Private Finished Husbands and Wives

With dinner concluded mostly in silence and the animals put to sleep, Erina retired to the large chamber that she and Xeros shared. It was empty, much to her relief. Erina began to undress, untying bows to pull off her dress, rolling down her stockings, putting whatever she'd worn that day into the laundry chute and pulling on a dark blue silk nightgown, then donning her robe on top of it. She sat at her vanity and began to brush out her hair, winding down for the evening in private before Xeros showed up to go to bed as well.

She'd forced herself to try and get used to sharing a room and a bed with her husband. He'd said he would be fine with separate rooms, but properly married couples were supposed to sleep together, so she'd let her parents make that argument and hadn't argued back.

Sleeping with someone at her side was uncomfortable. She hardly got a good night's sleep since they'd been married a few months ago, and it was starting to show under her eyes, much to her chagrin. She figured she was going to have to get used to it sooner or later, because things weren't going to change any time soon. She was married now, and that was that.

Erina slipped her wedding ring off of her finger and set it on her vanity, then stared at it for a long time in silence while she continued to run her brush through her hair.

Tags;; @Saber​

Erina straightened instinctively as he entered the room to change, and stayed that way even as he ducked out briefly. She met his eyes in the mirror of her vanity for a moment before looking elsewhere. He was trying to be cheerful and romantic, but she wasn't having any of it, as usual. But...

She'd seen something in his hands and glanced back up at his reflection. What was that? She looked away again. "Awfully late for a package delivery," she remarked, pretending like she didn't know it was probably something he was trying to give to her to win over her affections. Erina was not one to be wooed with presents and pretty words.​

From his home? Interesting. Erina watched him out of the corner of her eye as he put the package down. She was going to make a point in leaving it there until he actually offered it to her; no sense in letting him see that she was a little intrigued by it. She set down her brush in its spot and pulled her silvery hair over her shoulder to twist it slowly into a braid while he spoke to her, staring at the ring sitting in front of her rather than at him.

He made some rather obvious remarks about her affinity to birds, as well as other animals in general. She didn't see anything worth responding to until he actually asked her a question which begged an answer. "No, they are not," she replied, then thought a little bit more on his first question. "I suppose you could say it is just like talking. Only, with the mind, and not with the mouth," she chose her words carefully.

The braid was finished and she tied it with a ribbon, which left her nothing else to do, so she rose from her vanity at last and drifted across the room to douse some lights and draw the curtains on the windows, leaving them only with the illumination of the lamps on their respective bedside tables. She hesitated for a moment before slipping out of her robe and settling into her side of the bed, picking up the book from her nightstand and thumbing through it to the bookmark.​

She considered and nodded once, perhaps if people were more perceptive, then yes, they would realize how individualized animals could be, each with their own preferences and habits, no two alike, just like people.

Erina let him finish his thoughts completely on the subject of names before responding with carefully-chosen words, as always, "Sometimes they name themselves, other times I name them and they accept that as their name, sometimes they are named by their parents or peers, it all really just depends on the creature. But as for all of mine, I named them myself when they were born and they just accepted those names as their own. I have been with all of them since birth. That's one of the reasons why we share such a close bond."

She was opening up, just a little, because the subject pleased her, and she felt that sharing this information with him would allow him to understand her a bit better.​

Erina shrugged. It wasn't as much of a big deal to her as it seemed to be to him, raising animals from birth. Her parents had allowed her to do so in order to train her for raising children, she assumed. He was correct in stating that they were like her family, though, and she nodded a little, her eyes trained on her book as she began to read.

"It's exactly like it sounds," she replied, getting a little bored with all of the questions in this conversation. She sighed and put her book down, then reached over and turned out her bedside lamp, curling up beneath the sheets and turning away from him. "I'm tired," she said finally, shutting her eyes. Mostly she just didn't want to talk anymore.​