fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers, Friday (10/16)

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Covent Garden Flowers, Friday (10/16)

Yasha supposed she ought to be more interested in the Halloween-themed flowers, especially since here was a holiday that actually, finally matched her aesthetic. And to be fair, she was fairly fascinated by them, and dutifully working up some new arrangements for the occasion. Or at least, her best understanding of the occasion, which was incredibly shaky since Beau had been no help at all in explaining it to her and she was mostly working off of a vague, general idea of 'scary things, gourds, and also candy for some reason.'

So yes, she was doing her work, and doing a passable job of it, but there was a mug of hot cocoa on the counter that she would swear hadn't been there before she'd gotten started on brewing the tea for the day. A mug of hot cocoa that, upon closer inspection, contained just two marshmallows that were stuck pretty firmly together.

It really had no business being as interesting as it was, and she was struck by the sudden urge to take a picture of it and send it to Jester and ask if she had anything to do with it, but Jester didn't have a phone for her to send it to anyway, so Yasha guessed that wasn't an option after all.

That mystery cocoa was going to bother her all day, though not enough to keep her from taking the occasional sip as she worked.

[OOC: Look, I had to. Also, LOOK AT THIS AWKWARD DOOFUS.]

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Annie had been meaning to check out the flower shop - partly because she had very Real Simple-influenced ideas of what it meant to decorate one's own apartment, and thus cut flowers seemed important, but also just because she'd been here almost three weeks and frankly there wasn't that much island to explore.

And with Halloween coming up, there was an actual reason to decorate, and she had been looking at Pinterest, so. Annie was ducking into the shop, tossing out a cheerful little, "Hello! Oh, wow, it smells so nice in here," as she did so.

"It's nice, isn't it?" Yasha asked softly, although it took a moment or two before she actually looked up from deciphering the very involved new order that had come in. She didn't actually smile, but the slight frown that sort of always lived on her face did soften into a more neutral expression.

"Hello," she said. "Um, can I help you?"

"I'm mostly just looking, no worries," Annie told her with a smile, waving as she wandered over. "I'm kind of thinking of getting some Halloweeny flowers, you know? But I don't want it all to wilt before the holiday, so maybe I'll hold off? I don't know. Maybe I should get an alive plant."

Lots of thinking out loud going on over here.

"It is always a little disappointing when they wilt, isn't it?" asked Yasha, making a mental note (though not out loud) to take a couple of the new varieties to press in her book at the end of the day. "An alive plant is probably good. You know. As long as you remember to water it."

Then, as if she'd remembered she was supposed to try to make sales here:

"But flowers are nice too, you know, even if they do wilt, right? You can keep changing them up, because there's so many different kinds, in all sorts of colors."

Neutral expression or not, that was a distinct note of awe in her voice.

"And," Annie said, cocking a finger at her, "no obligation to me to remember to water them every day, and no guilt when they wilt. It's just, like, the circle of life at that point."

Or something like that. Annie had never had flowers that weren't given to her by someone else, so she had no idea.

"And you guys do a beautiful job with the arrangements here, too," she added, looking around admiringly.

If Yasha hadn't been in a coma and then taken off basically as soon as she'd regained consciousness, she might have thought that circle of life thing sounded like something Caduceus might say but, well. She hadn't properly met him yet.

She nodded, though, and ducked her head for a moment out of bashfulness "Thank you, we try. I mean -- it's not just my work, you know, the other people who work here do it too, but I think I'm getting the hang of it now."

With a gesture toward the flowers she went on, "But did you want to look at the Halloween flowers? I don't really... understand the holiday myself so I don't know if I'm much help there, but I can try."

"Sure! Do you not have Halloween where you're from?" It was a real testament to Annie's adjustment that she didn't just mean 'Europe or something?' by that question, as she would have when she first arrived.

"I'm Annie, by the way," she added, thrusting a hand out to shake, if Yasha so chose. "I just moved here like, a couple weeks ago."

