and i look at her and i say that's my lady and i'm really proud

The sound of absent humming floats in through the threshold like so many butterflies, just brilliant enough so as to render the notes uncatchable. In between similarly absent noises from Minoth, Addam perks up straighter to hear, and when Minoth looks his way, he gets a good shooing for his trouble.

"Is my hearing going, then?"

"Be quiet, will you? I'm trying to listen to Flora."

That earns him a gem of an exasperated face made. "So go in there and listen. I don't see why it should be my problem."

"It should be your problem," Addam explains half-haughtily, "because it's everyone's problem - because it's not a problem. Oh, don't you see?"

Minoth sets down his pen, a gesture of commenced defeat if there ever was one, and blinks a few times to test his vision.

"Well, you tell me, if this is accurate." Now he makes a leveling face, communicating something indeterminate about adolescence and humanity and a man who was born with his ponytail tied, so he doesn't know from Ad[d]am anything about liking girls, for real, except that she's Flora and he loves her, and isn't that a swell place to start?

To start: "You meet a girl, and everything about her is pink. Not pink like perfume and princesses, though she does smell nice and she is as cute as can be, but pink like sharp wit and honest mistakes, hot fuschia and dusty mauve."

Minoth is a storyteller, a playwright; his talent should and does lie in action and drama that unfold beautifully right before the listeners', readers', viewers' eyes, but this abstract? It's a hidden gem. Addam nods, own expression dreamy - that is to say, not half as crafty and concentrative as Minoth, in his element. One could deduce, then, that Minoth's artful description is both apt and accurate, because a man as wholly in love as one wifebound Addam Origo would certainly never be transported by or on any less than his and her real deal.

"You meet her," Minoth continues, "and you don't even love her. You just...like her. Beyond any measurement. Or, vice versa. Both and neither, all the time. No time for falling, because she's already caught you."

Addam sighs. "It's as if you made up a person; it feels like cheating. But she's so real."

Minoth chuckles, leaning back and thumping his heels. "Maybe someone did make up a person. I believe in an auspicious narrator, here and there."

"You believe yourself so strong?"

Lean then-again forward: "Not strong, my prince, but weak!" And punctuate with a wave of wise finger... "As all artists."

"And who, then, is strong?"

"The people that put up with them, yes? All in a day's work."

Put up with them, indeed. Minoth never fails to astound, and Addam in turn never fails to be astounded, by and with the eclectic variety of moods he'll put on display for this present company or that. Sometimes he's grouchy, sometimes he's jovial, sometimes he's joyous, sometimes he's grim.

But in walks Flora, and there is the most constant northern star of all. "I don't see you two working. Is anyone going to help me with setting the places, or are we just going to wait until Jin ladles the curry out onto the table?"

Both men stand with abandon, each offering the little lady an arm. She could have snared them with a word, or even without one. She should, by rights, have had them up from the other room - but they were just so preoccupied, weren't they?