At least in the last case, she had told him to come again in Dentis. So she could give him a jar of the jam she'd made, more dear than she'd expected. She had promised, after all. And they'd hardly gotten much chance to talk. They wouldn't get more if he came now, not really, but she was looking forward to that nebulous someday all the same.
Having friends, Aurelie had decided, was nice. She didn't quite understand how it was managed, or how she seemed mostly to become such with people she wasn't even supposed to talk to, but she was enjoying the experience. Mostly. It was more lonely when they weren't around than before, of course. That was the trouble. You didn't miss things you didn't have, or at least Aurelie didn't.
Not, she chided herself, that Yazad was her friend. Friendly, certainly. An odd young man, with his tidy manner and tidy dress, his strange space between her world and the world outside. Just because they'd had one nice conversation—one nice part of one conversation, even!—that didn't mean she could be so bold as to consider him a friend. Even thinking of Aremu as such seemed to be somehow crossing a line; in all likelihood, she'd never see or hear from him again. And Fionn? Fionn was a friend, she thought; but distant from her, and likely to remain so.
Maybe she was getting ahead of herself, to think so positively of the concept of friendship. Like she knew what she would have been on about.
The fog that blanketed campus made her glad, that she was in the kitchen and nowhere else. Aurelie was pleased to be here at any time of year, even sweating through her layers and layers of sensible cotton in the height of the Yaris heat, but she had to admit it was more pleasant in the fall and winter. Rainy season, too, it was almost—cozy, really. The sun hadn't yet risen high enough in the sky to burn the fog away; Aurelie wasn't sure it would, given the state of the day. It made her walk to the kitchen seem like something from a dream, even though she had traced that exact path so many times before. Nearly every day for ten years. But the details were worn off, formless and strange.
No matter. She was busy; she was always busy, she thought ruefully. The work was a blessing; Aurelie was grateful for it every day. Most days. The days she was in the kitchen, certainly. Days when she was not? Well, they did still keep her busy. Idle hands and idle minds, all of that. At least keeping her hands moving gave her something to focus on that wasn't the inside of her own foolish head.
"Aurelie!" A voice cut over the din; one of the other girls. Aurelie looked up from her cinnamon rolls, puzzled. "You have a visitor. A man." The reproach in her tone made Aurelie's face burn; it could not, she thought dazedly, be Fionn. She didn't think he would ask for her so openly. So who, then, could it be? Aurelie moved across the kitchen, wiping powdered sugar off of her hands and onto the apron she wore over her uniform for just such a purpose.