2022-08-27: Familiar
- Log: 2022-08-27 Familiar
- Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss
- Where: Lake Macalania
- Date: August 27, 2022
- Summary: After days of sparse rations, the trapped Lan and Loren wake up to a much-appreciated care package from Marivel.
==============================<* Lake Macalania *>============================== Lake Macalania is a vast, snowy expanse. The lake itself has stunningly beautiful crystalline waters on its south shore. The shore, there, is so calm and warm that it invites swimming at times -- though it can get chilly. But go even a little further north, and proximity to Macalania Temple causes the temperature to drop sharply. The northern end of the lake is so cold that it is frozen over. Snowdrifts are everywhere. Lake Macalania has the towering Temple at the center of it. Here, it is snowing constantly, and even on clear days, it is shockingly cold -- even more, say some Ronso, than Mt. Gagazet. BGM: Final Fantasy X - Phantoms
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Never let it be said that there's nothing new and surprising under the sun. Case in point: never has Lan ever been awakened by servbots, much less a pair of them carrying supplies and a recording of Marivel Armitage, fulfilling a promise she made five thousand years ago (or last night, depending on who you ask).
And then one of them licked her face a bunch (which was DOUBLE weird because robot) before they left, leaving the food behind.
"..." Lan peers out after them from beneath the blankets, the inn's chilly air yet enough to raise goosebumps on her arms. But she's still warm, thanks to sharing the bed with Loren. "I can't believe she actually did it." She blinks down at the container the servbots left behind and tugs the covers up higher as she sits up. "...You wanna do the honors?" she offers, because she knows damn well that Loren has been going mostly hungry to ensure she has some kind of nutrition, and she doesn't know any other nicer thing she can do than 'give him first dibs on the snacks'.
A different kind of warmth lies at her hip, glowing beneath the blankets.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
To say that he'd had his doubts would be a bit of an understatement -- usually, in his experience, people don't go to sleep in search of aid. But hey -- what did they have to lose?
And he's seen Lan pull off more extreme measures besides, up to and including the time she burned a Primarch's influence out of his psyche.
Loren is thus astonished by the fact that not only did this work but they have a response...
...immediately?
Lan isn't the only one a little bit weirded out by the machines, but beggers can't be choosers. He just sits up in the bed, watching them make their delivery and... stares.
Besides, there's food involved, which makes him supremely unwilling to refuse the aid. Even under normal circumstances, he would have been hard-pressed to have turned down a meal--
So right now he, his stomach growling, just regards the container that Lan offers for a long, hungry moment. His gaze meets hers, and for a moment, he's not sure if he is still dreaming, or hallucinating, or whatever.
"...Yeah," he tells her, reaching over for the container and cracking it open. What he wouldn't give for the biggest sandwich in the world to be waiting for him at the top--
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
As she'd said in the Dreaming, even if it didn't work they weren't going to be any worse off than before.
Inside the box (it's thicker than it looks, the walls being insulated) are several smaller containers and wrapped parcels. And, because the gods listen to even the grumpiest nerds on occasion... Some of the parcels have sandwiches in them, piled thick with meat and cheese and even some mayonnaise or mustard, depending. Other containers have longer-lasting things like jerky, and there are tea and coffee packets, and a small jar of sugar, and what looks like candy drops wrapped in a crisp paper packet.
"Is there any butter?" Lan asks, leaning over to peek inside the box. "Or bre-- ow." Is there a rock in the bed or something? She doesn't remember dreaming about that--
But when she digs underneath the blanket, there is a rock. The stone she finds is warm and glowing, rays of light spilling from between her fingers when she holds it up. "This is..." This is Eleanor's. "But... but I understand the robots, okay, like maybe not how they got here so fast but--" Lan gives up, because Loren was there too, he'll get how weird this is! Well, he will in between bites of sandwich, she guesses.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Emperor be praised, there are sandwiches.
Loren actually sighs in something that might be contentment or relief before seizing one of the wrapped sandwiches and, nudging the box more in a Lan-oriented direction, unwraps his selection just enough to take a big old bite.
