2023-01-04: Nothing Like a Fresh Scone

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  • Log: Nothing Like a Fresh Scone
  • Cast: Lan Lilac, Loren Voss, Hicalu Wilwisp
  • Where: Guild Galad - The Electric Air Voids
  • Date: January 04, 2023
  • Summary: Lan invites Loren by Hicalu's bakery, an invitation of which Loren is /more than happy/ to avail himself. The tiny bear, again, makes itself known. Mysterious.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    The Memory Cubes are pretty useful. One day maybe Lan will start some kind of petition to have one brought to Little Firelight. Or maybe a Save Parrot would be better.

    She's really not sure how you would go about getting a Memory Cube anyway...

    It's kind of a moot point anyway, since she can't go home until things are settled between her and Solaris.

    And speaking of...

    Isn't it about time she introduced Hicalu to one of the very, very few Solarians she could entrust him to/with? So Lan invited Loren Voss, via Memory Cube, to pay them a visit in Guild Galad. Lan is between Digs right now, but has found some temporary work in a tailor's shop and occasionally goes out wildcrafting for medicinal and culinary herbs. Sometimes she stays at Hicalu's place, and sometimes she gets an inn room so they can each have their own privacy. It's a luxury they grew up without!

    She'd given him the name and approximate address of Erika's bakery, and he'll show up when he shows up. At the moment, Lan is helping out the bakery by grinding a small sack full of toasted herbs in a mortar, one handful at a time. "I can't believe one bakery goes through so much rosemary..." she remarks, twisting the pestle against the stone. "Is it that popular in bread?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Memory cubes are extremely handy things, even if Loren -- familiar to the phenomenon of admin eyeing your electronic messages -- wonders if even this is privy to the Watcher's gaze in some way.

    If only he knew.

    Still, what are his options, exactly? Tell her to never message him again? Ignore his messages? Cut down the only real friendship he has out of some sense that he's going to get her killed? ...Well, that might be a good enough reason.

    But Loren is selfish in that sense and try as he might, he just can't seem to let go of what he has.
    Especially if there are scones involved, as they are in this case. Lan had promised!

    Which might have turned out to be a necessity, given that he is none too fond of Guild Galad. There's too many people once you get past the surface, and worse, it's a pain in the ass getting around. At least there are directions, this time.

    A small bell on the door announces his arrival. Loren looks tense (does he ever not?) as he gazes around the inside of the bakery and slowly begins to relax (relative to himself, anyway).

    "The main street was blocked off," he says, almost accusatory, as if Lan had planned this, somehow.

    ...It's not her fault that a transport car had a small accident in the middle of the avenue!

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    "Sure is!" Hicalu answers, cheerfully. His curly mane of bronze hair and giant ears are currently captured in a hair net to avoid any Grievous Baking Accidents, but his big bushy tail isn't in the cooking space, so that's fine. "Rosemary's a good trick, Lan! It's pretty much cookin' magic!"

    As opposed to magic used for cooking, which is what most of those tattoos up his bare arms and legs are for. He's wearing airy Baskar-style clothing, which means shorts and a shirt which shows off his midriff. It would be much better suited for a desert than an underground den, but anyway.

    Under that hair net, his ears twitch, when he hears the familiar tink of Master Erika's bell. Pulling out a fresh tray of scones -- LITERALLY right from the oven -- he situates the tray out front, smiling to their new customer. "Hi!" He greets Loren, with a big smile.

    "Sorry to hear 'bout the street," he offers, conciliatory. Hicalu has worked here for a while; he has a Customer Service Voice. "Since the streets are kinda narrow down here, it's easy for stuff to happen, huh? Glad you made it here!"

    He may not realise that this is the Illustrious Loren, who he's heard so many stories about.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    "With the amount you guys asked for I was starting to think you were going to use it in place of flour," she teases.

    Loren may or may not have considered that Lan is exactly the type of person who would take unanswered messages to mean that he is in trouble and needs help, and would thus proceed to mount some kind of half-cocked, completely crocked rescue attempt. At this point, keeping her at an uncomfortable arm's length may be his only option...! That is, if he doesn't want her to cause infinitely more trouble than she already has.

    Ting-a-ling!

    Even if he's grumpy (boy is he ever), she's still glad to see him. Lan knows just how much Loren hates crowds, and how catastrophic a simple setback can seem in a strange place. "Hey!" she beams at him, pestle slowing in the mortar. "You made it!" Because even if he said he would, things happen sometimes.

