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I see no flaws in this plan. [nephero!]

Started by Rhindeer, May 06, 2014, 03:04:23 PM

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nephero

Wherever Shea's mood had been, it lightened considerably the more Mei rambled on. It was astounding how much she could bumble a bad mood away, to the point where he wasn't entirely convinced there weren't some measure of witchcraft to her.

She almost made him forget about that whole mess in the basement.

He sat down on one stool, and pulled his bowl closer to himself. He still wasn't sure how this whole thing was meant to work without meat, or really any of the apparent necessary ingredients. It was a little... odd looking, to say the least. But nothing ever came from hesitation, and so with an internal shrug he took a swig.

The first thing he noted was the temperature. It might have done him better to blow on the soup beforehand, but it was always the little things he tended to forget. Not bothered in any regard, he took another, more careful sip, and that's when he was better able to taste the actual dish itself versus his own burnt tongue.

The second thing he noted was the heat. It was slow, at first, lingering, and then it built up to a veritable inferno. Involuntarily, his eyes watered, and he took a breath in through his mouth as if that would somehow aid him. Realizing this would do no such thing, he very casually and not at all hurriedly brought the milk back out from the ice box, poured out a glass, and slung it down.

He let out a breath once the glass was emptied, and laughed.

"Little inquisitor, if I get cooking like this out of it, I will make sure we run into one another again. What do you even call this? The, ah, non-deviant original, I mean? Lord, that has some heat to it."


VIGILANCE WALKING THE TOAST
Characters here!

__guilds, yo__
The Territok Orcs // The Oratok Orcs // Fausteth // The Ashmen

Rhindeer

Don't be creepy, don't be creepy, don't be creepy... Mei desperately thought as she took a seat on another stool, breath held as Shea pulled his bowl closer. But even with that thought running on a loop through her brain, she found herself leaning forward and watching Shea a bit too intensely when he took a sip of the soup, her own meal forgotten on the counter, her hands clasped together in her lap.

She was literally on the edge of her seat.

Please like it, please like it, please like it...

It was the moment of truth, and she practically squirmed in jittery anticipation. What if he hated it? What if it was totally gross and inedible to him and she'd just wasted a bunch of his ingredients and made a fool of herself? Then what?! She had no backup plan. She'd just thrown all her eggs into one basket and hoped none of them cracked upon landing.

First sip. Okay. Nothing yet. He wasn't spitting it out, there was no choking. That was good, right?

Yes! He was going back for another sip! Okay, this was good, this was--

Oh dear.

Mei saw the change in his face, saw the way his eyes grew glassy, heard his sharp inhalation, and her stomach dropped as he headed for the ice box. Oh goddess, had she made it too spicy? Had she just broke him? She'd forgotten how delicate these folk could be! Sure he'd said "the hotter the better", but she had learned that a Thanati's idea of hot was very different from someone from these parts and she should have taken that into consideration! She watched him chug the glass, her eyes wide and mouth open with all the apologies she wanted to babble--how rude of her to not have considered his sensitivities!--but then he laughed, and the tension eased.

He...he liked it? Was that what she was hearing?

And he liked her idea of meeting again?

Really?!

She let out a sharp breath of her own and grinned like a fool, her belly doing a flip-flop that she would have called nausea if she wasn't so excited. "I just call it coconut soup. The real thing, with the actual coconut and things that make it actual coconut soup, of course. I don't know what this would be, but that just means we'll have to give it its own unique name, liiiike...the Mei 'n' Shea Special! It rhymes, see?"

Too much? Maybe that was too much.

She cleared her throat and brought the bowl to her lips, taking a long sip to shut herself up for a hot second.

But only a second.

"I can cook breakfast, too!" she said. "Before we go tackle the Touch. Give you another taste of my cooking--I take it you don't get cooked for much? Cooking for other people tastes so much better than just cooking for yourself, true fact! And really, it's the least I can do for letting me stay here!"

Because she was obviously staying the night.
Adamaris // Aderyn // Aki // Alexander // Angel // Axieva // Beatrid // Briar // Cadmus // Corryn // Einin/Owl // Emery // Fang // Faolán // Faris // Frost // Hayate // Ife // Jayari // Jirou // Juniper // Katxiel // Khaiya // Kota // Kyran // Liam // Makani // Max // Maya // Mei // Nakato // Naovi // Nasrin // Niaaki // Niamh // Noor // Pepper // Qiana // Qismat // Quinn // Raxta // Riyarin // Rook // Sachi // Sahar // Siobhan // Simonea // Sita // Song // Summer // Valor // Yasmin // Yiroa

nephero

   "The Mei 'n' Shea special," Shea pondered the name as he returned to his own bowl, much more careful about how much soup he took in that time around. You live and learn, after all. "Now that's a name. Thank you, for this."

