Angus was excited. It didn't take much, admittedly. He tended to think the smallest occasion was worth celebrating. This, he felt, was above average on the scale of awesome. He was about to, hopefully, help Dawin start his career as a writer. He wondered if the other boy had found a publisher yet.

He wandered slowly through the streets of Vienda, an umbrella in one hand and the other resting in his jacket pocket. He'd dressed nicely today, nice enough to not upset anybody's mother. He knew he was seeing Athrym's parents later and he wasn't sure he wanted to change, so he'd worn something suitable for a first meeting.

He slowed as he got closer to Dawin's house number, wondering at how little things seemed quite different after several months in Brunnhold. He'd forgotten that the bricks seemed a bit smaller in Vienda and a slightly darker colour too. He didn't know why.

He eventually found Dawin's place, opened the front gate and knocked on the door. He stepped back a little, leaning back from under his umbrella, looking at the upper storey windows. He wondered if Dawin was looking out at the rain and if he'd see him.

This was a rather nice area; upscale, relatively clean, organized and even streets, small gardens lining short, cobbled paths to the front doors and unadorned, longer, winding dirt trails around to the side, to the human entrances.

The one Angus stood in front of matched its peers in style, in make, in the wrought-iron balcony off of the second story, in its fancy cherry wood door -- except that someone, at some point, had split one unit into two, with a wall down the center. It meant that 17b's only door was the human entrance on one side, and 17a [owned by Ava Nivou] had no human entrance at all.

It also meant it was about half the size of the buildings surrounding it. It meant that, when the place had been purchased, Dawin's mother must have sacrificed size for location, and it probably told quite a bit about her.

Angus could lean back, and if he squinted hard enough through the rain, he'd see a light on in one of the top windows. No sign of Dawin, but there were definitely airships tacked to the ceiling of the room. While he was staring up and getting damp, the door opened in front of him and he was greeted by a somewhat dopey teenaged mug; dressed down, for once, except all that really meant was that he wasn't wearing green. He blinked at Angus a couple times and then flashed a sudden smile. "Oh! You're here!"

Angus grinned, eyes scrunching up and his teeth showing brightly in the dreary light.

"But of course." Angus said, bowing a little in greeting. "It's good to see you, Dawin, may I come in?"

Angus stepped closer to the door, closing his umbrella once he was under the awning. Clearly a little damp from the rain but protected by his coat, which was made of thick, dark wool and fashionably cut. He'd forked out for it but it had been worth it, it was hard to find good clothes for surviving the rainy season.

"How have you been? How goes the search for a publisher?" Angus clasped a hand companionably on Dawin's shoulder.

Angus's bow seemed to snap Dawin back to attention, back into focus, a reminder of societal norms. He did a quick bow of his own, gawky as always, and then halfway hopped back a couple steps so that Angus could ease inside and out of the rain. He reached out, like a good host, to take the umbrella from his fingers and tuck it into a fish-shaped umbrella stand by the door.

"Oh. Well. I haven't...I haven't actually spoken to any publishers," The entrance hall was probably a warning of what was to come. Small, but packed-full, with a startling number of bright colors and strange things, "But, I was looking for this one place yesterday, and I met this fellow who makes cartoons, and he gave me a name and an address."

...and one mildly embarrassing drawing. He didn't mention that bit.

"Hey, that's great Dawin!" Angus replied. "Good for you!"

Angus took his coat off and shook it a little outside. He hung it up near his umbrella, on a coat hook.

"Good to hear you've been keeping busy, you must have got here only yesterday or so, right?" Angus asked, "maybe would could go look at this publisher sometime. No time like the present, as they say."

Angus waited for Dawin to show him where to go. He didn't look overly fussed, just patient.

"Yes, ah." Dawin didn't move just yet; he hesitated, hands sliding down into his pockets and just watching Angus for the moment, trying to reach some sort of decision. Chewing on words, and how to make them come out...funny, teasing, joking, instead of helpless or desperate.

"Well -- " He tried it by being bright, cheerful, with his eyebrows raised and his shoulders deliberately slumped, casual. It halfway worked. Maybe. "Should we, ah. Should we hunt down my mother and be polite, or retreat immediately to the sanctuary of my room?"

A smile. It trembled, a little, but served.

Something little and bright switched on in Angus' head. His smile became gentler and he found himself subconsciously taking on Dawin's posture. He often did that, when he wanted someone to feel at ease. He put his arm around Dawin's shoulder and gave him a little squeeze, free hand in his jacket pocket.

