maskormenacelogs | Homemade Stew.

Entry tags:

Homemade Stew.

WHO: Yenh Quryoja and Ysanne Isard (cameo by Emet-Selch)
WHERE: Nonah, in Yenh's backyard.
WHEN: Some weekend evening!
WHAT: Dinner and conversation between two people who met in a thrift store. then they kiss.
WARNINGS: Emet-selch; later on, a PG-13 seduction with a fade to black.

With her roommate gone to his favorite club for the evening, Yenh focuses on making dinner. She has few expectations for the night and for the woman she invited over, but Ysanne had been friendly and helpful. It can't hurt to get to know someone like that, regardless of where it may lead.

If she were in her usual position to be cooking for herself, she would be living off the land somewhere between towns and settlements. Since she is in the city and in no mood to make an all-day rural excursion, she chose to get ingredients from the farmer's market. The chunks of beef came from the local butcher, though she briefly considered hunting and dressing some pigeons.

Her text directions to Ysanne will lead her to a little two-story house in Nonah not far from the Porter, and then to head through the side gate into the backyard. Yenh's message used a fire emoji, a cartwheel emoji, and the pot of food emoji.

The backyard has two large trees at the far end, between which Yenh has set up a training dummy. The cookfire for her stew, however, she set up in the open space nearer toward the house. It's a decent campfire, methodically built and surrounded by stones. She has also set up a couple of folding chairs, and a cooler, which she is only using as a table for a pitcher of lemonade, a pair of drinking glasses, and the cookware she needs.

This is very much a casual-dress situation. The SHIRT BARN tee was, no question, the shirt of choice for this event. She is otherwise wearing khaki shorts and flip-flops. And the eyepatch. The stew quietly boils away, the pot dangling above the open flame. She hums tunelessly as she dumps a portion of chopped carrots in.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Translating emojis wasn't the easiest thing she'd learned, but a crash-course on the internet had allowed her to parse it. It wasn't that hard, but it was one of many reminders that she was a new stranger in a strange land. One that, in many ways, bothered her.

She had commanded entire fleets of hyperspace capable vessels, yet these little communicators produced on this backwater had more capability and variety than any communications equipment she'd ever seen. It was strange, and in some way unsettling that she couldn't put her finger on.

But it was not the sort of night for those thoughts - in point of fact, she might actually get to enjoy herself, for the first time here. Oh, some guard is necessary to maintain her legend, but it will probably be the most satisfying meal since she has arrived, since her own cooking skills are still mastering Kraft Dinner, which she suspects is secretly sinister, in some way.

She still tends to red, however, arriving in a red blouse and slacks, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. It looks casual, as far as she can tell. She hasn't ever been casual in her life, so playing that part is a new and interesting experience.

She also carries a small cactus in a pot. The cactus had a flower on it. She had read about gifts being appropriate in some situations, and something about this particular cactus made it seem a good idea.

"Hello?" she called, moving towards the backyard, but not wanting to appear unannounced.

Yenh's ears satellite toward the sound of her voice. The rest of her perks up as she recognizes the voice. "Hullo, Ysanne!" she calls out as she sets aside the platter. It's a short distance between the gate and where she is, but Yenh trots the distance nonetheless. It only right to open the gate for her guest, even if she did unlock it just in case.

She is greeted by the sight of her guest, who earns a bright smile just for being there. As far as Yenh is concerned, Ysanne's casual look is nice enough. Then her eye falls on the cactus, which earns a delighted look. "You've brought a cactus! And it's in bloom! How adorable!" She's already stepping back to allow Ysanne to join her. "Come in! Or back, I suppose."

She was fairly certain waiting was the polite option, though it was difficult to tell, with this planet. Some places were much less formal than others. In the United States, which was pretty much a mixture of most everywhere else with jingoism sprinkled on top, it was even more uncertain.

But she hands over the cactus, following Yenh.

"Yes, as a thank you! I don't think it requires much water."

Biology is not her most important subject.

"It shouldn't," she agrees in a chipper tone. She cradles the little pot in her hands with care, and decides that the safest place for it is on the back porch, between the railing supports. "I called a desert city-state my home for some time. Lots of cacti 'round there. Small like this, or big as a man... and that walk around!"

Cacti secured, she takes a moment to admire it one more time. It's the good kind of nostalgia, the kind that leaves her hoping that the people of Ul'dah are doing well. More warmth behind her smile now, she sets about to pour a glass of lemonade. She made it herself, but she followed a recipe so that it didn't come out as sugar water with a hint of lemon. Which she would have preferred, but this is alright, too. "They don't have cactuar here. A pity. They're rather cute, so long as you don't piss them off."

She has pissed off a lot of them in her time.

Yenh offers Ysanne the glass. "Lemonade?"

Well, an accidentally good choice.

