Luke's- Sunday

[complexfemale]

There was just... so much singing and dancing in Luke's today. There'd been a whole musical number about fish.

Which was why unless someone was coming in to eat, Maeve would be standing outside the restaurant for as long as possible, chain smoking.

She should get hazard pay today.


[Open!]

Comments

[chef_chocobro]

Just when Ignis was starting to feel that he'd exhausted all of the eligible maidens in this particular kingdom to no particular success, it would seem that he kept managing to discover more!

Although the likelihood of any of them seemed to vary on a dramatically wide scale, and he had his doubts, but he was dedicated to his cause! It was...literally the only thing about his character!

So, of course, he approached the young woman outside of the diner with a deep bow and a perfectly balanced pillow on a shoe.

"Pardon me, miss," he said, "if I might have a moment of your time?"

[complexfemale]

"Why?" Maeve asked, eyeing the show pillow.

[chef_chocobro]

"I need to find the maiden whose foot will fit this shoe," Ignis explained, as if it hadn't gotten old explaining this to literally every potential elligible female he happened across, "on behalf of His Royal Highness, Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum, of the Kingdom of Lucis, who wishes to make her his bride and future queen."

[complexfemale]

Maeve took a long drag off her cigarette before answering that with a, "You're kidding me, right?"

[chef_chocobro]

"Not in the slightest!" said Ignis, with the smallest of huffs of indignation that such a thing would even be possible, let alone that anyone would suggest it. "I am here to fit shoes, not pull legs, my lady. And I have tried to fit the shoe to so many of the maidens of this kingdom so far, but I have yet to find...the One. Would you oblige me a moment, and try the shoe for yourself? I am determined to let no foot go untested."

[complexfemale]

"This sounds like a good way to get a fungus," Maeve told him.

[chef_chocobro]

"I assure you," said Ignis, "it's all quite sanitary."

What sort of place did she think this even was, that there would be something a terrible as a fungus?

"The busboy," he offered, nodding toward the diner behind her, "tried it yesterday, and, as I'm sure you can see, he's still quite fine today."

Unless you counted all the singing.

[complexfemale]

"That's not as encouraging as you think it is. I'll pass," Maeve decided.

[chef_chocobro]

Ignis...truly did not know how to process this sort of blatant refusal.

"But..." he faltered slightly, "why, if you try and it fits, then...you will become a queen!"

Wasn't that a truly desirable aspiration for any young maiden?

[complexfemale]

"In no time, in no place, am I ever a queen," Maeve told him. "I'd just trash the place up, anyway."

[chef_chocobro]

"Trash...up the place?" The concept seemed entirely foreign to Ignis, who just blinked at Maeve a bit helplessly some more.

"Surely," he said, a bit of desperation slipping into his voice, "it wouldn't hurt to at least try. Perhaps you'll surprise yourself! Perhaps the key to being a good queen is not wanting to be a queen in the first place!"

That made some kind of moral sense, didn't it? Somewhere? Somehow?

Look, he had literally one job, okay?

[complexfemale]

"I'm not trying on your shoe, okay?" Maeve said. "There are plenty of other people around who it probably fits."

[chef_chocobro]

"None so far, actually," said Ignis, trying his best not to sound to disappointed or disheartened. "And the search has been...quite exhaustive thus far."

But he supposed if someone didn't actually want to try on the shoe, then that was a pretty good indication that it probably wouldn't fit, anyway. And if it did...would he truly want it to?

Yes. Yes he would. Finding the foot that fit was the only thing he cared about, even if the person that foot was attached to was a little...unsatisfactory. It wasn't like he'd be the one marrying her, after all.

[complexfemale]

"Why don't you just put out a call for all the size sevens or whatever to come to you?"

Please. These shoes were probably a dainty size five, lbr.

[chef_chocobro]

And yet there were quite a few maidens whose feet were practically swimming in them.

And that would be far too easy, Maeve. Come now!

"They're actually quite custom," and magically!, "made," Ignis opined. "I'm not quite sure what size they actually are."

[complexfemale]

"Sounds like a problem," she said, making a face.

[chef_chocobro]

"Yes," Ignis admitted with a deep frown. "I suppose it is..."

And with that, he just stood there sort of awkwardly for a moment, like a man who didn't quite know what to do with himself, when what he was supposed to do with himself clearly just wasn't happening.

"And I suppose," he then ventured cautiously, "if you're quite sure you're not interested in at least trying the shoe..."

Could he really be blamed for giving it at least one more attempt?

[complexfemale]

"Quite sure," she said, immediately, nodding.