They had met when Ast was getting a filling after a particularly bad period of depression where he had let his teeth deteriorate to such a point that the dentist said he should get all his teeth checked out for other pressing issues. After having received the treatment on the one tooth that was causing him great pain, he only improved his dental hygiene just enough to avoid any further pain and neglected the advice, while he was financially secure (albeit less so at this time) he really only improved this aspect of his life due to the inconvenience and cost of the filling rather than any hygiene or health concerns.

"Good morning sir, how are you today?" Ner said while he hadn't yet seen her, still closing the door behind him, her voice instantly created an unfamiliar emotion within him.

He waited until he reached the reception desk and simply replied "hi" briefly meeting eyes with her before looking away to pretend to read a notice sitting on the desk "sir... funny" he said softly almost to himself as he let out a little chuckle. He stared intently on the notice which read 'current wait time: 30 minutes' it seems strange that they would go through the effort of this, I wonder how many cards they have? 4? it's a small place surely it's easier to just tell people the wait time his thoughts then shifted to the word sir and how he hadn't heard that word since he was back in highschool. Ast was one of the only students who would always address the male teachers with sir and perhaps solely because of this the teachers always treated him with a significant amount of respect relative to his classmates and perhaps graded him a little more generously. He thought about his highschool days in general and how they felt for about ten seconds as he stared at the notice.

Ner followed his eyes and didn't want to interrupt what she assumed was reading, the abnormal length of time and his odd chuckle to himself lead her to believe that he might be special needs and she didn't want to pressure him to finish reading the notice at fear of offending him. She studied him intently looking for any signs that might indicate he wasn't entirely there but his face offered no guidance, she eventually assumed he was just shy and was about to speak when he said "you know, same old same old". It took her a moment to realise that he was responding to her question, she was used to people not responding to this as they understood it was just a pleasantry and the times in which they did respond were almost always empty pleasantries themselves like 'good' or 'fine'.

"I know" she replied, Ner was immediately intrigued by Ast mostly due to his peculiar way of speaking, not so much the intonation but the cadence in which he spoke. Athough Ast spoke softly he spoke very deliberately with the edges of words containing unusual harshness as if the words were each uttered on their own and didn't properly blend into one sentence, it was as if he often had to consciously remember the pronunciation for many words and as such each word was a new task which provided a possibility for a reset of the tone in which he was speaking. This way of speaking came from his low level of socialisation as a child, he had never ingrained the pronunciation of many words into his deep subconscious, this combined with his anxiety over possibly having to repeat a word meant he spent a great deal of focus on trying to pronounce words in a way where they would not be misheard rather than the more natural flow of words in a coherent sentence.

Ner was consciously attracted to the uniqueness of his cadence but wasn't consciously aware that a large part of why his particular manner of speaking interested her so instantly was because of the pleasant emotions it invoked from its similarity to her late twin brother who she had always seen as incredibly intelligent. Jerry, her late brother had died a year prior to this meeting and even in our current day she still looked up to him despite being four years older than he ever was. Jerry had gotten into a relationship in his late teens with a woman six years his senior who abruptly died in suspicious circumstances and his soul never truly recovered. Jerry had eventually settled on killing himself to rid himself of the sorrow, a decision that was a great internal conflict for him, he knew how much it would affect Ner with how much she depended on him. Like most teenagers Ner had her own struggles with angst and depression and looked to Jerry as a sort of role model who could always seem to handle the world in all its coldness and endure anything. Jerry did not want to ruin this perception she had of him, he believed that she needed to believe that it was possible for people to handle anything so he tried his best to hide his suffering from her and maintain a strong persona and go on with his life. Jerry could not however bear this burden on his soul and decided to take his own life setting out to make it look like an accident, he crashed his car into a pole and died on the scene, just 2 months after his lover. The day started fairly typically, he told Ner that he was going to his friends house and left her with a kiss on her forehead, not particularly unusual but not too common either, he left no note for her although he hid one in a bottle underground in their garden explaining his motives, unsure if anyone would ever find it and hoping if she did, it wouldn't be until enough time had passed that she had already proved to herself that she can live without him. While Ner expectedly felt a hole within her soul that would never truly heal, Jerry's plan did work to some extent, she went on living with the idea that it was possible for people to live graciously and with courage face the state of the world and all its horrors.

