"Oh, and I don't?" Alaema remarked testily, rising from the couch and crossing her arms over her full chest.
"I wouldn't know," Sedriil replied, and reclined against the wall, legs set in a lotus position. He removed an orb from the pocket of his white jacket. "But then again … you always seem to be here whenever I get back from work."
"Oh, go back to playing with your toys, baby brother," Alaema said haughtily, refusing to bite Sedriil's obvious bait. She threw her hair aside from her face, revealing intense green eyes. "Besides, we weren't even talking to you."
"True, but your noise was interfering with my logic, even in my room," Sedriil answered. "It makes me wonder how your model can even function normally without lying on your back beneath some human."
"Why you little-!" Alaema's eyes flashed in fury, and she stalked forward towards Sedriil, who remained eerily calm, as if barely noticing how his words had set her off. Her pale skin flushed an almost-impossible shade of crimson.
"Knock it off, you two, right now!" Skori barked, appearing through the archway entrance. His voice alone neutralized the situation before it could begin. Wide-bodied and imposing, he was the tallest of the family. His face was more squared where Sedriil's was round, and his brown hair was cut short and conservatively. In contrast to his family's apparel: Mericlou's mildly gaudy combinations, Sedriil's ever-present black ensembles of shirt and pants with white jacket, or Alaema's filmy at most, barely present at least, attire, he wore a simple blue shirt and brown pants: an outward expression of his own levelheaded persona.
"Thanks, Skori," Mericlou said with a smile. The dataspike retracted back into her wrist and she removed the secondary jack from the plugs in her neck. "At least you understand what I have to go through."
"Ah, brother!" Alaema sang, completely forgetting Skori's slight. She leaned over Mericlou's left shoulder. "Wait until you hear the story that our Meri has to tell!"
"I know about her purse, Alaema," Skori replied blandly, and then glanced towards Mericlou. "Be more careful next time, Meri, okay?"
"Oh, believe me, I will," Mericlou said, the burning memory of anger over the incident briefly returning.
"But did she tell you about the elf?" Alaema continued, undaunted. "Did she say if he was handsome or not?"
"By the standards of every race, all elf lords are handsome," Skori said with indifference. He sat in the couch across from Mericlou, and removed another small orb from his pocket. He extracted a plug from a slot in his arm, and inserted it into a socket in the wall. He closed his eyes, and the orb began to glow with the same blue as an ether link.