|
Much like many breeds of dogs that were bred for working, Tsara has been a lot less of a force of chaos and trouble once she found a job for herself. Instead, she has been more than a little bit obsessive about her writing.
Even after she turned over all the work for her first book, and there was nothing left to do but wait for the whole process to finish and publishing to happen, she was on to the next one. It was the kind of thing that could very well have been a wild idea she had for a moment, only to be discarded when the next thing came along, but it turns out that she's had a lot of things churning around in her mind for much of her life, and she just never had the right outlet for them.
But it takes a certain degree of magical ability to be endlessly obsessive, and Tsara is not yet practiced enough to have reached that threshold. Breaks are still necessary, which is why she's now pushing herself back from the table with Yael's computer sitting on it and lets out a long, low groan as she stretches her arms above her head and leans back in her chair.
"Fuck, I'm hungry," she breathes out to herself when she finishes stretching.
The thing about being a Person of the Hour is that you are literally the kind of wizard that Gandalf knows -- never late nor early, but arriving precisely when she means to, and, in this case, precisely when necessary.
There's the beep-click of the hotel room's electronic lock, followed by the door elbowed open by Yael, carrying a brown paper bags in both hands. Glass bottles clink together inside one, and a rich, meaty smell fills the room. "Trouble?" calls Yael, her sunglasses pushed up to the top of her head and holding her hair back from her face. "I stopped at the food carts on Broad on my way back, the gyro place was open. You hungry?" She steps out of the way of the door and its weight pulls it closed again, clicking shut as she kicks off her flip flops and goes to set the bags down on the counter.
Acanthus!
Tsara long since stopped being surprised by random acts of serendipity, so Yael's arrival with food right when Tsara says she's hungry just seems like the way the world should work, at this point. "Yes!" she answers, already hopping up from the chair. "Yes, very much so. I think I might have missed a meal or two, and I could go for something that has been spinning around all day."
When the smell actually hits her nose she groans again, and her tummy joins in with a rumble.
Laughter rattles out of the younger Acanthus, and she starts unpacking the bags. "I figured a celebratory meal might be in order, too, given you're not, you know... an apprentice anymore," Yael agrees. "You've been working really hard on your draft, and you need to fuel the machine." She tosses a smile aside to Tsara, opening the bags and starting to unload them.
Gyros wrapped in silver foil -- four of them, two dressed up according to Tsara's previously-stated preferences, two dressed up to Yael's. She sets the two marked with large markered Xs over in front of Tsara's usual seat, followed by glass bottle Mexican Cokes from the second bag. "Gonna put the ice cream in the freezer," she adds, picking up the box of mochi from the mochi cart and stashing it in the freezer.
"Yes, I can finally be trusted not to accidentally turn my outside into my inside with Space magic or something," Tsara says as she takes a seat and reaches for the Cokes. She uses the corner of the counter to pop the top off of one, then the other, and puts the second down in front of Yael's seat.
"At least not by accident," she adds. She takes a sip of the Coke and then asks, while setting it down, "what kind of ice cream did you get?"
She snorts then. "I'm pretty sure I could trust you not to do that from the start. You've had a reflexive and intuitive understanding of magic basically since I met you, which, you know," a vague gesture with one hand as she settles into her seat, opens her Coke, and takes a bite of her gyro after unwrapping the foil.
"Yeah, it would definitely be on purpose," Yael agrees wryly. "I got strawberry, mango, green tea, blackberry, rose, and honeysuckle. There's two of each flavor."
"That's because of my genius," Tsara says with a casual shrug but an impish smile. "That, and the fact that I spent as long as I did as a Sleepwalker married to a mage, so I had a decent foundation of knowledge to build on. Some of it wrong, unfortunately, but what can you do?"
She picks up the gyro, peels back some foil, and turns it slightly, and her head slightly in the opposite direction, like she's figuring out the best angle to get the massive sandwich into her mouth from. "For a second I thought you were saying one thing of ice cream full of all those flavors, which didn't sound so good."
