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At this point Tsara has proven herself to be both a quick learner and a determined one, and she has been going out on her own more and more often now that she's shown that she's capable of doing so without walking out into traffic without realizing it or something. It's from one of those outings that she's returning now, and she comes through the door carrying a bag from a nearby thrift store.
She's humming to herself under her breath when she comes in, wearing more of her thrift store finds. Once she's in she closes the door behind her and then calls out, "Yael, are you here right now? I don't want to use all the locks if you aren't, since I don't want to lock you out!"
"Yeah, I'm here," comes a distracted voice from the hotel bedroom that Yael has claimed as her own. It is -- no surprise -- the 'master' bedroom of the two, the one with the much larger bathroom and footprint, since Yael was already sleeping there before Tsara flew forward through the centuries. The distant sound of the television can be heard through the half-open door. "Your shopping go okay?" She appears in the doorway, wearing a pair of loose sleep shorts which hang halfway down her thighs and a ratty old white t-shirt with lettering on it which reads CAMP RAMAH IN THE POCONOS in blue and green, with little mountains beneath the lettering, and then the same words in Hebrew below.
"Yes!" Tsara exclaims delightedly. "I found a leather jacket that fits me!" This has been her recent quest, for a couple of days. No matter how much Fate you have to help you with delightful thrift finds, if there's not something at any of the stores, it can't help guide you to the right one. She proceeds over to the couch and sets the bag down, then pulls the jacket out and holds it up in triumph. "Even if there was someone annoying at the store trying to tell me why leather is so terrible. Are people supposed to just waste all the skin of an animal after they kill it?"
She laughs that low, lazy laugh of hers, the laugh that sounds like she just got done smoking six cartons of cigarettes and then ran her vocal cords over a chees grater. "Ah, well, the people who go on and on about leather, they're usually people who don't agree with the idea of killing animals at all, for any reason. They also seem to be very confused about what their 'vegan leather' is." Yael lifts her fingers to make air quotes around the words 'vegan leather' while leaning against the doorframe. "It's just plastic, which is totally bullshit for the environment, and leather lasts forever in the good way rather than in the shitty 'it will never decay' way." (edited)
Tsara's eyes roll dramatically at people who don't agree with the idea of killing animals. "Don't they realize that the ability to tend animals and make good use of the flocks that we tended is one of the things that helped us get from where I came from to where things are now? I was reading that it was agriculture that helped allow for population growth and freeing people up to have time to do things like science and philosophy." She waves a dismissive hand. "That sounds like spoiled people who never had to deal with the realities of the world."
She slides the jacket on and turns from side to side, showing it off for Yael. There's definitely a knack on her part for making just about anything look good, but in this case it's actually very flattering on her regardless of that. "Isn't it nice?" she asks. "Also, I don't know what their problem is, since it's a thrift store find. It's not even like I was buying a new one, I was just not wasting something that already existed."
Leaning against the doorframe, Yael just sort of spreads her hands out, palm up, as if to say, man, I don't know. "I mean, I think some people probably think that they've evolved past that, but, you know. I don't think that, so I can't make the arguments for them." She pushes away from the doorframe and pads barefoot towards Tsara, absently scratching her cheek. "... yeah, it does you a few favors," she chuckles, shifting her weight and glancing up and down. She is at least trying to Look Respectfully.
"It sure does!" Tsara agrees with a laugh. "I think I'm starting to get the hang of some things in this time. The need for money all the time is a little bit annoying, though. I keep having to use Fate to put me in circumstances where I come across some, except for when I got some guy at Maddy's to hand me his hundred dollar bill, and then just kept it. Most people have jobs, right? Do you have a job?"
"Um... " Yael scratches her cheek absently. "Not anymore, no." She scratches her cheek again; she seems to do that when she's either thinking or stalling. "I had a job. Sort of. A responsibility. An occupation. For like... twenty years. And part of the deal was that like... I don't have to pay for things anymore." A pause. "Well, I mean, I pay for them, but I mean like."