   Shea set the bottle of milk down on the countertop rather than putting it back into the icebox, having learned his lesson in regards to Thanati cooking. What a fascinating people they were, between Inima and their weird nonsense about magic and regularly ingesting what, to him, seemed like fire-soaked vegetables. Fire soaked vegetables in a fire broth, with a hint of fire aftertaste. And to think he'd been concerned about there being too much earth and water. That was laughable.

   Shea looked over at Mei, at how it seemed for every sip of soup she had an entire lungful of words to say, one question leading to two more and a thousand little facts in between. If such a place produced people like Mei, that might be worth a visit. It wasn't as if he really had anything planned, after all.

   The cat sat down beside his stool, peered up at him, and gave a soft, chirping meow as if in assent. Shea raised an eyebrow at the little creature, and watched it skulk off to some other portion of the house, tail raised and gently curved into a curious question mark.

   Well. That decided that.

   "Does it really?" He asked, turning back to the scholar dining with him. He had to admit, he didn't exactly have much experience in cooking for others. And being cooked for, that had been some years ago, now. For the life of him, however, he couldn't remember the taste of it. It hadn't seemed important at the time, but now...

   "Well, there's as good a basis for an experiment as any," he stated, pushing aside whatever pointless melancholy that had been. "The hypothesis is that food tastes better when you cook it for others and not just yourself. So, if you make breakfast, we'll each prepare lunches for ourselves, and then I'll take dinner, and we can compare notes after. Seems adequate, yes?"

   He gave Mei another wink over the rim of his own bowl, having found the proper ratio between Special Soup and soothing milk. But soon that small bottle was depleted, and there was still plenty of soup left. Shea hummed, got up, and rummaged through another cabinet for a moment before pulling out a tall, dark bottle whose label seemed to be well on its way out of being legible.

   "This is quite possibly the best to come out of Tirial, in my personal opinion. Certainly worth dragging all the way out here, anyway. It's very sweet."

   Shea set the bottle down on the counter, pulling out two more clean glasses soon after. He shot Mei a glance, before running one finger along the rim, lines of frost spreading in its wake until the whole of the glass was covered in the spiraling patterns. A quick uncork of the bottle, and the pale wine was poured out, the first frosted glass slid towards Mei before Shea finished pouring for himself.

   "To the Mei 'n' Shea special, may it have many returns."

   The sweetness did go well with the molten spice of the dish, though it was still a struggle not to just guzzle it all down. Because the last thing he needed was to lose complete control of his faculties. Maybe when he redressed. A little celebration of putting all this in storage. Getting back to how it all used to be, and so on and so forth.

   "Still, I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves. I believe the agreed-upon payment, if you recall, was you sharing notes over dinner." Shea took another sip of wine, before setting the glass down with a mischievous little tap. "Room and board, my little inquisitor, is going to require a tad bit more. Tell me about where you're from. You mentioned your island."


VIGILANCE WALKING THE TOAST
Characters here!

__guilds, yo__
The Territok Orcs // The Oratok Orcs // Fausteth // The Ashmen

Rhindeer

"Where...where I'm from...?"

Mei practically lit up at his question, eyes widening. He...he had asked...oh gosh! He asked to learn about where she was from! A topic she knew all about! A topic he was lacking knowledge in! A topic she could impress him with!

YES.

Straightening up and setting down her finished Mei 'n' Shea Special, she cleared her throat imperiously, fist in front of her mouth. This was going to be long, but luckily he had a whole bottle of wine there to keep her from growing parched. Good thinking, Shea!

"It's a long and tragic history," she began, shaking her head. "Thanatos, that is. Which is where I'm from, but that's not really where we're from. We're from what your people call the 'mainland'--a very egotistical thing to call something, really, as though it is the center of the world! Which it's not; there's no real center because as the Essyrni have pointed out, our land is a sphere, though we have yet to explore the entirety of it! Probably just a small fraction, actually. Maybe like 20%, some theorize. But that's beside the point!"

