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It's a lazy Friday evening at the Lodge: Fox has brought an absolute shit-ton of food from the food trucks up on Broad Street near Temple Medical. If you can think of it and it came out of a food truck, Fox probably brought it tonight. She has taken a bag of pelmeni for herself -- the little Slavic dumplings full of spiced beef cradled close to her chest. Wearing a ratty tank top and a pair of cut-off jean shorts, she curls up on the couch and shoves another dumpling into her face, biting down on it with her vixen teeth. She's grubby and content, which means she probably spent most of her day running around as some animal or another.
Mei had to take a phone call, and she doesn't know enough Mind to make calls with her brain while holding a conversation, so she stepped out for a few minutes. She's just coming in from behind the Lodge now, tucking her phone away into her leather jacket as she and her booted feet clomp back over toward Fox. "Sup, Vix?" she says as she hops over the back of the couch and plops down next to Fox, careful of the food and stray limbs and the like, before she starts scanning for what she might want to yoink for herself. "Still some left, I see?"
Barefoot but in a pair of high-waisted, loose fitting pants and a basic white tee Pema enters the Lodge, which has finally started to feel like a familiar place where she belongs rather than somewhere she's a welcome guest. Dark eyes search the room for anything of interest, and it doesn't take very long for her to find what she's looking for. What she was seeking was company and there it is, in the form of a pair of hungry mages currently hard at work stuffing their faces. Confident and clearly at ease she strides toward the familiar pair while one hand, adorned with rings of iron and brass, rises to herald her coming with a wave.
"Helloooooo, baby," Fox trills, finishing crunching down on the crispy dough, and tipping her greasy face up toward Mei, making a smoochy-face sort of expression at her. "I have so much food, it's amazing," she sighs, patting her stomach with one hand as her face remains turned up toward Mei. "Help yourself!"
This offer gets turned toward Pema as well: Fox grins her wide, sharp grin at the incoming woman. "Pemaaaaa!" she calls in greeting. Fox is in fine form today, in a rather contented mood. "Come, sit, eat food! If you wanna, anyway. It's good food. I took Zoya's credit card up to the food carts and got like... everything."
When she spots Pema coming toward them, which doesn't take long because Mei is a professional noticer of the starkly obvious, the Obrimos lifts her chin in Pema's direction to answer the wave with a little up-nod. "Hey Sister," she says, before making an expansive gesture at the spread of take-out food. "Come feast with us, if you'd like!" She stops and gives Fox the squinty face. "How did you carry all of this? You must have looked like a very manly man trying to carry all of his family's groceries in from the car in one trip."
"I'm so glad you're both here and I didn't come all the way over just to hang out by myself" responds Pema, and her resting stone face warms, like its at least been in the summer sun for a few hours. "I've been tempted to try to learn some Fate just to avoid coming by when nobody's here, but then I always realize it's actually relaxing to be here alone, too." She starts picking up take out containers, opening them to sniff and check out contents, and then takes a seat with a carton of pot stickers and some wooden chopsticks. "I don't think I've met Zoya. Someone from your cabal?" She takes one of the pot stickers and tears it open to peer in side, then nods and eats the whole thing.
She continues to make a kissy face at Mei, with big wide hopeful eyes, while talking out of the corner of her mouth toward Pema. "Vasha could teach you," Fox offers cheerfully. "He's very good at Fate." She shoves another pelmeni into her mouth. "But he's very grumpy and will pretend he doesn't like you."
"Yeah, Zoya is one of the founding members of the Firebirds, back when we lived in Russia. She's super busy, so she doesn't socialize as much as I would like but she is the best honestly." A heavy, happy sigh. "She's like a social media celebrity and she's really rich so she spoils us."
"How was your day, Pema? Anything fun?"
Mei glances over at Fox and the kissy-face and throws her hands in the air. "Fine! Cooties it is!" she pretends to grump before she leans over and smooches Fox on the lips, then she nabs a pelmeni, makes it seem for just a second like she might be as sly as a fox in a henhouse, and then offers it out toward Fox's mouth. "Here, occupy your face hole with this so my mouth is free for talking to Pema," she says.
