every little animated expression. The tease behind her smile. The coyness in how she turns her gaze just so. How attentive she's really actually being to her listener in every passing glance he spots beneath her lashes. An entertainer needs to know if she's got her audience hooked. Not that this one ever even needs to try.
It's almost uncanny when their eyes coincide across the few short feet of countertop between them, bearing some thought along the same lines that hardly needs to be said. Even the cracks between them seem to split and overlap right in tandem. It's unclear where they began. Uncertain who prompted what first. Both. Neither. It doesn't matter. They're laughing together.
"You can somehow charm all those songbirds and snakes with your singing…" he hums to the brim of his glass at his lips. "...Just not bees, though, huh?"
"Guess not," she quips back, like the other half of a serenade to complete his lyric.
"I remember reading somewhere that they can sense fear in you. In the pheromones," he trails off onto some tangential smartassery she's always remembered pretty well of him. "So…you're scared of bees, then?"
And just like that, all that beaming hilarity he'd managed to sow in Lucy Gray completely bottoms out with her turning gaze, brows raised while her entire demeanor is sent sideways. She hadn't expected sass, but clearly the wine's making the man bold here.
"Don't go putting words in my mouth," she fires back with pretended offense. "That's not what I said, Coriolanus Snow."
The fact that the natural lilt of her accent draws out even more when she gets like this only deepens the curl at his lips.
"...'The lady doth protest too much.'"
Smartassery.
So she responds as a lady does—dips her fingertips into the barely touched red drink in front of her and gives the drops a nice, good flick at the scamp of a man across from her.
Unexpected sass can go both ways.
She dares him with a cutting look to match his own as he's left blinking, unable to help but flinch at the sudden assault. The man is rendered incredulous at her devilish audacity, and she's absolutely satisfied with herself for it.
"Little fellas are sweet as long as they're calm. Buzzing about their business among the flowers and all," she reasons nonchalantly, watching while he brushes away the stray red droplets from his face. "I appreciate them. You know…at a distance."
There aren't napkins nearby, so he licks away what he's wiped from the pad of his thumb. And he can't help the bubbling chuckle that starts rumbling through him then. This is maybe as close as he's ever gotten to having a drink tossed in his face. He doesn't put it past her to be the first to do that either. (And it isn't as though he doesn't also deserve it.) But seeing the burgeoning grin she can barely contain anymore there across from him, he'd gladly take two glassfuls for just a glimpse of that full, real smile. The special one with the little crooked tooth at its corner.
"Know a fun little fact?" She gave him a story. Seems like a good enough trade, he thinks, as the conversation wanders all on its own this way. "Actually, most of the bees you see outside the hive are probably workers. And those are all female."
Lucy Gray's engagement follows where he leads here, her unassuming captivation drawing her regard across the counter. Always having knowledge to show off. She knows the kind, and they can be so obnoxious. But never once has she ever been made to feel stupid when he shares anything like this. She loves anything interesting. Loves when there's anything novel at all to be learned.
"Is that right? Never knew that."
He never did either. Had no real practical reason to until some messy project involving tracker jackers on the verge of falling through got shoved into his hands during his stint interning at the Citadel. He'd learned more about Hymenoptera and their eusocial nature in a single quarter than anyone ever needed to over a whole lifetime. But, of course, Lucy Gray doesn't need to know all of that. He just smiles to see her delight at the otherwise useless bit of trivia.
"Imagine that. A whole working gig with one queen at the head of it, watching over all the little queens under her," she muses with a thoughtful wonder. "Maybe there's something to appreciate just a little more in them."
Between sips from his glass and pickings from her bowl, the quiet slowly settles back in. Coriolanus takes the moment here to broach the subject once again, now that she seems more receptive to at least a bit of small talk.
"You can't possibly feel nourished from that rabbit food." He opts for a light jest. Just a toe's dip in the water.