Finally she just takes a big bite of the food without any concern for whether it drips onto the counter as she leans over it.
"What you can do," she answers, wiping a bit of tzatziki sauce from the corner of her mouth, "is learn better than that twerp taught you." Yael's nose wrinkles up.
"No, ew, no. I got like a sampler pack. Mochi ice cream are these little balls of ice cream with rice flour around them in this... look, you'll have one, you'll think it's good probably, it's easier than explaining it." Chomp. Big bites. "Speaking of that mage." She chews reflectively. "When were you gonna tell me you brought someone's soulstone with you?"
"I though you were going to ask me to do something challenging," Tsara says with a slight roll of her eyes, There's tzaziki sauce on her upper lip, but she doesn't seem to be aware of it, and she goes in for another bite anyway, so if she wiped it off she'd probably just end up with more.
After that bite she puts the gyro down and looks around for a napkin, or a paper towel. "The next time I actually thought about it when you were around, I guess," she says after giving the question some brief thought. "I wasn't trying to keep it secret. You probably knew what it was long before I did, since I found out what a soulstone is after you had already seen it. I just don't think about it much. Or him as much as I used to. I should probably decide what I want to do with the thing."
She snickers, setting down her gyro carefully on a paper napkin. "I didn't say it was difficult, you just said 'what can you do,' and I answered you," Yael points out mildly. She shifts her weight, folding one foot underneath her jean-shorts-clad butt, and leans her elbow on the counter.
"I didn't think you were hiding it from me," she clarifies. "I just wanted to know when you'd bring it up. It's sort of a ... thing... to be carrying around, yeah."
Tsara's posture relaxes in a way that betrays that she'd been tensed up a bit, even if she hid it well. "Sorry. I... am still too used to that kind of question using being an allegation." She wipes her hands off on a napkin and then picks up her drink, though she only spins it slowly in her hands while looking at the label without really seeing it. "I know that's not the way you meant it, but I'm still working on un-learning the need to defend my actions."
She looks up at Yael. "I haven't decided what would be the best thing to do with it. I can't exactly return it, even if I want to, so it feels like the best thing to do would be to make use of it, but the idea makes me feel uncomfortable. I also have this feeling like my having it is important. During my Awakening, for some reason I thought it was critically important that I bring it with me."
"I know." The way that Yael looks at Tsara gets a little gentler somehow; the corners of her eyes and mouth soften, and she goes quiet, eating while Tsara talks. "Yeah, so. There was some stuff I didn't want to talk to you about until you were released, but like, before you started talking to a lot of other people about where you're from, and when you're from."
She scratches her cheek absently. "I mean. So." This is a look that Yael gets on her face sometimes when she's trying to figure out where to start. Tsara has seen this expression before. "You remember when I explained the Sundering." It's not a question; she knows Tsara will remember. "And you know how I taught you about lacunas and temporal sympathy?" A beat. "So there's a universal lacuna at the time of the Sundering. No one, and nothing, has temporal sympathy to before the Sundering."
"Except for you. And that. And the things you brought with you."
"Yes, yes, I know that I'm very special," Tsara says with a faint smile. She brings the bottle to her lips, takes a drink, then puts it down and reaches for the gyro again.
"It seems like being the only person we know of who has any sympathetic ties to before the Sundering is something that could be advantageous." Her thoughtful look should, perhaps, make Yael a bit nervous. "I wonder what someone from the Mysterium would trade me for a chance to make use of that sympathy, even briefly. But that's probably best kept close to my chest..." she stops to think about the phrase and looks down at her boobs, then after a moment shakes her head and moves on. "It might be good to be cautious about who I reveal that information to, basically."
"Trouble." Yael puts down the gyro and leans her forearms on the table. "You are very special, that's true, but like."