    "Hicalu, this is the friend I told you about! Loren." Carefully dusting the crushed herbs from her hands, she stands up from the cafe table and gets up to go... give Loren a great big 'it's been so long' hug.

    Perhaps worse, this is just inviting HICALU to give Loren a hug, too!

    But at least they both smell like baked goods, so he's probably experienced worse things.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    And then there's that -- the part that, while he might not be fully aware of the lengths to which she would go if he suddently tried to ghost her, neither is he completely unaware that he's important to her, too, in a way.

    Even if it's all utterly awkward for him and probably going to get her killed (or worse) one of these days. No one ever said that friendship was easy.

    And it sure isn't today, either! Even if the reason this time around is (in the context of things) far less dire. Still, Lan does have the right of it. Not only had he been forced to go down a street he hadn't been given directions along, but he'd had to ask for the correct directions once it had turned out that he'd gotten turned about and it had taken even longer. Probably, anyway. He hasn't been here before.

    "They should widen them," he sighs, grimacing as Lan rises from where she's working and starts towards him, knowing well what she's going to do. He gives her a brief, 'what, really?' sort of look, glancing pointedly in Hicalu's direction before giving into the inevitable.

    While he puts up with it about as well as a cat who doesn't want to be held might tolerate the same, the real fact of the matter is that...
    ...well, it's complicated.

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    "Great idea!" Hicalu replies, and whether he's giving Lan a hard time or earnestly enthused about the concept of flour replacements is impossible to tell.

    Hicalu makes sympathetic noises when Loren complains, but any further Customer Service Patter is interrupted by -- "Oh!" Under his hair-net, Hicalu's ears perk right up. "So you're Loren! Hi! Nice to meetcha!"

    The biggest tragedy of the world is that Hicalu steps around the counter to go give Loren a hug too. Even though he's never met him! Is this... desert hospitality?!

    He at least steps back soon enough, tail sweeping about behind him in excitement. "I've heard all about you! Good things!" That's an important addition, when Loren seems so prickly. "I'm real happy to get to meet someone so close to Lan! It's great how she's got people she can really rely on out here, too!"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Ever since the inn, Lan has availed herself of hugging Loren a lot more than she used to on the rare occasions they're together. Normally at least she doesn't do it when there are other people around! But Hicalu isn't 'people', he's family.

    And if Lan ends up milking this fact a little bit so that she can get in a brief amount of group hug, then nobody could blame her, ever.

    "You remember me talking about Hikky, right?" she asks, because who knows, Loren's had memory problems before. "Hicalu Wilwisp, meet Loren Voss. Loren, meet Hikky, my little brother."

    Yes... different last names, different races, different color palettes. They're totally siblings! Then again, Loren has visited Little Firelight once before, and heard Lan spin stories about their childhood home.

    "Did you have to travel a long way? Like, on a train?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Your... what?"

    He glances between Lan and Hicalu as if attempting to do the math here and not entirely coming up with a whole number. Luckily, Loren is not (that) stupid!

    "...Adopted?"

    She's been hugging him more, and it would be easier if he merely hated it. As it stands it's actually the reverse, which makes him feel weird (so much of his feelings about her are weird, lately).
    Which is probably why he's particularly prickly about the hugging, even if he doesn't take steps towards pushing her off.

    Because, again, he doesn't hate it--

    "Wait, what are you...!"

    But that same right isn't necessarily afforded to Hicalu, who he only knows from Lan talking to him about him (a little bit, sort of) and when he comes in to turn this into a group hug, well, Loren actually (verbally) protests the matter. "Let go of--"

    The fact that something is now gumming on Hicalu's forearm might also turn this into a rather brief sort of hug situation. A very small bear cub has latched onto Hicalu's arm and is... gumming him? Oh wait it has teeth, it just looks like they're insubstantial. ...As is part of the bear?? Is that actually better?!

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    "Yup! I'm the homebody!" Hicalu confirms, brightly, when Loren trips over the concept of them being related. Obviously that's what he was confused about, righ--

    Oh right, yeah, the tail. Hicalu's swishes, as he reaches up to scratch at the back of his head, bashful. "Haha, yeah... I wandered in as a kid one day, and Mana snatched me up on the spot!"