She pauses mid chew and glances back down at the remaining scraps left in her bowl. Beneath the clear humor of his remark, the thought really hadn't crossed her mind about that. This had just been her normal for the past solid five years. She'd only been living off what the woods offered her and all the other living things that dwelled within them. Difficult and lonely as it was, she can only feel gratitude for what bounties it had provided, when it easily could have left her ravaged and bereft, and completely at the mercy of its wilds.
The first few years of it had felt like a miracle. The next few then had just become life as she knew it. Until she'd returned to her cabin from foraging one day, to the sight of something clearly not of that world awaiting her. The small team of Peacekeepers simply asked her to identify herself before telling her she was to go with them. Didn't say where. Didn't even hint at what was to happen. She knew to simply stay quiet and listen, because that was how things worked back in the districts. She remembered that much, at least. Next thing she knew, she'd been set up with an entire suite stocked with everything she'd never dreamed of even knowing, courtesy of the President. Someone who, at that time, she had no way of knowing had once been some boy she knew, once so sweetly.
"Well, this rabbit food was what kept me alive for the better of five years," she answers rather soberly. "It isn't like what they're feeding me is bad or anything. I'm sure your cooks know what they're doing."
He can hear the somber shift in her tone, and expects a 'but' to follow here.
"I keep trying to tell them. My stomach isn't used to all that heavy stuff they keep offering me. The looks they give me…like I'm some ingrate."
And it only dawns on him then. He feels so stupid for this oversight. Because when ever in history has the Capitol thought to properly host anyone from beyond its walls? To know what is needed, to understand what is essential? Not what Capitolites require, and not by choice. This only serves to starkly remind him of how vastly different the trajectories of how their lives had gone since that day by the lake. He can't bear to keep returning to that day. This is why she is here now. Why he's been trying to do what he has.
Do better, then. Feeling sorry isn't enough.
"And it isn't just that," she adds almost reluctantly while he's trying to find his words. She pauses because this came out before she had a chance to think it through with the pace of her rolling thoughts coming now to the forefront.
"The things the staff says sometimes. Gossiping up storms..."
Coriolanus sets his glass down, attention narrowing at this. She doesn't take note as her gaze wanders distantly while she idly pokes at those awful shreds of cabbage left at the end of her fork.
"…Polite enough to your face, but always talking around you. Never at. Definitely never with. Like they see you as some illiterate critter or something. You'd wonder if maybe they just think you're deaf, but it honest to god feels like they want you to hear all those nasty thoughts. They just don't want to be the ones to say it to your face."
He watches as she spears into the piece of cabbage with a scornful smile twisting at her lips.
"Mayfair was a bitch. But, you know, she never hid that. And she made it pretty clear how much she hated me." Bringing the scrap to eye-level, she lets her eyes linger on the limp thing hanging from where it's impaled on the prongs. "Takes out the guesswork."
There is a cynicism laced in her words that Coriolanus decides is completely at odds with her. It's contradictory. Incompatible. Absolutely wrong for everything Lucy Gray evokes and embodies. He watches how she numbly bites down on the shred of cabbage between her teeth. The meager thing only takes a chew and a half before it's swallowed down. Barely even worth the effort. She looks like she can hardly stomach the bite, but he knows it isn't for the same reason he can't stand the abhorrent stuff.
"What are their names?"
Lucy Gray is surprised by the steel in his voice then. She meets his eyes again, and he looks completely burned out of whatever drunkenness has had him beaming and humming just earlier. The resolve she sees in him looks as hard and feels as cold as the sound of his tone. She realizes then, why she'd hesitated at all to say any of this. But it's too late to take any of it back. It isn't like she can tell him to forget it either. Coriolanus Snow doesn't let things go. Why else was she standing right there with him now?
"…Even if I cared enough to remember, what would happen if I were to tell you?"
If looks could kill on sight. She knows it's not her in his crosshairs, but she's looking right at it herself there, and that alone leaves enough of a chill in her bones that she never wants to be reminded of again. She's seen it before. It's like staring down the barrel of a gun. Even if it isn't aimed her way…well, she hates guns for a reason.