"You're impossible. And I mean that in all of the best ways. You exist in a way that breaks one of the things that people have considered a cardinal rule of the universe." She picks up her soda, takes a sip of it. Her eyebrows rise as Tsara goes on. "Yeah, probably a lot. But also, once that information gets out in the world, it might not be about what people will trade you."
She stares off into the near distance. "I'm just thinking about what one of the Exarchs would do to have access to someone like you, and I don't like that."
But then Tsara looks down at her boobs, and Yael blinks several times, coughing around another mouthful of soda.
"I understand what you're saying," Tsara says in a calming tone.
"I don't need them kidnapping me, or worse. I do suppose one question we might want to answer is whether I, or the things I brought with me, actually still maintain that Temporal Sympathy or not," she leans back a little and cups her right tit under her hand and jiggles it a little, super casually, without any break in what she's saying, "but for matters of my safety it might not entirely matter. Someone who finds out when I'm from might not know one way or the other, and do something regrettable regardless."
Yael starts to answer, and then when Tsara tit-jiggles, one corner of her mouth curls up and her eyebrows rise. "Someone's feeling herself now that she's no longer an Apprentice," she deadpans. Leaning back, she props an elbow on the countertop, picks up her gyro, takes a bite, and casually, but at great length, licks tzatziki sauce out of the webbing between her forefinger and second finger when some spills out. Completely fixed expression, maximum eye contact.
"So we're agreed. We limit who knows. Aggressively."
"I promise you that I was feeling myself frequently the whole time I was an Apprentice," Tsara says with a sparkle of laughter. "I just wasn't doing it in front of you, in a rare display of tact." All the while her eyes watch Yael and the tzatziki sauce.
Eventually she remembers they were having a conversation and says, "how aggressively are we talking, here? Do we need to backtrack and figure out everyone who knows, and make sure they don't talk?"
Still leaning back, she reaches out and picks one piece of meat out of her sandwich, then pops it in her mouth.
That corner of Yael's mouth curls up just a little bit more, and she takes a swallow of her soda. "Exceedingly rare," she replies, watching Tsara with amusement riming the edges of her expression.
"If you want something, you only gotta ask for it, Trouble."
And then she pauses, circling back to the actual conversation. "I don't know. It might be a good idea to go talk to Peacekeeper or Weaver and get their advice. They know, right, but I don't know if people have like... put together all of the implications."
"Oh, there are so many things that I want, and I can always come up with more," Tsara says as her gaze flits down from Yael's eyes to the curling corner of her lips, then back up. "Maybe I'm already getting one or more of them. Maybe part of the fun is the process, and not just reaching the goal."
She picks a piece of onion out of the gyro and pops it into her mouth, which only requires a moment to chew as she thinks.
"I would suspect they've put things together, and are probably keeping an eye on the situation rather than getting involved where they haven't been invited. I think they might both be polite enough for that. To treat us like adults, instead of Acanthus."
She shakes her head in amusement, letting the first thread drop, but with a lopsided smile as a sort of coda on it. "As you say," Yael agrees, picking up her gyro again. Flirting is great, but also, she's fucking starved. This time it's much less sexy eating and much more big bites of pita, lettuce, lamb, cheese, tzatziki sauce and tomatoes. Definitely not kosher, but Yael doesn't seem to care at the moment. Her eyes half-lid, because the food is good and she is hungry.
"Ha ha ha," she adds when it comes to 'adults instead of Acanthus.' "I think that's probably the case, but. Yeah. We should talk to them."
Tsara, too, is quite hungry, and spends a few moments digging into her food. She doesn't have a complete lack of table manners, but from her first day in her new timeframe she hasn't seemed to be concerned with things like eating daintily, or even taking great caution in avoiding getting food on her. She eats like she enjoys it, and plans to keep enjoying it, and is aware that she can just wipe her face and hands off when she's done. No pretenses.
Wiping her fingers off, at least, happens after she takes a few more bites and puts the sandwich back down. "I'm always happy to talk to them, so no objections from me," she says. "They're good people, and I'd spend time with them even if I didn't have anything important to discuss."
