accidents of fate

"So, Alvis."

Only the cool transporter light shifting shows Alvis's acknowledgement. Not that Dunban is terribly apt to pay attention.

"What's a handsome stranger like yourself doing in a strange place like this?"

Eryth Sea is really not all that remote or eerie, but by comparison to the Nopon forest and village, wherein it's quite difficult to be smooth (imagine casting such a line with sweat on your brow and heaving in your breath), it is an idyllic otherworld.

It would be much, much odder to find Alvis in a place like Tephra Cave: similarly cool and eerie, yes, but flanked by so much familiarity.

"How remiss of me not to ask the same of you, Dunban." But Alvis still does not turn the Homs hero's way, nor does he proceed to pose the question.

Flirting, perhaps, is the intimation that you know more than you're letting on. You're transmitting your willingness to play a game, to dabble in artificial closeness contrived immediately at the point of reckoning.

Somewhat cryptic. Pointedly so. Dunban's face falls, ever so slightly, as it dawns upon him that Alvis's trademark mysterious bearing, which manifests an untouchable stoic crypticism in its purest form, is not flirtatious. Alvis does not act this way on a separate purpose than that which dictates the remainder corpus of his actions. He's aware, but he's not, perhaps, self-aware.

But then again...no. No! Of course he knew what he said - he was coy! Even cheeky!

Alvis was not, however, forward. So Dunban, thinking himself a casanova but finding himself a casablanca, has been taken aback.