“Excellent, excellent,” Zechariah agreed.

Ants. Oh, God, ants. Last time he had gone on a picnic, it had been with Penina. She had said she wanted him to be able to court a woman properly, and then seemed to promptly abandon that idea after his reaction to ants.

Before Zechariah could confirm that (ants aside) everything was quite fine, thank you, Elijah was apologizing for bad conversation, generally existing, and insisting he could have been somewhere better.

Zechariah furrowed his brow in open confusion. Weirdly, he too felt diminished by Elijah’s poor esteem with nary a single word said, well, directly about him.

“… What?” he managed.

Then leaned conspicuously into the aisle, looking to and fro for a waiter. One spotted him, and Zechariah nodded to the empty champagne bottle. Clearly his mind was clouded by the absence of drink.

Wordlessly, the waiter snatched the empty bottle off the table and whisked off into the distance.