Aurelie dropped the sample with a hiss then stuck the injured finger in her mouth. It tasted unpleasantly of iron and paint chips from the bench. One day, she really ought to get a thimble. The tips of her fingers were starting to rather too closely resemble a pincushion. Aurelie checked, and sighed with relief. She had moved fast enough to not get any of her blood on the fabric, after all. While it wouldn't be the end of the world if she had, the thing would have needed to be thrown away and she would have had to start over. The practice was going rather well, too, she thought. Better, at least, than some of her other attempts at roses. If she looked very closely, she thought she could tell that her tension was more even and her stitches too. Improvement and progress--Aurelie was pleased. Or at least she had been, right up until the moment she'd stabbed herself in the finger with her embroidery needle.
With a sigh, set her things to the side in as neat a little pile as she could manage. Concentration kept eluding her this morning. Even with the warm Roalis sun filtering so prettily through the leaves of the tree that arched over the bench itself, making everything dreamy and inviting. It was really a rather lovely day, in her own opinion. Ideal for spending a little free time with her stitching and her daydreams. The sort of day she normally found immensely soothing.
Aurelie's nerves were absolutely shot. The two facts were entirely unrelated, the balmy pleasantness of the morning and her nerves. Somehow though, the gentle sunshine so happily dappled on the grass in front of her seemed almost mocking. That pleasant breeze that shifted the leaves above her just so? Cruel and deliberate, that's what it was.
No, she had to sigh again, it wasn't the mild weather that was mocking her, it was her own mind. When Fionn had caught her at dinner the other day and asked to meet her here--what else did she think she was going to do? Say no, when that was all she wanted at that moment and most moments besides? Of course she'd agreed, and shown up earlier than asked to. Now he was a little bit late, just enough to make that anxiety reach up to grab her again. Frankly, Aurelie was tired of it. Couldn't she just wait and be bored or maybe a little annoyed like a normal person, instead of fretting about why he'd even wanted to see her in the first place and that maybe he'd changed his mind?
"Don't be ridiculous," she scolded herself, the sound of her own voice in quiet of the grove making her feel a little steadier. Even she knew she was being silly, getting worked up this way. Why on Vita would Fionn have even asked to see her, to have taken the risk, just to--what? Make her feel foolish? Change his mind and avoid her? If that was what he wanted to do, it would have been easier to avoid her generally speaking. It was easy to not run into her, really. Hadn't they managed for nearly a decade to do exactly that? So she was being absurd, and she needed to calm down, and maybe pick up her needlework again because she was doing the thing where she picked at flakes of paint on the bench just to give her hands something to do.
Aurelie did not pick her needlework back up.
Instead, she stood for a moment. Took two steps away from the bench as if to leave, then two steps back again. A few steps more. After a minute she was pacing back and forth, secure in the knowledge that she was alone and nobody would be looking at her anytime soon. She hoped. Or did she? The only person who she would expect to catch her pacing around like she'd lost her mind entirely was Fionn, and if he showed up she would stop. This was all very maddening, and she didn't much care for it. Not at all.
While she doubted he'd asked to see her just to not show up, she really didn't know what he wanted at all. To talk, he'd said, but not about what. They hadn't much time, really, at dinner. Just a quick exchange and a promise. Talking--it sounded so ominous, somehow, the longer she thought about it. Talk about what? Had something else happened? Did he want to talk about how he never wanted to see her again? She could imagine that, really. It would be easier to avoid her, of course, but perhaps he wanted to tell her to be kind. That was a thing, she thought. Absolutely.
It didn't really matter what he wanted, in the end. Aurelie would just be happy to see him, outside of the full view of every single busybody in the entire canteen. A foolish little smile worked across her face. For once, she let it bloom instead of wiping it off her face right away. After all, she was by herself, wasn't she? Surely in her own company she could be as much a fool as she liked. Fionn could just appear and leave again, she thought to herself, and she would be happy just to see his face. Oh merciful Lady--was that really a thing she just thought? Aurelie had lost her mind.
"Aurelie Steerpike, you stop this instant," she muttered sternly to herself, again out loud. Her voice was quiet enough, as she had no particular desire to alert any passers-by to her presence (not that there ever were any in this overgrown little corner). The sound was just steadying, in a perverse sort of way. "Stop pacing around like this, it isn't helping! Right. We are just going to. To sit back down. And wait. Quietly. Like normal people do. Not like a besotted idiot."
Aurelie stopped her pacing but didn't take her seat back up again. Instead she stood winding the fabric of her pinafore in her hands, feeling the fabric catch on each callous and that place where she'd cut her finger and it had scabbed over awkwardly. He was coming, wasn't it? He was just late, in a regular way? Oh, she really did hope so.