She pauses. "Basically, I was responsible for some stuff for a while, and because I did that, I have a bunch of money in a trust. And if I want more money, I just, uh... I just acquire it. Like you said." Another beat. "Yeah, that sounds like some of the dudes who hang out at Maddy's. Especially some of the new guys. They come into all the magic money they can get with Fate or with a motley pooling their money or some vampire bullshit and then suddenly they have to show everyone all the money they have."
"It's kinda sweet, in its way, you know? Like a puppy that gets so excited to see you that it wets itself. They're so little, they don't know what to do with themselves, so they just make a mess." She pads over to the fridge and takes out a package of hard-boiled eggs, then goes to get a bowl before opening the package, dumping the pre-peeled eggs in the bowl, and then salting the fuck out of them. "D'ja buy anything else?" Yael asks, before shoving half the egg in her mouth in one bite.
"I've found that one thing that people always want to do around me, when they know I'm not from now," Tsara says as she's following over to the fridge, where she goes looking around herself, searching for something she wants to drink. She ends up taking out a beer, and then grabs the bottle opener magnet from the front of the fridge. "They always want to show off for me. About something. Or maybe people just like showing off anyway? Oh, have you heard of vampires, by the way? Apparently there are kind of dead people who survive by drinking other people's blood? That's new."
She takes a drink and shrugs. "Nah, just the jacket today."
A soft chuckle. "Well, people like to show off, period, and I think probably when they see you, they see someone who it'll be easier and cooler to impress." She's so classy, the way she talks with half an egg in her mouth, pushing her cheek out like a chipmunk. She stops talking, chews thoughtfully, swallows. "I mean, I can't say much, I opened a portal like five minutes after I met you and was definitely showing off at least a little bit."
A beat, and she glances out of the corner of her eyes, her low voice rasping, "the difference is, mind you, that you like when I show off."
"Yeah, I know about vampires. It ain't so bad to let them drink from you, if you want -- like, it's not for me, really, but it won't hurt you -- but drinking from them... that is very bad, and you should not allow that to happen. And if it happens and you didn't allow it, please tell me and I will light, uh, everyone responsible on fire." A big ol' grin there at the end, the sort that makes light of her statement while also making it very clear that she is not joking.
"Oh, I do, do I?" Tsara asks with a crooked grin and a delighted laugh. "I guess if you said it, then it must be true. I think the portal would probably have been more impressive if I hadn't been married to a Mastigos for as long as I was. I would like to learn that trick some day, but I've seen it before, too." The grin fades a bit when she starts talking about her life before, and the slight crinkling up of her nose serves as a reminder for just how fond of said husband she was.
"What happens if you drink from a vampire? I'd never heard of these people before, so this is one area where I'm not well equipped with knowledge."
"Have I ever lied to you? I have not. Therefore, it must be true." She shoves the last egg into her mouth all at once and chews, allowing her cheeks to puff out like a chipmunk again. After she chews and swallows, she wanders over to the sink and turns it on, rinsing the salt off of her fingers. Yael wanders around, cleaning up her trash and letting Tsara have her face journey and her feelings. "Well, that doesn't mean I wasn't showing off," she points out, turning to lean against the kitchen counter again.
"And I'll teach you someday, if you want." A roll of her shoulders.
"It's ... like a drug. You get addicted, and it can make you subservient to them. Like you'll want to do whatever they want, and you get obsessed with them. Drink from them three times and you... are their slave, basically." Beat. "And I'll set whoever did it on fucking fire."
"I don't know, maybe you have and you're just a good liar," Tsara says with a shrug of her shoulders, but she doesn't seem convinced that this is true. "Actually, I guess that I kind of assume that people are going to be lying to be me by default," she observes about herself, after giving it a second's thought. "It's so often the case that it's easier to make the assumption, and just be cautious operating on the information people give me. Maybe that's not the healthiest, but I did a lot of helping people with their problems before I came to now, and people are so often not entirely truthful about their problems, you know? They love to make things not entirely their own faults, even when they are."