    Hicalu does let go of Loren when he asks -- and would have just done it when he asked! As it happens, he has another reason to stagger back, though, waving his arm wildly as a (very small) BEAR (cub) CHOMPS HIS ARM (with its insubstantial teeth). "Aaaaah!" He yelps, flailing wildly. "Lan! LAAAAAN!! Bear! BEAR!!!"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    "I told you, right?" Lan blinks. Come to think of it... hadn't she just kind of... always referred to Hicalu as Hicalu? "Oops. Yeah, technically adopted." Wherever Hicalu came from, he's Little Firelight's now. Lan can be plenty selfish, too, when the mood takes her.

    But Hicalu jumps, and yelps, and Lan realizes that it's not because Loren crabbed at him or something. "Oh geez--!" She throws her arms around Hicalu, hugging his arms to his sides so that the poor cloudbear doesn't get thrown into the muffin display or something. She doesn't think it would be hurt, but...!

    "It's okay! It's okay, it's a pet! Loren, come get him, okay?" Before Hicalu accidentally sets them on fire or something! "It's a cloudbear. See, see, it's not hurting you," she reassures her brother, while somehow also making a 'hurry up!' motion at Loren by craning her neck. It probably looks pretty hilarious.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Loren beetles his brow. "'Technically'?" Do they have to do paperwork out in Little Firelight, or something? Somehow, he has his doubts...

    He's met Lan's mother, though. ...Frankly he'd never thought it was possible for someone to be more terrifying than his own mother. If she had decided to adopt Hicalu, he's not sure that even God himself would have been able to have said otherwise...

    But then, just as Hicalu is giving Loren the space he's unkindly requested (personal space issues, nothing personal), there is... bear.

    "Hey-- hey, what are--! --What?! I didn't even put it in--"

    Loren sort of gapes unhelpfully for a good handful of seconds, watching as Lan restrains Hicalu who is in a state, with the bear gumming him, before it suddenly occurs to him just what Lan is getting at with that head gesture and bustles on over there to detatch the bear and stuff it back into his bag (it squalls and bites his hand a few times, harmlessly).

    "...It invited itself," he says, lamely. His bag wriggles and writhes a bit.

    There may be a few moments of silence. Loren looks away and rubs at the back of his neck.

    "I heard there were scones," he says at last.

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    "Aaaaahhhhh!" Hicalu flails around, which makes it difficult for Lan to bearhug him, but luckily: this isn't Lan's first rodeo.

    He sniffles and stops thrashing about once she gets a grip on him and tells him just what the bear is, but he's clearly still quite frightened of the intangible bear cub. "Luh-L-Lan he's tryin' t-to EAT me," Hicalu blubbers, holding his arm out to try and get the cloudbear as far away from him as possible. Luckily, this makes it easy for Loren to retrieve his attack bear and pocket it again.

    Hicalu pulls his arm back and cradles it back to himself. It's a good few seconds before he realises: "Huh? I-I'm okay..?" Lan just said he wasn't hurting you, Hicalu!

    But: SCONES. "Oh, yeah!" Hicalu perks up, and disentangles himself from Lan to go and find the tray he put out on the countertop. "We just got these out of the oven! You gotta try one!" He grabs three scones, handing one to Lan, and --

    Very gingerly approaching Loren from the opposite side of his bag and stretching his arm alll the way out to offer a scone at maximum distance.

    "Your bear's scary," he explains, cowarding cowardly.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    What kind of person would it take to tell Mana something she didn't care to hear...?

    "Did you forget to feed it or something?" is about all she can think to ask, which probably won't lift Loren's mood any. She's not blaming him! It's a valid question though.

    "Yeah, it's just a baby. It doesn't know any manners yet." And it's a weird magical abomination (depending on who you ask), which of course means that Lan thinks it's precious and adorable. "It eats magic, so it gums on people a little bit to kind of... like how butterflies lick the salt off of your skin in the summer," she hunts for anything similar and not terrifying. "It probably saw your Symbology tattoos and couldn't stop itself."

    Once he's not panicking outright anymore, Lan lets Hicalu go. And just in time for scones!

    "Yeah. Scones and muffins and a bunch of things I don't know the name of. Crescents? But spelled weird." Lan, you know damn well what a croissant is and you're just teasing them.

