River enters with slow, careful steps, rolling heel-to-toe as if any moment she might change the direction of her steps and shift into a solemn dance. She doesn't, though; only makes her way to the bar, and runs her palms over the surface.
"Please," she says, and gets a small bowl of fried paradoxes with marinara sauce.
And a
bracelet woven of fresh flowers, with a note in childish handwriting.
And a letter.
The paradoxes and the bracelet make her smile, and the note does too, and she slips the bracelet over her wrist with care and smiles again at the result as she tucks the accompanying note in her pocket.
The
letter, when she opens it, wipes all the smiles away.
She reads it once standing by the bar, face going pale and strained and fingers too tight on the paper.
Then she turns away, jerky and abrupt, half-running for a booth where she can tuck herself beneath the table and spread the two pages of the letter on the floor and reread it over and over again. Her fingers twitch through mental calculations, her lips moving soundlessly and her face lined with unhappiness and frustration; every so often she scrubs at her face with one brown cuff, to stop a tear from falling onto the paper.
The fried paradoxes, abandoned, vanish back into the Bar after a few minutes.