Lucy Gray offers a renewed smile then. Hopefully it's one that he buys. "It's nothing to get yourself bent over. I made it through the Games. A couple of snarky remarks isn't going to make me lose sleep."
No, because there's something else entirely that's beaten them to that.
She realizes here that she hadn't meant to make a point about assholes doing as they do. It's just something about suddenly finding herself dropped back into society now. Thinking she's missed it. And somehow, even being here in the bustling heart of it, she manages to feel more alone than in the woods beyond the borders. But that's her problem to sort out, not something to trouble others with. She hopes she can pedal back and convince him of this, too.
And she sees that tinkering in him. The way his ever mindful gaze examines and reads what it sees in her. The hesitant bob in his throat when he swallows, mulling over those mile-a-minute thoughts he must be roving through. The little unconscious stirrings in his fingers as he weighs it all. So she helps it along by molding that smile just so. Softer around the edges. Ease that calm back into her brows and the corners of her eyes.
Own it.
Sell it.
It's okay, Coryo.
And the words she wills in her heart seem to make it to him to sink in. He turns his gaze away and sighs. A resignation.
"I'll speak to the staff about the meals," he says quietly. "They cook what they think is best. But they need to know what you actually need." The more obvious issue crosses his mind then, so he thinks to speak to it as well. "If you're more comfortable with it, Lucy Gray…you can always let me know these things directly."
She doesn't intend to let the effort of his concession go without compensation. Though truly, it's the warmth she'd so carelessly almost snuffed out just now that she wants to salvage. Whatever it takes. To this, she blithely nods and lets that crafted smile illuminate. Maybe that alone will do it.
Coriolanus knows her better than most. Better than any, he might even presume. She may have just swayed him well enough into thinking there really hadn't been anything worth dwelling on here, if she hadn't reached for her glass in that moment, left untouched up until then. She goes for it a bit too discreetly not to be deliberate. How she looks to him with added assurance before taking that drink, but not before bracing herself for the bitterness when she swallows.
He was always the one guilty of trying too hard. He wonders now if his efforts had always been this transparent to her. And how graciously she'd humored it every time. Never made him feel like a fool while he was at it either. To do the same for her here is the very least he could spare.
There is a porcelain cloche that's set in the middle of this island counter, painted with classical motifs in gold and pale, candy colors. He smiles, seeing her hold down the bad and still too unfamiliar taste of the wine and decides to see if there's something that might help.
"Here," he lifts the cover away, revealing a dessert plate with the remnants of some pastry left from the day.
Lucy Gray's eyes immediately light up at the simple, yet strange looking thing that she figures is far too refined for anyone from Twelve to have ever sampled. "What's that?"
"This…" He slides the small dish over to inspect. "Looks like a 'pastel de nata.'"
She raises a brow, amused by its odd name. The pastry is round and flatish, filled with some butter colored creamy stuff, browned just a bit at the top. "What about these is anything like pastels?"
Innocent as her remark is, he can't help but laugh. "No. No, it's just what they're called. It's basically a tart made with egg custard."
"Custard?" Licking her lips, she beams. "I know what that is. And I know what tarts are. The kind I've ever seen were made with fruit. Whatever we can forage outside the fence. And that was only if we could splurge a bit on butter and sugar that season."
She must miss such delights, he thinks, seeing how the nostalgia alone heartens her with just a mere mention. He pushes the plate closer to her. "It'll help with that aftertaste."
The hesitation in her gaze asks if the entire thing really is for her, so he prompts her again with a nod. Delighted, she takes her fork to it, splitting into the pastry right down the middle. But before she picks up any piece of it, she slides the plate back halfway towards him.
"Help a girl out here," she urges, offering him her fork.
Within the glow of her countenance and expectant smile, he is reminded of the spirited girl he'd hardly known yet in that zoo enclosure. She really doesn't need to share this with him. If anything, he prefers her to eat the entire thing because she's still too thin for comfort. Always, she was sharing any treats gifted by him or Sejanus with little Maude Ivory first. Even with what few morsels she'd ever managed to scrape up for herself in that awful enclosure, she'd made a point to spare some for that Jessup boy. As though it'd never weighed at all on her that she was a frail thing nearly half his size. No, it simply never mattered to her.
