Breakfast arrives by adorable animated tray.

So adorable. And delicious. What a good combination.

She eats breakfast and then spends about half an hour reading her book and then she gets dressed and puts the book in a pocket and goes a-wanderin'. Maybe there will be spontaneous doors, maybe not.

No spontaneous doors this morning, it looks like. Lots of beautiful architecture.

She wanders until she's familiar with a little more of the layout, then decides to try asking. "...Can I have a door to Tarakova?"

Spontaneous door back to his art studio! He's working on another painting.

Pretty!

She sits down on the balcony and takes out her book.

He paints. It's lovely.

There's something nice about having another person around, even if they're not actually interacting. When the person isn't scary, anyway. She reads her book and occasionally looks up from it and glances at the painting-in-progress.

It's a landscape. She might recognize the mountains from her adventures with the viewing pool.

She does! Nice!

Eventually she finishes her book, notes the time and how hungry she is--not super, but a little peckish--leaves, has lunch, swaps out books in the library, and then returns.

This time he looks up and smiles at her.

She grins back. "That's really pretty," she says, nodding at the painting.

"Thank you!"

"The sunset one from yesterday was really pretty too. I guess you've had a lot of time to get good at it," she muses, "but I'm still impressed."

"It took a while to learn," he says. "I like it. I like being able to... make something beautiful."

"That makes a lot of sense."

Nod. Paint paint.

Smile. Back to reading, then.

It's nice, having her be around and happy while he does things.

That's the idea! She is perfectly content to be around and happy and reading a book while he does things, and interact when one or the other actually has something to say. This was a good idea. Although given that it's probably a bad idea to distract him from his painting she'll let him start the conversations...hm...

She asks the castle for something to write with and on.

A delicate little wooden tray tiptoes onto the balcony on delicate little wooden feet, bearing pen and ink and paper, and then folds up into a lap-desk.

Aww.

She makes notes on things in the books--the one she's reading and the one she recently finished--that she didn't really have the context to make sense of. She can ask about them in case he understands them, next time he wants to look up from his work to talk to her.

He finishes the painting he's working on and comes over to stand by the balcony, which puts him within a reasonable conversational distance.

"That's really nice! Did you do it because of the viewing pool yesterday?"

He smiles and nods.