    She takes her scone from Hicalu, and watches him offer one to Loren too. "It's not a bad bear. It's just... well, it's a bear. Hey, did you ever name it?"

    SHE REMEMBERED, LOREN

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Of course I fed it!" Loren says, defensive because he's sort of been put on the spot. "It feeds itself, anyway," he adds, a moment later. His bag squirms, as if to protest this point. "Ugh, fine," he says, stuffing his hand into his bag and making a face once the bear makes contact with his fingers.

    Why does this business have to be so weird?

    "It's not dangerous," he adds after a moment, swallowing down that 'probably' in the face of someone who is, frankly, looking like they're about to cry if he says the wrong thing about the bear and its intentions. See, sometimes he can have a (bit of) a bedside manner!

    "That's croissant," says Loren pointedly, who has learned a few things in all those years since being deployed on the surface. After a moment more he extracts his hand from his bag and attempts to surreptitiously wipe his hand off on his pantleg before reaching over to take the scone from Hicalu. He's about to sample it for himself, when Lan asks an important question. Loren freezes.

    And then there's Loren, put on the spot once again. "What-- why are you asking about that now?"

    Because it ought to have name, perhaps...?

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    "I-I'm not that magic!" Hicalu yelps, despite the fact that he has a LOT of sweet tatts.

    ("Croissants," he corrects Lan's pronounciation, taking the bait reflexively and at the exact same moment as Loren. He meets the man's eyes for a moment afterwards. They both got owned.)

    Once Loren retrieves his scone -- Hicalu just kind of keeps holding it out there for him all gingerly and at a distance -- Hicalu retreats so he can bite into his own. He instantly cheers up at least ten degrees.

    "Ish a Bitey," he says, through a mouthful of scone. Chew, chew. Swallow. "Uh, I mean, he seems like he's a Bitey. You should name him Bitey so people know what to expect."

    Hicalu once named their pet desert rabbit 'Mr. McEars'. He's very bad at this game.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    Why are these things so weird, indeed? "Hey, at least it doesn't have sharp teeth or anything," she tries to console everybody. Yes, everybody, perhaps even the bear.

    "Croissant," she echoes, before taking a bit bite out of her scone. Mmmmmm, fresh from the oven and all soft and flaky... She would have been proud of Hicalu no matter what he did for a living, but him being a variety of chef is just the bee's knees. Lan likes food and is only 'decent' at cooking it herself.

    Fuaaaa... tastes like love. <3

    "You are covered in spells, Hicalu," she counters cheerfully now that the immediate catastrophe is over. Lan gestures with her scone at his arms. "And... well, I think the way you name a thing influences how it grows. If we name it Bitey, it's going to be bitey-er. Maybe something more gentle..." She thinks about it while pulling out the other two little cafe chairs at her worktable. "...I still don't think we could go too wrong with Misty."

    Misty is a terrible name, nobody encourage her!!

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Yeah. In that moment they both know it, don't they. They've both been owned. Loren resolves immediately to say nothing and pretend this never happened.

    "I'm not naming it Bitey," he scoffs, as if this is the silliest thing he's ever heard and that he didn't nearly end up trying to name it 'Chompy' a few months ago. He glances sidelong at Lan before taking a mouthful of scone. His expression brightens almost immediately, as if an exclamation mark were hovering just overhead. In rather short order he's polished it off and looks almost disappointed for having done so.

    "...Are there more?"

    He's a little shameless when it comes to food, sometimes.

    "I'm not naming it 'Misty'. It's not very... well, okay, but I don't look at it and think 'mist'!" Loren protests, frowning as he thinks back. Damn, what were those names he'd thought about while stuck in that cabin, anyway...

    "And I don't think 'Cloudy' is a good name, either," he adds, getting ahead of that suggestion while he can.

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    But Hicalu knows it happens.

    He heard it happen.

    "Sure are!" He chirps, brightly, grabbing another round of scones and handing them out. (Loren still gets his at arm's reach.) He baked an entire tray, because Hicalu Wilwisp knows just how to make friends.

    Also if they don't eat them all he can sell the rest. That's just business!

    "Haaah... but if it grows up how you name it, then... you should totally name him Cuddles!" Hicalu declares, snapping his fingers as soon as his hands are free of scone again. "Yeah, that's a great name! Oh, but if he keeps bitin' people, they might get the wrong idea and think he's safe to hug... aaahhh, naming pets is so hard!"