"Mmfg?" he mumbles when she asks about the butter, and really, given his current circumstances, can only shrug in her general direction. Heck if he knows, he saw what he wanted, and he got it.
Fortunately he found a kettle while scavenging in the inn, and with careful positioning in the remnants of the hearth here, he probably could boil some water with his magic. If they wanted tea, anyway.
But there's something in the bed with them, and it's not just the cloudbear, gazing at them both from the foot of the bed. Lan produces it after a moment more and Loren chews and swallows swiftly, gazing at her prize with raised eyebrows.
Hadn't... Eleanor given them that in the dream? He knows it wasn't there before they fell asleep!
"How?" he says, once he's able.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
There's a relief in being able to relax a little. In renewed hope. In the promise of a full stomach after days of rationing the worst food ever. ...They should ration this too, Lan knows, but... even she's hungry. The cloudbear looks up at them from the foot of the bed, probably wondering what all the fuss is about, and Lan has the brief impulse to offer it some of the bounty too. It hasn't eaten before, and she supposes it probably won't start now.
But she sets aside one of the bottles of water for it, just in case.
There's a thermos in there too, and she cracks it open with a bit of effort. "Soup," she sighs happily, and it takes an embarrassing amout of willpower to not just hork the entire thing down. Even so, the first sip brings a rush of warmth that travels all the way down to her stomach. "'s good." They so owe Marivel a favor. Or two, or three.
Both hands clasped tight around the thermos, she peers at the jewel resting on the covers between them. "I don't know how," Lan says eventually, after she's given it some thought. "I mean... maybe one of the robots brought it?" And tucked it into her hand, underneath the blankets, without waking either of them up. ...Probably not.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The cloudbear -- still tragically nameless -- makes no move towards them, instead blinking at them from the foot of the bed as if they had awoken it as well with their awakening from the shared dream. It sniffs at the air once, twice, then huffs out a breath with a sigh and settles down again, wriggling in by where their feet would be.
It may appreciate the water, later.
"Go easy on it," Loren tells her, watching her as she takes that first sip. "We might need to..." Make this last, until Gwen gets here.
Oh, hell with it. He's already been starving a few days. And she's been eating energy bar gruel. Eating his fill means he can finally rest easy and, who knows, maybe have the energy to finish some of the patch jobs on the inn. ...It won't improve their situation by a lot, sure, but any improvement to the ability of the building to retain heat is a just cause.
That, and the gem might help, as improbable as its appearance here might be. "Maybe... it fell off of them," he allows, looking just as dubious about this as any other answer.
"Have some more soup," he tells her, gesturing with his free hand. He's got a sandwich to completely devour.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"I know," she nods. Gwen will definitely get here, but they don't know where she's coming from. And there's no telling how hard it will be for her to find the inn. Loren had told her it was practically covered by the snowdrifts. Lan opens her mouth to ask what if Gwen can't find them, but goes silent. She takes another sip of soup instead.
She knows what will happen if Gwen can't find them. Which isn't important, because Gwen will. 'If you need something delivered, ask Gwen.' Surely you can deliver a rescue, right?
"I know I needed the nutrition and everything, but... I wish you would've at least split the nutribars evenly with me." With the thermos held carefully in her lap, she picks up the jewel and studies it. Somehow staring at it doesn't hurt her eyes - otherwise, it's like a tiny sun, meant to hang in the sky above a dollhouse. Warm, and bright... just having it here makes her feel better. Like the endless winter in Macalania is no match for summer's warmth.
But... holding it feels good for another reason, one that Lan is still struggling to put into words. "I feel like... I know this," she says eventually. "It's not Stare Roe or Celesdue - the Guardians of light or the moon. It's not any Guardian. But it feels familiar. ...I wonder why."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The thought's dawned on him, too. But he's got an idea for what to do about that. It's just that, first, he needs to gather his strength -- eat a sandwich. And maybe bring a rosesol, because he's got to really put his back into it if he's aiming to create something that should serve as a waypoint for Gwen.
Emperor. The courier -- friend but more often foe to him -- really is their only hope, isn't she.
Well... so be it. It's not like beggers can be choosers, not in a time like this.
