a halo around her finger around you
As much as Treize enjoys to occasional foray into the bar scene of the Nexus, he'll never be entirely comfortable there; he will always be an observer in certain crowds, despite his generally positive social outlook. Here, in this upscale cocktail lounge high on an observation deck in a hotel he's 'found', he seems much more at home
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As far as Petra's concerned, the nexus is still alien and alarming - but it is a distraction from the frustrating slow progression of days through the month and all of the accompanying worries. (That Martel lives, here, is a worry all of its own that she is afraid to examine and so does not, letting it settle in the back of her mind like a half-remembered nightmare.)
How she got here is something of a mystery, though, a row of encounters like chinese whispers that led her somewhere interesting until she comes to be handing her cloak off and accepting a glass of wine, idly wishing she'd worn something a more adventurous hue than dark brown. No one could call her sense of style 'frumpy', but the colour makes her feel matronly where she'd like to feel - rebellious, who knows.
"Oh my word," she breathes out, startled, looking out the windows over the nexus proper, and thinks that maybe she's a little past the age for wild rebellions, after all.
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"Quite the view, isn't it."
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"I've never seen one quite like it," she admits, not yet looking away to see exactly who it is that's come to stand next to her. He's tall enough that she'll have to look up, and she's still a little enthralled by seeing the sheer limitlessness of the nexus from a height like this - beautiful from this angle when from the ground it seems cluttered and confusing. "It's almost elegant."
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Now, when she stops looking, it's because her eyes have closed and she ducks her head to the side to prevent herself from actually laughing at whatever his remark has inspired in her mind. "And you are only commenting on our vantage point in the literal sense, I don't doubt. With whom am I appreciating the view this evening?"
...it doesn't really take very long in the nexus to realize that mob mentality and the concept of a lowest common denominator is multiversal, let's say.
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Ladies of Petra's stripe do not shake hands, but they do sometimes generously allow men to take their hand in greeting, as she does now. The knuckle-kiss is not obligatory (there are some gentlemen whose mouths she'd rather not have that close to her skin). "Countess Petrana of Gatas. I'm afraid I'm so new here as to still be easily overwhelmed."
Not, it must be noted, that she looks anything like overwhelmed.
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"Will you join me, then? Perhaps off your feet you would be only just whelmed." --Treize.
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...Treize Khushrenada, she knows your type - because they keep getting her into trouble is why, so when she laughs and switches her glass from one hand to the other before she moves away from the window it's both a perfectly natural and graceful flow of motion and yet no accident that the light catches on the emeralds in her wedding ring.
"How perfectly satisfactory. I'd be delighted - will you be speaking figuratively?" Knowing and being immune to are two very different things.
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"I'm sure I will be at some point, Countess."
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The pride Davidias takes in his wife is a many splendoured thing. Presently that wife is following Treize to sit down with him, and arranging her skirts neatly when she's seated. It's not the most daring ensemble, but it doesn't need to be.
"I'll listen for it. May I ask where you're from? I've been collecting new places since I arrived, though I'd be a terrible cartographer." She'd sort of like to commit some of the places she's still only heard about to canvas, their people and their skylines, but so far there's been nothing tempting enough to actually visit, much less visit with art supplies.
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"A small country called Luxembourg," he tells her. "Historically, in my world, it's not been well-known. Beautiful countryside, a forgotten bit of the world. For a while, anyway."
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The familiarity in it charms and cautions her at once, and she lets herself be comfortable without being enthralled the way the windows caught her. In Petra herself there's a sense of containment; of the black and opaque surface of a deep lake that catches moonlight and reveals very little. A sort of tell, in its own way.
"It isn't any more? Or it won't be?" she prompts him off the end of that, unabashedly curious. "I've heard some very interesting rumours about what a terrible idea it can be to forget whole places."
Yes, then there's a war thousands of years later.
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"Oh it is very well known, now. I've always been a bit loud, politically." An understatement. "I try not to let whole countries go forgotten about - how tragic. What is Gatas like, if I may ask?"
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'Loud, politically' makes her smile briefly, amused half by him and half by something that's crossed her mind. "Gatas is a small region and city in the heart of Deira," she supplies. "We're on the river and the trade route, flanked by mountains." It's not a valley, really, they're too far apart for that. "I grew up outside of Demos, though, in Elenia."
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