There was a very, very small frown adorning Nerea's delicate face, edging it with a slight annoyance that she refused to admit to either herself or her fellow Crown member. Had the choice been entirely up to the redhead, she wouldn't be currently dressed up in an impossibly hot and, most importantly, inelegant outfit. She wouldn't be doing so with a wailing child sitting on her lap, nor would she be staring blankly at his desperate parent.

"Nerea. You're scaring the children."

All right, perhaps the blank stare would have happened either way.

She sighed, tired of keeping up an act, tired of failing to keep up an act. Nerea's eyes flew tiredly to the woman she was sharing Santa duties with.

"If one so experienced with freightened faces is to say it, Mrs. Delano, I am no one to deny it."

Whether the not so subtle jab would be taken badly or not, despite the soft tone with which it was voice, she didn't quite care at this point.

"Young fortune-hunter, listen to me,"

she said, turning back to her current task: the child. Her voice was more assertive this time, as if she were to reveal the secrets of the world to him. Perhaps she was. She certainly could try and brush her words as such.

"Seek the comfort of salt water as much and as often as you like, but forget not that the young man with the camera over there is waiting, and that this present won't arrive home with you until he deems you've earned it."

Was threatening young children a good course of action for a publicity mission? Hardly. Was it effective? Well, the way the kid in question sobered up, got his picture taken, and scurried off with his present in one hand and his father's hand in the other, she was inclined to believe that yes. Eyeing the laughing woman beside her, already on her way to the next child in the roster, she wondered once again how it was that she returned alive.