Angel Stone
Touch me once, burn on you. Touch me twice, burn on me.
Touch me three times, and it's not an accident. It might not even be on purpose. It's...a secret third thing.
Pyra's nervousness usually hasn't a chance to come out, when she's in party company, because she finds herself well-suited to the role of kind, patient core among a boisterous group. It's easy to be calm when you're both level-headed enough to keep down from the fun and fun-loving enough to see how one - another one - might enjoy it.
Leave her on her own, however, and the bashful, low-clasped hands start swinging. Only voice to be heard is her own, inside her head (never mind Mythra, for the moment), which means it can get awfully loud.
Especially when there's a beautiful girl here with her, straying unusually close to her forearm, as well as elbow and wrist.
Well. That's a little bit reductive, isn't it? But it's only true.
Pyra studies people, just as her other self does, but it's supplicating rather than appraising. She's looking for a place into which to slot herself; a segment all her own, or alongside, to which to belong. She's looking out and around for people's needs, their penchants and philosophies, their tendencies and tenacities as well as their tenuousnesses.
Pyra doesn't do things by accident. Neither does Melia. However, the both of them have the winsome capacity to stray clumsy, which is where the rub lies.
And, considering that Pyra hadn't even had a body of her own, half the time...
Cooking consumes the senses, yes, but Pyra remains hypervigilant about her own personal space, and Melia is most definitely in it, right now.
She doesn't turn around, hesitant even to shift a heel or a shoulder. She tries to concentrate on the aroma of the stew, the sound of its merry bubbling, the sting of the sweetening onions at the corners of her eyes and lips, the potential need for a minor note of sugar or acid to add to - to perk up - the mellow, savory flavors.
Perhaps the need for floral, delicate Melia to lend her magical strength to the quietly smoldering, loyally supportive Pyra.
It seems none of Pyra's other senses promise to be of absolutely any aid to her, in this current plighted predicament.
(Her senses haven't completely deserted her, either; in some far-off hijinx-prone variant of this scenario, Melia is desperately tapping at Pyra's arm, as yet loath to grab it and shake it about but steadily getting there, because the stew is burning and the Fire Blade has - uncharacteristically - gone rogue and drifted off, eyes lost in the clouds.)
So Pyra keeps stirring, arms nearly rigid, back snapped straight.
Then she hears something: Melia's soft yet odd-angled voice reaching out through the gentle curls of steam to call for her.
"Pyra?"
She clears her throat. "What is it?" Melia?
"Would you mind if I stood here with you?"
Hasn't she already been? But, then, Pyra considers that if it were her in Melia's place, she too would have made a million treads over the same stop, not truly standing and waiting but pacing, basically, as she approached her decision.
She turns to meet Melia's gaze, taking in the colors of her cloak (and those of her cheeks), gloved hands neatly folded in front.
"Of course! As long as it's not too warm."