(no subject)
Ellen has taken off her shoes and socks. Neat dark pumps and neat thin dress socks have been tucked away just beside the stony bench-protrusion on which she is currently sitting, and her bare feet are pressed into the grass. She sits quite upright and looks quite prim and business-like in her grey summer suit, with her hands clasped in her lap over crisp slacks. Today the park is warm and sunny and not uncrowded, but she has yet managed to create a small area of isolation, possibly by being a weird creepy barefoot lady on a rock.
Where others are perhaps put off by creepy, Elizabeth seems not to notice it. Her gaze does not stray to the strange woman on a rock, instead noting the empty space and gravitating toward it. She walks behind a rather large cat on a leash, silver-spotted and endlessly energetic, who moves with the slinky grace of a feline and the cheerful enthusiasm of a canine.
While the majority of Ellen's attention is occupied by the living grass beneath her feet, intrusion onto her island of solitude has become rare enough over the past hour or so that it draws her gaze immediately. Her gaze goes first to the woman, and finds little to catch on there; but then there is the cat. She frowns at the cat, and its immediate ping in her associative memory, and looks back to the woman only briefly, with a faint furrow lingering upon her brow.
Elizabeth is somewhat slower to note her company, but when she does there is the faintest of pauses. So faint! After that split-second's hesitation she offers a small smile and turns a distracted gaze back to Lethe on her leash. She seems to have found a stick. Fascinating.
"What kind of cat is that?" Ellen asks, with her traditional level of subtlety: to her a lot, to anyone else, not so much.
Elizabeth's gaze lifts again, brows lifted just slightly as she turns to Ellen to ask, "Pardon?"
"Your cat," Ellen says, gesturing with a curve of one palm. She blinks once but otherwise her gaze is steady where it settles on the other woman's features. "It's an unusual breed. Unique."
"Oh, yeah, gorgeous, isn't she?" Elizabeth asks with the sudden flash of a smile as she tugs on the leash with a cluck of her tongue and a quick call of "Lethe! Come say hello." The cat responds with an easy bound and nudges curiously at Ellen's bare toes with the tip of her nose. "She's a Savannah cat. There's a breeder in Buffalo."
"Lethe," Ellen echoes, with the barest twitch of an almost smile. She bends down, presenting the curl of her fingers for the cat's inspection as well as her toes, a veritable buffet of digits to choose from. "An interesting name. Oblivion." She turns her hand, opening it and revealing it to be empty, as she glances up at Elizabeth, pale eyes sharply interested. "I knew another once, remarkably like her."
"I like it," Elizabeth allows cheerfully. Lethe lifts her head to sniff at Ellen's open palm before ducking it to demand a scratch of her ears. "Has kind of a ring, don't you think?" Her head tips slightly as she adjusts her stance for the twining cat-tail that twists next to her calves. "Oh? They're not all that common, really, but increasingly popular I think."
"Do you have an interest in the classics?" Ellen asks, as though of idle curiosity, but her eyes stay sharp on the other woman's face, "or is it only the sounds, rather than the river?" Her gaze abstracts slightly as she scratches at the animal's ears, racing idly through the animal's systems and making sure they are all present and correct.
Lethe is quite healthy and, apparently, happy, as a rumbling purr takes hold and she butts an ever-demanding head against Ellen's palm. "I always liked mythology," Elizabeth allows, watching her cat with an amused smile. "But mostly it's fairly pretty, don't you think?"
"Fairly." Ellen scratches and strokes with the absent ease of a long-time cat owner, her gaze resuming its prior focus -- if less than its prior intensity -- as she withdraws her consciousness to a more limited level of explanation. "I prefer the waters of Mnemosyne myself. Too many syllables to train an animal with, of course."
"Bit of a mouthful," Elizabeth agrees. "Might work for some cats. Savannahs, though, they're pretty trainable. Friendly, too." Her smile glows warmly amused at that observation.
"Quite trainable," Ellen says, studying the cat. "The one I knew before answered to her name, even when she was quite young. I used to keep Siamese, and it took much longer to get them to acknowledge anything." Her mouth twitches at only one corner as her gaze drops. "Amusingly enough, that Savannah was also named for a mythic river."
"I stole the idea from one I saw online," Elizabeth admits with a brief laugh. "Liked it better than naming her 'Hermione' -- /Lethe/!" The sharp bark of a name comes as the animal tugs away and strains at her leash, interest in Ellen lost in favor of the sudden flutter of grass in the breeze.
"Styx," Ellen calls lightly after the playful cat, crossing her bare feet at the ankle and sitting up again on her rock. She presses palms into dead stone and watches Elizabeth with mild interest. "Hermione is too long."
The animal is already bounding back at Elizabeth's call, but her head raises at the second name before waggling back to her mistress. "What, really?" Elizabeth wonders, startled. "Huh. Well. Yeah, maybe. I could've gone with 'Ginny.' Or maybe gone Shakespearian. That's got a bit of elegence to it."
"Cats and dogs do best with one or two syllable names." Ellen tips her head slightly with the shadow of a smile, but again doesn't follow up on the Potter thread because she lives under a certain /kind/ of rock. "My Siamese were all poets. Keats, Frost, Wordsworth."
"Poets. Not bad," Elizabeth approves. "Browning. Or I could go philosophers, maybe."
"My favorite philosophers are mostly too long," Ellen regrets in a mild tone.
"And often French or German," Elizabeth sympathizes.
"There is that, too." Ellen's head inclines but slightly, and then she glances up at the sky. "France has always been full of philosophers. I can at least read German."
"Good skill to have," Elizabeth approves absently, gaze lifting to watch after the once-more wandering Lethe. "I'm brushing up on my French, but I'm not terribly competent."
"I had a little French, when I lived in Germany, but it is long gone now." Ellen wiggles her fingers, dismissing -- perhaps dismissing France and its language entirely.
"Mmm," Elizabeth replies, and as Lethe tugs on her leash again she offers Ellen an apologetic smile and moves to turn after her. "Enjoy the sun," she offers by way of parting.
Ellen's farewell is in German, and mildly archaic. "Godspeed."
Ellen meets a "stranger" in the park. She has a very familiar cat!