She took a another gulp of wine and swirled it as she spoke, needing to do something to occupy her hands, because she was practically vibrating with excitement. It was so rare that anyone asked her about these things! Most people thought it was dull for some reason! She never got to use this knowledge for much of anything!

Now she could unleash it all.

"We came from far, far away, somewhere on your--" She did one-handed finger quotes. "--'mainland', but far beyond it! Up past Serendipity and Connlaoth and all of that, a place that is long lost to history! We kept oral records back then, and when we made our home down in what's now Connlaoth, the people hated us and chased us out. So did Serendipity's people. We were fractured, and much was lost. They thought we were necromancers!" she scoffed, wrinkling her nose. "Just because some of us can speak to the dead! And sure, there were some necromancers. There's always bad eggs in any group, and unfortunately I get it, there's a societal trend of focusing on the loud, bad ones and forgetting about all the perfectly normal, quiet, average ones just going about their lives. But I'll point out necromancy isn't specific to any one population and there have been plenty of cases of it even today in places like Serendipity! They even have a whole organization dedicated to hunting creatures of the night! And yet they blame us!"

Another deep swig, draining the glass. She set it down and reached for the wine, flashing Shea an inquisitive look. A quick, "May I?" was her only warning before she topped off his glass and poured more for herself. It was only polite.

"They called us awful slurs and killed us and hurt us and excluded us, and we weren't safe anywhere. We couldn't integrate into society because, well--" She motioned at herself, forgetting the wine glass she held and sloshing a little onto her hand. She didn't seem to notice, except to take another sip. "Hard to blend in when your hair and skin and language gives you away. So eventually, my ancestors I suppose went--ahem, pardon my language--'sod the lot of you,' and took off. They took to the sea."

Oh, that wine was good, and Mei was starting to feel warm. Maybe that was just her blood pumping through her; this topic always got her worked up. "I don't know what their plan was if they didn't find land. That wasn't written down. But I suppose if you're so desperate and tired of being murdered, possible death by dehydration or drowning or sharks--though shark attacks aren't actually that common--doesn't sound half so bad. Especially if there's a chance you might actually get lucky and, you know, not die! And if there's one thing my people also have, it's a predisposition for luck. Well, some do. There's entropymancy, which can influence that. So perhaps the leader was just  particularly lucky and figured, why not? Anyway, our first Maharani was the brave leader of said expedition, and her name was Yindira, and she was beautiful and brave and--" She stopped to fan herself, letting out a sigh, and chased it with more wine.

"Sorry, she just gives me the tingles." She cleared her throat and sat back, smiling, her cheeks a little flushed. "I want to be like her. Discover a new land. That would be so amazing. Anyway, she and her people arrived onto what is now known as Thanatos, which is a frightening name that means 'death' to the people of Connlaoth and Serendipity. But Yindira was smartandbeautifulandamazing and she came up with the idea of naming it something awful to keep other people away. Because she had found paradise, a new fruitful home, and it was unclaimed by man and thus all ours. But she knew others might try to take it away if it had a pretty name, so...let them think we had exiled ourselves to some barren wasteland! It worked for a while. And it stuck."

Mei paused then, raising her eyebrows at Shea. "You're getting all this, right? Tell me if I'm going too fast and feel free to take notes. There'll be a quiz at the midway point, and a test at the end. Just to make sure there's no gaps in your knowledge. Anyway...where was I...?"

She tapped her lips and cocked her head. Mm. Maybe that was the wine, after all. Her head felt a little fuzzy. Too much, too fast, it seemed. No matter! She just had to push along, as was her duty as an educator and scholar!

"Ah, yes. The formation of our great country, Thanatos! Well, as I said, it all began with Yindira, and..."

It was going to be a long night.
Adamaris // Aderyn // Aki // Alexander // Angel // Axieva // Beatrid // Briar // Cadmus // Corryn // Einin/Owl // Emery // Fang // Faolán // Faris // Frost // Hayate // Ife // Jayari // Jirou // Juniper // Katxiel // Khaiya // Kota // Kyran // Liam // Makani // Max // Maya // Mei // Nakato // Naovi // Nasrin // Niaaki // Niamh // Noor // Pepper // Qiana // Qismat // Quinn // Raxta // Riyarin // Rook // Sachi // Sahar // Siobhan // Simonea // Sita // Song // Summer // Valor // Yasmin // Yiroa

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