Gaspard & Ciara & Emlyn | Just After Noon | Town Circle
When Ciara put the pretty peach flower in Emmy's hair and said she was beautiful and asked about the dress, Emmy grinned even wider and did a happy little swirl that spun the skirt of her dress out around her. "Yes! Oh, well, it's technically not mine! It's one of Miss Reagan Shrike's original designs, and she let me wear it so people could see what she can do. Isn't it lovely? She's just so talented!"
And then Gaspard was correcting her, and she fixed her attention on him as polite as she could. She knew she had got the title wrong at first, that's why she'd corrected herself, but was Lord Belmont really not right either? Emmy looked confused, because... that was how he had signed his own name when he had written to her, but now she was even less sure what she was supposed to call him. She never got stuff like that right -- official stuff, formal stuff, detail stuff. Emmy was good with people, and with animals, but not with rules or formalities, especially not Clovennian ones that just didn't really make sense to her. Danu, Robor, Dea... those were titles and roles she understood. The idea of royalty made some sense to her, because it had a place in Aurellian history too, but that would have been titles like King and Queen and Prince and Princess. What was a Lord anyway? What did a Lord do? Just... own stuff? Boss people like her family around, and cut their wages for no reason at all?
Emmy just shrugged helplessly and let the topic of Belmont's title go, instead smiling warmly at Gaspard as he offered her his flower. She didn't know about all the rest of it, but she knew about this, and she could tell he didn't really want to give up that flower to Emmy. His reluctance was obvious, and Emlyn wasn't offended. In fact, she kind of swooned a little for him on his behalf, because she thought it probably had to do with it being a flower from Ciara and not just that it was a flower. She still didn't trust her Clovennian for the complicated parts, and tried to speak in slower, clearer Aurellian for him as she responded.
"Thank you! Tradition would be for me to accept that flower from you, but... you hardly have any, and I have lots, and I know that one was from Ciara. You should keep it," she reassured him, pressing those carnations back into his hands. Then, in clunky, grammatically terrible Clovennian, she added, "You want to keeping it. So you should."
Feeling a little embarrassed by her obviously terrible grasp of the language, Emmy just smiled through her blush and gestured to the lovely distraction of the celebrations they were not yet at the center of as she added, in her native Aurellian again, "Come! Ciara, we must show him the rest of the festival! Come with us, Gaspard!"