“Better him than any of the gentlemen I meet in society,” Phyri said dryly, with a snort. Speaking of getting into people’s skirts – “Yes, I suppose I ought to congratulate you,” she added lightly, though couldn’t bring herself to gush about it: she simply could not envy Eavan Miller one bit. Childbearing and motherhood seemed a monstrous endeavour, and one she would be most content to personally forgo, much the same as she would marriage.

(There was something delightfully gruesome and ghastly about the process of giving birth, though – enough of her friends were wives and mothers to have allowed her to glean plenty, and her own mother had always been very open about the gore – but Porphyria censored herself before she started down that path with a currently-pregnant-woman.)

“Yes, you could say that,” she said instead, with an airy smile; though busy, to her, was always more in thought and word than in anything else. Besides, she could work and work and still not lose herself in it enough to be satisfied with it. “I’ve been looking for inspiration, actually. I was hoping,” Phyri paused to nudge Bastien momentarily out from her feet before she tripped up on him, “you might introduce me to more of your friends from the aviary.” Feathered friends, that was.

---