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A lazy Sunday afternoon, and Fox lays on her stomach, doodling idly in a sketchbook; she doesn't appear to be paying an awful lot of attention to what she's drawing, just sketching forms and loose, swoopy shapes with a pencil. There's a pile of food on the table, as there usually is when Fox comes to the Lodge; she hits up every food truck along Broad Street and then carries an impossible amount of food, somehow, to the Lodge. Today, she seems to be a little ... homesick? ... maybe? Sort of, given she was born here?
There's an AWFUL lot of food in cheerful blue and yellow bags, with 'KACHKA' on said bags and boxes in a cheerful mock-Cyrillic script. Fox is eating out of one of those bags, but not pelmeni, for once! It's something that looks kind of like a calzone?
Kay, as they enter the lodge, takes a moment to remove their black long coat, hanging it on the hook near the door, then adjusting the sleeves on their white button up shirt. Their hand runs over and through their hair, as if peeling away some concealing layer and flowers sprout into existence, little luminescent outcrop grow around the magi's eyes, a bit like make up would be applied.
Heels click onto the floor, as they join the main living room. "That smells nice." then the attention lands on Little Fox and the little sound her drawing makes. "Idle doodling or a work in progress?" they take a seat not too far from the Thyrsus
Vasha did not arrive with Fox, ironically, but meets up with her here just the same. He's dressed in what could best be described as 'East Coast Dad' clothing. Right down to the white New Balance shoes and the Wrangler jeans. It's a good look for a guy with a retreating hairline and a vodka gut, really. If you like somewhat doughy middle aged dudes, in any case. He heads over to Fox and her pile of food stuffs, settles down on the ground at her side, and pets her hair once, right down her back, as he might if she were being a Fox fox. He offers Kay an uptick of his head and a brief smile.
"Trying to think," Fox admits, dangling her feet in the air as she continues to lay on her belly, looking up at Kay with a small, squinty-eyed smile. "I'm holding someone asleep so they can be ... dealt with... and the spell's going to run out in not too long. I have been going by to make sure he's sleeping peacefully. Waste processing and food and all of that."
But, of course, something is bugging her, thus the drawing of the swoopy shapes. "Plus I think I want to learn how to do tattoos. I have ideas I want to do on myself that I can't go to a tattoo shop for, you know?"
Then Vasha arrives, and Fox brightens considerably. "New clothes?" she asks of him, eyes glittering delight, arching her back to the pet. She tucks her pencil into the wire spiral on the book, and twists around a little to hand Vasha the thing she's been eating. (Khachapuri is smoked sulguni cheese wrapped in a pillowy dough that's crunchy on the outside. Sort of like if a sauceless calzone and a crunchwrap had a delicious lovechild.) "Kachka added a bunch of new stuff this weekend," she explains, and sits up a bit to smooch him once before flopping down again.
"Yeah I imagine that would be hard to ask for like actual runic, high speech work to a Sleeper." Kay looks upward, as if trying to imagine it. "I don't know where you'd learn something like that in a mundane sense, but someone with your ability in both Life and Matter would probably have some really deep insight into it. I'm guessing, it'd at least help."
"Oh, yeah I heard there was some kind of prisoner." They comment when the sleep spell is brought up. "Hopefully they get it sorted out before the spell ends, or that might give extra work to the sentinels."
"Is Kachka the meal or the place you got it from?"
"I can place our friend into stasis until the hearing can be conducted. If I lay my effect over your own, you can drop your effect and reset it so that I can put him back into stasis, and so on. It's a fairly standard juggling act in my circles." Vasha's reassurance comes with a tight sort of smile. "Me, personally, I never much understood the sense of bringing them in alive just to hold a sham trial and execute them anyway, but I suppose it's what separates us from them. Or so my handlers always assured me."
Vasha relaxes back onto the floor alongside Fox, albeit stretched out on his back and peering up at the ceiling. And, by happenstance, the faces of the people he's chatting with from time to time. "Anyway. New clothes. I am working on another cover identity. No one suspects innocuous Ukrainian soccer dad." He chooses this moment to put on his dad sunglasses.
"That is a good idea. I do not want for him to suffer." Fox has An Ethics, after all. "I don't know about the trial part. That part... is not my job. Mostly I feel sorry for people who get so lost." A little frown.
"Oh, I know Mind, too. I just have to learn a little bit more and I can just... do it. New tattoos! The closest I have to a signifier is the stone book at the bottom of the tree on my back." Fox absently scratches at her shoulder, holding the Ukranian food out to Vasha, still. She holds the food over his face once he settles in. "I bring big piles of new Ukranian food, My heart. I got salat mimoza, Siberian pelmeni, crispy beef tongue, sour cherry Vareniki, tabaka, golubtsi, and a whole fuckton of pickled stuff. Also khachapuri, which is what I am hanging over your face for one bite."
"Yeah mind is fun like that, just download a new skills in your head and poof, you can just do it. It's kind of amazing but I don't know when I'm going to find the time to work on that one." Kay says, then, inspired by the food on display, reaches up to the flower growing on their head and, with just a small touch generate a small set of berry. "Oh, oh wow, that's new." They set it aside for a moment, as another flower grow in the place of the old one, fun using the attainment.
"All that food looks really great, is it spicy food?"
A look then toward Vasha "Inspired by Hearth for the idea or just coincidental? I mean, both are possible."
