Voicemail.

[chef_chocobro]

"You have reached the voicemail of Ingis Scientia. I am unavailable to take your call at this moment, but if you would please leave a message, I will assuredly get back to you as soon as possible."

**BEEEEEEP**

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Comments

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana's constitution score was robust, perhaps even surprisingly so if you didn't realize how important that was for a mage, but even she couldn't keep up with an unembodied spirit haunting a set of armor all day.

So during one of her breaks from dancing, she was paused the current song to leave a message.

"Feeling suitably industrious, my darling? Because I'm spending the day dancing, which I don't think was what you meant when you said I had to go to work today," she teased.

You chose this, Ignis. Just saying.

[chef_chocobro]

At that point, of course, Ignis was very deep into his meal planning and prep, and while Liliana didn't have any sort of magical music box directing her dance around the shop, he certainly did to orchestrate his dance around the kitchen. And as much as the energetic, driving notes of the music, even in their smaller, tinnier form threw him into a certain intensity for his work, the sudden chimes of life leaping from his phone to announce an incoming voice text from Liliana immediately drew his attention out of it. And since his hands were quite in the middle of some very messy work, he was very glad for voice commands so that it could play.

Without even missing a beat, as soon as he did listen to the message, the tune on the music box changed, to something wholly predictable, and with a small intake of breath, Ignis was glad that he'd at least have the chance to pause his work, wash his hands, and turn the music box off before instructing the phone to call her back, on speaker, while he continued his work, but perhaps something a little less involved for the time being.

[deathsmajesty]

"Oh hello darling," Liliana said, answering her phone with the sense of casual ease of someone had been waiting for just this call. "You called just as I was about to have my first piece of lunch."

Oh the grinning.

[chef_chocobro]

Oh, and Ignis had become quite the expert at hearing grins; distance and phone lines certainly were no barrier, and there was a pause.

A consideration of his work in progress, a moment of thinking it was a shame Liliana's steward couldn't be a convenient redirection of his ministrations, and then, finally, he ventured forward with caution.

"Here I was going to make some terribly clever comment about being worried about this dancing wearing you out too much for this evening," he stated, "but now I find my concerns shifting elsewhere. First piece? Have you ordered a pizza? An ungodly large bucket of deep fried, seasoned, and battered 'chicken'?"

Yes. You could ear the quotation marks.

"I don't suppose you've gone and sprung for a lovely little charcuterie board, my dear, have you?"

[deathsmajesty]

"Cheesecake!" she announced, sounding very pleased with herself. "J,GoB was selling groups of eight slices or so Stark said." Liliana sounded dubious, like she didn't necessarily trust anything that Stark said, but that she couldn't particularly prove he was wrong. "I was about to try something called Nutella with my cheesecake."

[chef_chocobro]

"So I take it Stark failed to add," Ignis murmured, with a bit of a dark tone slipping into the words, because this was just what he needed, a reason to knock Stark even further down in his estimation, but at the same time, he could hardly be surprised, considering the company Statk kept, "that cheesecake is considerably more a dessert than a lunch."

There was a pause, the pause of a man taking great measure of whether or not it was wise to ask the question balancing dangerously at the tip of his tongue.

"Do you plan to eat all eight slices?"

[deathsmajesty]

"Oh having the cheesecake as part of a brownie this morning made that very clear," Liliana assured him. "But it's what I have with me today to eat. And after all that dancing from earlier, I am very hungry. Probably not eight pieces hungry? But I expect I'll be dancing later, so it's good to have some extra to help me keep up my strength if I need it."

[chef_chocobro]

"Darling," said Ignis, with a sigh that indicated his word choice was attempting to be magnanimous, "do you really want me to break down for you all the reasons why, if more dancing is what you wish to do, why several pieces of cheesecake in lieu of a proper lunch is actually an exact detriment to that goal?"

And you know what? He knew who he was talking to, so he was going to tell her, in great and exhaustive detail, while his chopping of vegetables almost became pointed.

"So unless you plan on leaving your dance partner thoroughly unimpressed with your lethargy and torpor, might I suggest a more balance and efficient method in which to satiate that hunger?"

[deathsmajesty]

Is it weird to think you adore someone mid-lecture on nutrition? Clearly Liliana had no such thoughts, but just asking for a friend, is it?

"But I don't have any such lunch," Liliana protested. "I just have cheesecake. One of them is peanut butter and I'm fairly certain someone told me peanut butter was healthy." It might have been Stark? And it had definitely been thoroughly detached from cheesecake. "And Oreo. Stark told me the filling was white, I protested that that was a color and not a flavor, and he insisted it was both and that I would have to try it to understand. He assures me I'll love them once I do."

Ignis was going to take his key back and she'd have only herself (and Stark) to blame.

"Oh, but my dance partner won't mind my sluggishness a whit," she added, like the following information was meant to help. "It's a haunted set of plate armor. I'm literally dancing with a set of armor that Gladio would sport were he the type to cover up, animated by a restless spirit of the dead."

There was a screeching noise from further away.

"Excuse me, a restless spirit of the protective dead." Beat. "Not one of my spirits, I should note. This one came with the armor."

Her spirits would never.