So he thinks of nothing else other than to oblige her convivial nature. Even though he knows in these instances, she's only giving him the illusion of a choice in the matter. Either way, it usually works in everyone's favor when he makes it one, and one that's all his own. With a shift and a rustle around his end of the counter, he answers by fishing his own fresh fork from that same drawer. And the smile Lucy Gray gives in return is sweeter to him than that first shared bite of the pastry.
While he's still savoring his piece, Coriolanus doesn't yet ask her what she thinks of it, but all the anticipation shows in his fixed gaze. Of course, she finishes hers first and definitely quicker than that sip of wine earlier. That alone should tell him enough anyway.
She sighs like it was her first resurfacing breath after practically inhaling the thing. "The best pastels I've ever had," she jokes, licking the crumbs from her lips. "Though…I suppose I can't say I know how they taste. Only ever used them to color pretty drawings and such."
It's in this moment that the empty kitchen becomes a familiar special space. The only room in the whole of this manor that is alight with the hums of their intermingling laughter. The shared glances across the island counter over their dessert and wine at this odd hour. For just this moment, it feels like a girl and a boy again. Nothing and nobody else in the world.
"Remember those nights? When…" Lucy Gray finds herself speaking before her thoughts even catch up to it. "…When you stayed over. And we'd snuck some midnight snacks from the kitchen after getting ourselves hungry talking all night…"
He smiles to himself, staring down into the shallow red liquid in his glass. "…When it was so hot, it was easy to just fall asleep out on the roof…"
"…After hours staring at the stars."
Like a seamless memory, shared just as easily as that simple pastry.
Of course he remembers.
He remembers, too, how those stars were something he'd never seen. Never here in the Capitol. The brilliance of their array. Like layered twinkling lights in a stream that spilled across the dark expanse. He's seen old photographs of this. But the harsh and bright mechanical lights of the Capitol always outshine those tiny ones far above them. It's always been that way that no one ever really thinks about it. Not until they've seen it. And it's easy to forget that those cosmic lights will continue to glow well after these earthbound ones inevitably burn out. They may be invisible behind the glare now, but they've always been there. He realizes, too, how easily he's forgotten that himself.
Maybe it's one thing he can't deny that he actually misses from District 12.
He reaches for his fork on the dessert plate to pick up that last bite from his remaining half amongst the crumbs left from hers.
"Isn't it nice…? Having nobody, nothing at all to be rushing out first thing in the morning for now?"
The wistful air of her voice draws his attention just like that wafting memory. Until it ushers his gaze across the space. Until he finds hers in between and sees how still it's become that it must have lingered this way for some time through their exchange now. His fingers idle and stir once again, letting his fork slip right between them, forgotten. Barely even cognizant of it himself, it's Lucy Gray who takes notice.
As she relaxes herself forward over the counter, she props her chin over one hand, leaving the other to laze at rest somewhere near the dish between them.
"Can I ask you something?"
How reticent her question suddenly sounds is entirely unexpected to him.
"Of course," he answers.
The tips of her own restive fingers trace at the fine, nearly seamless gaps between the countertop tiles as she thinks on it. And it is this merest motion amid the hanging silence that catches his eye, stealing his focus as he waits for what she means to say.
"…What's your reason for being awake at this hour?"
This rather catches him off guard. They'd been talking about all manners of miscellany and nonsense, the collective nonessentials that altogether make up everything that they are. And for the time, he'd almost forgotten how nice it was to just be that way. Be them. Be plain and simple and stupid. And now she asks him the very thing that leads his thoughts all the way back to why it was he came out here to be alone and drunk with his wine at all to begin with.
And somehow…it's all led him again right back to her.
