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The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

With a cup of tea and a biscuit, Lucille sat down by the window, watching the rain fall outside. Her umbrella hung on the backrest of her chair, and the hem of her worn skirt was wet. At least there was no red mud here, although there was a part of her that missed it, almost painfully so, one of those small things that reminded her of something best forgotten.

She took a sip from her cup and looked out on the passers-by.

[Open!]

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It went without saying that the Perk was hardly Tisarwat's preferred place for a cup of tea, but when she walked by and glimpsed Lucille there through the window, she figured she could make an exception today.

She knew there was a reason she'd decided to take the long way around town on her errands despite the weather.

So after being careful and shaking out her own umbrella and getting a trap that she barely planned to drink much of beyond a few tentative sips here and there, she smiled and headed over to Lucille's table.

"Hello, Lucille," she greeted. "Good day for tea, isn't it?"

"Tisarwat," Lucille said, smiling, and gestured for her to take a seat. "The weather makes it feel like home. Will you join me?"

"Thank you," said Tisarwat, pulling out the chair and sitting down with her tea, "I think I will."

As if she hadn't already been planning to the moment she walked in. She took one of the few judicious sips she planned to take from her cup before asking, "How was your week?"

"I opened the flower shop for the first time yesterday," Lucille said. "I think it will be a suitable business for me. Thank you for the recommendation."

"I'm glad to hear that," Tisarwat smiled and set down her tea. "It does seem a better fit for you that it does Seivarden," which was still difficult for her to wrap her head around, even having witnessed it with her own lilac eyes, "though she managed beyond expectations.i just hope the new responsibilities don't keep you too busy..."

"Work here rarely is."

Lucille sipped her own tea. It might not be up to Tisarwat's standards, but she found it acceptable.

"Why beyond expectations?"

"Tending flowers and a shop," Tisarwat said with measured Radchaai pleasantness, "isn't exactly in the wheelhouse of where I'd expect her talents to be used. She comes from a military background, and a notable house."

Notable at some point in time, anyway.

"But I think she did well in rising to the unexpected occasion."

"Flowers are considered more suitable for ladies, after all," Lucille said. "At least where I'm from. And ladies are never soldiers there."

Edited 2020-10-11 13:54 (UTC)

"Well," Tisarwat offered with a faint smile, a subtle shake of her head, "where I'm from, we don't really bother with distinctions between ladies and...what's the other term for it? Gentlemen? I honestly still don't understand what the point of it is."

"Really?" Lucille said, a little surprised. "Doesn't that make things complicated? Although I appreciate that the limitations put on women where I am from are almost nonexistent here, and that even romantic love isn't only allowed between the opposite sexes."

"If anything," Tisarwat countered simply, "it makes things far less complicated when you're not beholden to what seems to me to be arbitrary rules and restrictions based entirely on what's between a person's legs. And you see proof of that all across the Radch in the cultures we've annexed to adopt," sure, that was a word for it, Tisarwat!, "our ways."

From someone who had grown up in what could still be considered the British Empire, adopting 'inferior' cultures seemed reasonable, at least.

"So," she said, "No one cares at all what's between... Or is it just that it doesn't influence what someone is expected to do?"

"Caring about that sort of thing," said Tisarwat, now gaining a small smirk, "is just considered terribly uncivilized."

Her eyes danced almost playfully toward Lucille's hands.

"Almost as bad as going around without gloves."

Which she'd have never said if it weren't for the fact that Lucille, at least, was cultured enough to be wearing them.

"This place is terribly uncivilised, then," Lucille said, amused. "And I assume Radchaai are under no illusion that women are the weaker sex."

"I've rarely seen such an uncivilized place across the entirety of Radch space," Tisarwat declared, although fondly, teasingly. But not untruthfully. "And we have no illusion that women are women, they're just people, so why would they be inherently weaker?"

"I noticed you referred to your friend Seivarden as 'she', and so does everyone else," Lucille said, a little awkwardly.