The long list of delicious foods has Vasha's mouth watering before he spots the khachapuri being dangled his way. He props himself up on his elbows and takes a careful bite, waggling his brows appreciatively at Fox in the doing. "Mmm," he begins, before trailing off into mumbled Ukrainian that is no doubt praise of the flavors involved.
"Hmm? Oh. How could I have been inspired by Hearth? That's who she really is." He gives Kay a wink that would betray what he'd just said, and then offers a slow chuckle that betrays the wink, ending with a soft laugh that leaves a knife in the chuckle, too.
"But maybe, yeah." To which one? Who knows.
He hands over his delicious cheesy food to Vasha and leans down to kiss his widow's peak delightedly before grabbing another one of the bags from the table. "Criiiiispy beef tongue, how I loooove you," Fox sings happily to her food, peeling back the bag like she's about to eat a hamburger or something. Cronch. She bites right down into it with her sharp little teeth. No more talking about the sleeping sad bad mage. Now it's time for food and hanging out.
"Wait," she offers around a mouthful of food, "When did you get a flower on your head that makes berries? That's cool! I should try having a flowering head sometime." Burp.
"Some of it is spicy but most of it is just meaty and hearty and comforting," they explain to Kay after swallowing their first bite. "Ukranian food isn't like... super spicy. A lot of it is made so that the flavors of the ingredients are really predominant, you know? If you say 'it's not spiced' people would think it's bland," and she takes in a deep breath. "But it's not, because ... it's made so the simple richness of the ingredients come through."
"I meant spicy in terms of hot and all of this sounds absolutely amazing, I'll definitely give it a look when I eat out next." They point to the food.
Kay mpds "I can use my legacy to alter my body and that of other people in my 'spore cloud' around me with vegetal aspect, so I grow flower in my hair and luminescent muschroom around my eyes just because I like how it feels, how it looks... it's the first time I thought of making the flower grow to the fruit stage, I'm not sure those berries are edible."
"Inspiration strikes in strange ways, I'm just saying I see similarities". they joke back with Vasha a bit, a small smile.
"We were the bread basket of the Soviet Union. Our meals are sturdy, strong, powerful, and good. Like our women and our hockey players. And our vodka." Vasha rolls over onto his stomach to begin rooting through the bags of food for morsels to munch. "Food to kill fascists with. And we did." Vasha plucks out a pelmeni for a munch, smiling brightly.
"Help yourself. I always bring enough for the tribe." Another bite of her beef tongue, and she wiggles happily in her seat.
"May I see one?" Fox asks curiously. You don't just take someone's berries that they grew on their head, after all. The smile she gives Kay is conspiratorial, almost. "It's delightful. I like doing stuff like that too! You should show Weaver, I'm sure they would chitter with excitement. They just love that sort of body experimentation."
Leaning over Vasha before he rolls over, she smooch smooch his head. "Hmm. And yet here you are with this scrawny American," she teases. There's pleeeenty of food to choose from. Technically she also got stuff from other food carts, but this appeared to be 'eat Ukranian' day.
Kay accepts the invitation to partake in the food and grabs the first thing that draws their attention in terms of packaging and shape. "Smells amazing." then, offers a few of the berries. The berries seems to be blackberries, which makes sense with the flower that was in Kay's hair. (Sorry, i had to google berries and flowers ^^; )
"I should definitely do that and I'm sure they'd instruct me on how to do it much better. Like what they suggested Balm do to help her sight. Which I totally didn't try back home after I got back that day."
"It's always fun to hear people talk about their own country of origin that are outside of what I've seen and experienced. Make me wish I could travel as easily as Maddy does."
"They're an interesting character once you get to know them. Being with Fox as long as I have been has made me more accustomed than most to their peculiarities. But even so, it took some getting used to. Not that I can make any personal use of their body modification suggestions, but. Even so. It's given me a lot of excellent ideas for adaptability. Taught me to think outside of my own boxes. Which I think is mostly the point, really. Don't limit yourself. Take risks. Learn and grow. It sounds deceptively simple until you try doing it." Vasha takes another bite of his food while staring down into the bag pensively.
"I have found that travel can only give you a very shallow understanding of a place. You're never really of a place until you've birthed a child there or buried a parent there. I know Ukraine. I understand Ukraine. It is my home. Everywhere else, I am just a traveler. Forever in want of a pillow." This sounds like a sad admission, but he's smiling when he says it. "It is good to know where you come from."
She contents herself singing a little song to her crunchy beef tongue in between bites. Food is delicious and it's been a long time since she had this particular food, so Fox sings the little song until Kay hands over the berries. (It is a very silly song, but Fox is sometimes a very silly person.)
Wrapping the beef tongue back up in the paper bag, she sets it on her lap and reaches both hands out, cupped, to take the berries that Kay offers. "Thank you," she offers solemnly, and whispers down to the berries as if telling them her secrets. She is not! She squints at them, sniffs them...
And then she tips her head a little bit and squints sidelong at Vasha for a moment, as if sussing out something he just said. She doesn't say anything, just makes a little Fox Thinky Face.
"Yeah, it's a lot more complicated that you assume at first. If I do too much around my eyes with plants, or if I'm not careful in how I do it, I can end up with sap instead of tears. Which is an experience I don't recommend without having matter to help you out." They scratches near their eyes.
"Yeah I suppose by that Metric I'd be from Philly." They take a bite from the food they got and goes a little quiet in contemplation for a moment, as if thoughts needed to be analyzed.
The Berries are composed of the various chemical and materials that black berries are made from, though they appear as if they aren't ripe.
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