Something about it feels as fated as him having become her mentor for the Games. There's a reason. There always is. Or, at least, it's what humans are wired to take comfort in believing. The fact that he has to think this hard again nearly brings him painstakingly back to waking sobriety.
He goes backwards from here. He came from his office. He was pissed off at…something. He finished the last drop of his drink—right—he was working. But, no, not for the sake of working. Papers, letters…Tigris' letter. Now he remembers why he's pissed off. A rolling snowball of reasons, apparently. And then…yes, of course. He remembers thinking about her. Lucy Gray.
Always Lucy Gray.
Part of him wonders if he should just tell her she's the reason why he's a bottle and a half in now, just for the hell of it. Just to hear her laugh again, maybe.
And, oh? She spies that little twinkle of a smile at some thought crossing his mind and wonders what it is that's brewing in that brain of his. (Nothing good, probably.) But what really catches her attention is how those idle fingers of his start to wander now, too. For a second, she peripherally watches, just to be sure it isn't something else he's reaching for—her wine glass, that half empty bottle, the plate with that last untouched bite of pastel left.
No, it's definitely her hand that his own seems drawn towards. Its mirror. Its counterpart. Its long estranged companion. And how close they come just then…
Yes. Find where they belong.
And Lucy Gray can't help the prying curiosity in her anymore. The silent longing. The ache that she doesn't even realize until they are so close, had never truly gone.
But he stops just short.
How fucking expected.
Coriolanus blinks as though he's just come to realize something too, leaving her to wonder—why the sudden restraint? He's got no real reason to, and absolutely nothing at all in the world is stopping him. Except himself, that is. What a strange, cold war they've both been playing at here. An unsteady armistice where neither seems to know what the other's moves will be. What their intentions are. What the other even truly wants. And then there's the fact that both of them, too, have been dancing around something neither of them are willing to speak of. Where she remembers a time when it came so easily and freely between each other.
Even as he was now, unburdened by much of the seeming inhibitions he's built up over the years, lighter in his mood, affectionate even, she feels their distance. And the small part of her buried so deep inside that she hasn't given mind to it in so long now aches for it. Suddenly, the distance leaves her cold. The solitude leaves her in longing. For what, exactly, she can't even quite define, but its void carves down so much deeper than anything else in her. Touches her in a way she's almost lost sensation to. And how its faint, still warm memory leaves her in tears she's too bitter to shed.
So she watches as his fingers curl back into themselves before he draws his hand away completely. He spares a smile in some attempt to disguise the fact that he's looking for something to fill it. And, right—he remembers his not quite empty wine glass on his side of the counter, hiding behind a gulp that comes a little too quick not to be deliberate. Either he isn't aware, or he's just that desperate, she decides.
Lucy Gray merely reflects his smile back. She tries, but it comes short again, and she feels it. And it's really okay if he doesn't have an answer to give. She can make one up for him.
"Just…itching that hard for a drink?" She opts for something of a tease. Can't ever really go wrong with that. Add a laugh in for good measure, too. "Must be stressful work, I imagine."
Letting her eyes lower away, she finds herself picking up her own untouched glass again. She isn't sure if she's still just mirroring him or if she's just doing what feels natural. Bringing its rim to her lips, she lets it linger there. "You didn't have to stay on account of me." She pauses, to hesitate or to brace herself, she also doesn't know, but she eventually takes that dive, finishing what's there completely to the last drop. It goes down hard and tart on her tongue, but maybe for that moment she appreciates the slow, smooth burn that follows. Stealing that last remaining bite of the pastel, she then sets the glass back down onto the now empty dish.
"Thank you, Coriolanus. For the company."
And with those words, she quietly steps around the counter and passes him, crossing the marbled floor toward the entryway.
"You're welcome to come use this kitchen anytime, Lucy Gray." This is all he manages to say after all that. "Fix up whatever you want for yourself. I'll let the staff know."
It hardly stops her from leaving as she briefly turns just to acknowledge him, if little else. The smile she gives in return is that kind he's come to dislike, no matter how thankful she means for it to be.
