fandomtownies | Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

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Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

Another week, and still no word from Iris. There was, however, some new soap, which Sparkle was giving a thoughtful once-over as he settled in for his shift today. It was unscented; he suspected he was going to have to touch base with Fenris over what oils or whatever were to go into different kinds. He didn't know Iris' exact recipe or anything, but he was willing to experiment, and he did know enough to figure out which bars needed, say, a handful of rose petals in them or whatever.

He left a note for Fenris to find, telling him that he'd come in over the weekend to help him figure out scents for soaps if Iris wasn't back again by then, and then busied himself today by settling in with the stuff he'd picked up for making bath bombs.

Baking soda, citric acid, epsom salt...

He was kind of getting into the swing of this one, yeah, doing his experimentation with oils now to figure out what combinations would work well in soaps for later.

All in all, it was a productive day. But so help him, if Iris never came back? He was letting Fenris run the place, dammit. He had already inherited one business that way.

[OOC: Open!]

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He got your touch base right here.

Fenris went to the store on Wednesday to talk with Sparkle. He had an idea.

An amused glance raked across the alchemical mixture he was working on. "Good morning, Sparkle. The girl who sells products to Iris, do you know how to contact her?"

Sparkle blinked up from his bath bomb progress and tilted his head at Fenris. And then glanced at the letter he'd written.

Eh, he didn't need that anymore.

"Which products? The, like, handmade stuff that isn't hers, or the shitty chemical crap that's slowly taking over that corner of the shop?"

Because commercial product was way easier to get in than lotions and shampoos that were handmade without access to Iris' lab. Sparkle had been taking care of the commercial shit easily enough. If with a pained eyeroll every time he placed an order.

Fenris made a face. "We shall not add to the Wall of Shame while Iris is gone," he said firmly, "I meant the other stuff. I can make soap readily enough and if there's a receipt for the oils or scents used it should be good enough to get us through. You have the..alchemy..covered."

It looked like it anyway.

"The lotions and shampoo, however, we are running low on and that's beyond my ken. Unless it's within yours? I thought we could order more from the local girl. It would help fill the shelves until Iris returns."

... Sure, Sparkle was going to go with alchemy. If it got him out of soap detail, he'd be fine.

"I'm, uh, really not on the up-and-up with lotions, no," he admitted. "And I don't know who it is she was going to for that. But she might have it in her list of business contacts behind the counter?"

He set aside the bath bomb stuff he was working on and started poking around back there.

"I noticed you were making soap. Haven't figured out the scents and additives yet, huh?"

"I have difficulty reading," Fenris said easily. He was no longer completely illiterate but it still took him a great deal of time. "And I am unfamiliar with the words associated with the scents."

"Soap is easy enough," he added after a moment, "A plain base can be made in large batches, then ground down to a fine powder and re-melted with scents or unguents or more fats added. Color, too. From there it can be poured into fancy molds. I found some rectangular molds. If she has fancy ones, I haven't found them yet."

"Rectangles are fine," Sparkle said, "but I can go looking for fancier ones if she's not back in another week or two."

He considered Fenris thoughtfully for a moment.

"I could colour-code the recipes," he offered. "Put purple dots for however many drips of something goes into a batch of purple recipe, or blue dots for however many blue. That sort of thing? That way you can familiarize yourself with the words without having to slow down too much to do it."

"That would be very helpful, thank you. If you know which scents are in which bar, grouping them would also be helpful," he said with something like relief.

"I found the peppermint," Fenris noted, wrinkling his nose a little. He'd been scenting the bottles and most of them had been fine but that mint was overwhelming.

Sparkle gave a little cackle at that.

"Must have been like getting punched by an icy wind to the sinuses," he replied, not quite able to bite back his smile. "Well, we'll avoid that from now on. How big are the batches you make? I can write out the dots based on the size of the batch for you, and we can go over them once together just to make sure. Maybe we can do a soap set that matches the bath bombs, sell them together, that kind of thing."

"It burned," Fenris conceded. He rubbed his nose in remembrance.

"The batches of base are large because that's just plain soap. For the scented ones, it looks like each mold will make a dozen bars. If I understand what the slots in the mold are for. It looks like that's where the knife goes to slice them," he plotted out loud. "It might be best to do the re-mills in small batches for now. They'll cool faster that way."