Yasha gave her hand a dubious look for a second before she slowly reached out to shake it -- gingerly, like someone aware that she might crush some people's hands if she wasn't careful.

"Yasha," she offered. "We do not have holidays like this where I'm from, no. At least not that I know of. There's... a lot of holidays here, it seems like."

And that was enough talking about herself, so:

"You are new here? Is it -- do you like it so far?"

"It's been an adjustment," Annie massively understated. "But I'm lucky that my world is pretty close to this one. We have Halloween, for example"

Though now she was wondering if she was going to wake up one day and have everyone on Fandom act like she should know that it was Enchilada Day, or something. Probably shouldn't take things for granted.

"Have you lived here long?" she added. "Everyone I talk to seems to like it here, after - you know, an...adjustment."

Yasha looked just the tiniest bit pained at having to talk about herself some more, but when you had a charisma score of 7 gracefully changing the subject was not one of your strengths, so she just went with it.

"It's been ... a few months now? The beginning of the year, more or less, but I'm still getting the hang of the calendar here," she admitted. "It has been a lot of adjustment, definitely."

Even if she wasn't making as much of an effort to adjust as she could have, out of fear of getting attached.

"Everyone seems nice though. You know. For the most part, but I don't really ... get out much."

"No? Well, then I'm glad I stopped in, then," Annie decided, her mouth quirking in a smile. "To be fair, it doesn't seem like there's much to get out to do. No offense, I'm really starting to like it here, but this is a pretty quiet town from what I've seen."

Careful, Annie. That was how you jinxed things.

"Adjustment-related weirdness aside," she added, because there was still a baseline level of not quiet here, of course, obviously.

Edited 2020-10-16 21:59 (UTC)

"It is ... mostly quiet," Yasha agreed, nodding slightly. "Much quieter than I'm used to. It's a little weird, actually."

"I hear stuff happens on a schedule," Annie said, having made peace with this very convenient idea. "So where are you from? Somewhere more exciting?"

Sorry, Yasha.

Honestly, you'd think that no one that tall and brawny had any business sporting the deer-in-headlights look that crossed Yasha's face, however briefly.

"I don't know about exciting, but it is definitely very different," she said, fiddling with some floral wire on the nearest arrangement that had absolutely no need of adjusting, just to have something to do with her hands. "Beau -- she's someone here that I know who's also from that world. She said it's the kind of place that you see in what I guess they call fantasy movies here?" The giant sword on her back probably underscored that a bit. "It's not... we don't have electricity or anything fancy like that, although there are some things they can do with magic that are sort of similar."

"Oh, wow," Annie sighed admiringly, her eyes widening a touch even as she watched Yasha fidget. It was kind of adorable to see someone who seemed so...tough, be so shy. "Yeah, magic is a hundred percent new to me, and it's - so cool. I don't think I could deal with no electricity, but the magic thing makes the idea a little more palatable."

She couldn't use her powers without electricity, but maybe she could learn magic! She could be a wizard.

"I like your sword," she added. It felt weird to say, but probably only because she had never complimented someone's sword before.

Wizards did get all their abilities from studying magic in depth, so that was entirely possible.

"Thank you," Yasha replied, a wry and vaguely amused expression crossing her face. "I seem to get that a lot around here, for some reason."

In case that made it feel any less weird.

"I mean... if it changes your opinion at all, I have to say my world is not, um, terribly peaceful? We end up fighting things a lot." Funny, that.

"So it's not a decorative sword?" Annie teased. "That seems to be a common thing around here - my world's less peaceful than Fandom, too."

Not by a huge margin, since she was from a relatively quiet city in a relatively quiet part of the country, but still.

"I've never seen someone with a sword outside of a Renaissance fair, though. Maybe they should make a comeback. Is it heavy?"

"It is definitely not decorative," Yasha assured her, and unsheathed it to lay it on the counter for Annie to look at, if she wanted to; given that it was a two-handed greatsword that was about as tall as she was, it definitely looked like it was much heavier than the nonchalant way Yasha handled it let on. Runes that looked like they might be magical were engraved along the length of the blade, which showed clear signs of use. "It is hundreds of years old, though."

