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+--- Thread: Oranges and Confrontation [ooc welcome] (/showthread.php?tid=5165)
Oranges and Confrontation [ooc welcome] - Naunet - 10-19-2013
((Set no more than a week after Mothers Make the Best Stew.))
***
In the midst of barkers and pushy shoppers, Antimony did stuff that was, like, shopping stuff. Eyeing foods critically. Poking at produce. She was in an open air market down in the lower decks, and the selection was limited but still good. With all the farmland in La Noscea, it was no wonder. After some time meandering about, she paused to consider a crate of oranges then, and was now stooped over them. When she spoke, it was probably the most boring thing ever, "Ulanan, how do you feel about oranges?"
Ulanan didn't answer right away. Her mind drifted like a ship that had been bombarded with so many cannons in such a short time that it was a wonder that it hadn't sunk to the bottom of the ocean yet. But the lalafell's mind was not attacked by literal cannons but by a simple question: Why were there so many people wearing linen cloth, the most evil and terrible of fabrics? She pondered about this for a long while, perhaps too long. At the end, something in her mind made a connection and she remembered Antimony had just asked her a question. "Oranges are fine." she smiled.
Her tail flicked behind her in a subconscious gesture of thought. "I don't really know any recipes with oranges... I wonder how quickly they rot."
A dark grey hand would offer a basket of oranges to Antimony from behind one of the stalls, a straw hat casting a dark face in shadow. "If you're looking for oranges, I know of the best grove in La Noscea." The voice was deep and neutral, but the man leaned his head back a bit so there was light on his broad, old smile.
Antimony blinked at the basket, then at the arm extending it, and then at the face beneath the hat, and only then did she startle upright in surprise, dropping the orange she'd been experimentally poking at. "Ah! What? Ah--Megiddo!" Green eyes wrinkled as she processed his words again and then, "I didn't notice you there... I'm sorry."
Ulanan turned her head until she could see Megiddo sideways. She frowned for a moment before returning to her usual, more neutral gaze. "What a coincidence." she commented with the enthusiasm of a rock.
Picking up the orange she dropped, ears flicking apologetically at the merchant nearby, Antimony took a moment to calm her heart from Megiddo's surprise. "Well. It is indeed. But... ah, you like oranges as well?"
Still wearing his smile, Megiddo greeted Ulanan with a nod (both his hands were fixed to the basket of oranges he carried). "I'm sure there's some wine around here if you'd like to make good on your previous offer." Looking then to Antimony, "A hermit learns a certain appreciation for fruit, free or otherwise. Oranges last a day or so in a pocket, so it helps to learn to love them."
"You could keep them fresh for a few days if you pile them around a water sprite core and place them all in a box," Ulanan suggested.
"A day or so," she pursed her lips in thought. At Ulanan's words, her expression brightened, "Ah, of course! Ever resourceful, Ulanan. Though... I don't think I've access to such a thing."
Setting down the basket, Megiddo said, "They're using them to preserve the fruits for sail, actually. I'm sure we could get hold of one."
Ulanan raised a brow. "We?"
"Oh, but I couldn't ask for one they're using! And... well, bluntly put, I'm sure I don't have the purchasing power they do." Antimony chuckled a bit wryly at that.
"They have several," he said, arranging a few oranges. "And once the food is sold, they don't serve as much use. They also tend to expire." He glanced at Ulanan, a bit bemused, "Well, if I'm helping, then yes, we."
"They should not be as expensive as they are in Ul'dah." the lalafell remarked. She kept looking at some point over Megiddo. "I'm quite surprised to see you are still in La Noscea. It was already quite odd to meet you in Wineport."
His bemusement giving way to amusement, Megiddo smiled over at Ulanan, "You notice the working of Oschon, one of the most confounding of the Twelve."
Furrowing her brow, Antimony turned back to the oranges, muttering to herself, "I suppose if we got some fish... That seems light enough? Hm, and they would be a nice breakfast..." Her tail twitched at Megiddo's words and she added, "I do not blame you for not returning to Gridania."
Ulanan raised a finger. "Oschon isn't the only one who can give direction to feet." Then the finger dropped and she turned to Antimony. "We could make some juice with them. Or pudding."
"A pudding... Oh! I heard something the other day about... what was it... preserves!"
"Ah, if you start pairing things up for meals and pudding, you've exceeded anything I know about food," he said to Antimony, juggling that well with a response to Ulanan, "The Twelve often co-opt our intentions, though I suppose what you say is true."
Ulanan stood on the tip of her toes, her hands pulling Megiddo's basket down to her eye level. "I wonder if they just sent you to us now so we could decide between pudding or...preserves?"