Ner had not dated anyone since the death of her brother and this was the first time since his death that she had looked at someone the way she was now looking at Ast, as some interesting soul who stood apart from all the rest.

"I know" she repeated "how can I help?"

"I'm here for a 9:30 appointment with Dr. Talbott" he stuttered a little, unsure of whether dentists were always referred to as doctors.

"Great, fill in this form and take a seat, you are aware of the wait time, right?" she said pointing at the sign he had been staring at earlier, she said out of habit and immediately felt bad thinking he might interpret it as mocking how aware he should be of it by now.

He looked back at it and truly read it for the first time "oh, that's ok" he took the form and started filling it out on the counter in front of her.

"Sir, please take a seat so I can help this lovely man" she pointed to an elderly gentleman who was now waiting behind Ast.

Ast panicked and his face turned a little red, he was not used to getting in peoples way as he was usually acutely aware of everyone possibly around him. He felt a little shame as the mans tidy attire made him self conscious about his own ill fitting casual clothes, the shame was further exacerbated over his lack of composure before her because he found himself to be incredibly attracted to her. While not finding her particularly beautiful at first but he was immediately enamored with her unique features and style, along with her unique voice which sounded as if she had some foreign accent that he couldn't properly discern. In his soul he felt that from her eyes and mannerisms alone he could read deep into her psychology and that she was truly a unique creature worth pursuing but his more logical mind and previous relationships made him pass this off as simply the 'that spell all beautiful women can cast on men' as he put it.

"Oh, sorry... sir" he said to the man, enunciating the word 'sir' particularly loudly, although he didn't do so intentionally, she felt as if he was playfully teasing her with the use of this word due to his comment on her use of it earlier.

Ast sat down and continued to fill in the form while he thought about her voice, he tried to pick what her accent was but couldn't due to the limited reference points to draw from. It wasn't just the way she pronounced certain syllables that enraptured him, it was the general softness of how she spoke, her manner of speaking was almost the opposite of his, despite some strange choices in pronunciation, her words all blended together so beautifully to him as if the sentences she spoke were really one sound or a short melody.

The truth was Ner didn't have an accent in the sense that she came from no foreign descent. The peculiarity in how she spoke came from her unique upbringing. Ner was the daughter of a famous movie director and in her earlier years they had been very wealthy and a picturesque family, however, just shortly after Ner and Jerry had started school their mother suffered a great sickness and was bedridden the rest of her life with the exception of excruciatingly exhausting short trips on occasion. The hospital bills and the lack of a second income ate into their wealth and caused their family to have to adapt to a more frugal and stressful lifestyle. Ner's father was often away on movie sets and as such her mother was left to raise her but due to her illness she often lacked the strength, forcing Ner and her brother to often have to essentially raise themselves. They grew up in the sparsely populated outskirts of town and so would often spend their days watching movies from their father's extensive collection. Ner learnt a lot of her language from these movies, and although the ones they would watch were almost exclusively in English, they were often foreign in origin causing her to develop some peculiar pronunciations for words that she had learnt from these movies, making her accent if you can call it that a unique combination of all the worlds accents in one. Their nearest neighbour was about a kilometre down the road and had a boy around their age which Jerry befriended, often leaving Ner at home with just her mother and movies.

Ast finished the form and handed it back to Ner with 20 minutes to spare "can I come back in ten minutes?".

"Of course, is everything ok?" she replied

"I don't know" he paused, instinctively answering the question too literally largely due to his nerves around what he considered to be such a beauty, he immediately tried to explain it away "I mean, yes, I just need some fresh air"

"See you soon" she replied.

The muffled shouting of kids could be heard as Ast sat on the railing of the ramp leading to the front door, positioning himself just out of sight so he couldn't be seen from within the building. His mind was largely quiet as he stared at the kids swinging on some monkey bars across the road, he felt some nostalgia over his own youth but these were largely ignored as his mind swam formlessly from unimportant thought to unimportant thought. Roughly two minutes later, Ner came out the front door and walked down to her car, picking up a small envelope and returning to her desk. On her way back she addressed Ast "nice day, eh?". "Nice" he replied after about two seconds.