She leans against the counter and frowns. "No, I don't think I'll be drinking any vampire blood," she says. "That sounds..." The words trail off. "No," she says again. "I'd rather have you teach me Mind first and Space later, if you know enough to teach me. So I can protect myself from things like that." Not the first time that she's expressed concern about being able to protect herself from mental manipulation.
She folds her arms across her stomach. "I've never lied to you. I'll take an Oath to that effect if you want me to." Yael keeps her gaze fixed on Tsara for the time being, and one of her hands comes up to rub through her frizzy curls. "I know a lot of things are my fault, and I'm never, uh, confused about that. So. There is that, I guess."
"I'm pretty good at Mind, yeah. So I can teach you that. Not as good at Space. And, uh, yeah. We'll make sure you can protect yourself as best you can." Her smile is a little awkward.
"No, no, I believe you," Tsara says with a little wave of her hand. "I'm sorry if I'm not a trusting person, though." She sighs, leans her head forward, and brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "That's a product of the things I've gone through, and people not giving me much reason to trust them. Or just making sure I did, even if I shouldn't. You've been good to me so far, though. That's been pretty rare, especially from the few people who had more power than I do."
She turns around to grab her beer off the counter. "Honestly, though, I'm pretty tired of being at other people's mercy, or dependent on other people's charity. No offense to you there, but I'm looking for ways to enable myself to be more independent."
"I understand." And that's all Yael says at first. She pauses, adding, "look, I'd... I'd like for you to trust me. But I can read between the lines of the things you've been saying to me... and I can see why you might not be able to right now."
"So... don't apologize for being hurt and needing to heal. I get it. I do."
"And like... I don't want you or anybody dependent on me. I did that part. It was terrible. I like people with me, not... depending, you know?"
"I want nothing more than to move on," Tsara says with a soft sigh. "It turns out it's not as easy as just wanting to do it, though. I hate that he gets to... I believe the phrase I heard is "live rent free in my head". Is that right?" She waves a hand like it doesn't matter, even if it does. "I don't really know where to start on trying to make myself independent, though. Beyond just using Fate to find money here or there."
She puts her hands on the counter, hefts herself up, and leans forward, resting her forearms on her knees. "I know," agrees Yael. "It's not so easy, though." Her head cants to the side, and her gaze fixes on Tsara, sympathetic. "I think probably the best way to start moving on is to start establishing your independence."
"Get you set up with paperwork, so you legally exist. Get yourself a cellphone. If you want your own place to stay, figure that out. If you want a job, we can work on that, too." The wrinkle in Yael's nose puts forward her opinion on that, but, you know. She has to offer. "I'm happy to, like, give you a solid place to land, but also I don't want you to be dependent on me, either."
Tsara comes to lean against the counter next to Yael. "I would like to have a phone, that would be very useful. I don't particularly want a job right now, but a bank account where I can put money would probably good." She hmms out a quiet, thoughtful sound. "I would like to be able to get my own place to stay, but I don't want to live alone. I think that would not actually be good for me, you know? I've never lived alone before, and never wanted to. Having a community around me has always meant life, and being exiled from the community was like a sentence of death. For all that I seem like I'm adjusting well, I'm struggling with a lot of things, and I think that would be bad for me."
"Then we'll get you a phone, and a legal identity." Yael shifts her shoulders and bumps hers against Tsara's companionably. "You should spend some time at the Lodge. I'm pretty sure that we could set you up with a place to crash there, if and when you want to, and I think spending time with everybody on the weekend when they're doing communal meals and everything would be good for you. Me, I like being able to go and engage and then come back to a place which is quieter and I have my own space. Best of both worlds."
One hand rises, absently scratches at her cheek. "What are you struggling with most, you think? Anything I can help with?"
