Who: Tristan Dunstan & Lyra Moon What: This time it's definitely a date. Right? Where: Dunstan family home, outside Exeter When: Tonight Warnings/Rating: TBA
It had been a little foolish to invite someone over, Tristan had realized. Even if the bulk of cooking - of everything? - was meant to take place outside, that was no great consolation. The land seemed to him to be as unused, as open and empty as the house itself. Inside, at least, there were the remnants of the decor that his parents had left behind, imprinting the shadow of what had once been a warm and bustling home. Outside ... the garden was nice enough, a bit overgrown but rather pleasant, all overblown flowers and full hedges and great creeping tree roots. But past that, there was nothing but brown, empty fields, bare for years and years, reaching towards borders of spindly trees that he thought only made everything look a bit more lonely and desolate. ... Perhaps it would be dark enough when she arrived that it wouldn't matter.
He would make the best of it, though. He couldn't really dread seeing her again. Every time he started to worry, he recalled the warmth that had grown into him sitting on her couch in her charming, cluttered living room, and he found himself smiling, his shoulders slipping out of their tension. It was hard to worry about a disordered house in the face of that.
He was in the kitchen, the next room away from the fireplace, when the appointed time came, struggling with a bottle of wine. The cork was determined to thwart him, but he'd have it out. He was going to have a couple glasses of wine ready by the time she got here. That ought to be enough to make the place at least tolerably warm.