He shakes his head, though, when Lan chastises him gently for his decision earlier. "People can live for a few months without food. But, if you're going to heal, you need the calories," he says, after he's swallowed. "And, it wasn't like I was eating nothing. Trust me, if I'd eaten my fill, there wouldn't have been anything left for you."
Ether use comes with certain caloric demands, and he's still a young man, besides. Loren is almost always some level of hungry.
By now he's finished the sandwich, wiping his fingers off on the paper it'd come wrapped in. He could use another of those! Lan's remark about the stone, though, gets his attention. "Hmm? What do you mean, you know this? Is it some other Guardian--"
Or maybe it's none of the above, as she puts it?
If either of them were to look up right now, they would notice that the cloudbear has suddenly... vanished from its spot in the bed. Loren's attention is on the stone as he reaches towards it, though and so he doesn't notice a thing until the bear has made its final approach towards the stone and attempts to put its entire mouth around it.
"Gah! What are you doing?!"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's not like Gwen particularly considers herself to be Loren's foe, even though they've certainly come to blows plenty of times. She and Lan consider themselves Loren's friends! And sometimes you have to stop your friends from committing murders or defiling historic ruins or using a sword on your other friends. It's the Drifter way of life.
"I know, I know." He's right, but Lan doesn't have to like it! "I'm just... not doing anything useful, lying here. You've been doing your best to make this a better shelter. ...I'm absolutely taking you to Hicalu's work for muffins after we get out of here," Lan hums, suddenly pleased with herself for the idea. Two of her favorite people in the same room! No way could that go wrong.
You know what she already regrets saying it out loud. Forget it!
But he asks what she means, that it's familiar. "I've never seen it before. But I feel like I know it. Like hearing a song for the first time, but knowing the words anyway. Kind of like-- hey!!"
Lan, sadly, had not looked up at the cloudbear to notice it missing. She notices it's missing from its spot at the foot of the bed at the same time Loren does, when it attempts to eat the jewel right out of her hand. "Hey, no! Bad!" Carefully (but firmly, because NO) Lan extracts the gem from the bear's mouth by holding on to its scruff and tugging. "Are you teething? What're you doing, uh...." she pauses, wiping moisture off of the jewel and gently blocking the cloudbear with her other hand. "Uh... Chompy. ...Loren you've got to give it a name, I can't call it Chompy with a straight face."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren's response to that is to sigh as if put upon. "Of course you're doing something useful, you dummy," he tells Lan, shaking a finger in her general direction. "You're resting and getting better. If you did anything else, you'd be useless!" He's reached for the box, as if to further explore its depths and whatever else might be inside. "Besides, you're always doing something. You should lie there for a change." Oh hey, is that some candy?
"...He makes muffins? Wait, I think you said he did baking or something..."
Which was likely the one thing that left him feeling more mollified about Hicalu's presence in the first place, but details.
Loren, in that moment, has reached out to the stone. How strange, it almost feels like he ought to touch it. Like he already knows what might happen if he does.
Except the cloudbear gets there first.
"Lan, it can't eat it!" Which is both a literal statement of fact but also a suggestion to what she ought to prevent here. One brief struggle and --thankfully, as it has no real grip on the stone -- she's prised it free, but it seems quite intent on getting the stone back into its mouth again.
Or at least, it does until Loren grabs it and it returns the favor by biting his fingers.
"It has teeth already," he tells her. Which is true! The teeth are just as insubstatial as a cloud.
He looks down at the bear, which has apparently latched onto his hand.
"I dunno. 'Chompy' seems like a pretty good name. All it does is try to bite me." And the stone now, too, it seems. He sighs. "...But I don't know. I thought about it, but I don't know what I should call it. --Hey, let go, will you?!"
It doesn't have a 'bite' in the traditional sense but he's still got some fingers in a small bear's mouth.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"I knnnnoooooooowwwwww," she doesn't entirely whine. "I just... I'm used to doing a lot. I take a lazy day now and then, but... there's just always so much to do." Crocheting lace to sell, or hunting, or going on a dig, or foraging, or just traveling to a new place to do more of the above. "I guess I never thought about how much effort it takes to make myself lie back and be still sometimes."