Laughing, Megiddo looked at Antimony and says, "If that's so, I'm beginning to suspect Oschon is very like Ulanan in personality."
"That would be an odd task of the gods, if they did guide actions at all." She left off the 'but they don't' and eyed a crate of leeks across the way.
Ulanan followed Antimony's gaze. "They do all sorts of strange things. But there is a difference between divine guidance and mortal malice. A thin one."
Megiddo didn’t seem to have anything to say about that, so he instead indicated the oranges, "These are the best I was able to find in the orchard, being unhurried. I picked only the single basket."
Antimony pulled her eyes from the crate of leeks to the basket in his hands. "Oh! Then... well, I'm sure you will enjoy them! But that seems far too many for you to eat in a couple days."
"Oh, they're not for me. This vendor is selling them. I just helped them to pick them."
Ulanan took a peek inside Megiddo's basket. She squinted at the oranges, her enormous hat blocking most of them from the view of the others. "We have to buy some leeks and make some leeway in our load for the leeks we will be making leeway for."
"That was kind of you," Antimony smiled briefly, then frowned. "I've never made neither pudding nor preserves, Ulanan. Do you know how...?"
"We'll need eggs, butter, lemons and sugar." she added.
Antimony winced at the list. "Sugar... That may be a bit out of my, ah, budget." She leaned forward, trying to see the oranges around Ulanan's hat.
"You'd likely have to buy it from the Culinarians at the Bismarck," Megiddo said amicably.
"Well, we do not have the power to produce pudding without sugar. So we should seek to secure a source of sugar." She then looked up to Antimony, her hat no longing obscuring the oranges. "Unless we skip the dessert."
Glancing first briefly at Megiddo before looking down at Ulanan's up-turned face, Antimony sighed. "I suppose that would depend on... other decisions affecting my finances," she said vaguely and then frowned at the oranges.
Ulanan blinked at that, looking confused.
<Twinflame>Spreading his arms, Megiddo says warmly, "Are you still concerned about that? I thought the other night at the Drowning Wench would reassure you."
She blinked at Megiddo before half-smiling and shaking her head, "Oh, no, not that. Don't worry." A pause and then a change of subject, "Ah, oranges qualify as sweet on their own, certainly?"
"I can buy the sugar." Ulanan said, moving her hands out of the basket's borders. "We won't need much anyway."
"That's awfully generous. Are you sure you're from Ul'dah, Ulanan?" Megiddo smiled.
"You are awfully friendly. Are you sure you are a Duskwight?"
At that, Megiddo laughed loudly, his old voice dropping away into silent laughter after a few seconds.
"I can't possibly ask that of you, Ulanan. Why, I'm not even sure how you'd get the money! You've never spoken of work." Antimony shook her head.
"Oschon shall show me to the gil, where I shall shamelessly shear some shells and shape them into sheer gil. " She smiled and added: "Or maybe I'm a good gil saver."
Greyed ears shifted flat out form the sides of her head and, after a moment, she relented, "If you insist. It would be nice..." She turned then to Megiddo on a sudden thought, "Ah, you should stay to share this pudding!"
Catching Anti's glance with his pale eyes, Megiddo frowned vaguely. "Seldom does a Duskwight doubt his ears..."
"What? Is that a strange thing to do?" Her brow furrowed.
"I assure you it won't be poisoned." The lalafell smiled casually.
Megiddo hummed at a thought, and then gestures to the market around them, "Seldom you will find a Duskwight in places such as this, and when one does, it is not usual to request that one stays for dessert. My instincts would normally warn me away from such an invitation, but I wouldn't expect any ill intent from either of you."
"Well, I simply thought... with your apparent, I mean, I am making assumptions so I suppose I could be stepping on toes, but you do seem fond of oranges, and while I can't guarantee the quality of this pudding, since I've never attempted it before, Ulanan does seem to know what she's talking about, and certainly neither of us would try to harm you! Well, except for that one time and ooh I'm not going to speak of that!" Antimony finished looking a bit flustered.
Chuckling at Antimony’s outburst, Megiddo looked down to Ulanan, "What do you think, hm?"
Ulanan's hands curled into fists, which she placed under her chin, letting her head rest against them. "Maybe Oschon just wanted you to get some pudding."
With a nod, Megiddo smiled, "Yes, I do think that Oschon and Ulanan do think alike. While I'm not fond of the city, if I'm willing to come here to pass a meal with Ildur, I suppose I can try some pudding."
"Excellent!" The creases around her eyes and mouth deepened in a smile. She eyed the basket Megiddo still carried then, "I don't think we'll need quite so many, but..."