"What do you want to do?" Angus asked, his voice level and supportive. "We can just hang about if you'd prefer. Hey, maybe I can even take you out to lunch somewhere, instead, if you want to get out of the house for a while."

"W-well..." Well, lunch sounded fantastic. Dawin knew startlingly little of the city, considering that he'd been coming here on breaks for a good six years. He hadn't even been able to follow simple direction to the printing house.

"Well, why don't you come up first, and I can get a jacket and. Ah. My bag..." He eased back one quiet step, head jerked toward the staircase with its wrought iron railing, scrollwork, overblown. "And you can check it out and all that, and then we can figure it out?"

"Sounds good!" Angus replied, following Dawin up the stairs and towards his room. "Is your mum home? I should probably introduce myself as we're leaving. Oh, I almost forgot, I have your books for you! Have you written anything more?"

Angus sounded quite keen on this. Dawin's writing wasn't as polished as other authors, his pacing wasn't as practiced and his characterisation was often embellished but it was the sort of book Angus liked. The characters weren't as pretentious as Angus was used to, even the protagonist. They had their thing and they gleefully stuck to it. Dawin seemed to be aware of what he was creating and that was simply something exciting, something escapist. It was accessible, to people like Angus that didn't want to feel like they were being lectured to when they read a book.

Dawin had his first fan and he couldn't have asked for a more excitable one.

"I really liked the parts were things blew up, you write delightful explosions." Angus said, smile becoming slightly dreamy. Angus loved a good explosion.

Dawin was suitably flattered -- buttered up, in fact. He blinked down at Angus as he led they way up the stairs, his expression surprised and embarrassed and, as usual, a little red around the edges. His hand just skated, lightly, over the top of the banister. He was tactile, too, just in a different way.

"W-well, I wrote a bit more." An outline of his spoiled, poisoned princess story, and he was very much looking forward to fleshing it out. "But I was...um. I was mostly re-reading. I think I need to rewrite a lot of it, before it's ready for anything."

He watched Angus as he walked, rolling his shoulders in a shrug. "You know, same story, better writing, since some of those are pretty old."

Angus followed Dawin avidly, eyes tracing the line of his shoulders as they shifted. He liked it when Dawin calmed down, the way he moved became much more fluid. It was the sort of thing that Angus honed in on, especially since he was part of a culture that valued control of action and behaviour. Dawin wasn't like that, it was as though he thought he had to be that way and if Angus distracted him a little, he'd forget and go back to his natural movement.

"That sounds like a good idea." Angus said, a little distractedly. "Even your last few books, you can see a difference. I like it."

They were at the door to Dawin's room, Angus wondered what was in it.

"Y-yes, well, I was ten or eleven for the first few." He ducked his head some and shouldered the door open; it took a little wriggling, not because the door was broken but because the bookshelf on the other side halfway blocked the path. His room was small, potentially servant quarters once upon a time, and mostly undecorated. Dawin only lived here during the school year, after all, and it housed only his most important possessions.

The bookshelf, on one wall, couldn't have been only his books. There was the usual assortment of books on airships, maps, one on scooners, but there were also quite a few books on tea and cooking and sweets that must have been his mother's, either on loan or for storage. His desk had journals on it, his bed took up most of the room and was unmade and he hopped in first to tug all the blankets tight so that Angus could sit.

"If I rewrite it, I can take the stories but...but...clean them up, some." He slipped out of the way to fish out a jacket, ducking thoughtlessly under a dangling aeroship. "And add things."

"Uh huh." Angus said, glancing at the titles on Dawin's shelves, learning the boys interests better with each passing moment.



Angus sat down on Dawin's bed and watched him move about.

"I can't believe you started at ten, that's dedication." Angus said, admiringly. "What would you change?"

Angus reclined back, until he was on his elbows, facing the ceiling. He looked at the models on the walls and the other varied paraphenalia above his previous lines of sight. It was clear to him that Dawin lived a more internal life than Angus did and he found that intriguing.

"Your room is so..." Angus almost said 'small' then realised how rude that was.

"It's a little messy, sorry." He blinked, shooting a look back toward Angus as he dragged the coat on, and managed a real smile for once -- more solid, less fragile. Too bad the boy was staring at the ceiling, instead of at Dawin.

