#i'm sorry hanami turns into a startled cat when she gets touched

[blackestnight]

💋 cheek kiss! >:3c

(crafters of light GO)

The light that streamed through the domes of the Crystarium was the golden, watered-down sunlight of early winter–jarring after her morning in Ishgard’s mid-spring slush, and Hanami’s eyes teared up every time she glanced up at the gleaming stones of the Exedra. The stairs of the Dossal Gate were too cold for comfort, but it was the best place to wait for her quarry and the sharp marble of the step at her back pressed its chill into a tight knot at the base of her spine. She would live.

She would have preferred a coat, though. She would have to remember to make a watch and ask Feo Ul to throw pixie magic at it until it could tell her what day it was on each shard; she was growing more and more sick of needing to worry about things like seasons. She bent back over the pad of paper in her lap to write a note–the lines of her hasty circle sketch warped when they hit the divot from an earlier pen line, remnants of her copying sentences out of an old Ishgardian schoolbook for practice–

She heard the shuffle of a small footstep and the clink of jewelry before the voice, but not by much. “You know,” said the woman, “When Raha asked me to chase off the gargoyle skulking on his front step, I had a feeling I’d find you here.”

Hanami set her pen back down, abandoning her sketch, and craned her neck to look up at Lunya. Her hair was near-blinding in the afternoon light, brighter than the flagstones, though mercifully her coat was a deep purple that hurt less to look at. Her boots had a fur trim that matched the white stitching, though, and the gloves shimmered with silver embroidery at the wrists–impractical, all of it, in Hanami’s mind, but today she needed that fanciful eye for clothing.

“I need your help,” she said, and flipped her notepad shut. “With a dress.”

“Hello to you too,” Lunya said, and Hanami might have felt worse were it not for the way her eyes lit up. “A dress, you say? You realize I’m quite in demand.”

Hanami crossed her arms, tucking her knees up closer to her chest, now that she did not need to worry about her book. Of course she realized; Lunya was a popular seamstress on the Source, even under a false name, and her popularity was growing here as well, all for good reason. She was the best at what she did. “That is why I am asking you now, yes,” she said. “Aymeric already asked me to come with him to a big fancy Starlight party–it is supposed to be a celebration of the end of the war, too, and all the Alliance leaders will be there.” She wrinkled her nose; parties with the Alliance meant crowds, and hushed whispers wherever she went, and she would undoubtedly be too keyed up to even drink. “I know there are dressmakers in Ishgard, but they make me feel…” She sighed and stuck out her tongue, the words escaping her.

Lunya gave a slow, sage nod. “Like a stuffed Dodo wrapped in baking twine? That’s just sloppy corsetry.” She spared a despairing shake of her head for whatever slights against tailoring she was envisioning–Hanami wouldn’t even know where to start–and straightened her shoulders. “Well! I suppose I’ll be able to put something together, though I’ll need to know what precise level of big fancy I’ll be aiming for. There’s a code to these things, Hanami. There is etiquette.”

Hanami shrugged; it wasn’t as though she had asked, and besides, from what she understood Ishgardian dress had less to do with the status of your own family and more to do with stepping on the toes of others. She would not have called it etiquette. “I do not know. It is not as if I go to parties if I can help it.”

Lunya let out a groan, slanted almost toward a whine with her disgust, her bangs fluffing out with her breath. “I would swear Redolent Rose said you were enrolled in the Weavers’ Guild. How do you know so little about clothing?”

“Is that all Master Rose said?” Hanami could not help her snort. “He should have told you I sew things like I punch people. It works, but it is messy, and I get blood on everything.”

Lunya’s brightness finally bubbled over into a laugh, deep and trembling, one that nearly brought a smile to Hanami’s face in satisfaction–before Lunya leaned over and pressed her laugh into Hanami’s cheekbone, the contact shooting down her own spine like a cold shock. “You’re a disaster,” Lunya said, sounding quite pleased, and Hanami fought down the urge to jump to her feet as Lunya’s voice reverberated right next to her horn. “Alright, I’ll take on the job, but only on the condition that I get to dress you in a real color. None of this ‘so dark it’s almost black’ bullshite.”

“No pink,” Hanami said, mostly on reflex–but then she’d seen Lunya’s wardrobe, of course, she knew how she loved pastels, and Hanami had no desire to look like a cake. She did get to her feet, too, slowly, unlocking her muscles that had stiffened in the cold.

“Yes pink, it’s your color,” Lunya insisted. “You had it in your hair for so long, gods know you should be used to it. Go on over to the Mean; I need to run an errand and then I’ll meet you there to take measurements.”

Hanami bent over to scoop up her bag, and caught sight of the stone sculptures lining the staircase–which reminded her. “Tell G’raha Tia I am going to do violent things to him when I see him,” she said, tucking her book into her rucksack. Gargoyle. He had it coming, really.

“What, are you going to darn a sock at him?” Lunya said, and her laughter followed Hanami as she rolled her eyes and descended the stairs.