Welcome to Gaia! ::

Gouvernail, perhaps summoned by the erroneous idea that they were preparing to leave, was stepping to join them when Joy caught his eye as Rhysi was engaging in her diplomacy. She beamed a broad smile, making a guitar-strumming motion in as inviting a fashion as she could, for the pleasure of being able to savor the look of sudden hunted-animal horror on his face for the rest of her life.

Ahh.

He was gone - possibly having fled - by the time she turned with a dimpled smile still lingering to Rhysi's contributions, and she turned the expression towards her with a great deal of genuine enjoyment. Lots of things to cherish up for later consideration were taking place here.

"There indeed," she agreed, contributing a bag of cherries from her own subspace. Grocery store cake, cherries, and stale mints. Delightful.

She plunked the candle down into the frosting, lit it, and engaged in the very important Earth ceremony of singing Happy Birthday. The whole thing, with Rhysi's name in the middle properly, although she did not stop to interject "what's your name again?" this time, a deviation from her previous rendition of the lyrics in the aftermath of the Hollow.

"Now you make a wish, and you blow out the candle. And maybe the wish'll come true, if you're superstitious enough." She then, with great dignity, gave Rhysi a fork. One fork. She did not procure a fork for herself: apparently "let's have cake" could be a metaphor.

"I'll let the Commodore know you did a bang-up job. A great job," she hastily corrected.

She managed to conceal her initial jump at the shouting with polite applause.

She hated to admit it to herself, but there was something sort of touching in Rhysi's childish awkwardness. Something heart-tugging, really, about her sincere appreciation for something as basic as a cheap candle stuck in a cheap piece of grocery store cake, which seemed to speak to a sense of personal deprivation. It awakened an almost maternal sense in her that was, appropriately, shot with an equally-maternal sense of exhausted annoyance. She really would tell Lyndin that Rhysi was doing a bang-up job.

Maybe she had a weakness - she did not want to consider it - for the pity that was brought on her by other people's being denied good things. Even when they were the one denying themselves.

She was glad, however, that she wasn't eating that cake after Rhysi's somewhat explosive exhale.

"Dig in," she said drily. And then, glancing at one of the little pits left in the dirt by her trowel, she clarified: "To the cake. You know," she added casually, a wonderful epiphany striking her, "you should visit this one 7-11-" she named the neighborhood "-and ask to scope out their bathrooms too. They're really incredible."

A pause, as she considered the horrible harvest she would never see from this diligent sowing. She should probably try to do something more useful than torment Rhysi's future contacts vicariously. "And tell me about Lyndin," she said, "before I take us back home."