"I cleaned up some, but it's sort of...cramped." He leaned out to grab his bag from under the desk and settle it on top, nabbing the first and last issues of David and sliding them in, with the drawing and Campion's note tucked in between. With that done, he turned around again and raised his eyebrows.

"They're...they're less...regular, in the beginning. The characters. They change a lot. They're more stable, now."

"Ducky!" A buttery, bouyant voice pierced the brick walls. It wasn't an unpleasantly shrill voice, but it was loud enough that it could be heard in whichever part of the house you happened to be in. Ava made extensive use of this gift-- in her house, there were no excuses for tardiness because they hadn't heard her calling.

"Ducky are you in?" She called again, and turned back towards the woman who was following her, "Put those over there, Miriam. And did you tell Peter about the leak we've been having in the guest bathroom?"

A dumpy woman in her forties with dark brown hair that looked as if it had recently been dyed followed Ava into the house and put down the three large bags she had been carrying. They were filled to the rim with colourful things that Ava had deemed worthy to put in the tea shop. At least until she tired of them and stored them back in the house again.

"Yes ma'am. He's tending the garden right now but he'll be in soon to take a look at it."

"Good. I need these floors mopped again, they're filthy. And use the lemon scented soap this time, please, Miriam dear!" Ava told her as she began to climb the stairs. She made a mental note to tell Peter that the fifth stair was creaking and knocked on Dawin's door, determined to see her son. She had just received news that Ms. Templeton's daughter was in town and had decided to make it her mission that the two young people should meet.

"Dawin? Are you busy dear?" She asked as she knocked on the door.

Dawin's expression blurred around the edges at the call, going blank -- the empty, emotionless mask of someone who was surveying the room and determining that, really, there was no escape. Then it dissolved from emptiness to a jittery sort of panic. He cleared his throat, ignoring the knock for just a moment and dropping his voice so they wouldn't be heard on the other side. "...want to say 'hello' and then escape?"

Angus bit his lip and mouthed "Ducky?" at Dawin, lips curling and his right eyebrow rising slightly.



Angus recognised the sound of desperation when he heard it, "sure, I'll say I made a reservation, and you simply cannot break a reservation."

Angus' voice became slightly higher towards the end of the sentence, as though he were mocking some old truism that had been thrown at him years before. Angus sat up, rising to his feet and standing, avoiding hitting a model with his head.

"Let us go and meet your delightful mother." Angus said, opening Dawin's bedroom door and walking out into the hall, pausing to wait for Dawin.

Attention drawn to the stupid little nickname only made more color bloom on his cheeks, sudden and helpless. He ducked his head and settled the bag more securely across his body -- they could escape, and then he'd show Angus what he'd brought. "We could just go out the windo--"

But it was too late. No avail. Angus had probably been loud enough to give them away to Ava waiting in the hall, anyway, and then he was opening the door and Dawin had little choice but to follow him out into the hall.

He wondered, absently, if the 'delightful' was joking, or sarcastic, but shrugged off the idea. That just didn't seem like something Angus would do.

Ava almost knocked on Angus's chest when he opened the door. Instead she gasped and backed up a few steps, tittering with surprise.

"Oh!" And then, because she felt she hadn't said it right the first time, "Oh! Ducky! You didn't tell me you had a little friend over!" She tried to remember if this had ever happened before and came to the conclusion that it had most definitely not. Ava couldn't have been prouder. My little boy is finally breaking out of his shell!

"Well!" She stared at Dawin expectantly, "Introduce me, go on!" If the woman had had time to primp she would have. As it was she stood with her hands on her hips, bright blue eyes on Angus's face, and an eager smile. It was an expression Dawin had seen on his mother only when she was in the presence of some delightful new candy. Her impatience was obvious-- Ava wanted to find out everything she could about this young man before Dawin took him into the depths of his room again.

Angus knew it wasn't his place to introduce himself, as he was Dawin's guest but he didn't want to seem impolite by waiting. He bowed deeply at the waist, his left hand crossing over his chest.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Winchcombe." He said, smiling encouragingly at Dawin.

Dawin smiled, crooked and shaky, at both of them. Then he eased into Good Host mode, bowing to each and introducing in a careful, well-trained sort of way.

"Mother, this is Angus Worthing." -- miraculous that Dawin had remembered his last name, and it probably meant that some effort had gone into preserving the memory -- "A friend from school. Eighth year."

And then attention slid onto Angus and his smile slipped a little, some of the strain leaving his expression with it. "Angus, this is my mother." And if she preferred to go by 'Nivou' as opposed to 'Winchcombe', he was not going to be the one to make that correction. He cleared his throat, straightening. "We were headed to lunch."

