Celebrity

[touchedinthehead]

Aldaras lets the university have hold of the necklace again so they can finish learning everything about it. He'll start molding it when the Dean's learned all of its quirks - trying it now could accidentally make some aspect of it worse. Besides, it takes time, it's not like he can manage any progress in the time that it'll take for the Dean to identify anyway. Best to know where he's going when he starts going there.

News spreads pretty quickly about the knife's new location at the bottom of the ocean. Aldaras and Sintre become celebrities, along with being rich. Sintre is nigh-impossible to find in his hermithood. Aldaras - is not. The necklace is his. The mission to go encase the knife in concrete was organized by him. He's now deemed to be an important person, and as bewildering as that is, he works to roll with it.

He ends up invited to a party. It's the type of party with lots of important, famous people attending. He can bring one guest with him.

Right, he knows who he wants to bring, but first he has to ask her. Time to go find Annie.

Comments

[touchedinthehead]

"Hi," he says, warmly.

Wait. Now, how does he word this?

"No pressure," he begins, "or presumptions on my part on any part of your answer, but. There's a, um, party I was invited to. I can bring a guest. Do you want to come?"

[keep_busy]

"What kinda party?"

[touchedinthehead]

"A party with famous and rich people. It'll probably be really boring, honestly, but the networking's likely to be useful."

[keep_busy]

"And I bet the food's good at those things. When is it?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Next week, after your seminar."

[keep_busy]

"Yeah, sure, I'll come."

[touchedinthehead]

That causes him to brighten considerably.

"Okay," he agrees with a smile.

[keep_busy]

"You're so disproportionately pleased."

[touchedinthehead]

"A bit," he admits sheepishly.

[keep_busy]

"It's cute."

[touchedinthehead]

"Thank you!"

[keep_busy]

"You're welcome. What's the dress code?"

[touchedinthehead]

"Classy and expensive, as far as I can tell. I'm fine with throwing money at you so you can have a pretty dress."

[keep_busy]

"That would require me to be able to identify a classy one. I'll get my mom to take me shopping, and I think I'll accept your offer of a budget."

[touchedinthehead]

"Mhm. Should we be picky about matching, or not care?"

[keep_busy]

"We might as well as long as I'm purpose-buying a dress for the occasion, what're our colors?"

[touchedinthehead]

"I'm not picky, are you picky?"

[keep_busy]

"I don't think I look good in pink or yellow."

[touchedinthehead]

"Ha. And orange looks terrible on me. Should we go with purple or something?"

[keep_busy]

"Sure. Dark purple."

[touchedinthehead]

"That sounds nice," he agrees with a smile. Is that the lovey look? Yeah, that's definitely the lovey look.

[keep_busy]

Annie reaches up to pet his hair and then says, "I'm going to go sign up for lab time and then I have an advisor meeting. But I'll see you later. Pick me up at home when it's time to go to the party?"

Off she goes.

That weekend she goes shopping.

[touchedinthehead]

He leans into the hairpetting with the contented smile still on his face, and replies, "Sure. See you then."

And off he goes.

He needs to go shopping, too, it's not like he owns anything quite fancy enough for the party, but that's easy enough to fix. Shopping. For something that is dark purple. It's uneventful and gains him some new clothes.

Then it's time to pick Annie up, which he goes to do. Knock, knock.

[keep_busy]

Annie answers the door. She's already dressed up.

She looks like the night sky.

It's past sunset and she's not one of those people who tries to navigate the climate of Noregr in skin-showing garments, so from neck to floor is soft purple fabric so dark it looks black except in the more directly lamplit areas, and she's spangled with little white beads and pale embroidered stars, swirling across the skirt. Her gloves, which go up nearly to her shoulder, match but are a thinner fabric, and there's a comet sewn on the back of her right hand. She's acquired a set of silver and amethyst jewelry, a crescent moon comb in her twisted-up hair and twin bracelets shaggy with dangling stones on her wrists and stars clipped to her ears and an abstract pendant hanging from her neck. Either her mother helped or she has hitherto unexplored makeup skills of her own; there's a little purple on the lids of her dark-lined eyes and more stars drawn in silver at their corners.

She smiles tentatively.

[touchedinthehead]

Helpfully, Aldaras's brain decides to completely shut down and he's left standing there, staring. Silent.