Tsara leans into the shoulder when it bumps against hers. "Do you think they'd be okay with me staying there?" she asks. "I'm not a member of the Order or anything." Yet. "It would be nice to have a community of people to spend time with. I'm used to communal meals, and people telling stories. That's one of the things I'm struggling with. Feeling isolated. It's so strange and uncomfortable to be around so many people and have them all be unfamiliar and unknown. It makes me really uneasy. There are so many other things. I'm really good at putting a good face on and making it seem like I'm happily going with the flow, but I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water. I'm sure I'll get used to things eventually."
When she leans in, Yael leans back against her, keeping the contact. "I do," she agrees. "Well, yes, but I am, and you're my apprentice. By the Lex, until you're released, you're legally like... me?" A vague wave of one hand. It's a weird thing to say, and the gesture acknowledges it. Her smile shifts a little bit, and she nods her head, pushing her frizzy curls out of her face absently. "You're right, though, humans are very isolated from each other now, and I'm sure it's harder if you're not... if you didn't grow up that way."
So much is the time, Tsara takes done pleasure in teasing Yael with her own forbidden status as an apprentice. Right now the contact between them doesn't have that damned quality. It's just a comfort. A few moments feeling less isolated.
"We were a comparatively tiny nomadic tribe," she says. "We all knew each other well, saw each other every day, knew what was going on in each other's lives. I'm sure it can be nice to have some real privacy sometimes, but right now I feel... irrelevant, I guess? Small and unimportant to basically everyone." She chuffs a soft laugh. "I never realized how important it was for me to feel important until I wasn't."
She thumps her head to the side, quiet and companionable. There's no tension in this moment - just humans being humans near each other. It's terrible to be lonely.
"You'll be plenty important to people here. Cities are big, and it can feel a little bit like suddenly being at sea, but... the supernatural community of Philly, Shackamaxon and the Martyr's Tree and all that? It's much smaller than you think." One arm loops comfortingly around Tsara's shoulder. "Don't worry. People will be all up in your business in no time at all."
"I hope so," Tsara says. She breathes out something that's almost a sigh, and under Yael's arm her shoulders shake, briefly, for a moment, before she breathes back in, even though her face stays neutral, and then she changes the topic. "What's involved in getting a proper identity set for myself?"
Her arm stays looped around Tsara's shoulder. "Well, I was about to say that the people that I know for getting new documents are in the Freehold," she admits. "But actually... we should go for a walk. Because if I go for a walk... I can find what we need."
A vague wave of her hand. "I'm a Person of the Hour. We do that."
"Alright," Tsara says with a laugh. "This sounds familiar, at least. I go for a lot of walks looking for what I want. That's how I get most of my money already, I just didn't know that was something we could find laying around." She laughs. "I suppose I should have just decided to leave it to Fate as usual. Shall we?"
"Well, it is, if you know the right way to look, which it sounds like you do. I just happen to be... extremely good at it, because of my Legacy." Tightening her arm around Tsara's shoulders, she kisses the top of her head, then clears her throat and hops down from the counter. "Gimme a second to put on some pants and a bra and all that, and we can go make that happen." And off to her room she goes.
Tsara draws in a deep breath when she's pulled tighter for a second, then lets it out in a calming sigh. "Bras!" she ends up exclaiming when Yael mentions putting one on. "I can't entirely decide if I love them or hate them." She pushes away from the counter and follows after Yael, but stops outside the door. "They're not the most comfortable things in the world, but they sure do a good job of keeping everything in place, too. And making my tits look at least as good as they did when I first got them."
When she shouts "bras!" Yael reflexively answers "I'm putting one on!" and then there's a pause. "Oh. Yeah, no, it takes a while to figure out which ones you like best. I'm a lazy tomboy, so I've been wearing sports bras and pretty much only sports bras since I got boobs. Doubly so since I stopped pretending I was interested in men. Not that most people who knew me were at all confused." Her words are occasionally muffled, and there's the occasional sound of a drawer opening or closing. Eventually, she opens the door wide enough to be seen. "I'll take your word for it on the last bit."