Ava couldn't have been prouder. Once introductions were done she swept over to where Angus was standing and planted a kiss on each cheek. "I've never met any of Dawin's friends before! He's quite shy, you know. My name is Ava." She told him exuberantly, then kissed Dawin on each cheek as well. "Always up in his room, reading his books and writing Hulali knows what! And I've told him to bring more people over but he's very stubborn, my Dawin is. Aren't you, ducky?"

She ruffled his hair affectionately (no small feat, as Dawin was quite a bit taller than she was) and then her smile broadened when she heard they were going out. Her Dawin was going out!!! To lunch!!!

"Oh you are!!! I know this fantastic little place-- unless you already had somewhere planned?" She paused for half a second, "Oh you and Dawin you really must stop by the tea house after you're finished! I was headed that way myself-- Mrs. Templeton's daughter is back from Brunhold and I fancied you could meet her--"

She stopped herself with another titter, "But of course you'll be busy having fun with your new friend! Angus, right? Did you meet in school?"

A kiss on both cheeks, how modern! Angus was going to seize on the opportunity to do so himself, as soon as possible. He was sure Dawin was mortified.

"He's a wonderful writer, Ava." Angus said, taking care to use her first name since she had given it. "Very talented, I'm lucky to have met him."

Angus ducked his head again, a small motion designed to idicate apology.

"I'm afraid we have a reservation, I made one this morning and you know how places in Vienda can be. If we miss it, I'll never be able to get a table there again!" Angus smiled his mother's smile, the vaguely bashful one. "I am sure we can make it to the teahouse, if that wouldn't be an imposition on your time. I did drop in rather unannounced, Dawin was kind to let me in."

Angus grinned at Dawin, his mother was adorable!

Mortified indeed. How on earth could Angus grin through the torment? Dawin cleared his throat but was only too glad to let Angus answer the question and make the excuses; he did it with such perfect grace, smoothed it over without fumbling. Dawin was perfectly aware that if he had tried to answer, his reply would have been spotted with 'ah' and 'uh' and stammered consonants...

He was left smoothing the back of his fingers quickly over very hot cheeks, drawing in careful breaths, and counting the seconds until this was over. So far, it had not been too terrible, his mother's attempts to set him up not withstanding.

"...we can run by after, ma." His voice came out a little small. He had to clear his throat to strengthen it. "I mean, we have some plans, but...but, yes, we will come."

And Angus could help stave off the girl.

Ava positively glowed when Angus complimented her son's writing. She hadn't technically read any herself-- that is, she'd skimmed it...but sitting quietly in one place for too long gave her a headache and her mind always drifted off mid sentence. Still, she had tried to give proper compliments when she'd pretended to finish, although it was quite obvious to both mother and son that she hadn't truly understood the half of it.

She hoped Dawin appreciated her efforts, anyway.

"A reservation! How modern! The trick with these restaurants is knowing people who own them. I can get into quite a few of them just by mentioning my name. In fact, if you'd like, just tell the waitresses that Ava Nivou sent you and you'll be let right in!" Although the woman wasn't aware, the reason she was generally let into restaurants at the mention of her name was because word had gotten around that she spent her money liberally on food and tipped well. All the staff liked to serve Ava, who, if left especially happy by the food, would always leave more than a few extra tallies to her servers.

When Dawin consented to come to the tea house, Ava's day was officially complete. First, he'd brought home this charming young man, then she'd found out they were going out to lunch, and now he was actually going to stop by the tea house. Dawin usually found some excuse or other to avoid going, and Ava had of course, never forced the issue. She just wanted her son to be happy, after all. All the same, she was always a little disappointed when he rejected her offers.

"I'll be sure to save some cakes for both of you!" Angus could see she was absolutely thrilled. "Oh-- It's absolutely dreadful out, though! Almost makes me wish I was back in Plugit--" Ava stopped to laugh at her own joke very loudly, and then walked down a small hallway and pulled open a closet. Coats in different colors all tumbled out and the corpulent woman fished one out of the pile that looked warm, already thinking about how she would have to tell Miriam to reorganize the closet. "Here, wear this."

It was one of Dawin's old coats. Very old. The sleeves were too short and the hem had already been brought down a few times. It was old fashioned and not at all trimmed as neatly as the clothes Angus was wearing. Ava looked at it with vague disappointment.