Re: Train tracks: Oliver & Gwen
It was indicative of her disproportionate youth, the way she raised her hand to her face immediately after he shook her fingers. She kept her fingers a few centimeters away, but she examined the chalk dust there like it was something particularly significant. As if daffodil and lavender dust was the secret to some longstanding and unproven theorem. She rubbed her fingertips together, cornflower eyes wide with amazement at the previously unknown feel of chalk between fingertips. She'd picked up a little of the dust when she'd examined the tracks moments earlier, but not to this extent, and the sensation was completely different.
"But you're putting forth effort for something that's totally ephemeral. Isn't it better to create artwork using oil paints, in an environment that isn't subject to snow and wind and rain? Isn't the point of creating something beautiful for it to last and be witnessed by others?" She was acknowledging that the flowers were, indeed, beautiful, because they totally were. She just thought it was a shame that they wouldn't last the week. "Barring that, maybe you should try creating a train-track-garden during a season when it doesn't snow a lot."
And then, curiously. "Do you have a given name?" In Gwen's life and experience, it wasn't necessarily the case. There had been test subjects in New York that were differentiated by numeric identifiers, and that didn't have names at all.