Day 2 - Cups

After the... incident at Christmas, the whole town knows about the elementals, which is nice because that means we don't have to keep Flame a secret anymore. It is also not nice, because now casual acquaintances and old class mates keep coming up to me, because apparently now I'm "cool" or something. Never knew I'd miss being the weird choir kid...
The best part of course is that Flame doesn't have to stay cooped up in my room all the time, especially when I'm not at home. This of course means that she clungs to the back of my coat as I was leaving to school and I was forced to take her with me. I got a lot of weird looks on the way, and now that I'm here everyone keeps gathering around my desk or not-so-subtly staring from across the classroom. At least Flame is feeling cooperative, deciding that she doesn't want to move from backpack where she sits during the lessons and munches on sticks and whatever dirt she finds from the bottom of my bag.

The girl behind me decides it would be funny to feed Flame pieces of her notebook and watch as it burns up in her mouth. I try to ignore whatever's happening behind me and focus on the teacher.

Finally, the merciful bell rings and I am the first person out of the class.

~x~

I end up at the tattoo parlour. I've been feeling guilty and avoiding it for the past months, which of course has made me feel more guilty and avoid it even more. I haven't seen Cecil since the concert. Well, that's not entirely true, but Cecil hasn't seen me since the concert. That I know of...

But with Flame perched on my shoulder, I think maybe it's time to go visit. If for no other reason than Flame, because surely Cecil wants to see Flame. He must know she's back, because Rachel is back too.

I swallow and push open the door before I get cold feet. The bell dings and Flame mimics the sound.

"Welcome!" Cecil says, as he looks up from the counter. "How may I - oh."

He stops talking as his eyes fall on the two of us and I give him a sheepish grin from the doorway.

"Hi," I say and Cecil's face splits into a grin. He walks around the counter. Flame jumps on his face.

There is a moment of scrambling to get Flame off Cecil's face. Again. Rachel comes from the backroom to see what the commotion is, but ends up being no help at all, laughing her ass of by the counter. Eventually Flame let's go off Cecil's face, opting to sit on top of his head. Rachel stays to man the counter and we move to the backroom with Cecil.

Cecil disappears through a side door that leads into a small kitchenette and I sit down on one of the sofas and look around. I've only been back here once and then my surroundings weren't really the top priority in my mind. Aside knowing the easiest escape route of course.

There's a lot of bookshelves around the room. Some of them about tattoos and pigments and making art with magic, but a great number of the books are actually related to Cecil's other profession. There's shelf after shelf on old legends and mythical creatures and gods and other deities, and also history and archeology. An amazing variety of topics but they're all still connected as they sit on the shelf.

Cecil places a cup of tea on the small table in front of me. It's red and has the logo of the shop on it. I huff out a small laugh as Cecil sits opposite me, taking a sip of his own cup.

"What?" he asks, amused.

"It was this cup that led me to you," I say, picking it up and bringing it to my lips. Earl Grey, of course. "You know, the first time."

"Oh," he says quietly. "I never knew."

"Hmm," I agree. We never did discuss how exactly we came to find tattoo shop with Leea. "It's funny, isn't it? If you hadn't been walking past us with this cup, we might've never found you."

"And if Rachel would stop giving blood stones as business cards it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place," Cecil mutters in his cup.

"Don't diss the stones!" Rachel shouts from the front of the shop and Cecil looks like a deer in the headlights for a moment, before he looks away and sips his tea. He's only slightly red. I hide my smile behind the cup.

"It's the littlest things that make the biggest differences, isn't it?" I say and Cecil looks over at me with soft eyes. Flame pushes against his arm with a purr and he scratches her behind the ear.

"Yeah. And I'm glad they did."
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D'awww. I had this one part of dialogue planned where Cecil explains more about the symbol, how it's the old logo and that's why it couldn't be found on the internet or anything, but I think that's a good place to stop, don't you think? Sorry it's a bit late, I had a rather hectic day today. But yeah, bye~

Pie out.

P.S. Someone give me topics kthnxbai. Also, we had "Cup" as a topic in the main storyline, and this is completely drawn from that particular part. Yeh.