A black v-neck tee with the words "basic butch" scrawled across the front in blue, jeans, and socks -- she steps back into her bathroom, grabbing a wide-toothed comb so she can attempt to make her hair vaguely presentable. Time to drag the comb through her curls and force them into a braid.
"Keeping things snugly in place sure does have its advantages. I can see the advantages, but I don't prefer them for me," Tsara says somewhat unenthusiastically. "It's still so weird that I just know English, even a lot of words for ideas I have no reason to be familiar with. 'Tomboy', for instance." She keeps talking from outside the door. "That wasn't a thing, really, where I grew up. Why do I know what it means? Why do I not know what some other things are? Who knows! Thank you, Supernal Whatever. But I don't know what 'Basic Butch' is supposed to mean."
She does lean a little to watch Yael's butt as Yael's heading away again for the bathroom, but doesn't do anything to make it apparent that she'd been doing so.
"Well, I do like them for when I'm chasing sheep around on the farm, and shit like that," Yael offers, working a snarl out of her hair with the comb and then adeptly parting her hair into three chunks, rapidly braiding back behind her head as if she's been doing it all her life. "But I generally don't bother if I'm just hanging around at home or at the Lodge or whatever." She grabs a washcloth, washes her face, then puts lotion on it. And that's it, that's the whole makeup/skin-care routine. "No? There weren't girls who were too into things intended for boys or whatever?"
"Basic Butch is a play on words," she explains, grabbing her wallet and keys off of the desk in her room and heading out to put on her boots before holding the door so they can head out for the Great Wander of Fate. "'Basic bitch' is a kinda-misogynistic term used to refer to women who have predictable or unoriginal styles, interests or behaviors, according to the people doing the assessment. For white women, you know, it's a lot of 'you drink this kind of wine, you have this sort of name, maybe you like this kind of coffee.' It's very shallow shit."
"But then, there's butches and femmes in the lesbian community. It's a whole cultural thing, right? And this is like, the very basic version of it, but a butch tends to be masculine of center, while a femme tends to be feminine of center. And so, wearing a shirt which declares myself a basic butch is a self-deprecating joke and also a reclaiming, you know? Kinda... mmm. I tend to be the kinda person who will use the slur or the nasty term for myself because it means that I can't be hurt with it. And also, like, what the fuck, if the worst thing you have to say about me is that I'm a dyke, well, I'm proud of that, actually, so." No, she didn't notice the butt-looking. Maybe she's purposefully not noticing.
Tsara wobbles her hand in a "sorta" gesture. "There were, but for a lot of things we didn't have as clear a dividing line. People did what needed doing, much of the time, with less worry about what their gender was. That's not to say things didn't end up being divided up, and often times along gender lines, but I think we worried a lot less about it when people crossed over to do other things, so we just didn't really have a word for it. I don't know. It's not something I've spent a lot of time thinking about."
Once Yael's ready to go out she joins, walking comfortably along with Yael and looking much more adapted to the modern world than she was when she first arrived. She isn't looking around wide-eyed and amazed at everything, instead projecting confidence and self-assurance. "That explanation had a whole lot more words that are among those I never had in my vocabulary in any language before," she says with a laugh. "A lot like 'tomboy'. People existed who fit those descriptions, we just didn't have the words for it that you do. It means I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking about what ones actually apply to me."
"I think I really envy that," Yael admits. "I think when things become easier, or maybe just more disconnected, when things are done for us to some extent, then we end up, like... " a small handwave. She holds the door, and the pair meander out, down the hotel hallway, through the lobby, past the automated doors, and out into the city beyond. Just in that sentence there are like twenty concepts which are new to Tsara in the past two weeks, and yet, here she is, the two of them walking along together.
