At the incoherent quiry, Ariane couldn't help but smile as she waited for a more understandable reply. "Sorry - I asked what it was you were looking at?"
She grinned slightly, setting her fork down beside her plate, a slight clatter tingling the edge of the glass dish as it slipped to hit the table. "I as..." She swallowed hard to clear her mouth of potatoes, then reached to take a glass of water (for Ariane had picked one up along the way). Swallowing down a mouthful helped clear the thickness, and she managed to reply easily. "I was looking at the roof. It's sort of a... childish amusement of mine, one might say. Counting the tiles, if there are any, or beams if that replaces them."
The woman shrugged, forking some carrots. "I don't know why I do it, but I enjoy it. It's a distractor, something to shift my thought patterns from darkness to simple logic—" Something Ariane had never been able to accomplish, being more melodramatic than logical, more unpredictable than mathimatical, more of a writer and an artist than one for numbers and logical thought. But she didn't say that aloud, letting herself trail off naturally, as if she hadn't considered carrying on to say anymore. "But what do you think of the buns they have here? They're amazingly flavored." She sighed. "I cannot cook a thing without burning it."
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