There's a nod in response. No need to labor over topics -- once they're done, Yael moves on. Such is conversation with a Child of the Hour. We have only so many Nows before Eternity, after all.
"Speaking of talking." And here, ironically, Yael stops for a minute. Not to eat, per se, though she does take another bite of her gyro and set it down, chewing thoughtfully. "We should go out to the farm. Lev's forgetting to eat, because he's out there by himself. I mean, I don't mean we should necessarily stay out there, but we need to at least visit. You need to meet him, and the dogs."
Tsara seems to be just as easy with putting the topic aside once what needs saying has been said, but since she's almost certainly a future Person of the Hour herself, that probably makes sense.
"Sure!" she says enthusiastically, suggesting this will not be a hard sell in the slightest. "I've been looking forward to meeting Lev and to seeing the farm. I love being in the city, but I think the farm will be good for me too, and the dogs. It will be a quiet place to work on writing, and it's important to you." She picks up the gyro again and returns to eating, while humming happily to herself.
She finishes up her gyro and starts cleaning up. "It is. My relationship with Lev is-- " Yael pauses there, halfway across the floor to where the tiny hotel trash can hides in the too-small hotel kitchenette cupboards. It's nice having someone else clean the room every few days and all, but everything is just kind of strange and small. "No. My relationship with Lev is as relatively normal as it can be, you know, under the circumstances. It's the circumstances which are weird. He's a good kid." He is, for all intents and purposes, her kid, after all. "You'll like him, I think."
She hopes.
"I'm sure I will!" Tsara agrees with an enthsuastic nod. "Genuinely. You know me, I like most people, but I can read a bit about him from the way you feel about him, and that makes me pretty confident." Tsara is very good at reading people, and then understanding what makes them tick. It was a big part of why her book was so well received.
She takes one more bite of the gyro, then wraps it up so that she can put the rest in the fridge for later. Then she wipes her face, starts cleaning the space around her, and so on.
"Yeah. Lev is very... " Yael stops for a minute, looking for the words. "Lev gets along with dogs and sheep better than people. I think because he understands them better. He's been around them his whole life." She starts tidying up after lunch. "He started helping me with the sheep when he was... oh. A toddler." A little shrug.
"Don't be surprised if he doesn't know what to say. A lot is going on, between this and, like. Zoey coming back."
With her trash gathered up, Tsara gets up to toss it all in the trash and then puts the rest of her sandwich into the fridge while she listens to Yael. "That's all fine," she says amicably. "I'm actually looking forward to talking with him about the differences between the sheep he has and what we had in our herds, how techniques for their care are different. Remember, I was a shepherd myself," she points out with a warm smile. "If he doesn't know what to say, he can just talk about sheep. I'll be glad to listen."
She goes over to the sink to wash her hands. "Do you think I'll meet Zoey, too? I don't think I've actually met any of the Changelings yet. At least when I knew that's what they were."
She leans against the counter the way that she often does when she's thinking about stuff. "Good. He probably will, or he might just sort of stand in awkward silence and look at the sheep." That's said affectionately, and Yael shrugs her shoulders. "I don't see how you wouldn't, you know? The farm... I mean. It was Zoey's, and my great-aunt's. I don't know if she'll want to live there, but... she'll definitely be there."
"The fae turned her into a border collie, so... don't throw a ball around her." This is said as a sort of 'heads-up' tone.
As soon as she's done cleaning up, Tsara moves to lean against the counter across from Yael and watches her talk, wearing a contented smile the whole time. There's always something about the way that Tsara smiles that gives the impression that she's up to some kind of mischief, even if just in her own head, and now is no different.
"Silence can be fine too," she says. "I appreciate the warning about Zoey and balls, I'll keep it in mind. I do look forward to meeting her too, though. I'm used to being surrounded by my community most of the time, and having to make an effort to get time alone if I really want it. Having more people around sounds nice to me."
|