She sits back down on the couch, looking relieved.

Ariel is, externally, intensely absorbed with fire building, and doesn't notice any particular affect of hers.

Then he also won't notice her dropping that expression in favor of an indecisive one after a few moments, nor that one turning careful and tentative, but with a hint of determination.

He will presumably notice her asking, "Would you like help with that?"

He looks over.  "Naw, I'm good.  I mean," he goes back to his work.  "I'm not the one who walked up a mountain in the snow at night, so."

"Okay."

Everything about this is awkward and terrible but conveniently he can just keep building this fire and not deal with that.

Well, he can keep building this fire until the fire is built.  Then he can no longer do that.

"Thank you; this is very kind.  I feel warmer already."

There was something incredibly off about that delivery, but hey, he already knew this was awkward and terrible; under other circumstances he'd find that suspicious or something but this is just kind of how things are right now, it seems.

"No problem, boblem.  You want anything else?"

She gives him an odd look for several seconds before her brain appears to catch up with her.  " - No thank you; this is already so much."

"It really isn't!  But uh no biggie if you don't have anything you want."

Nod.

"So, uh, we didn't want to watch a movie, right?  What should we do instead."

"Hm.

You were listening to music earlier?"

"I sure was."

Somewhat shyly: "Well, maybe we could do that now?  That's a thing people do sometimes, right?  Just - hang out and listen to music?"

"Heh.  Yeah, that's a thing people do sometimes, I guess.  What do you want to listen to?"

"I think whatever you had on before would probably be fine."

" - You don't want to pick something?"

"Not really.  I don't have - or, I only have a very narrow range of genres.  And they also don't seem like the right thing for right now.  And even if they did, I think I don't have good enough signal here."

"Uh, sure.  I've got some stuff downloaded.  How about - do you still not want to pick something if it's from my - collection, I guess - instead of yours?"  He does a bit of navigating on his phone and holds it out for her to take.

She does, and looks through the available selection a bit.

Then she looks up at him, scrutinizing, for a long moment.

"Casey?"

What.

"Uhhhh . . ."

" - Sorry - are you not . . ."

"Uh, no, sorry - I mean I am - or was; I go by Ariel now - just - do I know you?"

"Oh - all right, Ariel then - I think we might have had a year in school together - "