"Not on me!"

"Are you sure?" She tosses a corner of skirt over his head.

He bursts into helpless giggles.

"See, that's adorable," she pronounces. "I know adorable, I have the cutest baby."

"You do have a very cute baby," he admits from beneath his enveloping cloak of skirt.

She collects the skirt back up into her arms. "Well. If you really don't want to blush now's the time to scoot."

He scoots.

The dress is indeed reasonably easy to figure out, and mostly reasonably easy to put on. The laces up the back of the bodice need to be done up and tightened by someone other than the person in the dress, and the long wrapping overskirt with its many layers and numerous buttons is going to be a logistical challenge even with help. But gosh is it ever pretty.

Drape drape button button "ow I craned my neck too hard this part needs help."

Ashras comes back. "I admit I did not anticipate you hurting yourself with the dress!"

"I did anyway. What happens if while I am here I need medical attention. Like neckrubs."

"What if I'm terrible at neckrubs, what then - goodness this thing's a puzzle," he says, peering at the buttons.

"I know, right? I think this is supposed to stay in a square shape 'cause of how it's stitched, is there a corresponding square for it to attach to - anyway, are you?"

"Wouldn't know, never tried - that looks like a square to me," he says, peering from one square to the other. "Yeah, and the buttons correspond. Okay, that's one mystery solved. Except then there's these extra buttonholes - maybe they'll make sense when the next layer comes around..."

"Attempts at making you blush aside what do I do if me or Katin needs a doctor -"

"Oh, right. Uh, so medical care in Aluvanna is a little different from what you're used to, because magic."

He fastens the square to the other square and double-checks all the buttons so far.

"There's - I guess the most straightforward translation is 'healing wells' - places where, if you go near them, you tend to recover faster from things. The house is built on one, actually, most of the homes of old landholding families are. So the first thing you do is go sit in that courtyard with the blue tiles for a bit - have you seen it, I think it's just out of sight of your balcony, toward the middle of the house - and if that doesn't fix whatever it is, you can ask someone to take you to one of the bigger healing wells in a major city somewhere, and if that doesn't do it and you're really in trouble the next place to escalate to is probably the ruikni - there are intermediate steps for locals but they wouldn't know what to do with you; I'm sure right now there are hundreds of ruikni doctors learning everything they can about medical care for your species because they're just horrified at the thought that anyone ever might have to go without."

"That's nice of them. Okay."

He smiles. He tries to figure out how the next bit goes. "- oh, that's why the buttons are tiered like that, the next layer hangs from the higher ones and the lower ones show through..."

"Of course they should. They're so pretty."

"They are extremely pretty."

The next layer takes a lot of careful arranging, to get the folds of cloth hanging from their buttons and draping prettily instead of bunched up any which way. He manages not to blush despite the required proximity to Peka's waist and her mostly-undone laces.

"This is gonna be pretty warm, all the layers. It's summer at home, do you even have seasons here?"

"Sort of. It gets warmer as we get more sun and cooler as we get less."

"Wonder what that'll do to seasonal stuff."

"I guess we'll find out!"

Button button button. Wow this dress is really pretty.

Peka admires herself in the mirror.

And Ashras finishes buttoning the skirt into place and starts trying to figure out the laces.