Welcome to Gaia! ::

Catherine frowned - or would have frowned, if she were wont to changing her expression; as it was she just sort of lowered her eyebrows a fraction of an inch. A nod yes or no was input, was it not? It was an affirmative or a negative. Very clear-cut and straightforward. The best sort of answer one could give, in essence, made even better by the fact that it required no words. Chatty and impatient were the foremost adjectives in Catherine's mind. And it was the bad kind of chatty at that, the kind where the speaker wanted for - expected, even - active engagement from the conversational partner. She had apparently skipped the theory that said conversational partner was more for listening than speaking and jumped straight to the conclusion that she was being ignored. This indicated a somewhat hot-tempered nature, perhaps a certain lack of forethought, maybe even some arrogance. She was an interesting person, that was certain.

That interesting nature, however, would fail to draw conversation from Catherine. As if missing the point entirely, she responded to the question with a nod, glancing up from the dull paperwork to turn her innately intense stare on her companion. She missed out on so much body language when her eyes were occupied with reading and writing. How inconvenient.

She met her stare head-on. Brazen, confident, unafraid. Eager to hold her ground. And, if her words were anything to go off of, she was a lover of drama and the dramatic. Catherine could empathize with that; she quite adored drama herself, but she preferred hers on the stage rather than in person.

She ceded, and just once - and only once - wasted just a few words on a frivolous cause, "You have quite the imagination." Her only physical response was to tilt her head slightly aside, her vermillion stare almost unblinking in its thoroughness. The words she spoke were quiet and as equally devoid of outward emotion as her features. Internally, though, she was vaguely amused. Really, who would be brought to tears by as little as speaking? Who's past was so dark that they would bind themselves to an oath of silence? Passingly Catherine began to consider such a character as they might act in a stage play. It could never hurt to conceive a few extra stock personalities, just in case.

Goodness, did she really need a reason to save her words? Catherine certainly enjoyed talkative people - it was much easier to get into their heads than if they only provided actions - but she always marveled at just how poorly the more talkative sorts understood the concept of reticence. Always wanting an explanation, always assuming the quiet ones were dark or antisocial or dumb.

"Words are precious," she explained concisely, returning her attention to the paperwork before her in short order. As much as she dearly wanted to continue observing, they were in fact on duty. The other grunt's next words, however, drew her focus back up, eliciting a very rare display of actual emotional, sparse and subtle as it was: a raised eyebrow. Certainly she wasn't being serious.

Hmm? It seemed that most people should at least be able to conceive the reason for speaking little, even if they didn't agree with it, when given the most basic cause. From this Catherine surmised a very stubborn nature, though that had been evidenced throughout the conversation thus far. It also indicated a certain degree of arrogance that the girl couldn't, or wouldn't, search for a reason outside of her own world of understanding.

There was a long pause, one of the usual silences that punctuated any dialogue with Catherine, before she replied, "The less one says, the more it means when they say it." It was a sort of 'boy who cried Mightyena' situation; the more needlessly talkative someone was, the less likely it seemed their moments of insight and sincerity would be taken to heart when they came about. An innate curiosity simply drove people to listen more seriously to those who spoke less. There was most certainly a preciousness in the spoken word - it was just lost easily to such things as idle conversation and rambling monologues.

Unexpectedly, the girl seemed satisfied with her response. Catherine was somewhat surprised by this; she had pegged her company as the stubborn type, perhaps the sort that would make it a personal mission to force Catherine to vocalize more often knowing her reluctance to do so. It wasn't necessarily an unpleasant surprise, though. She returned to the paperwork as well, though the other girl's voice once again pulled her attention to her.

As a name was given, Catherine stared intently at the giver, as if memorizing the exact dimensions of her every feature. Finally, she reciprocated, "Catherine."