Alfred was suddenly wishing that he had written this all down in a letter, though not because he would have had any intention of sending it. He couldn't have just sent something like this off into the void and then sat around waiting to hear how she reacted, only to eventually be met with a few sparse lines on a page to try and decipher. Rather, he was wishing he'd written it all out because at least then he would have known what it was he wanted to say. It was hard enough trying to say anything at all with Roslyn hovering like that; it was even harder when he wasn't even really sure where he was trying to go.

And Zelda hadn't given him much to work with, in her response. If she had said something like oh, the one about your friend? he could have used that to steer the conversation, knowing at least that they had a shared (albeit cryptic) vocabulary for what was to follow. Instead, she'd just said I did which put the ball solidly back on his side of the court. Was that a signal itself? Was she trying to let him know she didn't want to talk about it? He didn't blame her. He didn't want to talk about it, but felt he had to, before he could do anything else.

"Yeah, that one," he said lamely. He fidgeted with his cuff again. "I — uhm —"

He flushed. He had no idea what he was doing.

"That pumpkin spell you used was pretty creative," he said suddenly.