Yael doesn't seem to be paying much attention to where she's going -- she's just... being present, here, with Tsara, in that moment. "Yeah. It might take a while to figure that out. It's interesting the way the human brain works. Once you know there are words for things, it becomes hard to remember how it was when you didn't know there were words."
"People seem to end up specializing a lot more," Tsara says as the two walk along, with her paying no more attention to where they're going than Yael is. The two are both happy to leave things to Fate. "Now, I mean. Apparently some people don't even really know how to cook? That seems absolutely astonishing to me. That people can get by without having to know how to provide some of the very basic functions of their own life. Clothing themselves, feeding themselves, things like that. Large swathes of people being able to get through their entire lives never knowing how to do those kinds of things."
"Yeah, that's true," Yael agrees on both parts. "The not cooking for ourselves is actually pretty old. Pretty much as soon as people started living in one place, in larger groups, there were people who didn't cook. I didn't know that until like... earlier this year, but apparently Rome had takeaway thousands of years ago. People would drive up in their carts, get handed their food, and then drive off."
"We didn't have them in, like, modern life, not quite like that, until less than a hundred years ago, so it's kind of funny to me to think about all of the things we've developed over and over again. Like nature keeps making crabs, we keep inventing the drive-through." A vague shrug. "I mean, I can cook but I'm not that good at it."
"We certainly had times where a few people would do the cooking for a larger group, but there were also reasons for people to know how to feed themselves, and it wasn't really a topic that people remained completely ignorant of even if they didn't do much of it on their own, you know?" Tsara shrugs. "I can see why it would be advantageous to have things people just don't have to spend their time learning. It makes sense. People generally only have so many hours in the day to learn new skills and practice them enough to get good at them, right? It leaves people more time to get good at things like art."
A vague wave of her hand, and she turns down a side street, tipping her face up towards the cold air. "You'd think that would be the case, wouldn't you? And to a certain extent, it is true. But the problem is that a lot of us are sort of... stuck." Yael's cheeks puff out. "A very few people make decisions which keep a lot of people struggling to survive. Burned out. Not able to do anything more than work a job that doesn't pay enough, trying to feed themselves and their kids. It's obscene, you know? We have all of this... and still, children starve."
"Oh, right, that capitalism nonsense," Tsara says with a dramatic roll of the eyes. "There's always some assholes who think they need to be on top, at the expense of everyone else, aren't there? It is obscene, I agree. I'm not saying children didn't starve in my day too, when things went bad, but we also didn't have so many of the same advantages. We didn't even have sunglasses."
Her laughter is a raspy, croaky sort of thing, like if a frog got a washboard stuck in its throat. "Yes, capitalism nonsense," agrees Yael. "It's probably going to destroy human life on the planet within the next fifty years, unless we're really fucking lucky and make changes really fucking fast." A heavy sigh. "Otherwise, you know, it might turn into a post-apocalypse situation, in which case, you will be a very handy person to know." Her shoulder bumps against Tsara's, and she stops at a corner, tips her head to the side, and takes in a deep breath. The pause -- with her eyes half-lidding -- looks like she's listening to the city for a moment, or to something only she can hear, before she steps off the curb of the sidewalk with her eyes closed, wandering into traffic.
She's fine, of course, and it might not be the first time that Tsara has seen someone do something very risky while using something Fate-like, but the drivers who come far too close to her for their own pleasure, as marked by the blare of their horns. "Sunglasses are pretty great!" she offers, turning around to back across the road with her eyes closed. Goddamned Acanthus.
"Did y'all have goats or sheep? And did you use dogs to herd them?" Subject change?
"We'd better start getting lucky, then," Tsara says with a straight face but a grin that can be heard in the tone of her voice, can't it? Or maybe not? She's expert at walking that line. "I plan to still be around in fifty years, and I'd prefer to be around both alive and human."
She follows Yael into traffic like she's unaware of how dangerous it is, missing the cars and letting Fate handle things for her the whole time, in stark contrast to her previous statement about wanting to still be alive in fifty years.
