Appointments

[pendantry]

Do the thing. Do it. You know you want to.

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[herotypical]

Raven might be unimpressed but Buffy seemed...not to notice. Or perhaps she simply didn't mind. Instead, she met Raven's eyes with an unflinching pair of her own.

Still, she stopped beating around the bush: "A ring. A man's ring, in point of fact. For a man."

Maybe. Maybe for a man. A lot depended on Buffy actually making a choice instead of waffling back and forth between playing domestics or throwing herself into being the Slayer.

[pendantry]

As opposed to a man's ring for a woman? Raven lifted an eyebrow and looked from Buffy's face to her hands and back again.

"I need to know what size and what you want it to be able to do."

[herotypical]

"I thought you might..."

She dug at a chain around her neck, pulling it past the collar of her shirt and freeing a thick-metal'd jade-heavy ring. Jack had given it to her quite a long time ago. A placeholder, of sorts. One of his own while he worked at getting her a proper ring. She hadn't expected things to escalate so dramatically, back then.

Buffy unclasped the chain and unthreaded the ring from its length, leaving it alone on the counter.

"This is another of his. It fits him fine. And as for it...doing anything?" She sounded a little at a loss. "I kinda just expect it to--"

Solve all my problems tie him to me make up my mind start the next chapter...

"Be. I just need it to be. What else would it ever have to do?"

[pendantry]

Ah, an example. Raven picked up the (heavy!) ring, turning it over in one gloved hand and angling herself to look at the stone in better light. This was a nice ring, for an ordinary nonmagical sort.

"People usually want accessories with properties. Fire resistance, magic strength." She set it back down on the counter. "You can pick what you want it to look like."

[herotypical]

"Oh."

Buffy paused. She hadn't actually realized that those options were on the table, and now that they were? She frowned. "Properties. Properties could be good. That way--"

That way, if she chickened out on her ultimate plan? She could simply tell Jack that it was a gift. A magical gift. No other expectations.

"Would it be terribly terribly uncouth of me to ask about what other kinds of stuff you can slap onto it?"

Its appearance could wait.

[pendantry]

"It's easier if you decide what you want. There are a lot of choices." It would take her a while to go through them all, not everything could be applied to a ring, there were new options thanks to the materials of other worlds in Luceti...and so on.

"You could pick a color. If you can't choose."

[herotypical]

Startled: "Why? Does colour change the property? Is it one of those things? What does green do?"

Absently -- or not so absently -- she fiddled with a delicate jade ring on her right hand. The mate to the ring she was now hoping to commission.

[pendantry]

Green? There were green stones and crystals; the ones from Sharance all shared the same basic property.

"An emerald or a wind crystal in a ring makes you strong against wind magic." Or immune, in the use of some particularly pure crystals.

[herotypical]

"An emerald...." She tasted out the thought. Curious. Strong against wind magic, though -- it might do. It might...

"What about jade? Anything special about that?"

[pendantry]

"I've never used it." So even if it did, she wouldn't know. "Emeralds from other worlds don't work like mine do. So it probably matters where they're from."

This was the longest conversation she'd ever had with Buffy.

[herotypical]

"I kinda had my heart set on the jade, but--"

But perhaps it didn't matter. Not as much as she thought it mattered, at least. "Can I ask you a question? Kind of a weird one?"

[pendantry]

"Then pick jade if you want it." Raven didn't see what it mattered, if she hadn't come in here looking for a magic accessory in the first place. "What?"

[herotypical]

"When you talk about all this stuff about stones from your own world and...and I just wondered if maybe your world had some kind of a...tradition. Ring-wise. When it came to more romantic adventures. Like I'd hate to order the gorgeous emerald wind option only to learn that this curses the couple or something equally inconvenient."

A pause.

"It's just that I've witnessed my fair share of jewellery-related superstition in the past."

[pendantry]

For several long, silent moments, Raven stared at Buffy. She looked again at the example ring, at the way this woman was, in essence, hammering around the outside of her questions without actually nailing them. Working with what she did have was a start, at least. A romantic tradition with rings, and superstitions...

"You want an engagement ring?" Finding the items for that could prove to be trickier.

[herotypical]

Unhelpfully: "I want an...engage-me-maybe ring, actually. It's all very up in the air."

[pendantry]

All this told Raven was, 'I'm not sure what I really want.' Not the best place to be if this lady wanted to actually get engaged.

"Forget all the stuff it could be about and just think of what you want to give him."

[herotypical]

"Security," she said with sudden ease -- dropping her elbows onto the counter. "The chance to think that maybe he's made the right choice. So he doesn't have to worry any more...about being alone. Or about being left behind. That's what I wanna give him. It just seems weird that a ring should be able to do that."

[pendantry]

Someone in this conversation has misunderstood. Raven gets the strong impression it isn't her. This time.

"It's a ring." Dismissive, 'just' a ring, her attempt at trying to be...helpful. "Because you like him and you want him to have it." She knew the Sharance traditions around engagement rings; other accessory rings had no such ties. "If you want him to know the other stuff then say it."

[herotypical]

"You make it sound so very easy."

Saying it. One would think that Buffy Summers would have no trouble at all with the spoken word, and yet-- "Okay, okay, okay. Say we went with the emerald option -- something simple. Nothing too dramatic. Classy but special. How long would that take?"

[pendantry]

Raven picked up the example ring again, noting it was already a man's ring and of the appropriate size. She thought Buffy would probably want to match this metal, too.

"If I start now, I can be finished by tomorrow. I don't have anything else to work on."

[herotypical]

"Tomorrow? That's..."

A deep breath. It wasn't like her life was hurtling out of control, right? It's just a ring. "Quick. Very quick. Either you're very good or very sloppy. And I'm hoping it's the first."

Shaky recovery.

[pendantry]

"If you want it later than that, then just say so."

The insinuation that she'd do sloppy work for a customer? Pretty insulting.

[herotypical]

"No, I suppose tomorrow'll do just as well as any other day. There's no use in procrastinating, right? Or putting off the inevitable..."

[pendantry]

Within the space of a few minutes, Buffy went from being that non-customer who brought snacks to one of the most indecisive people Raven had ever met. Making things work out well for others wasn't her strong point, either.

"Well I'll finish it and you can come get it whenever you want."

[herotypical]

"And can I trust your...discretion, Raven?"

Jack wasn't the only one she wanted to keep in the dark. Sokka was one of her best friends; she didn't want him to learn second-hand of her eventual plans.