fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers, Saturday

It was late afternoon when everyone got back from the trip, which Tisarwat figured would be enough time to still swing by the flower shop after getting her things settled back in her room. The strange weather almost had her wishing she hadn't spent what little money she had on tea so that she could invest in an umbrella, but at least this rain wasn't nearly as gross as the gelatin from a few weeks back, even if the little triangular pieces were hard enough to hurt if they struck you in just the right way, and she'd probably be picking them out of her hair for days now.

"Hello, Seivarden," she said, as she hurried into the shop, and she would have continued on to say that they were back from the trip (obviously) and that she'd brought tea, if it weren't for the sign in the window catching her eye. "You have biting plants now?"

"Tisarwat, welcome," Seivarden said, rising from her chair.

"Yes. Amaya has plants like that, but I'm guessing it's the island and not her that's to blame. Don't get too close."

She added: "Back from the trip, then?"

Tisarwat was, briefly, tempted to comment that, no, she wasn't, she was clearly just a figment of Seivarden's imagination right now. But, honestly, around here, that seemed like something that could actually happen, so she just carefully stepped around the plants that looked the most bitey, giving them a wide berth as she made her way over.

"I guess if anyone could handle keeping biting plants," she noted, her smile seeming to take on a slightly dreamy quality, "it would be Amaya. She seems so strong."

Even though the nature of their meeting had been ~~so incredibly handwavey because bleh this week~~ brief, the blacksmith had clearly made an impression on Tisarwat ~~because I'm a terrible person~~.

"But, yes," she added, "I'm back. And I've brought some tea from the area if you're interested in trying it."

It really didn't come close to measuring up to her Radchaai tea, but, then again, few things ever would.

Edited 2019-10-19 12:54 (UTC)

"Well, she is," Seivarden said, noting that Amaya had indeed made an impression. That was hardly surprising though, apart from strong she was also friendly and wore gloves. "She's good at fixing things too, on the level of technology she's used to, and if you ever need that, just ask her. She's fixed my door twice now."

But to the important thing: "I'd love to try the tea."

"Twice?" asked Tisarwat, who had a seat and wasted no more time setting down some cups so that she could pour what she'd made in her flask before heading down to the shop. "Is your door prone to breaking?"

Twice in two years didn't seem like a lot, but if doors around here were prone to breaking, making that wasn't so bad. They all seemed sturdy enough to her, anyway, though now she couldn't help wondering if the doors had been slammed maybe a bit too hard or otherwise abused if Seivarden was feeling particularly irritated by something.

Seivarden made a gesture with her hand. "You know how things can be here."

She reached for one of the cups and took a sip, then frowned. "This is... odd. Not... bad."

Drinking tea, even if it wasn't to her taste, called for politeness, after all.

"I'm starting to know, anyway," said Tisarwat, who couldn't imagine a more vague, less helpful answer, but she supposed that indicated that Seivarden did not want to talk about it. Out of her own politeness, then, she wouldn't press the issue and focused instead on the tea, taking a long sip of her own before setting the cup down.

"Very different from what I expected," she admitted. "I didn't buy much of it, just enough because I figured you'd might be interested to at least give it a try."

And, well, even if it was the best tea she'd ever tasted, she hardly had the money to buy much, anyway.

"That's kind of you," Seivarden said, again offering proper polite conversation over tea.

"How was the trip?"

"It wasn...interesting," Tisarwat decided, after a moment to think about it while drinking her tea. "We spent most of our time on a very large waterbound ship," that made her terribly homesick, "going between various islands to experience the nature and the wildlife there. I think I liked our time in the city better, though. More to do, though it was a little...astonishing, so many people, and barely a glove to be seen."

She wasn't sure she'd ever get used to it, but she felt she was getting slightly better.

"It's hard to get used to that," Seivarden said. "I've been in annexations where the locals still hadn't adopted civilized manners, and still... I imagine there was more to do than here, though."

"It was mostly exercise and educational," Tisarwat shrugged a little. "But there were nightly events on the ship that kept things interesting. The change of scenery was nice, I wish I'd spent a bit more time with my classmates, though."

Seivarden took a sip of tea.

"Are they nice? Your classmates."

"They are," Tisarwat said with a nod. "I've made a few friends among them. Okuyasu did a good job of distracting me when I wasn't feeling well, Wayne makes breakfast for everyone on Monday mornings, the only reason I can even bear sitting through my awful civics class is because Lana has a good head on her shoulders and understands how ridiculous the government here is. To name a few. I like them, though. Its not hard to make friends here, really."

"Sounds like the students are better than the adults, then," Seivarden observed. "Lana? I think I had to read notes about the two of you making sensible comments in class."

The use of 'sensible' had been Seivarden's choice.

Tisarwat was a lieutenant with the mind of a thousands-year-old tyrant. The idea that her status of a student precluded her from being considered an adult made her frown into her tea a little. Especially from someone with a bad habit of calling her kiddo back home, although, thankfully, she seemed less inclide to do so here ~~so far~~.

"Yes," she said. "She's the only one who makes any sense around here half the time, especially in that class, which seems to have just turned into the two us trying to convince our instructors that a forcible removable of an unfit leader from office," see? She could definitely think of a more palatable term than simply 'murder'!, "is a completely viable, not to mention necessary, option..."

"But," she added, somewhat pointedly, "all the...adults I've met have been nice, too.""

Edited 2019-10-19 19:33 (UTC)

~~so far~~

"What do they want to do? Watch the idiot make a complete mess?"

She took another sip of tea. "Some are nice," she admitted. "Some of them are terrible. Who have you met so far?"

"Well," Tisarat sipped her tea as she thought about it, putting together a pretty short list, "not many, I suppose. There's my instructors, obviously," and one of them she supposed she wouldn't call very nice, just a little....hard, but it didn't take a genius to put together the fact that she clearly knew enough about Radchaai culture to initially hold it against Tisarwat at first, and there was clearly only one place she could have picked that up from, which was...definitely interesting, "Breq," maybe best to move quickly past that one, "Kanan at the diner you recommended, Amaya over the trip," and perhaps a small smile at that one, "and a few of the shopkeepers around the town, the bartenders, most of them I don't think I caught their names, though. I suppose you could argue it's their jobs to be nice, same with the instructors...."

Seivarden snorted. "You can't count on business owners to be nice here. Although to be fair, most of them aren't rude, and at some places, like the diner, you can at least feel comfortable about eating the food. I obviously have no experience of the instructors, although I think most of them live in town and have other jobs too."

She found it hard to believe that all of Tisarwat's instructors were nice though.

"You mean, experience of them as instructors," Tisarwat ventured. "Because, obviously, you're friends with Amaya, and she's an instructor, even if she's not one of mine," and what a pity that was! "and I just assumed you knew my survival skills instructor, since she recognized me as Radchaai immediately, and I don't think she'd have picked up something like that out of a book or something."

Seivarden choked on her tea.

"I hope she's not causing problems for you," she said after coughing.

Tisarwat had been poking around for a reaction, sure, but that was...not quite what she'd been expecting. Her brows lifted, she blinked her lilac eyes a few times. "No," she ventured, now even more curious than before, which had been mild at best, "she hasn't. She seems really tough," and maybe was a bit heavier on that whistle for Tisarwat during that one class than the others, she felt, but that was fine, it just meant Tisarwat had to work harder, and she liked the challenge, "but it's a survival class, so that makes sense. She should be tough on us, right?"

A beat. A sip of her tea.

"So you do know her, then?"

Seivarden straightened a little. "It depends on what you mean," she said. "We don't get along. I wouldn't put it past her to take that out on you. If she does, let me know and I'll talk to her."

Because taking whatever she felt for Seivarden out on a poor Radchaai kid was unacceptable.

And how many different ways could someone mean so you do know her, anyway, Seivarden?

"She doesn't seem to treat me any different than the other students," Tisarwat offered. "But if a problem comes," she wouldn't come running to Seivarden to solve it for her, that was for sure!, "I'll let you know. She just seemed a bit...prejudice at first, but I guess if you and she don't get along, then that might explain that."

Tisarwat sipped her tea thoughtfully. What was Seivarden like when she wasn't in civilized company, anyway? It wasn't too difficult to imagine most of them probably being more like this one, and Amaya and Kanan were more exceptions than the rules...which honestly said a lot about Amaya and Kanan, if you got right down to it.

"That's still no reason to be prejudiced, but I'm glad to hear she's not treating you worse than anyone else."

Then Seivarden smiled, deciding it was best to change the subject. She took a sip of her tea. "Never mind."

And, of course, the polite thing to do would be to take that never mind under consideration and veer the conversation elsewhere, which, of course, Tisarwat would do, because they were, of course, having tea right now. But that was definitely a little bit of something to nudge at the suspicions she might have already had about exactly why her survival skills instructor already had those prejudices to begin with.

But for now...she gestured an argreement to the cordial change to hopefully more pleasant topics.

"Did anything very interesting happen on this island in the meantime?" she asked. "Radio made it seem very quiet."

"It was quiet," Seivarden said. "The most exciting thing was being bitten by Amaya's plants."

It was obvious that wasn't exciting.

"My cat tore up a nice pair of gloves."

She took a sip of tea.

"About as exciting as that."

Sipping tea was very good at helping to keep smirks hidden, even when you felt you were keeping them relatively held back.

"I'll have to meet your cat sometime, you know," Tisarwat noted. "I--"

She caught herself, though, before she commented on the fact that she couldn't picture Seivarden with a pet, actually having to take care of someone other than herself.

"---have never been a pet person myself," she recovered, "but I do have a fish...."

That she may have forgotten about making arrangements for while she was gone (oops?), but, luckily, that fish was surprisingly resiliant. It had, after all, survived being eaten whole by a Translator.

Tisarwat would see Seivarden being bossed around by a cat.

"A fish? Did you get it here? From the pet store?"

She smiled over her tea cup.

"Of course you can meet Issa. I take her to the park sometimes when she gets restless. Or if you want to stop by and watch a proper entertainment."

And wouldn't that be a sight to behold.

"Er, no," said Tisarwat, suddenly a little awkward and wondering why she even mentioned the fish. "It came with me, it was..." She gestured that thought away dismissively. "That's a long story. But I'm glad to have it, it...reminds me of home, I guess.

"But that'd be nice," she said, "meeting your cat. Either at the park or with an entertainment. It has seemed like a really long time."

And yet it's barely been a few months. And Tisarwat knew better than almost anyone how much could happen in just a few months.

"I'm not sure where you are from, time wise," Seivarden said, as if that comment was something she did feel used to, "but there's a new one I really like. I've watched it with Amaya, but she always wants to fast forward anything that doesn't involve explosions and spaceships."

"I may have seen it," said Tisarwat, dancing carefully away from anything about where or when she was from, "but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like seeing it again, especially if it's a good one."

Her casual, almost apathetic tone turned a bit warmer, though, with the rest of it, as she smiled faintly. "And I'm not surprised that she might want to," she noted, "even with how little we talked. She did mention that you've shown her quite a few of them, but then we got distracted talking about ships. She wanted to know more about what kind I've served on, things like that."

"A Mercy, right?"

Seivarden took another sip of tea, hiding her hesitation.

"What did you tell her?"

An easier question to ask than admitting she wanted to hear more about it herself.

"That's right," Tisarwat gestured agreement. "A Mercy, and that's about as far as my experience goes. But I told her I liked it, and a little bit about my decade, and that I really missed it, especially when being on what this planet considers a ship. But that it's no where near as exciting as I imagine it'd be serving on a Sword."

That last part wasn't exactly true; she hadn't told Amaya anything like that and was adding it merely for Seivarden's benefit. Especially considering that Mercy of Kalr had more excitement during her time than it knew what to do with.

"Yes, well, a Mercy isn't bad," Seivarden said. "Your decade? Why... oh, human crew?"

She couldn't see any reason to talk about an ancillary crew, especially since it was something that could upset people here.

Tisarwat blinked a little. "Right," she said, remembering that Seivarden's experience with more modern Radchaai politics were limited, if not entirely nonexistent. "Where I'm from, we don't really...use ancillaries much anymore."

"No? Maybe I heard something about that."

At that shitty station in the middle of nowhere she had ended up on. She hadn't really trusted those news.

"Isn't that... impractical?"

Covent Garden Flowers, Saturday

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