Ulanan clapped her hands together before looking to Antimony. "I suggest we divide our efforts. If you don't have already, you should get some flour. Then head back and prepare the oven. It has to be quite hot for the pudding to be made! Me and Megiddo will take care of acquiring the sugar."
Antimony pursed her lips in thought for a moment, then nearly protested leaving the two of them alone, before finally nodding assent, "That would seem most efficient. I may need to pick up some more kindling on the way..." She turns away from Ulanan and Megiddo, losing herself quickly in planning, enough so that she forgets to even say good bye.
With a static smile on his face, Megiddo quietly pocketed a few oranges.
Antimony walked away, weaving through the other shoppers in the market and the crates of produce, quickly disappearing from view.
Ulanan looked up to the Duskwight and declared that, "The sugar is this way." She turned and moved in the opposite direction Antimony had gone. She stopped a few yalms ahead and turned around to see if he was following her.
Before departing, Megiddo positioned the basket of oranges alongside a few others, turned to some nearby Hyur who were near the booth and dismissed himself by stating, "I am being lead elsewhere. Good sales." He received rather little by way of gratitude for whatever help he'd proffered, but didn’t linger to receive any either. He slipped out into the main walkway in the market, his spindly, rickety body swaying as he turned to follow Ulanan.
The lalafell wandered aimlessly and silently across the street before stopping in front of a pile of crates by the entrance of the market area. She climbed on top of one and turned around, waving her hands to beckon the Duskwight.
With a look of curiosity, Megiddo briefly paused when he saw Ulanan climbing the crates. After a moment, he paces over, observing, "I doubt they sell sugar here."
Ulanan raised a finger. "Crates certainly have no capacity to sell sugar. Now come closer."
Megiddo got as close as he was likely to, perhaps a half meter away, and awaited an explanation.
She looked at him, disappointment all over her eyes, and crossed her arms. "Tell me, what are your intentions with Antimony?"
Megiddo blinked at that, frowning, and stated after a moment, "To taste pudding, I believe."
"Don't bring Oschon and his pudding into this." She moved her left hand towards him and extended the fingers out. "Too many times we have ran into you since you tried to kill her." The other hand moved over her left and pointed at each finger while she added: "After your competitors failed. At the winery. At the Drowning Wench. And just now!" She seemingly ignored the fifth finger and crossed her arms again. "Don't try to blame this on Oschon."
As Ulanan spoke, Megiddo glanced over his shoulder to note if they were being watched or not. The few looks he did notice were the typical disapproving glares that Duskwight tend to get. "If you think about it," he said, looking back, expression flat, "It makes perfect sense. Antimony's new employer is an old friend of mine. That isn't coincidence."
"That only justifies one time you met her. Are you implying they hired you to follow her?" Ulanan's eyes widen and she gapes, perhaps as if she just had an epiphany. "Was it D'hein?"
A bit taken aback by that, Megiddo shook his head, "No, nothing like that. You've got it backwards."
"That's exactly what someone of your profession would say if I had gotten it right!" Ulanan took a short jump off the crate, the meeting of her tiny feet and the floor muffled by her boots and small size.
Megiddo put one hand on his hip, "That's ridiculous. What are your intentions with Antimony?"
She straightened her posture, looking up at him with a frown. "You can't judge me. I'm not the professional assassin."
"We don't know what you are," Megiddo stated, "Except very dangerous when threatened, and fond of olives."
Ulanan shook both hands in the air. "You will not judge the merits of olives!" she exclaimed, completely missing the point. She calmed down immediately and added in a much calmer tone: "I don't care if Oschon or your own malicious feet are bringing you to her. If I get the feeling that you will hurt her I won't just burn you alive."
His eyes took in the scope of their surroundings again, and noted gazes that lingered on the Duskwight who stood out of the way, speaking with the irate Lalafel. A private thought deepened the crags on his visage, and he said in a tone a few degrees cooler than he'd been speaking with before, "There is no sense in such a threat, considering all the chances I've already turned down, and the money besides. Did you want to get sugar, or was that simply a ruse?"
"I don't expect murderers to have logic." Then she smiled. "Yes, sugar. We can't make the pudding without it!"
Megiddo hummed at an unsavory taste in his mouth. He exhaled, "Then go and retrieve it. I'm sure you know the way. I'm going to walk alone for a time."
Ulanan nodded, saying "May Oschon guide your steps." And then she walked away as if they had not spoken about anything for the past few minutes.
For a few moments, he watched Ulanan's back, and a scowl tugged at his lips. Then, he found another person to scowl at, someone in the market who'd been eyeing his back earlier.