28th of Vortas, 2719 - Lunch
The older the diners got, the more the lines were divided less by age than by social status. The children of politicians and elites jockeyed for power over ham sandwiches; prospective matches were made and broken. Nothing was enforced, and yet the lines of peerage seemed clear and strong.
At the corner of a table towards the middle of the room, Cerise Vauquelin sat alone. This was not wildly unusual; it would have been a stranger sight for any of the seats in her immediate vicinity to be occupied. As it was, she appreciated the arrangement. It certainly gave her a bit more room to spread out her things. The incumbent's daughter had perched the ankle of the leg closest to the edge of the table on top of her opposite knee; the other was left to jut out awkwardly into the aisle. The posture was far from appropriate for a young lady of any status; if this bothered her at all, none of it showed on her sharp, pale face. The riot of her dark curls had been pinned away from her face by a series of clips that were doing their valiant best to keep her hair out of her eyes; it was something of a battle of attrition on the part of her hair.
Her lunch was arranged somewhat awkwardly in front of her; she had clearly adjusted it to make more room for her reading. While this might look admirably studious at first glance, a closer inspection revealed that the book she held in front of her was hardly academic. The tattered copy of Tales of Near and Far had clearly seen better days. The paper cover was creased and seemed to only be attached to the rest of the book by force of will. There were stains visible on the pages, from water or tea or who knew what else; more than a few had been dog-eared and smoothed out again.
Still, it was this and this alone that held Cerise's grey-eyed attention. No matter that she'd read the book many times before, or that she should probably be eating her lunch. A bite did manage to make it to her mouth every few minutes, when she paused in her reading. Every once in a while, she would spear a bit of food on the end of her fork and it direct it to her lap instead. When she pulled it back there was nothing on the fork any longer. Where it was going wasn't clear from casual observation--it could very well have been her pockets or the floor, for all anyone else could tell.
Eventually Cerise shifted posture slightly; not to correct it to something more befitting of a young woman, no. If anything it got worse, her knee extending further into the relatively narrow aisle between her corner and the next table over. She shifted and twisted, her spine snapping into place with an audible crack. There was a plaintive noise from the vicinity of her lap. Cerise looked away from her book to the source of the sound, unaware of the rest of the world around her.