After his filling, Ast said nothing as he approached to pay. "Have a nice day" she said to which he responded "ok" and accidentally let out a little lopsided smile, usually prefering to hide all expression when possible. From his response combined with his smile, she thought he was teasing her in some weird form of flirting by refusing to respond with a conventional pleasantry such as "you too", "thanks" or even "goodbye" but his mind was just elsewhere and his social skills were too rusty to remember such unwritten rules.

That evening Ner messaged him "hi, it's Ner".

Ast didn't recognise this name but it evoked a slight familiarity to him, while he had briefly glanced at her nametag earlier that day, he hadn't filed it away in his mind as her name or even a name at all, he brushed it off as something unimportant, her position within the company or some abbreviation for the business itself, completely forgetting it shortly after spending this brief thought on it. Ast received this message while laying on his couch staring at the ceiling, not thinking about much in particular, "hi, who?" he replied almost instantly shit, i should have given them a chance to possibly send a second message which might add enough context to work out who they are before risking offending them.

"The receptionist from Brad st. Dental, I thought you seemed nice"

Ast thought this was some sort of practical joke, he sat up straight and his mind jumped into action, while he had thought fondly of their encounter and even pictured an imaginary life together on his drive home as was customary whenever he met a beautiful woman, he had never actually believed for a second that she had felt some interest back towards him. He tried to think of possible reasons why she might be doing this, he thought that maybe it wasn't even her, maybe it was someone else who knew he had been there, he threw his phone up in the air a few times as he thought of possible explanations before deciding to take a chance.

"Oh? thanks, how did I seem nice?" he replied.

Ast immediately regretted sending this and felt like he had accidentally expressed his skepticism of the situation, he did not doubt her sincerety as he now realised how she could get in serious trouble for using a clients personal number for personal reasons. Ast's primary reason for this question was he simply didn't know what to say yet and felt like it was his responsibility to bring up some topic of conversation despite not giving her a chance to say something that she clearly wanted to say. For this particular question though, Ast had a deeper motive, at this time he was still incredibly depressed and felt like his mind was too broken to let anyone in, he wanted to make sure that she had a genuine interest in who he actually was and not just some deluded fantasy version of him, that what she found nice was founded in reality.

"I don't know how to explain it, you seem interesting, I am no good at this"

"Thanks, you seem interesting too, good at what?"

"Asking someone out"

"I can do it, do you want to have dinner tomorrow?"

"ok"

Ast felt no joy initially and even felt a little annoyed that he had a date, he rightfully feared that this might be a turning point in his life and bring him out of his recent hole of depression, on some level he felt like he deserved to suffer for all eternity due to the wrongs he had committed and as such he intentionally tried to avoid letting anything good happen to him and subconsciously either refused to acknowledge any blessing or actively worked against them, feeling he didn't want to live in a world where someone as terrible as him was not punished eternally. As the minutes passed, this feeling of fear subsided as his focus shifted outward onto her, how beautiful she had looked and sounded, he forgot his past and who he was, entering pure bliss from this blessing. This turned into anxiety as he wondered what to say, he desperately wanted to keep talking to her, to get a better read on her before their date so he could plan out what topics he would say, how he would dress etc. but decided against it with the thought that's not what people do, they would act cool and pretend they are patient and have other things to do.

"5:40? where should I pick you up?" he replied

"Make it 6, 37 Fleece St"

"See you soon" he assumed she would notice he borrowed her words from earlier in the day, wondering if their every interaction earlier was now burned as deeply in her mind as it was now, since he had recounted it a good twenty times at this point.

Ast spent the next half hour almost entirely thinking about her name as it was the only fact he really knew about her, he had never heard the name before, he looked it up online and could find no solid information on it, no concrete meaning behind it or place of origin. He thought about how it was similar to his in the sense of the length and just how unconventional it was, he had never met another with his name either. He wondered if this similarity had worked in his favor and caused her to pay closer attention to him during his visit, eventually concluding that it had, he assumed she thought in similar ways to him with his only justification for this assumption being that she liked him.

Her unique name, features and voice along with the novelty of the whole situation relative to his bland life caused him to work himself into an immediate state of obsession with her, he thought about her deep into the night, getting little sleep as he tried to figure out in his mind exactly who she was. Ast had no work the next day due to the holidays and spent the majority of it reading dating advice on various forums, none of which he ended up applying.