"I think that Vasha likes almost everybody, even though he pretends he doesn't. I'm pretty sure he just spent so much time under cover that he feels naked if he's not pretending at something, so he pretends at being a grouch like it's his security blanket. Zoya is an absolute sweetheart, though. She seems to just genuinely be an anti-grouch."
Pema is briefly distracted by the deliciousness of potstickers, which is a good excuse to give a modicum of privacy to the smoochy pair as they're kissing. It's not that they probably need it, there's just something awkward about sitting there watching people kiss. "Oh. Thank you" she says. "I'm not ready to actually start studying the Ways of Passage." Her gaze grows distant and flits aside as she realigns her thinking a little. "Forces or Fate," she explains. "I'll probably get there before I get to Time or Prime, but those two are still low on my priority list." She speaks about the pairs of arcana like they belong together according to some obvious rhyme and reason. Something dawns on her then and she asks, "wait, do you mean that Zoya? The one on YouTube?"
"Oh no, cooties!" Fox laughs brilliantly, accepting her kiss and then taking the pelmeni in her sharp little teeth, biting it in half. She mumbles something that sounds something like 'face hole occupied,' kind of. If one can guess at what's been said, and all.
"I think you're right about Vasha," she mumbles, shoving another pelmeni in her face. Fox uses up a lot of calories being so... very... Fox all the time, after all. "mmm. I like Forces. I'm not cold ever anymore, and I can text message with my brain." She taps a knuckle against the side of her head.
"Yeah! And Instagram. That's our Zoya."
"I mean, I'm an Obrimos," Mei points out. "I like Forces too." She starts poking around through the lifetime supply of take-out and grabs a foil-wrapped burrito. "I have no idea what this, so I guess it's time for some Mexican roulette. I don't think I've had anything bad from that cart, so it seems like a safe bet." She gives Fox a brief look, lifts her chin a touch haughtily, and sniffs. "Of course I'm right. I get a read on people for a living, remember?"
She cracks a grin, leans back to start unwrapping the burrito, and focuses on Pema again. "Some time I'd love to have you explain that whole perspective you have on the Arcana and so on. Cultural differences intrigue me, and for all that the Children of the Tree are really different from the Diamond, there are a lot of things we look at with a really similar lens, too."
Quickly replaying a few things in her head doesn't take very long, and a connection is made. "I guess having a friendly, outgoing personality would help in her line of work. I've always been curious what influencers are like behind the scenes, but I've also never actually cared enough to try to find out." She picks up another pot sticker with her wooden chopsticks and bites off half of it. "She's really cute, though," she adds while covering her mouth with her free hand to stop anyone from seeing the food in it. At that point she pauses for long enough to chew and swallow before she goes on. "I'd be happy to explain some time, if you'd like, and don't worry about me with grouchy people. I have a thick skin."
"Vasha has an Olympic medal in grouchy," laughs Fox, shaking her head. "I think only a silver, because he continues to train and try hard for the next Olympics so he can get a gold medal next time. Gotta represent the Ukraine." Her nose wrinkles up in amusement, there, and then she sticks her tongue out at Mei when she talks about what she does for a living. "Okay, okay, fine, yes."
"Ooh, yeah. That would be good to learn." The Orphan puts down her pelmeni but only so she can grab a package of egg rolls, unwrap them, and then bite one right in half. She loves that cronch.
"Bronze. He'd have a silver, but he keeps getting distracted by cross training in squatting." Mei points out to Fox. "You can grouch and squat at the same time, of course, but multi-tasking is usually not as efficient as doing both tasks individually."
She crosses her legs and takes a bite out of her burrito, which is nearly as big as her head. She quickly realizes she has the same conundrum that Pema ran into, where she now has a mouth full of food and can't say what comes to her mind. She chews for a few moments, swallows while probably not having chewed enough, and then speaks. "So, Pema, do you have any long term aspirations within the Children of the Tree?"
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