xp_logs | Amanda and Nathan, Friday evening

Nathan descends upon Amanda to get her advice picking a design for a certain piece of jewelry. (Yes, that. Finally.)

Her door was half-open. Oh, good. Grinning like a maniac, Nathan shifted the laptop under his arm, knocked, then pushed the door open. "I need your help!" he announced cheerfully to the rather surprised-looking witch sprawled on the couch reading a familiar Arabic book. "Your female input, rather."

"My wot?" Amanda gave him a look that was one part confusion, one part suspicion. He had that scary manic gleam in his eye. The last time he'd had that, there had been a water fight in the boat involved.

"Your female--feminine input?" Nathan amended, still grinning as he came in and sat down on the end of the couch that wasn't occupied, setting the laptop flat on his lap and opening it. "You're a girl. You like shiny things. It's really very simple."

The suspicious look over-rode the surprised one. Nathan wanted her to express her opinion on something girly? He didn't look like he'd been hit in the head...

"You know who yer talkin' to, right?" she asked, closing the book and shifting so she could look at the laptop screen.

"Oh, come on," he said wickedly, pulling up the jewelry site he'd been looking at. "Tell me there's not some part of you that looks at stuff like this and gets just a little giddy. See? Gold and silver and sparkly rocks..."

Amanda tried to snort, but then something on the page caught her eye. "Oh, come on, everyone knows you don't put those two together," she said, pointing at a particular ring setting. "Yer've got yer energies mixed up."

Nathan blinked at her, then blinked at her again. "I didn't even realize," he said enthusiastically. "You're not just a girl, you're a girl who knows what stones mean what. Oh, this was such a good idea..." He couldn't have wiped the manic grin off his face if he'd tried.

The penny finally dropped. "This is for the doc, right?" she asked. His grin was infectious. "Yer lookin' for a ring t' pop the question with, ain't you?"

"Looking for a design," he corrected her, still beaming, "to make a ring, to pop the question with. Yes. This coming week. So I need to get my ass in gear."

"This week?" Amanda looked at him, eyes almost round with surprise. "Yer jokin' right? Yer finally gunna do it?"

"I am," he said firmly. "And I may recruit you to take part in my little scheme, if you're up for it? But right now I have to decide on a design for a ring." He pulled up one page in particular, inclining his head towards them. "These are called tension settings," he said. "You see how the diamond looks like it's floating? It's actually just those little points of contact with the metal that's holding it in place. The pressure, rather than little prong-things like you get in normal rings." He grinned at her. "I can do that," he said, tapping a finger on the screen. "With my TK."

Frowning a little at the sight of a diamond on its own - they were used to amplify other stones, or the wearer's strengths and weaknesses, and generally something else was a good idea with it - Amanda examined the setting. It did look like the stone was floating. "What d'you need me t' do?" she asked, curiosity winning out at last.

"Just take a look at the designs of the settings," Nathan said, "and tell me if anything jumps out at you and says 'Moira!'" He had his own ideas, of course, but he needed a second opinion. And possibly a third. Yeah, he had a strong suspicion he would be badgering Maddie in the medlab once he was done with Amanda.

"Just the settin's?" Amanda asked, eyes already flicking through the first page and dismissing the rings displayed. "'Cause I gotta tell you, some of this stuff, it won't do the wearer any good. Wouldn't want that for the doc."

"Why not?" Nathan asked curiously. "And just the setting for now, yeah... I can't make the stones, so I'll have to pick them separately. And I need to choose a setting first, so I know what I'm looking for..."

"Stones have energy," Amanda explained. "Not the same as a full-on mystic object, but enough t' have an effect on people. Some of these..." She pointed to one ring on the screen. It looked perfectly ordinary, if a little gaudy with it's number of stones. "What yer've got here is a clash of energies. Positive an' negative workin' against each other. An' the gold amplifyin' it all. Person who wears that for any amount of time'd not be able t' make a decision 'bout anythin'." Reaching across to click on the mouse and advance the page, she pointed at another ring. "That one's better - balance is right, not too many things happenin' at once..." Remembering he wanted settings, she ran her eye over the rest of the page. "Too borin', too heavy... an' that one's just fuckin' ugly," she muttered to herself, not even aware she was talking.

Nathan found he was downright intrigued by the nature of her observations on the different settings. And she thought I was asking the wrong person... He tilted his head, turning his attention back to the screen. "There's part of me that wants something a bit fancier. Just so that I can say 'Hey, look, I made this and isn't it cool?'"

She chuckled, and considered the thought. "Depends. Moira's not really a big hulkin' rock sort of person, an' she'd need somethin' that wouldn't catch on stuff in the lab - practical, but not dull. Simple, elegant... like she is..." she said absently, looking through the various settings. Then she focussed, and pointed at one at the bottom of the page. "That one."

Nathan almost gaped. He had selected five specific designs off this page as possibilities. She had picked the one that had been his favorite, a broken-circle platinum setting with an elegant curve, holding the center diamond between the two ends and set with smaller diamonds along half its diameter.

"You're not going to believe this," he finally said, a smile that was less maniacal and more warm tugging at his lips as he looked sideways at her. "That was my favorite."

"Really?" Amanda looked pleased. She looked at the ring again, and shrugged a little. "Just says 'Moira', t' me," she said by way of explanation. "An' there's somethin' of you in there, the line of it..." She shrugged again. "Could be I'm talkin' bollocks, but that's the one."

"This is precisely why I wanted to ask you," Nathan said happily, putting an arm around her shoulder and hugging her. "I think that one's a winner. Might be a little trickier, embedding the little stones in there.... what do you think, platinum or white gold?"

"Platinum," she replied. "'S purer, energy-wise. An' stronger. It won't let her down."

"Platinum it is," Nathan said. "Now I just have to figure out how much I need to make the setting. And get Shinobi to come help me diamond-shop." He grinned unabashedly at Amanda. "I'm jumpy. Which is silly."

"But very, very cute," Amanda pointed out with a wicked grin.