"I'd love to hear your stories one of these days," she tells him faintly before her steps recede back out into the hallway. And just like that, Coriolanus finds himself in his own solitary company again. The empty silence reminds him how much he hates it on nights just like this.
So why didn't you tell her? Useless little shit.
This was why.
You could've said something. Anything.
He hoped he'd at least drunk enough to keep the whispers away.
Instead, you let her slip away. Just like that. Always the fucking coward.
He stares down at his empty fingers. Perhaps there was room for one more story that night. The one told right there in the lines and faint thorn scars in them. The one that tells of how they'd once held gold dust, so precious. How he'd managed to let it all slide right out through them.
Go ahead and tell it. It's a great one. We've got all night.
And it comes just too late then. For all his reticence, he realizes too little and far too late now that what Lucy Gray was asking from him wasn't a reason why he was up so late that night to find her here. What she'd really wanted to hear was any reason at all for her to stay there with him. Like those few times he'd stayed at the Covey house well into the morning. Waking nearly too late with his precious gold dust held safe there in his hands. Rushing in a panic out the door with a measly piece of bread with the barest slather of honey his dearest girl could spare for him. That, and a kiss even sweeter than if she'd given him the entire jar of it. All to fill him up before that two-mile mad dash through the brush and dirt from the Seam, only managing to sneak back into the barracks unnoticed because that stupid angel Sejanus had been there to cover his ass.
All this, simply because there was always something more to talk about before the night's end. Something more to say. Something more to hear. And it'd all come so easy—walls of words and wells of stories. So why, then, was it so hard for those words to come now? When had that well full of stories between them dried up?
'I'd love to hear your stories one of these days.'
No, she doesn't.
What worth was there in listening to how much screwing over, backstabbing, and disposing he's done over the years? Up until where he's gotten now? Lucy Gray has never found even a shred of joy hearing that kind of awfulness. She's as well as said so herself.
'Never cared for anything even a little bitter.'
He knows too well she meant more than just how shitty wine tastes. It only seems fitting that he sat here now with his lone, hateful companion remaining to savor the rest of it.
Notes: Whoo! I was SO excited to get to dive a bit more into Lucy Gray here, finally. (This has been such a slow crawl, sorry, lol…) And because I just love her as a character so, so much, I really hope her portrayal was done okay here. There's so much in her she still needs to sort out and process, so many thoughts and feelings to reflect on. And as the time starts to progress with more happening between and around them, I do imagine her having so much more inside that will continue to surface.
For this part, I thought a lot about how we saw Lucy Gray was like early in the book. How she handles herself and all the uncontrollable things around her. How she copes. Also how much she doesn't show. And since the story was mostly told through Coriolanus' thoughts and perspective, we never really got to see what hers truly were in all of it. Only what's perceived through Coryo's eyes. I think Collins always left us with a lot of room to fill and interpret Lucy Gray a bit in our own ways, which I think both makes it super fun, but also kind of challenging, haha.
In this story, I do want to look at them both equally and through equal lenses. And for this chapter, I wanted to take the time to imagine how Lucy Gray herself explores and interacts with the world and environment around her, some of the things we never necessarily saw much of in the book. Playing with how even small differences in her and Coryo's perspectives can yield such different ways they experience things. And at the same time, there's also so much that actually overlaps between them that they might not even quite realize.
Eee, sorry for the slight ramble here, but I just felt really excited to share some personal thoughts! And I'm genuinely always so curious to see the range of how others depict and envision Lucy Gray too! ^_^
I hope everyone enjoyed the read! There's actually a last third part I wanted to keep under this chapter title, but this was getting up there in word count, so I left it out for the next update. x_x These three parts were intended to share some thematic elements, but I think it all just got to be overkill in length. I swear, the notes I kept didn't make it seem like it'd be so long… .-. Lol, a friend calls it 'can't-shut-up' disease.
Anyway, thanks again to everyone taking the time to read this! And I apologize again for the slow pace with updates. Hope you can bear with me and continue to enjoy the story!
8/23/23