“Okay! I’d like to try a little of everything,” 3V says, with a cheeky little grin. “A glass of rainwater, a shot of the Darjeeling, a shot of the Amontillado, and don’t forget the coffee~!” There’s no spoiled brat rattling off what they want energy here, nah, this is playful, an invitation to play along or shut down the bit with a punchline. But just because it’s playful doesn’t mean it’s not real, too. If she gets her shots, she’ll do them one by one, with the water as a palette cleanser. Life is too short to commit to one thing without trying everything else; you never know when you’re going to suddenly find out that you are an [i]excellent[/i] Huehuecoyotl, after all.

Now that she’s not one-on-one, 3V sits back in her chair and nests her beetleshell-emerald fingers over her abdomen, one leg cocked over the other, sunglasses still resting on her brow, the figure of casual relaxation, but she’s focusing her attention on her host. The fists. The tightness in the voice. The way she didn’t react to the hissed intake of breath from 3V. (She’s familiar with the poem, but not its history. Or even really that first stanza, full of a memorial for the dead; everyone’s here for the [i]Inferno,[/i] and everyone’s here for the second stanza. Molech, Molech!)

“That’s got to be a [i]project,[/i] keeping the drinks cabinet that full,” she points out. “Because here you don’t have ‘Dash to grab you something from the store.” An opening gambit, a vulnerability deliberately exposed: if Ferris has mellowed out in her old age, she’ll hare down the invitation to talk about her drinks and why she moved out here; if she’s still got her finger on the pulse, reading the news like an ex’s profile, she won’t be able to resist making a comment about RoofDash’s recent failed unionization effort and its $20k fine for wage theft (in and of itself a fraction of what was owed, and paid to the government rather than to the workers).

And the really sad thing is how fucking convenient ‘Dash is anyway.