Her first instinct is to stuff the jewel down her shirt for safekeeping, but there's a major problem with that plan. Fortunately Loren is good at wrangling tiny cloudbears! ...Or maybe he's just an acceptable teething substitute. "Chompy... well, let's try other things too. Like... Fluffy, Misty... uh, Gerald." That's always sounded like a good name for a bear. "Or Mikel, Haban..." She holds the gem in her hand and watches the bear to see if it reacts to any of the sounds.
"But yeah, he's a great baker. I must've taken a dozen scones with me the last time I visited him. I split the last one with Ethius and Homer when I ran into them in the desert." Lan puts the cap back on the thermos and carefully lies down again, hair spread out beneath her on the pillow.
She holds the gem up again - this time, out of the reach of passing bear cubs. The rays warm the dim room by degrees. "...What kind of name would sound good for a baby bear and a grown up bear?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He just sighs. "I know. Every time I see you, you're busy with something." But her pack is lost elsewhere, and even if he were inclined to go and find it, he can't leave her alone like this. "But you need to rest. If you move around too much, you'll compromise the wound healing and, well..." Then he'll have to do something really drastic, with all the risks that come along with it.
He'd been contemplating doing it -- healing her completely but then monitoring her and doing whatever needed to be done. But that has plenty of its own risks and, worse, he's never done needle aspiration in the field.
Better to stick in the realm of the familiar until it becomes do or die. And fortunately, it seems he can avoid it.
More to the immediate point though is the matter of the bear, suddenly intent on making itself everyone's problem. Honestly, he tried for days to find something it would eat, way back, only for it to now turn around and decide it wants to eat glowing rocks.
"Misty's kinda..." He makes a face. "What about... I dunno. Runa? Addi?"
The bear doesn't appear to react to any of that -- Loren's suggestions, or Lan's own. Instead, it detatches from his hand after a moment more and settles down into the blankets.
He's watching it, rather than her and the gem.
"...You don't think it's going to get any bigger, do you?" It's already sort of straining things to keep it hidden as it is!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It's a large wound. There's no denying it. Even with the internal damage repaired, there's still a hole in her middle. Lan doesn't like to look at it. It should come as no surprise that needle aspiration is not something she's enthusiastic about, no matter how minimally invasive it is.
"I like those. Runa, Addi," she tries for herself, crooning the names and watching the bear cub. "You're good at naming things."
But he worries about whether or not it will grow. Her honest instinct is to say that yes, of course it will grow bigger. It's an animal! "Well... there were adult animals in the mansion's lab. I guess it depends on a lot of things." Like does whatever weirdo process they're subjected to stop them from aging? It's hard to imagine how long some of the animals would have had to live in the mansions grounds since it was left to rot. "If it gets bigger, what will you do? Is there any place it can live safely? Like... Macalania Woods might be a good place. It's cool and damp there."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He's even less thrilled about it without a way to monitor the position of the needle on his end...
Her compliment seems to make him flustered. "They're-- it's just names. I just thought about people I knew about," he says, shaking his head. Family members. Important people from his history books. "I really don't know what kind of name suits a bear." Should he even name a bear after people like that?
"Hm..."
Yeah, it's possible. Maybe it'll get bigger. And don't some bears get really big? Really, really big? He looks discomfited, glancing down at the bear.
"Yeah, maybe. ...But it'll have to learn how to be a bear. I mean... people have to learn how to be people, right?" And Loren doesn't know how to teach that lesson. It's been hard enough learning how to become human.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Well, I guess it's not like the bear will care very much," Lan muses, tucking the edges of the covers firmly beneath her armpits. There, that's a little more secure. She's been really pretty careful about covering up as much as possible - not only because of the cold, but because Loren keeps getting embarrassed every time he sees her topless. Which, it's a little embarrassing for Lan too, but it's not like she can help it. He had to cut her shirt off, and in the end she hasn't been able to sew a new one.
But now that she knows the bear is interested in the gem, Lan is more careful about holding it out of its reach. "Hmm... I wonder how much a bear learns from its mother?" Lan will admit to not knowing the secret inner workings of bear culture. "Probably how to hunt and forage... though, this one doesn't have to worry about that, maybe...?" After all, aside from the gem or Loren's hand, she hasn't seen it eat a bite. "And they'd have to learn to avoid humans." But how could Loren, a human, teach it that?
