"I could hardly answer definitively but Nistar's of a completionist bent and if he were made aware of an absence we'd be sending off to acquire it. Except things that can't be wheedled or bespelled to grow here, I suppose."

"And I'm not likely to have heard of anything that difficult to come by."

"Well, I'd be a little surprised if you claimed one of that sort as your favorite."

"I could have gone sailing around the world as a child and been pining ever since for some rarity on some island, you don't know!"

"And then I would have been wrong, and much abashed, and had an excuse to invite you back here once we'd gone and acquired your favorite flower for you off the distant seas."

"Are you going to run low on excuses? Do you need them?"

"No, and no, but I do not have many as good as 'I have acquired your favorite flower off a distant island for you'." Antir is eating her bowtie.

Iobel giggles at Antir. "It'd be very impressive. Alas, dahlias are lovely but commonplace and I cannot be particularly bowled over by their presence."

"I shan't lose too much sleep over it since you'll be bowled over by Makarial later." He takes her hands. "Dahlias are this way."

And she follows him that way, occasionally succumbing to the urge to giggle, looking between him and the garden. Cricket trots along, making the occasional remark that she sees no need to answer.

Dahlias! "They are pretty," he says delightedly, and picks a few, and starts braiding them together. "We can have matching hairpieces if I still remember how to do this."

"You had a flower-chain habit in your youth?" she inquires.

"I had six younger brothers and help-by-now-I-think-it's-twenty-three cousins, and am the eldest of all of them and got stuck watching them whenever our household staff would give me a look like they were about to break down crying. It was good practice for wrangling diplomats, in hindsight. I am good at every conceivable craft that can be used to occupy a gaggle of four-to-eight year olds."

"Awwwwwww. Sorry, I don't know off the top of my head how many cousins you have."

"What? That's an outrage. I think I shall implement compulsory national education so everyone can read and write and draw a complete House of Finos family tree by age 10. What's the point of power if you can't even expect arbitrary people to keep track of how ridiculously many of you there are?"

"Hey, I was educated and I still don't know how many cousins you have! It's a lot of them and it's not a stable number!"

He has two dahlia hairpieces. "I cannot do this too often or the gardener will give me a wounded glance. But here you go."

She plops it onto her head. Cricket makes a remark and she chatters back to him in idiolect and says, "He thinks I'm ridiculous."

"I think she looks stunning," Mitros says to Cricket, "and if you're jealous I'll make you one too. Dahlias suit her hair better than yours, though."

"Bah," says Cricket intelligibly, when this is translated for him.

"I also have the kitty treat for you. After exhaustive testing my brother Amars' familiar decided it was as good as humans could be expected to do on this sort of thing."

And when that is translated Cricket sniffs the air and says, "Yes?"

And a kitty treat is produced from his bag.

Nom.

"...Good," he eventually pronounces, "may pet me."

"I am very flattered," Mitros says gravely, and leans down to pet him.