A/N: Nothing much to say other than, sorry about the wait, and these two scenes are related, I swear.

The Pearl

"We've gone a pretty long ways," Tiana's gaze hovered at the pinkish orange of the dying sun poking through the densely clustered trees at the horizon. Naveen straightened a little from his position lounging across Louis' back. He hadn't even noticed it had gotten so late. "How much further is it, Louis?"

"Oh, uh…" the gator's head twisted slightly, shifting to survey their surroundings. "We ain't quite hit pricker-bush territory yet, Miss Tiana. I reckon we still got a ways to go."

Tiana groaned a little, pulling her knees up to rest dejectedly under her chin.

"Relax, Waitress," Naveen plucked a thread of spider web on his makeshift ukulele, running his opposite hand up its shaft to create a bright, glistening note sounding something like a slide. "Half the fun is in the journey, no?"

She glanced sidelong at him. "As fun as this journey's been so far, I'd much prefer to being back to my old self in my old home with my old job, thank you."

"Ah, yes, passing out dinner plates to the masses must be thrilling…" His tongue rolled over the last "r", holding it a beat longer than necessary. "Y'know, Waitress, you are the only person I've met who would actually miss their dead-beat job. Most people would find a day off drifting down this bayou to be a rather relaxing vacation." He improvised a short trill on the ukulele, emphasizing his point.

"I hardly think you're qualified to judge what "most people" would think of this situation, Your Highness." The title came out immersed in sarcasm. Naveen let out a small "humph" and laid back against Louis' leathery skin, strumming out another tune.

Was she always this annoying? Was there no conversation she could hold up without turning it back to work and sucking the fun out of it? She was like a pebble that got stuck inside your shoe, a splinter that wedged itself under your fingernail, a stick tossed aside into the mud. He sighed, shaking his head in bemusement.

"You, Waitress, are a rare brand of irritating."

"Irritating?" She straightened, her head snapped towards him. "This from the bum who's done nothin' but pluck nonsense all day…" She gestured emphatically at his ukulele.

"Hey, hey, hey," he put up one finger, "Do not insult the jazz…"

"Do not insult the waitress!" She snapped back, her hands clenching, looking for all the world like she wanted to strangle him.

"Hey, Naveen," Louis interrupted, "does that up there look like a pricker-bush to you? I can't tell." Naveen didn't hesitate to leave his spot on the alligator's back, hopping up once onto his head and then again, settling on the end of Louis' long snout. He shot his friend a smile, grateful for the excuse to put as much distance between himself and their irritable travel companion as possible.

"So, Tiana," the gator continued, eager to have everyone back in a pleasant mood, "is your restaurant gonna have etoufee?"

----- ----- -----

Within his chest, his heart hammered away, and it wasn't entirely due to the adrenaline rush of just barely ducking out of sight from the approaching, gun wielding shadows. She was hugging him… sort of. Their arms were around each other at least, that counted as a hug. He wasn't even entirely sure how they ended up like that. One moment they were stumbling to get behind something and the next she was pressed against him, his arms reacting of their own will, pulling her so close her head dug under his chin and pushed up the side of his face. She was so close; undoubtedly she could feel his heart pound. He dared a glance at her. Her stunned gaze met his for an instant, only an instant, and then she pulled away.

He took an awkward step back, both relieved at the reestablished personal space and disappointed she hadn't held on for a little bit longer. He suddenly felt colder, emptier, his arms itched to pull her back into that embrace, embarrassingly out of control heartbeat be damned. His fists opened, his fingertips tapped together idly, needing something with which to occupy themselves. Ray flew into his field of vision saying something about Louis; he didn't really hear it, though. One arm reached over to hug his other, the empty feeling refusing to dissipate.

How was he supposed to show her that he was in love with her when he couldn't even hug her for more than two seconds?

He watched her as she hopped forward, demonstrating a grace as natural as if she had been a frog for years. When she turned towards him, the smile she gave him was glowing and warm. His heart skipped.

"Naveen, you comin'?"

The old need to look cool and collected knocked him back against the metal casing of their hiding place. "Oh, I'll… I'll catch up with you later."

That seemed to satisfy her and she bounded after the lightning bug, as happy as he had ever seen her. He stood there, still leaning against that metal wall, smiling at the doorway she had disappeared through. He wasn't sure why he had looked down a moment later, but when he did it caught his eye instantly.

It was a necklace, well, not the whole necklace but one bead, pure white and gleaming next to the remnants of an opened bottle. The whole deck was littered with beads but this was the only one in that color. It caught the light, bouncing it off the wire from the bottle's cork, making it shine like gold. He grabbed them both.

The other beads fell away as he gently pulled the white one free. It rolled a little in his hand as he studied it, the smoothness of it, the gloss of its surface sparking a familiarity. If he held it in such a way, he could almost see his face reflected in it, and his memory filled in hers, just the way her reflection curved over Mama Odie's pearl, transposed over the identical white of the bead.

This was it!

In the passing hours he busied himself with preparation. Someone had left a few cracked open walnuts at a table on the upper deck and he claimed one, both as an oyster shell and a ring box. He eventually made it to the roof, out of the way of prying eyes and careless walking shoes. It took several tries, but he finally got the wire to loop around his gem the way he wanted it. He twisted the last bit of wire, completing the circle he hoped would fit around her finger properly. He could always untwist it and adjust it later if it didn't.

He held up his finished ring, letting it catch the last rosy warm rays of sunlight before night completely overtook the sky. He had stared so much at it he could see her face clearly inside it now, almost as if she was staring back at him through that snow-white orb.

It was amazing how something once so irritating had suddenly become so valuable.

He carefully tucked the ring into its case. And over the smolder of the sunset a star began to twinkle.

-----

A/N: *If you look carefully at the background just before the whole Naveen-tries-to-eat-a-bug-sequence, the sky does have the pinkish glow of sunset, so I didn't just make that up for the sole purpose of this thing beginning and ending with a sunset. It was just convenient.

*Do not insult the jazz…- I remember seeing a behind-the-scenes clip of Anika and Bruno recording those lines. The scene, or at least those lines, must've been cut, hopefully it'll show up as a deleted scene when the DVD comes out so we'll know how that conversation was supposed to go xD

*I don't know why I'm pulling all this half-baked symbolism out of this movie, but I really did make a connection between the bead Naveen uses as an engagement ring and that pearl Mama Odie shows the froggies during DaLD the first time I saw it. Pearls have a longstanding symbolic quality for their rarity but it becomes really fitting for these particular characters when you consider how pearls are formed… for me it did, anyways.