Luke's Diner; Tuesday [09/09].

[chef_chocobro]

Ignis was feeling rather contemplating that Tuesday, leaning back on the counter over his mug off coffee while waiting for customers. Rather hard not to be, really, sandwiched as he was right then between reflections of the past and visions of the future. Even without having been fourteen again last week to reflect over how much he'd changed over the past twenty years, there would also be Three Minute Dates ahead this weekend reminding him of how much more he'd changed over even just the past two. And then beyond that, even more changes in the two years to come, and the years after that, and after that...

So, yes. An awful lot to contemplate over coffee on that quiet Tuesday morning in the diner. At least once contemplating what to put on the board for today's recipehs had been taken care of, anyway.

Today's Specials
Breaded Pork Cutlet with Tomato
Buffalo Cauliflower Sandwich
Strawberry Crisp

Luke's is open!

Comments

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana traipsed into Luke's, looking for the most delicious option on the menu.

Ah, there he was, looking very thoughtful behind the counter.

Could she sneak up him, quiet as she was? Not hardly, especially not with her perfume acting as a banner. Was that going to stop her from trying to?

Absolutely not.

She was going to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible, intending to lean in and kiss him before he noticed her (ha!)

[chef_chocobro]

And it would seem that, perhaps, just maybe, Ignis was so lost and wrapped up in his contemplation that she might actually succeed.

But, of course, surely she was clever enough and knew him well enough to also know better than that.

Still, it wasn't until she was right there and leaning in that he allowed a small smile and turned his head just in time to meet her kiss with one of his own.

"'Iana," he said, setting his mug aside and turning fully so that his hand could take up her in its place, "Darling. Now when did you get here?"

[deathsmajesty]

Liliana laughed, kissing him again. "Oh, ages ago," she lied. Outrageously. As if he hadn't clocked her arrival down to the moment. "Ten minutes at least! I tried calling your name several times, but you were terribly deep in thought."

She laughed again, giving him another deep kiss. "What has you so contemplative, my darling?"

That question, though still sounding amused, was genuine, even if everything else she'd said was utter nonsense.

[chef_chocobro]

It was no big secret thar Liliana's laugh was unquestionably Ignis's favorite spund, and to get it twice in succession, and with a kiss to follow each time had him feeling particularly pleased with such an elaborate ruse, indeed.

He leaned into her then, contemplative a little bit more on how best to answer that question. "I suppose," he finally said, "you could just say I've been ruminating on time, and its passage, and its ineffable ability to twist and distort itself to its own ehims no matter how much we may try to constrict it to our own perception of it. On the long, dreadful drag of a decade or the fleeting brevity of just a couple of years. On one could swear ten minutes at least," and now, another smile tugged at the corner of his lips, "was truly but a few mere moments."

The smile softened, gently falling back into that contemplative expression he'd had when she'd come in, reflected in the way his fingers drifted slightly over her arm.

"How somehow, sometimes, even an eternity seems like it still couldn't possibly be enough.

"You know," he said, pulling back again after following that last part with his own lingering deep kiss, "idle mindless brain fodder."

[deathsmajesty]

"I adore your brain, and hearing about its most idle tangents," she told him. She hoisted herself up onto the counter, stealing a sip of his coffee (And then paying for it with a kiss) and hummed a bit. "There is a plane called Edraine which is something out of what Earth would call fairy tales," she said, also sounding thoughtful. "I heard of it once from another Planeswalker, though I've never been. She said that people there might get kidnapped by faeries, only to return decades later, thinking only a handful of hours had passed; or return in a span of minutes, but aged and withered as if they'd been gone a century or more. She told me that inhabitants of that plane referred to grief as 'time the heart spends among the faeries,' because, at least for mortals, there's nothing that can match grief for leaving one unmoored in time..." She traced cool fingers over his cheek. "Grief does so for immortals as well, though we are often unmoored in time. It takes a strong will or a sufficient anchor to keep oneself cognizant of time on a mortal scale.

[chef_chocobro]

And to think, he had almost just made some remark on planning and plotting for his Three Minute Dates outfit...

Of course Ignis leaned into the cool brush of Liliana's fingers, as well...all the while stealing his coffee mug back, thank you.

"Only a few months," he noted, "had passed here while we were back on Eos, and we were hardly the first and last to deal with such a difference in the passage of time. Prompto even joked about making a club for it, at one point. Perhaps that's something Fandom and this faerie realm have in common...

"I don't think, though," he added, "it's only grief that can leave a person feelinh unmoored. But perhaps the difference is in how. The difference between sinking and floating, between drowning and buoyancy."

[deathsmajesty]

"Not the only," Liliana agreed, "but I do think its unmooring is unlike any other. Perhaps, as you say, because it's like drowning. I remember, after Rabiah...well, I don't remember, actually. Snapshots and snippets. Flashes, like one Prompto's photos. Years passed, I think, before I properly remember again..."

Mmm, she should turn the conversation to something lighter, more fun than a long ago tragedy. But she was also idly curious to see how Ignis would respond. This was the one place their effortless dance didn't extend to, neither of them entirely sure where the other would step.

[chef_chocobro]

"Mmm."

Ignis did have a habit, didn't he, of infusing just that small sound with so much, given a multitude of situations. And this time, it was deep and weighty and ponderous, a solid match for his mood, and it was almost something used in place of words, a substitute for things left unsaid. Until he reminded himself that it would have been just as easy for Liliana to have done the same, said something else or dance away from it, but the fact that she had offered up this tune...he would follow her lead.

"Do you feel that's a blessing?" he asked. "To not remember so much? Or do you rather wish you could? Sometimes I wish I didn't remember as much as I do, and other times...I think it's important that I do."

[deathsmajesty]

"Oh very much a blessing," she said. "I remember clearly everything that happened, it's the aftermath that is hazy. When it was just me and grief and guilt, my fury spent, leaving me hollow. I drifted, more than anything else. I did nothing useful, I accomplished nothing of import. Any places I went and don't remember are probably the better for it, so I can rediscover them in happier times, perhaps. Anyone I met, well, they're nothing but dust now, I'm sure."

Either at her hands, or time's and who was to say which?

"There are some things that I remember that make me wonder that happened before them, but more idle curiosity than actually caring. I was in helpless, hopeless, useless pain and who wants to remember that?"

[chef_chocobro]

"Who, indeed," Ignis echoed back to her, that deep rumble of his taking in the dryness of a desert, though perhaps one just before the long-awaited rainy season, the way that soft, barely-there smile lingered its way back to his face. The coffee mug was abandoned once more, to better seek out her hands with his own, and a reassuring squeeze, for both of them.

"Another thing," he mused, "time has to offer. To blur the edges, to dull the lingering pain."

The musing then made way for quotes: "And if I could, I'd like the grief from your lips, 'Iana, and drink every ache you hide."

[deathsmajesty]

"You would find yourself drinking deeply from quite a font indeed," Liliana said, "and I'm sure I can find you far more enticing things to lick."

She leaned into him, pressing a kiss to his brow, to a cheek, and then murmuring in his ear, "She wasn't sure what scared her more, the fact that he wanted to explore her depths and understand her...or that she was willing to let him.