"Are you trying to angle to get onto the shortlist of people he actually likes? Because that's not a bad way to do it."

"Getting liked by someone who doesn't like most people is somehow all the more flattering."

"I admit it amuses me immensely to be at the top of Cricket's list."

"Who else makes the grade?"

"He's okay with my parents - prefers Kalars to Raney though and it's significantly on my behalf in both cases - and has an odd mutually unintelligible sort-of-friendship with the woodchuck familiar across the street from my store and he has not yet found a reason to dislike the florist down the block."

"I shall have to go meet the florist down the block and see what common traits put us in such illustrious company."

"It's impressive in the florist's case because he and Cricket have interacted more than twice."

"Well, I won't count too highly on his continued regard." He takes a napkin. "You have a bit of fudge on your lip. May I?

She snorts and takes the napkin out of his hand and does it herself.

He smiles distantly again. "Thank you for the lovely lunch and walk. The plans for funding are unlikely to leap off my desk if I'm too long in returning to it, but it's hard to say what will have leaped on, and it's a long boat back. Can I walk you home?"

"I'd like that."

It's not very far. Long enough for a story about how Telars and his cousin Iriss terrorized the palace after she came up with an invisibility spell - "I slept with ball bearings on the floor for a month" but not long enough for the story to leave them lingering outside her front door. "Cricket," he says, "the fudge cakes are delightful and we would never have found them without you."

Iobel translates this for Cricket, and he purrs, with a suspicious, grudging look in Mitros's direction.

He looks satisfied with this. "I delight in your company, Iobel. Later."

"Later!"

He goes home. It's a long boat ride. He acquires notebooks. He doesn't have an alphabet for his idiolect and Antir's not around to talk things over with so he stares at the wall a while.

She'll be a good Queen and he can probably have her.

That's great news.

He's been doing a lot of appreciating the wallpaper in this room for the last month but he can probably notice some more things to appreciate about it.

Iobel tells her notebook and her cat different things about her date with the prince (!) and writes her parents and sells an icebox and two books and pays her rent and closes up shop and goes upstairs and giggles to herself.

And a day later she gets a very prettily calligraphed letter:

Iobel,

There's a art exhibition in the palace gardens and Makariel's singing afterwards. Would you care to be my date for the evening?

- Mitros, Prince of Marlas, etc etc etc 

P.S. I've been trying notebooking!

P.P.S. I think I have an adequate analogous food for Cricket if he cares to come.

Iobel is so glad she went to her great-aunt's shindig. She writes back that she and Cricket would be delighted to come, when should she arrive what's the dress code?

The event is informal. If she comes by at six they can see the gardens before they get crowded. 

You should tell Cricket that familiars are supposed to wear starched bow ties, it's a royal tradition. (It is not a royal tradition. Please do tell him the truth before he settles to loathing me after all.) 

- Mitros, when I was four I told my father I wanted to be called Lord of the Waters and he didn't indulge me but everyone else did, Prince of Marlatia, etc etc etc.

We'll be there and I doubt I could get him to wear a bow tie even with the promise of kitty candy.

She shows up in smart-casual with Cricket on her shoulder, unbowtied, at six.

Antir, entertained, consented to wear one if it was made of something edible for birds and Mitros was pleasantly surprised to find that he could in fact get a request like that granted on short notice.

"Iobel! You're lovely! Have you been to one of my brother's concerts? They're really something."

"I haven't! I take it I've been missing out but at least I'll correct that soon."

"I keep telling him he should work out amplification with sufficient fidelity and sing for the whole city. He is very picky about amplification, though. I take it there's some difference which I don't have the musical ear to appreciate. I cannot possibly show you the whole of the gardens but if you tell me your favorite flowers I can definitely take you to those."

"Dahlias. Is there anything so obscure that you wouldn't have it in here somewhere?"