Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ah, she was going back to calling him ‘Lord Remiel’ again. Although he had only known her for a day, Rem was starting to catch drifts about her speech patterns. When she called him that, she was either being extremely formal or she was just upset or off-balance. Not that this was any surprise. Being attacked by the man you had just brought breakfast for was something that could put damn near anyone ‘off-balance’, to say the least. The real surprise was the oddly affectionate gesture from Laura when she brushed his hair out of his eyes just a little. And confusing as well…

Once she was gone, he momentarily reached for the bottle on his nightstand before catching himself. No. None of that right now. He had to stay awake and do some work. He ate the breakfast a tad listlessly, barely tasting it at all as he tried to think of a good way to really apologize to Laura. Just saying ‘sorry’ didn’t really cut it, not for something like this. First he had lost Leolin and now this?

She would probably leave now, or at least go back to her own house. Who would want to stay in the same house as someone who could, at any moment, decide that they were a danger and had to be killed? He pulled on some clean clothes and finished his breakfast before leaving the room, carrying out the empty dishes.

Say… wasn’t there that little shindig coming up? A little get-together for the nobility of the city? Maybe Laura would like to attend…

Ah, good. She was back to calling him ‘Rem’ again. That helped the lord calm down a little. The ribbon around her throat worried him a little, but he knew the wound wasn’t that serious; he had, luckily, regained control of himself before inflicting any serious damage on Laura. At least physical damage. There was no telling about the emotional or mental damage.

“No, no! You’re still free to stay here as long as you like,” he said quickly. “In your room or in the stable. Wherever you feel the most comfortable. The breakfast was very good, by the way.” He lifted up the tray of dirty dishes, as if showing them would demonstrate just how much he had enjoyed the breakfast. In truth, he had barely noticed the taste at all, but assumed that it had been good. If it had been bad, then he surely would have noticed.

“There’s a little… gathering coming up in about a week. It’s for the nobility, but I would like you to be there, Laura.” Alright, so maybe he had more than one reason for wanting her to be there. He felt that he needed at least one familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings. "It would mean a lot to me," he added.

Well, that was part of the reason why he didn’t want her in his room. There were lots of little reasons, the main one being that he liked his privacy and didn’t care for the idea of someone else going in and out of his room with impunity. It just bothered him. As a noble in Xuan City, his life was already laid out for everyone to see. He just wanted to preserve some small part of his privacy.

Like a lost puppy, he followed her to the kitchen. Honestly, she thought he was worried about blood on his shirt?! Pfft… what kind of nobles had she met? The sort that referred to ‘poor people’ as ‘smelly things that were occasionally found under carriage wheels’? Despicable… they had no comprehension of the nobility’s obligation to the other classes.

“Then we’ll get you a new dress then.” He said eventually, grabbing the first plate and starting to wash it.

“I’m not inviting you as an apology,” he protested, wiping a hand across his nose to get rid of that soap bubble. Of course, the action proceeded to introduce several more soap bubbles. Wiping his face with a towel, he vanquished the last of the bubbles before continuing. “I’m inviting you because I want you to be there.”

And that was it, basically. Maybe there were some other underlying reasons---like hopes that other women would back off, perhaps, or maybe there were little wishes that some of the rumors would calm down if he brought along a woman---but the main purpose was simply because he wanted Laura to be there.

“I could get you a dress specially made, if you like,” He suggested, not realizing the… connotations of such a thing. He was too innocent-minded to realize that most men, when they said something like this, would envision a skimpy little dress that was more cloth than clothes.

Remiel looked at Laura, a little startled by her suggestion. A definite red tinge came into his cheeks at the very idea of Laura ‘dressing up’----or rather, Laura ‘dressing down’---for him. “I… I didn’t mean it like that, I just meant that a nice dress, custom-made, and it would be really nice-looking and you said that you didn’t have any dresses suitable for such an event and I just thought…” he trailed off, once he realized that he was just babbling. Clearly, he wasn’t exactly used to being flirted with. Or, if he was, this wasn’t the type of flirtation he had been expecting.

He let the subject drop as Laura agreed to the idea. Apparently, she had understood that he didn’t mean ‘Hey, I want to treat you like my own little sex doll’, but had meant ‘I want to do something nice for you, so have a pretty dress’. “Of course… I need to learn how to train gryphons anyway, so it’ll be interesting.”

Once Laura was gone, Rem collapsed in one of the chairs, one hand at his forehead. Were all women this confusing, or just the ones who made a habit of cross-dressing? Right… time to go make contact with the tailor then.

Just to complete Rem’s confusion, Laura just had to go peck his cheek lightly. Even after Laura had left, Rem continued staring at the doorway for some time, just trying to make some sense of all this. There had to be some sort of sense, right?

Right?
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A few of the neighbors had taken notice of this young lady riding a gryphon towards the mysterious Lord Remiel’s house. Quite a few of the neighbors, actually. True to human nature, they were curious about the mystifying young man who had moved in just a few weeks ago and seemed to seclude himself from everyone else. It was all very puzzling to the nobles. Even more puzzling, however, was the sudden appearance of the young woman on gryphon-back. A sister? A cousin? A lover? Rumors whirled around the pair, and poor Rem and Laura didn’t even know it yet.

Remiel looked up from his writing as the dogs suddenly started barking and running around as if they had suddenly gone mad. The two younger ones----Trillion and Aggie---sat at the front door eagerly, practically bouncing up and down while barking. The older, Flash, simply sat silently beside Rem’s desk, looking up at the man.

As soon as the front door was opened, Trillion and Aggie practically flew out the door to the front gate. Once again, they bounced around and barked at Laura and Leolin, as if the power of all their noise could somehow entice the gate to open. Muscling his way through the dogs, Remiel made his way to the front gate, completely unaware of the ink smudge on his nose.

“Shift over!” he shoved the dogs to one side, but the canines apparently didn’t notice as they continually got back in the way once more. Finally, he managed to open the gates for Leolin and Laura.

Rem made a slight face as he glanced at the inky handkerchief. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time either. Quills were just so… messy unless you were really careful, which he usually was. But, alas, he had been less careful this time. “If I had fallen asleep on my work, things would be even messier.”

He accepted the sword and examined it, imagining that this was basically what Laura had expected him to do anyway. It was lighter than he had expected and very nicely balanced. Far lighter than the weapon he was used to working with. “It’s very nice,” he said before offering the sword back to Laura.

“Come on… we better unload Leolin before he gets impatient or something.” Whatever happened to gryphons who were loaded for too long… making sure that the dogs were inside, Remiel shut the gates once more, not caring for the idea of someone being able to wander in and out of his property.