vision

[calescent]

Kiri's up early the next morning, restless with various low-level simmering concerns, and wanders out of her room.

Comments

[salt_of_the]

"Well, I'm excited."

[free_flowing]

"Excited is an appropriate way to be when I'm cooking for you!"

[salt_of_the]

Patience beams.

[free_flowing]

He grins and kisses her on the cheek, in lieu of the hug he cannot give her with both his hands full.

To the kitchen!

[salt_of_the]

Awww.

To the kitchen indeed! Patience sits on a counter and waits for instructions.

[free_flowing]

He puts the basket of trout on one side of her and a pair of large bowls on the other.

"Edible trout parts," he says, pointing to one bowl, "everything else," the other. "Think you can magic 'em like you said?"

[salt_of_the]

"I thiiink so. Getting the skin off might be hard." She picks up a trout, contemplates it, and starts - disassembling it. It's pretty gross, but she gets it neatly split into food and not food after a minute of thought and a minute more of fussing.

[free_flowing]

"Amazing," says Loel. He leans up and kisses her cheek again, then commences doing tasty things to the disassembled trout.

[salt_of_the]

Patience giggles, and disassembles the remaining trouts.

[free_flowing]

Tasty things continue. Things other than trout get involved. It's a bit of a production.

The resulting meal is not the sort of thing that can be ferried about on a tray and then distributed from there. Loel eyes it for a moment, then says, "If I show you where the dining room is - it's not far - can you carry stuff there while I go get everybody? You shouldn't need to make too many trips. And I think this is dining-room material."

[salt_of_the]

Patience laughs. "Yeah, sure."

[free_flowing]

"Great!"

He hugs her. He clearly identifies which things are to be brought to the dining room. He shows her the dining room (it's not far). He hugs her again.

[salt_of_the]

Hugs!

And his neck is right there and needs a little nibble. Okay, now she'll let him go tell people.

[free_flowing]

...Loel giggles happily.

"You're great and I like you," he informs her. "See you in a bit!"

And he's off to collect diners.

[salt_of_the]

"See you!"

And she sets the table.

[free_flowing]

Loel arrives in the sitting room.

"I kind of accidentally got fancy," he says. "Food's in the dining room. Or it will be when we get there. I hope you all like trout."

[calescent]

"Mmm, trout."

[liakoura]

"Do you just keep half a dozen people's worth of trout around, or did you literally go catch a bunch of fish just now?"

[free_flowing]

"I went and caught a bunch of fish," he says. "Patience wanted to see."

[liakoura]

"Do you... float up blobs of water that have fish in them, or something?"

[free_flowing]

"Nah. I kill 'em in the water with a creepy coru trick and then scoop 'em out with a little net," he says cheerfully.

[calescent]

"If I were going to go fishing for my lunch I'd probably cook them before I even took them out of the river," snorts Kiri.

[free_flowing]

"Mm, but you would have a harder time finding out where they were to do it in the first place," he says, grinning and going over to give her a hug.

[calescent]

"Yeah, fish aren't very warm." Hug!

[free_flowing]

Snughug!

(An idle recollection of a similar but crucially different hug with Patience crosses his mind. Mm, hugs. Loel is so fond of hugs. They're so... hugs.)