"We had sheep and goats, and dogs," Tsara confirms as they exit the street and are back on the sidewalks.
She waggles her eyebrows, a rare lean into overt flirtatiousness, as she's walking backwards across the street. She spins on her heel. "Yeah, that's the plan, so here's hopin'!"
Yael tucks her hands into her pockets as they continue on. "So, there's a long story behind this, but... I was responsible for my great-aunt's farm for most of my life. A family responsibility. And I need to start going back out there soon -- I kinda hadn't been, see, because I didn't want to be somewhere that I couldn't get back quickly in case something happened until you were, like, more settled? But all things considered you've been doing great, so, for one, and for two, I have to go back out and check in on Lev. He's my cousin, but I basically raised him."
"You're welcome to come out to the farm with me and meet everybody. Probably you should."
"Sure!" With surprisingly on-trend style for someone who only first laid eyes on modern fashion a short time ago, Tsara doesn't currently look like the kind of person who would get her hands dirty, let alone be interested in hanging out on a farm, but she's from a pastoral culture. That kind of thing is completely the norm for her. "The farm isn't in the city, is it? It would be nice to have a break from the crowded feeling of being in the city here, actually. It's a bit odd being around so many strangers all the time." She slips her hands into her coat pockets and smiles at Yael. "What kind of farm is it?"
Yael's smile breaks across her face like a sunrise. She smiles easily, but it's often fleeting and more subtle, and this is a broad, lingering thing. "Nah, it's not in the city. It's up in Bucks County, about... mmm. Depends on traffic, but like half an hour or so north of here by car?" Another thing to get used to, people talking about distances in terms of travel time by a vehicle whose relative speed isn't familiar yet. "It's definitely not crowded. It's a sheep farm, mostly. We provide yarn for small-batch dyers, and we do like... demonstration days and all. Sheep, chicken, goats, dogs, and right now we have one dairy cow that we took in and a couple of horses that we got from a rescue situation where the owners weren't treating them well. Mostly it's the sheep and dogs, and everything else kinda... happened."
"It was my great-aunt's, and there's a whole story with it, but like... yeah. I'll take you up. You should meet Lev. His, uh, his mom died when he was born, and I was fifteen, and so me and my parents kinda raised him. He's a good kid."
"Half an hour," Tsara mutters, like the change in perception of being able to get somewhere significantly far away in half an hour is something she's still not used to. "That sounds wonderful, and I'd love to see it. How old is Lev now? I don't think I know what chickens are, though, so that will be interesting to see! If my unanticipated knowledge of English is right, cows are like a variety of aurochs, right?"
She smiles lopsidedly. "He's like... 21 now? Yeah. 21." She had to think about it for a moment, remembering what time of year it is and when Lev was born. Pausing at a corner, she takes another deep breath and then continues on in the same direction. "Chickens... " A pause. "Shit. You... are... before chickens. Wow. Okay. Uh. Chickens are a domesticated bird which we keep for their eggs and their meat. Ours are laying hens -- the females -- and we have one rooster. Generally you keep them for eggs until they're too old, and then they're Shabbat dinner." A pause. "Yeah. Yeah, cows are a variety of aurochs, I think? Bovines. We keep 'em for milk and meat. Ours are always dairy cows."
"Oh," Tsara says with a little surprise to Lev's age, like for some reason she was expecting something different. It also doesn't seem to be terribly important, and just immediately moves on. "You keep birds? Interesting. How do you keep them from flying away? Being able to get eggs regularly would sure be useful, but it seems like convincing the birds not to go anywhere would be hard, and then they'd be laying their eggs all over, and... I wonder how people solved those problems." She looks thoughtful. "I imagine you get a lot more milk from cows than from goats and sheep, given their size."
"I was fifteen when his mom died," Yael explains, and then she moves on from there, indeed. Her hands push down in her pockets. "Well." She pauses. "They can't really fly very far anymore. We bred the chickens for the ones that had bigger body mass, so they were better to eat, and for not... flying very far." She clears her throat. "But also, like, we built shelters for them, henhouses, which are difficult -- as difficult as we can make it -- for predators like foxes and raccoons and all to get into, so they and their eggs don't get eaten." A beat. "Yeah, and the milk tastes different. A little sweeter?"
"Oh, hmm." Tsara thinks about all that, taking it in and processing it. Yael has probably been able to get the impression, over time, that Tsara has a particularly sharp mind that's belied by her typical behavior, like making it seem like she's not as clever as she is became a defense mechanism at some point, or she's found it useful to get people to underestimate her. The speed with which she's been able to adapt to the modern world is definitely a big clue, though. "That might explain why we hadn't started doing it, since moving a shelter around when we don't stay in one place is a challenge." Then she laughs. "Everything these days seems to be sweeter. So many things are so sweet here."
As the wandering takes them pats a used book store she pauses a moment to peer in the windows before moving on. "I still haven't gotten over how much stuff there is. The amount of work that must go into making all the things everywhere is staggering. Even with machines to do a lot of the work."
She certainly talks to Tsara like she's rather bright and not really fooled by the defense mechanism in question. "Yeah, I mean, you can keep them without a big shelter, but it's definitely the kind of thing where they're not as easy to carry around or travel with as like... a goat. Because a goat or a cow will just kinda chill with you, chickens, probably more of a pain in the ass to carry around."
A sidelong glance. "Everything?" Yael offers drily.
"Mmm," she agrees. "There is a lot of stuff. It's not always bad, I like a lot of the stuff that exists now, but a lot of stuff just exists because capitalism means that we need to like, make things constantly, and buy things constantly, because that's what our economy is set up for, you know?" Her toe catches on something in the ice, and she frowns, pausing to kick at it again. A wallet, frozen solid into the ice, comes loose, and Yael bends down to pick it up, sorting through it, looking for contact information.
The wallet contains -- at first count -- six different driver's licenses with six different names. "Well, would you look at that," Yael laughs, but in a satisfied fashion, rather than a surprised one. This is what's supposed to happen, after all.
"Not everything," Tsara says with an airy wave of her hand. "Sweet things are everywhere, though. So much of it is way too sweet for my taste. It's not my thing." There's a sidelong look at Yael before she adds, "even if I'm willing to make an occasional exception."
She slides closer then, to look over Yael's shoulders at the drivers licenses. "Huh. Does that mean this wallet belonged to six different people. A communal wallet?" Clearly that's not the correct answers, and she knows it. "What a strange coincidence that we happened to find this. I'm sure those people would be really happy to get it back." Oh, yeah, sure. That's totally what they're going to do with it.
Yael snorts a little when Tsara says she's willing to make the occasional exception, and there's a slight glance out of the corner of her eyes. "Yeah, no, clearly not," she laughs in response to the actual question.
"But it surely looks like someone who might be able to help us with your present issue." She continues to sort through the wallet until she comes out with a business card for a Denny's, of all things, with a phone number scribbled on the back. With the self-assuredness of an Acanthus, she smiles lopsidedly. "And this... is the number." Like a magician producing the correct card from within a deck.
"How does this kind of thing work?" Tsara asks as she keeps watching Yael go through the wallet. "Do we just call the number and say, 'hi, we see that you might be able to tell us where to get identification documents. Please do that.'?" She laughs like she doesn't think that's likely the correct answer, but she also doesn't seem like she's worried they won't be able to make things happen, either. Acanthus confidence. The ability to just walk uncaring into an unknown situation and have a reasonable confidence it will all turn out fine.
"Usually, I abuse Fate to say the right thing when people pick up the phone," laughs Yael lazily. "Or rather, I ask Fate nicely." She flashes a little smile aside at Tsara. "But let's go get some food first."
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