It's distantly amusing to watch Luther slip briefly into just the first taste of his ice cream. It's silly. The whole thing tastes like childhood, though it never entirely stops being burned on the far, far edge of her thoughts. It lets her chuckle a little, even as she's got her spoon in her mouth, at the words that come out. Like somehow, she'd given him more than some ice cream flavor at a small, well-loved and well-trafficed, but hardly even famous, little shop.

"When I first got here--" Allison said, putting her spoon back in to dig a little more out. "--the first few months, maybe half of that year, I went through more than one place just tasting most of the flavors."

Allison's just gotten her spoon to her mouth, shaking her head a little, with a falted smile around it, at the strange necessity to -- what exactly would you call it now? Tell Luther the truth? Connect her experiences to his? Like somehow part of any of those links were actually left outside a handful of handwritten words? Did it really matter?

Did it matter for more than just h--

"Mommy!"

There's a shriek of something that pretends to be a whisper behind them, from a small child, and like all small, small children, given to thinking they're doing well but not really having any clue yet, it's anything but quiet, as she leans into her mom. "The princess is still here!"