Even if he acts like he doesn't care too much about it, he does. Even if he doesn't know much about keeping a pet (or any animal), he's doing his best.
"...If it would stay a baby, that would be easier," Lan sighs, looking over at it. "But if it grows up and keeps not caring about food, maybe it'll be okay."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
There's a good reason why Loren had asked for spare clothing. On one level, he knows he's being extremely stupid about this. It's technically nothing he's not seen before -- whether in general or Lan in particular -- but there's something about her being awake that changes the whole equation for him.
That, and the way he feels about her. He can't be doing this. There is a whole host of reasons why he can't be doing this, but what other name is there for this feeling?
Everything, again, has gotten all twisted up and he can't disentangle or make sense of a single bit of it.
At least there are things to focus on immediately. Like their joint survival. Like making sure she gets the proper care after they part ways.
And the mystery of the bear and the gem. ...Which is not a sentence that Loren has ever thought to himself before, but so be it.
"Probably... a lot? Don't most animals?" says Loren, whose knowledge about the natural world more or less ends at 'human medical'. "Yeah. As long as it can get water, it seems to be fine." It seems to... wilt a little bit, when it hasn't had its water, it seems like.
In the end, he shakes his head. "I have no idea. There were all sorts of things that had been fused with... elemental spirits, I guess. It's just another experiment. I don't think they cared how it was going to turn out."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Some animals learn more from their parents than others. A cat will stay with its mother for a few weeks, until it can hunt on its own, but a calf will stay with its mother for months even though there's, uh, really not that much to being a cow or a buffalo. Eat grass, try not to get eaten." It seems a little mean to the cows, to put it that way...!
She rolls the jewel between her fingers, staring up at its warmth and brightness. "I wonder why it went for this all of a sudden. If it was teething... well, you said it's already got teeth. But if it were teething, we'd know. It would be chewing on lots of things." Not just hands and magical gems. "--What if it eats magic?" she asks suddenly, turning over onto her side to face him, the mystery of the gem itself momentarily on the backburner.
"Have you ever used Ether in front of it? ...Though I don't know how it could... really eat that," she frowns, and reconsiders, staring at the bear cub. "Maybe if we had a Crest sorceror or something..." But, tucking the gem away beneath the blanket (and uncomfortably close to her bosom), the shaman holds out an empty hand in front of the bear cub. It takes a little longer than she'd like for silvery light to blossom in her palm, but it's the best thing Lan could think of to test her idea out. "C'mon, eat the magic...!"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Hmm," is the sum total of his reply. Humans take the longest of all to leave home, don't they, Loren muses, frowning as he thinks back. He'd left home at 18 and had barely been back since. ...Is it really home, anymore?
The little bear squirms, obviously discomfited by its inability to either chew on Loren's fingers or the gem that Lan had reclaimed from it, the former prevented no doubt by the way that Loren holds it at nearly arms length.
"--What if it what?" Loren utters, staring over at Lan. True, Tabitha had insinuated something similar, that it might have been feeding on him, leeching away his Ether. But it had been an unsettling thought and so he'd ignored it (and also he hadn't noticed the absence of any potential energy on his part, at least not to a degree that would have suggested it was being drained). But, to hear Lan raise it too--
"No, but... What, wait, what are you doing?" he asks of her, watching as she summons a small tendril of silvery magic. The bear squirms in his grasp. He glances down at it, then over at her, and then, in a moment of pure, 'well, fine, let's see how badly this blows up', lets go of the still-nameless cloudbear.
It pads across the bed for the light in Lan's hand and, opening its mouth...
devours it.
Loren looks a little bit ashen, regarding. "Great... so I'm just a walking dinner to it," he says, shoulders sagging. How's he different from the cow in this setup??
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Well it either wanted magic or shiny rocks, and I only have one of those to spare," Lan explains in her usual roundabout way. But he puts the cub down, and it toddles on over... to prove her hunch correct.