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    ("Didn't you try to name it Chompy or something," Lan asks Loren *sotto voce* when Hicalu goes to grab another scone.)

    But they could go around and around about what to name the bear. More importantly, Hicalu is making a friend! And Loren is getting a healthy meal! "I guess you're right though," she admits, after a moment. "But it'd be kind of like those people who have a huge mean guard dog and name it Fluffy." So, completely unhinged and/or the lame kind of ironic...?

    She sits back down at the table, contemplating the mortar and pestle. "How about a different kind of name? Marble, Agate, Moonstone..." Help she is running out of pretty minerals. "...Uh, Peppermint, Mallow..."

    Maybe keeping her hands busy will help. Meditative states and all that! She picks up the pestle again and gets back to grinding rosemary. "..."

    Grind, grind, grind. Think, think, think.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    ("No I didn't," Loren insists a touch desperately, just above *sotto voce* when Lan tries to jog his memory.)

    Loren sees that tray of scones. There is a brief, visible struggle on his face, something between 'I could eat that entire tray' and 'I should not eat that entire tray' -- even with his frankly ridiculous metabolism (all thanks to being a heavy Ether user and the centuries of genetic selection to optimize use of same) there are limits to how fast his body can process all of that. He would probably hurt his stomach if he tried, which is not recommended by anyone.

    He can have many scones, which is probably just as good.

    "I'm not naming it Cuddles," he says, quite flatly in between packing away the second scone. "That's just sad. It's not a doll. It's a bear." He furrows his brow. "And I don't want to name it 'peppermint'. Isn't that a kind of candy? ...What were those names I had again? Luna? Iddi?"

    Close, but no cigar.

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    Hicalu will continue handing out scones as long as Loren keeps longingly (loreningly?) glancing to the tray of scones.

    It is not the healthiest meal, but he did specialise in baking.

    Lan rattles off a bunch of names, and Loren dismisses them. Hicalu folds his arms, in a dogged Thinking Posture.

    "... Rosemary!" He crows, out of nowhere, as he points at what Lan's grinding.

<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.

 
    "Hey," Lan frowns at Loren, and sliiiides halfway out of her chair - just enough to nudge his ankle firmly with her sandaled foot. Be nice! She knows you can!

    But once settled back into her seat properly, she goes back to work. For someone with no actual bill-paying job (like baker, or accountant or something) Lan sure doesn't seem to be happy unless she's doing something.

    "It's an herb, which can be made into a flavoring or a candy!" Peppermint sticks and rounds (any hard candy, really) were always popular treats from Outside, partially because they travel well. "I think they were Runa and Addi. And maybe Haban? I still think Runa would be good for a bear." Grind, grind. The scent of rosemary is thick and fresh, along with the sweet scents of flour and sugar and syrups.

    Hicalu pounces on Rosemary, and Lan considers it. "...I dunno," she finally admits. "It's a good name, but maybe not for a bear. --Why is naming things so /hard?" she sighs. A small cloud of rosemary dusts the table. "--Ack."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He grimaces as she nudges his foot, well aware of what she means by that and that he has, again, been a bit shitty.

    Not that this matters as such to him, really, but if he keeps on being shitty, Lan will make it matter to him, and whether it's a matter of her approval or the fact that she can and will apply force, well, ultimately the mechanism itself doesn't really matter...

    As for the scones, at least they're handmade. With real butter! They might not be healthy as such, but they're a step up taste-wise for what Solaris has on offer.

    Even a First Class citizen would have a hard time obtaining fresh rosemary.

    "So, what, you can just grow something that tastes like that?" Pause. "Weird."

    They don't all come out of Solaris that stupid. Just Loren.

    "...Rosemary? You think so?" Loren frowns and glances Lan's way, as if checking. "Runa! Right. Maybe. I don't think it's a girl, but maybe that's okay anyway..."

    He's not entirely sure and hasn't been over-eager to really find out. Something about doing so just seems unsavory.

    He sighs, having finished off his second scone. "Was it this hard when our parents named us?"

<Pose Tracker> Hicalu Wilwisp has posed.

    Despite hours of back-and-forth debate on the naming of bears, a surprisingly difficult matter, neither Solaris' nor Little Firelight's finest(???) are able to settle the matter of the bear's name.

    'Runemary' does come up at one point, though.

    They're very good at this game.