He brushed the hair out of his eyes. "I thought maybe some autumn scents. Apples, ginger. Oakmoss and maple. Though I understand there's a holiday coming up that has a peppermint and chocolate theme."

"Chocolate is nice, but pine would be more on point," Sparkle offered, looking thoughtful. "Which, uh, isn't to say I'm going to go denude an evergreen for its needles, but it might still be something to keep in mind. Cinnamon would be good for that one, too. And cloves. Like mulled cider smells, you know?"

He hated Christmas, fuck Christmas sideways, but he did enjoy the scents.

"I could make an oil from pine resin if Iris does not already have the scent," Fenris admitted. "I had thought of the mulling spices for the apple. To make it smell like pie."

Pumpkin pie everything could f right off. Apple pie was where it was at. Pumpkin pie should be savory, not sweet, in Fenris' estimation.

And Sparkle was just pumpkin spice ambivalent, at this point.

"Apple pie would be kind of amazing," he decided, grinning. "We can play around with it. for some of the soaps, we can put actual spices in there, depending on what we're going for."

Cloves would be divine. But slightly stabby.

Not if you used the bud instead of the stem!

"Perhaps also dried apple pieces," Fenris mused.

Gross, Fenris.

"Or another layer of soap cut into lattice to look like a pie crust."

Sparkle was considering the apple pieces.

... Maybe just the peel...?

"The pie crust thing could be neat," he settled on, because weird apple slice soap was currently being filed under 'work in progress' in his head. "We'll play around with the apple things a little until we get it right."

Maybe just chunks of other soap cut to look like apple pieces. No actual mushy fruit parts.

"If we can find a small round mold, I could make them to look like very small pies," Fenris said with an amount of distaste. He didn't understand decorative soaps but people sure seemed to like them.

Applesauce! Just applesauce!

"Oh, that should be easy enough," Sparkle mused. "I mean, like, I can hit up the kitchen section on some artsy housewares shop on the mainland for that. Round is pretty much the baseline."

He paused, considering further.

"Or maybe little cupcake papers."

Sparkle no.

"The foil ones, so people can get them off easily before using them."

Sparkle maybe.

"If they were muffin shaped, some sort of sugar scrub crystals on the top," Fenris mused.

Iris was either going to love them or murder them. One of those.

He eyed the alchemy. "You could do the same for your..stuff. Instead of circles. Make them muffin shaped."

"Sugar scrub or epsom salts or something," Sparkle agreed, looking thoughtful.

Hey, if Iris didn't like it, Iris could come back and restock.

"Muffin bath bombs would be interesting," he added. "A little harder to make look like pie, I think."

"Not like pie, no," Fenris said with a small shrug, "Muffins are easy enough if you can make them brown, or white with blue spots."

"Are these the sort of things people would buy as gifts?" he asked, uncertain how the gift holiday worked.

"Sure," Sparkle agreed, smiling faintly. "Usually for, like, coworkers or classmates, it's the sort of gift you'd give to somebody you can't think of anything more personalized for."

... Sparkle was a bit of a holiday cynic.

"I promise not to get you a bath product for the holiday," Fenris said dryly.

Maybe for Peter.

"Thanks," Sparkle replied, smiling crookedly. "I've got plenty."

Employee discount.

"I imagine you would, working here," Fenris said with a wry smile. "We aren't really bath people, although Fjord sometimes goes to the onsen."

A beat.

"Which requires clothing, even though it's a bath."

He looked speculative for a moment. Fjord.. went to the bath. They had bath bombs..

"Yeah, people get weird about dangly bits in public," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "I haven't been to the onsen yet, but I hear it's relaxing, at least."

It would be less so, once there were a half dozen bath bombs in it.

Bath bombs were relaxing! The name of some of them were things like 'peaceful breeze' and 'relaxation' and 'serenity'!

"The world here is so strange," Fenris said with a tiny scowl. "I, for one, wouldn't like to bathe in a stew full of other people."

Or ever. He wasn't fond of sitting in a tub of water, ever. Showers only.

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