The sensation of having her magic eaten... isn't really all that weird. No weirder than actually doing magic to begin with. Loren is less impressed.
Lan tries to tug the bear a little closer to her, though she won't force it (she kind of wants to try cuddling it again). "It was eating your Ether? ...If you want to get nitpicky about it, you're its parent now. So of course you're a source of food and comfort." Though, how much comfort the little bear actually needs or wants is debatable. "At least it's not a vampire bear!" she tries to console him. Now who's acting like a parent??
Although... the bigger it gets (if it does get bigger) the more it might eat. "Do you ever feel weaker after it, uh, chews on you? Like, have you been paying attention?" What if it gets too big for one person to feed it? Will they have to have a volunteer pool of mages to keep Loren's pet cloudbear from drinking him dry?!
The mental image of a cartoony Loren, all shriveled up and blown away by a gust of wind, does not bring the kind of laughter it might under other circumstances.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren just gives her a look that about says 'I guess'.
The cub, sated for the moment from the dose of magic she's fed it, squabbles a little bit but is far less able (or willing, perhaps?) to hold Lan's affections at bay. She has a somewhat squirmy cloudbear in her arms now.
Loren, for his part, looks discomfited. "So you're saying it's like-- nursing it? Er," he adds, hunching his shoulders and looking away. Of all the times to say something like that...
"I don't want to think about vampire bears," he mumbles.
Does he ever feel weaker after it chews on him? "No! I would have noticed that earlier!" As it was, he'd just had it show up at times and chew on his fingers or his face or something and then it'd wander away. If he'd felt weak at all at any point -- especially given his earlier concerns and so forth -- he would have done... something about it.
Something, though even now he's not sure what ought to happen. Abandoning it seems wrong. But if it could end up hurting him...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She wasn't going to be the one to say it. "I guess you could think of it like that? Oh, but it's got teeth already. So you're more like 'bits of soft food from the grownups' bowls'!" Lan, stop helping.
It's a rare treat to get to hold the little bear, since it's usually so fussy. She doesn't have the heart to make it stay if it really wants to wander off, but for now she gets to pet it all she wants! It's just so, so soft. And kind of humid, but nobody's perfect.
It's a relief to know that so far the effects of being nommed on by a cloudbear are minimal. "Maybe it just needs a little tiny bit. So it's okay. We were just thinking about it all wrong... it's somewhere between real and spiritual. So it needs real water, and spiritual food." Lan settles a bit, scritching gently behind the cloudbear's ears. "Magilou never gets to call me dumb again, I'm the smartest~"
Nobody tell her, okay.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Even without looking at her, Loren wilts visibly.
Perhaps, between being placated with magical energy and the time it's spent over the last few days being so close to the both of them the cloudbear is a little more 'pliable' than it normally is.
Well, not counting the 'part cloud' sort of pliable, that is.
"I guess," Loren allows, frowning as he considers the bear that Lan is now petting. "I mean, it makes sense. Just..."
Just, he hopes it doesn't end up needing 'more' than this, or they're all going to have a problem. Maybe it'll stay small and managable.
Maybe.
Speaking of food, though, Loren's stomach growls.
"...Split one?" he says, pulling another sandwich out of the box. He could totally eat another entire sandwich, but fair's fair. He knows better than to think he should get to eat all the sandwiches for being good the last few days...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Regular feeding, forced interaction... Maybe this is how you tame a cloudbear. It works with hissy kittens!
"Just, it's weird," she guesses with a bit of sympathy. "And it's a little worrying if it does get bigger and need to eat more." If it comes to that, they'll worry about it later. For now, it's just a baby.
Loren could always become a renegade Drifter plundering ruins for ancient artifacts to sate his pet bear's hunger for magic! He could wear a cool hat and everything.
The bear isn't the only person around here that's consistently hungry though. Lan smiles, letting her hand rest on the cloudbear's back. "I just want a bite. I drank a lot of the soup." Her gaze drifts to the empty fireplace. "But later on, if you feel up to it, do you think you could boil some water? I'd really, really like some tea."
He really deserves to eat all the sandwiches. He's been hungry, and patient. Taking care of her while she's been healing up must be taxing. "But eat your sandwich first."