Jade Fern Grove We'll be the color in all this black and white

The weasel's skull crunched satisfyingly between her teeth. Her gaze lingered on Nox as he spoke, half-listening and half-distracted by the way his lips moved, the set of his shoulders and how it reminded her what it felt like to be held by him. She tried to focus on his words, but a familiar distraction was coming over her, a pleasant but ill-timed haze of what-if. What if I kiss him now? What if I tell him I don't want to talk about Kvarsheim? What if I let him touch me?

They'd spoken about it before. But she hadn't been ready, and truthfully still felt unprepared. Yet the want was there, fiercely so, and when she realized he'd stopped talking and was waiting for her to speak, Elphie promptly started to choke on what she quickly identified as one of the weasel's eyeballs. Only for a moment.

Then she coughed and spat it into the ferns, and stammered, Ah, got d-distracted, what's up? She knew he would see right through it, but could never keep herself from trying to save face.