"You'll forgive me," Ysanne says, taking the lemonade with an inclining of her head in thanks, "if I'm rather happy that the desert plants I've seen stay in one place."

She sniffs at the glass, arching an eyebrow. She has no idea what lemonade is. She takes her time to sip it, smacking her lips a little bit.

"Oh, that is...very good."

"Plantkin roam about everywhere," Yenh offers cheerfully. "And I'm glad you like it."

"It's funny—my star and this one are wholly different worlds. Yet both have lemons, and people who invented lemonade. Are you previously familiar with it, too?" She pours herself a glass as she speaks. Her taste for sweets has worsened living in a country that created a sweeter sugar, but lemonade is still refreshing.

"I hadn't even heard of lemons before tonight. There's just...so much to learn here."

She sipped her drink again, honestly enjoying it. Simple, but satisfying. Well done, Earth.

"Strange that this slips between universes. But not to mine."

Yenh nods, brows furrowing with some thought. She doesn't prefer dwelling on the deeper oddities she's taken note of. Not tonight, anyway. She realizes she should probably actually mind the stew, so she takes up the ladle. Twirling it easily across her knuckles, she snaps it into her hand with a flick of her wrist. That was as much to amuse herself as it is to show off.

"Truly strange," she muses. "What's the biggest adjustment you've had to make, then? Mine's been accepting that Earth's natives are only one type of folk."

There's definitely some skill in this one, though the precise dimensions of it are unknown to her. It will be interesting finding out. And that is increasingly how she justifies many of her decisions here. She has the time to indulge interests she hadn't before.

She laughs, just a little, at that adjustment. "I'd think, given what I've studied of their history and politics, that the bigger difficulty would be convincing them that they are."

They fight to the death over the stupidest things, she finds. Things that, where she comes from, are relative rarities.

"For me, it's...having free time. I can't remember the last time that there wasn't something to do. The last time I did something like this..." she gestured around them, vaguely..."I can't remember."

When it comes to war and politics, Yenh has seen and experienced far more than most. Intel was never her strongest suit, but the things she suspects about this world's politics unnerve her, and it isn't entirely the nuclear weapons.

"Ooh, that's something I can relate to. Mayhap not in as extreme a way," Yenh offers in thoughtful tones as she pushes her bigger worries aside. "I'm no stranger to snatches of downtime, but life has always had something in store for me. I'm a professional adventurer, you see."

She decides to put the lid on the stew to let it simmer a bit longer. With that, she returns the ladle to its hook and settles back into her chair, letting her tail dangle through the back. "What did you do?"

The nuclear weapons don't worry her at all - they're too easy to beat. And, at this point, aging badly. You don't irradiate territory you want to conquer - and she's long since figured out what a Soviet invasion plan of Western Europe would look like. Keep close to the major cities, of course. See if West Germany or France are willing to have nuclear weapons dropped on them.

She smiles at that first part. "How does one become a professional? Is there accreditation?"

But she thought about that answer for a time.

"Between you and me? I was a spymaster. I think that's the only equivalent Earth term for it. Twenty years, girl and woman, as an intelligence agent. Trying to keep a whole galaxy safe from...plots, and dark secrets."

"Close! There's a guild, with by-laws," Yenh answers, shifting in her chair. "If we don't live by a code, then we're merely vagabonds with swords." Yenh knows she is not exactly describing her profession in the best of terms, but adventuring isn't glorious. It's hard work. Good work, but hard work.

Yenh pauses and blinks as Ysanne's answer sinks in. She knows spies back home, so it isn't a surprise to accept that this woman might be one. That part isn't what trips her up. "—a galaxy as in..." Yenh sweeps her hand toward the sky, where the Milky Way would be visible if not for light pollution. "How do you manage so many stars at once?!"

She understand it entirely, actually. A hierarchy, a code to work by - these distinctions can be important.

She looked up, nodding, knowing to some degree what was out there.

"With great care, and great difficulty," she responded, smiling ruefully. And, in a way, genuinely. "Even delegating as much as I could, I had to manage so very much. Every day I heard about planets I would never see, people I would never meet. And I had to make decisions that affected all of them."

There was a pause, then. "Frankly, this place is...much more peaceful."

Yenh gazes at Ysanne with a tilt of her head, the joviality settling into a studied gaze. Yenh's decisions also affected at least two worlds, albeit often through bloodshed. Yet she did know as many of the folk among them—as would tolerate her presence—and she loved and cared for everyone. Even the 'savage' peoples whom her fellow 'civilized' folk so crudely referred to as 'beastmen.' Even as she reminds herself that the burdens of other worlds are not hers to bear, she can't help but wonder about what kind of people have lived across the great expanse of time and space. What they held dear. Dear enough to die for.

Her mind's eye is a wash over Ysanne, whom she has locked eyes with to try and ground herself in the present. The soft and low sobriety of her tone is a night-and-day difference from her usual airy lilting. "You were at war too, then?"