"Everyone is 'she,'" Tisarwat explained. "That's so much easier, isn't it? You don't have to worry about getting it wrong, that way."

Which she still struggled with, if she was honest, sometimes only saved by the grace of having heard what other people had used.

"That's part of the reason I took to that second book a little easier," she admitted. "The pronouns used by the main characters felt much more natural. Accessible. Familiar."

Part of the reason...

"Where I'm from people don't get it wrong," Lucille said. "Unless someone deliberately wants to deceive. But perhaps I can understand what you mean, though. And friendship can be deep and passionate too, can't it?"

Friendship was not exactly what Tisarwat had read from things, no, so her eyebrow quirked a little.

"Because of the fashions, right?" Tisarwat asked. "Another thing that seems pointlessly gendered, if you ask me, but I suppose in the context where that sort of thing matters, it makes a certain sense..."

She then made the mistake of forgetting exactly what the tea in front of her tasted like, having sipped from it out of sheer habit, made a slight face, and set it down again hoping Lucille wouldn't notice, especially as she brought things around to a topic much more interesting and less confusing than gender.

"And I find that the deepest and most passionate connections can be made through friendship."

Pointedly.

"Oh, I quite agree," Lucille said, smiling. "I used to have a friend as a student whom I loved deeply. I will never forget her, and I think about her often."

Or how she looked in bloodstained armour after slaying an enemy, but she preferred not to think about that.

Then, nervously, she added: "We haven't known each other very long, but I already value your friendship very much."

"As do I," Tisarwat said, the fondness in her tone easily matching her smile. She let it sort of linger there, in that nice moment of affection, before her head tilted curiously. "Tell me more about this friend of yours?"

"Cassandra," Lucille said, "Is very passionate about the things she believe in. Like her faith. We also read literature together and shared many favourite poems and novels. During our last semester we shared a room."

Lucille was unaware that a slight blush had appeared on her cheeks as she spoke.

"I haven't heard from her in a long time. It seems like we are unable to contact each other."

Edited 2020-10-11 16:34 (UTC)

The blush certainly didn't escape Tisarwat's notice, and it left her grinning a bit until the expression softened with that last past.

"That's a shame," she said. "I wonder if that has to do with the in accessibility some people have around here. Or just how things go at this school. I sometimes wonder about some of the people I went to school with but don't see around anymore."

"I believe some people want to leave and have no reason to come back or contact old friends. I went home, but I always wrote to my friends there, although most of them have left now. Then I suspect some leave and are never able to return, but that is hard to tell."

She sipped her tea.

"Are you planning to leave?"

"Not anytime soon," Tisarwat answered, a little wryly, a little ruefully. "I know Summer's getting close to figuring out how to get Seivarden back to her timeline, but I don't think...that would be a feasible option for me." It got a bit complicated thinking about the implications of her attempting to return, but before the time she left, and it worried her, almost, how that might alter things, possibly for the worse, in that timeline. There had been a lot of discussions about that sort of thing, since Summer apparently had a lot of experience with it, and just thinking about those discussions now was threatening to give Tisarwat a headache.

"I'd like to go back," she admitted, easily enough, "eventually. I can't stand the idea of this being perminant. But I certainly don't mind staying for a little bit longer, maybe until she can figure out how to get me to my timeline as well."

"I selfishly hope you stay a while," Lucille said, smiling a little. "And wouldn't it be a waste not to learn how to play the piano better?"

A silly reason like that made it easier to hide that the thought of Tisarwat leaving bothered her.

And it would be a lie for Tisarwat to say she didn't enjoy the fact that Lucille would selfishly make such an appeal.

"And Amaat only knows how long that would keep me here!" she commented with a laugh. "Although by no fault of my excellent instructor. And we're overdue for a lesson, anyway. With so many people gone for the week on the school trip, it would be nice to have a distraction from how quiet it will be around here."

"It would," Lucille agreed, "And of course some tea afterwards."

She tried to show how she appreciated the idea without sounding excessively enthusiastic.

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The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

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