Yes, it looked practically pristine, because magic.

"I still feel weird every time I go for a walk in the preserve and nothing jumps out and tries to bite my head off, you know? There's no... poison swamp trolls or anything like that." She paused and glanced briefly at Annie. "So your world is a lot like this one, but more... I don't know, is dangerous the right word?"

"Well, we don't have swamp trolls or incredibly beautiful swords," Annie told her, leaning in curiously and thrusting her hands behind her back like someone who had had 'look, but don't touch' drilled into her head from an early age. "Um, it's more like the mainland, if you've been over there at all? Just - more bad people, more bad things happening overall, I guess."

That seemed like an overly-simple way to put it, but really, that was the biggest thing that Annie liked about the island so far: everyone seemed to be so straightforwardly good. She might joke about the lack of crime, but it was also just...nice.

"We don't have magic, either - at least not the way people have described it to me," she amended, glancing up from her study of the sword. "Maybe it's kind of like magic, but we have people who are born with superpowers."

"Kind of like -- yeah, that is the impression that I got from Beau's friends here," Yasha agreed with a nod. "About the superpowers, I mean."

She wasn't going to actively discourage Annie from touching the sword, even if she wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the idea.

"I don't think you're missing out on much by not having swamp trolls, anyway."

Was that how you did non sequiturs? She had no idea.

"I dunno, it'd give me something to do," Annie laughed. "That's so cool you have someone from home here, with you, to help you out like that." Was she jealous? Maybe just a tad. "Do these - are these words?"

She pointed to the runes, keeping the indicating finger a solid half-foot away from the blade. It just seemed kind of intrusive to assume she could get her fingerprints all over it, you know?

"Beau is... really smart, so yes." It was kind of an awkward situation, so Yasha might not agree that it was something to be that jealous of, but yeah, it had helped her acclimate, so she nodded her agreement.

"They are, I think? Probably something to do with whatever enchantment is on the blade, but I am not an expert at magic and I'm not sure what it says. I mostly just, you know, hit things with it." She paused. "The troll splashed poison everywhere whenever anyone hit it. It was not a good time for anyone who had to work in close quarters, but if you don't have to, you know, if you can hit it from a distance, then I guess..."

She wasn't going to mention chasing after the troll, yelling at it to drop Beau's unconscious body like it was a dog that had stolen a shoe. Because that had just been kind of sad.

"Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. That was flippant of me." Annie was fairly mortified, because the thing was - it did sound like something out of a fantasy movie, and she needed to keep in mind that things that sounded made-up here often were very much not. "I'm going to blame that on not really knowing anything about swamp trolls, sorry. Are you okay? And...the people who got poisoned?"

"Fine," Yasha said, waving a hand. "It was... closer than I'd have liked, but everyone was fine. It really would have been a fun fight, except for that, you know?"

As much as she frequently felt lost in conversation because peopling was just hard, it wasn't like she could judge anyone for that kind of misstep; she certainly didn't look offended in the least.

"I know my world sounds like something out of... I don't know, a book, compared to a lot of other people's," she added, like a roundabout way of assuring Annie that she didn't need to apologize. "I'm still sort of getting used to remembering that myself."

"It really does. Like - King of the Bracelets or something," Annie said, smiling a little ruefully. "Which, if you haven't seen? You should. It's all...big swords and epic quests and there's definitely trolls."

And plus, Annie knew she liked watching certain Supe-produced movies from her own world as a little bit of a reality check. Like those ones with Popclaw and Billy Zane - it never went like that. (Though those were, of course, much lower-budget films than the King of the Bracelets trilogy.)

"I also kind of get that - like, again, not being intentionally flip, but it always sucks when it feels like you had a great fight and then it's spoiled by someone actually getting hurt." Not usually Annie. But still.

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