She tries to read her, in return. The thoughts swirling behind Yenh's visible eye are deep ones indeed.

"Yes, I was," she replied, looking upwards at the sky and sipping her lemonade.

"One war ended when I was...perhaps two, I think? I don't even remember it - armies of clone soldiers fighting robot armies across a hundred worlds. Then, for a time, there was peace...but it all started again. Brushfires and civil wars...by the time I was old enough to take over from my father, a new galactic war had begun."

She winced briefly, then, and it was only partly act.

"This is the first peace I've known since I was a little girl."

Yenh listens around her distraction, using Ysanne's words an an anchor against her own thoughts. The idea of multiple worlds at war was not foreign to her, but one she'd only encountered in passing. Despite her best efforts, she cannot help but feel sorry for that little girl Ysanne once was.

"It may not be home, but I hope the peace strikes you well." The smile she pushes onto her face is forced, but it helps her to climb out of that deep hole before she falls too far. "I don't know what your wars were about, but mine—well, I'd rather be home fighting than languishing here."

"It has so far," she replied, nodding towards Yenh, "I get stew out of the deal, after all."

It is said to lighten the mood, and obviously so. But now she has a better idea of who this person actually is. Tails tell her nothing, but emotions are everything.

"I'm sure you fought the good fight," she said, "and I'm equally sure you'll find a good cause here."

Yenh can't speak to the last part, if only because the good cause she already has found is far too convoluted to explain. Her eyes dart toward the house, only briefly, then she turns to check on the stew.

"Right," she says as she absently lifts the pot lid, not particularly caring about the sting of the heat as she sets it down against the stones by the fire. With a cough, Yenh continues speaking, this time with shades of her previous brashness beginning to return to her voice. "In the end, all we can do is make the most of it, hm?"

That little flicker is worth noting, though for the moment he hasn't a clue what it means. But all threads unravel, sooner or later.

By the look of her, she is unnaturally strong - not the first of such people she has met here, but perhaps the most interesting one.

"There's wisdom there," she replied, then remembered who she was - or at least who she was presenting herself as - and added: "though if you need to talk, sometimes, of other things, I think I an provide a good ear."

"Ah, thank you," Yenh replies kindly but with clear hesitancy. It isn't that she is troubled by Ysanne being a spy, as it isn't like her worries are anything that can be leveraged against her. It's good old fashioned avoidance. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."

She raises the ladle to her lips and blows softly on the steaming stew for a testing sip. Yenh nods and turns back to Ysanne. "Same to you, though. I've been a shoulder for more people than I can track."

She smiled, a bit fondly.

"I will wager that neither of us are particularly good at taking up such offers from others. Frankly, it's been so long since somebody just sat down and talked to me that even this is unusual to me."

She pauses a moment, then adds.

"The good sort, of course."

She returns the smile with warmth, leaning forward for some solid eye contact. "Much as it pains me to admit it, this situation is a great reprieve."

Her tail twitches. She snatches up the bowls from where they rest beside Ysanne, breaking the eye contact right after her smile cracks briefly into a cheeky grin.

"And what better reprieve than dinner? It is ready."

She just smiles back, then rubs her hands together at her latter statement.

"My stomach is growling just thinking about it," she replied. That much was very true - the smell was tantalizing. And somehow familiar, though she couldn't put her finger on it just yet.

With a vague shrug to herself, Yenh cheerfully sets about filling each of the bowls, balancing one on her forearm in the process. It's hot, but that doesn't bother her much.

With a flourish, she offers the bowl to Ysanne. "Think no longer! Feast. Oh, there are the spoons." She grabs one off the cooler before flopping back into her folding chair. Yenh digs in—it's a hearty stew, thick and meaty but not lacking for variety in vegetables and herbs. For Yenh, the flavor is adjacent to home.

She mutters her thanks, breathing in the scent and wrinkling her brow. Yes, there's something familiar about it, and yet...not.

When she takes her first bite, it hits her.

Ysanne Isard has never had a home, not truly. She lived on Coruscant, but that was a place of power - not a loving home, not a loving past. But then there had been the times when she was on-mission, when she was just setting out. Living in the shadows, on any of a hundred planets to carry out a mission.

She had never stayed where the lights were brightest, no spy worth their salt would - but the stew reminded her. Reminded her of a wet night on Corellia where everything had gone wrong, but there had been a moment, out of the rain, with a hot meal from a street vendor. Or perhaps that time on Kijimi, warming her cold bones after a successful coup d'etat at a small cafe.

It tasted of many places, yet none of them. But it provoked the strongest memories. The rare moments when she had been...satisfied.

She gulped down another bite with a quiet groan of pure enjoyment, leaning back to savour every last iota of the taste.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject