A Quiet Spot on the Beach; Wednesday Evening [09/11].

[chef_chocobro]

The quiet spot on the beach was the same, as was the fisherman's paella, but the date, the fruit salad, and the wine were all different, as Ignis had been saving one of the bottles they'd cultivated together in Argentina with the hopes to bring it out for this exact occasion: a celebration of the very first meal he'd ever cooked for Liliana, on this very same beach, as a bold response to a coy and cloying inquiry that had not only kicked off his experience at last year's Three Minute Dates, but had also fundamentally altered the trajectory of his life in ways he would have never imagined were even possible.

It was hard to put into words exactly how completely and extraordinarily things had changed for him during this past year, and so Ignis wasn't even going to try. In fact, he was just going to do what he knew was a far better way for him to communicate all of that, the same method he'd used to channel all the things that couldn't be expressed otherwise, for one reason or another: by pouring it all into food instead.

And so, his camp station was set up, there was achingly familiar music drifting quietly from a familiar music box, there was an excess of fruit that was not going into the salad to satisfy any grazing fingers, a spoon that being ostentatiously flipped far more than could ever be necessary, and, of course, someone to share it all with.

[[ and the post is for that someone~ ]]

Comments

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana shook her head. "I don't," she said. "I was at the fortress and our mother and sisters were at the manor."

Thank Gaea. Or else they also would have died that day.

...Funny how she still spoke in plural still, instead of the singular

"And our father was still out with the troops. The battle might even have been still been going on, I don't know." She had never even found out how the battle had ended.

"And it was a corset. A deep purple leather corset. My third year at Witherbloom. I lost it decades ago, but I loved it."

[chef_chocobro]

Ignis may have, admittedly, still been a bit too in his own head to notice the plural at first, but, at the second use, it was impossible not to notice, and he gave a small nod. A thoughtful hum. And began to ladle out some paella for her.

"Was there anything in particular," he asked, hedging his bets a little more freely now, when it came to subtly attempting to squeeze more questions in, "about that corset that caught your eye?"

[deathsmajesty]

"There were threads of iridescent thread worked through it, so that literally caught my eye," she said. "We were walking through a tiny town and I saw a sparkle out of the corner of my eye and looked over and there it was, in a display window. It was beautiful, just intricately tooled and worked, and the color was just so rich and deep. I couldn't pass it up."