special_rabbit | 6 Unicorn Street; Saturday Morning [04/28].

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6 Unicorn Street; Saturday Morning [04/28].

To her credit, Amaya had been taking it pretty easy this last week, but there was really only so much a girl could take. She had to do something, and that something was making a nice handcrafted wooden sign for the front of the lot for her new shop. She didn't work with wood as often, but she still enjoyed it, whittling out something that could have just been easily ordered and printed, but this had that rustic charm that better suited her sensibilities.

"Future Site of Blackstone Foundry and Forge!" the sign read in bold, slightly decorative letters. "Coming Soon; Autumn 2018."

And now to get the sign hammered into the ground.

Bright and early on Saturday morning.

Sorry, people who lived nearby.

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Seivarden had gone for a walk after the radio broadcast, and walking past she was relieved that she didn't live next to this building. Still, she frowned at the banging, and then snorted when she saw the text on the sign.

Foundry and forge? Who would need that, even in this place?

It was just as Seivarden was coming around that Amaya was putting the last good whacks into the left sign post, and she gave it a little wiggle to make sure it was in there good.

She waved when she looked up and saw her. "Howdy," she said. "Good morning for a walk, isn't it? Good morning for gettin' stuff done!"

Seivarden quickly offered an insincere but rather convincing smile in return.

"It is," she said. "And a good day for making sure your neighbours don't sleep late."

It had to be pointed out.

Amaya snorted a little, unfazed, feeling like nothing could really bother her right now, considering she was standing in front of the future home for her new forge. Finally!

"How ya gonna get stuff done if you spend all day sleeping anyway?" she asked.

Seivarden didn't have much stuff that needed to be done, so the question wasn't exactly relevant to her. Well, apart from radio and work on Saturdays. For someone who had been in the military for most of her life that was actually strange.

"Do you have a lot that needs to get done?"

"...not at the moment," Amaya admitted, with the faint hint of a groan. "No classes, an' I'm supposed to take it easy on account of the whole skinless monster attacks that happened last week." She made a little bit of a face. Idle was not a good look for her. "But I could at least get the sign up, there's that. I'm itchin' to get started on the building itself, but that's gotta wait, too. Otherwise, we won't have much to do in my next class..."

"You're having your students build you a house?"

She didn't object to the idea, just tried to imagine the result. Then again, looking at the sign...

At least she was wearing gloves, Seivarden noticed, or perhaps that was just for hammering signs. Still, her gaze stayed a little on Amaya's hands.

"Not...exactly," Amaya said with a faint laugh, finding it not-so-difficult to imagine some pretty interesting results with the last crop of students she had. Thankfully, though, this project was going to be a bit more structured than that. "I'll be my shop. And, well, an apartment just above it; we'll have to see how much they can handle before I decide what I'll be doin' myself, but, hey, I figured, if I can get a little extra help and the kids get to learn something useful at the same time, it's kind of a win-win. Say, you're not a teacher around here, too, are ya? I'm still gettin' around to meeting people; don't get out much besides for work."

Again, she was pretty much always working. It was...convenient when you also tended to not be too social.

"I'm not. I work in the flower shop."

After a pause, she clarified: "Portalocity can't open a gate to my universe."

"So," she gestured at the sign with a gloved hand, "You... make things?"

What would anyone need a forge for?

Amaya was going to sympathize a little about the gate thing, maybe even blame a wizard for it or something, but then she had to go and distract her with a question like that.

"That's right, I do!" she said brightly, with a small pump of her fist. "And about to make a whole lot more, once this place gets up and running." She patted the sign almost lovingly. "Weapons, mostly; I'm a blacksmith by trade, but I dabble here and there with other things. Starting to play around with guns, now aren't those fascinating pieces of machinery, we don't have them back where I'm from. I invent stuff, too. Basically, if you want something made, I'll probably make it, and, if I can't, well, I'm at least gonna try."

"You... don't have guns?"

She didn't say the word 'uncivilized', but she was thinking it.

"What kind of weapons do you use?"

Hey, there was a difference between uncivilized and primitive; after seeing this place, Amaya would gladly agree with the latter, but the former? What did she think they were? Goblins?

"I'm pretty partial to axes, myself," she said with a grin. "The bigger, the better, I say, but I mostly get my trade working on ceremonial swords and spears for the knights of Daventry. A lot of fancy-schmancy stuff; they're not much of a fighting army, it's all for show, but every once in a while, I get to sink my hammer into something real meaty and challenging, like a nice morning star or I had this one customer, got himself a flail, but the kind with extra blades hidden in that would pop out when he pushed a button on the handle."

Ahhh, yes, there were good memories there, and she was particularly satisfied at the little schnick! they made when they came out.

"You big on weapons at all?" she said, tilting her head, finally getting a good look at the other person and getting...that faint little tickle of recognition in the back of her head. "Shop'll be up after the summer, if you need any touch ups or projects, I'll be glad for the business."

Primitive people were by definition uncivilized, but not all uncivilized people were primitive. At least in Radchaai opinion.

Seivarden blinked.

"I'm partial to guns, myself. Used to be captain of a warship."

Amaya let out an impressed sounding whistle. Of course, in her mind, warship just made her think real fancy pirate ship or something like it, but either way, it was genuine.

"Seems a big market here for guns," she noted, "I really got to get to know my way around 'em before the summer's up. Bit of a step down, isn't it? Captain of a ship to...where'd you say you worked? The flower shop? That...have to do with your portal problem?"

...wait a second.

Flower shop.

Flowers.

Zounds, now she realized why thought this person looked a little familiar. She hadn't thought about that weekend for a while now, shoved it very effectively to the back of her head, and no one else seemed to have remembered the shy, bespectacled girl who thought it was just so important to have a new flower for that party she was heading off to...

She...would definitely not be mentioning anything about that if she could help it, no.

Edited 2018-04-28 20:36 (UTC)

They were definitely thinking of different kinds of ships, although Sword of Naphtas had been quite fancy, before it got blown up.

"Yes. Peter was kind enough to offer me a job," Seivarden said with a sigh. "Not much else here for me to do."

Except dote over a cat and watch entertainments. And luckily for Amaya, she was different enough from her younger self for Seivarden to make the connection.

Something she'd striven for her entire adult life, so mission accomplished. Amaya's shoulders might have squared a little in the realization that the recognition was completely one-sided, giving herself a mental little pat on the back.

"Oh, surely there's got to be something else," she said, leaning on the sign a little as she tilted her head at her. "What did you like to do in your spare time on the ship? Surely, it wasn't all Captaining, all the time."

"Well..."

Seivarden was a little surprised, actually. She shrugged.

"Play counters with the officers, drink tea, watch entertainments. At least I get Radchaai entertainment channels here."

"What's counters?" Amaya asked. "Is that like checkers or chess? And what do...Radchaai," she tested out the unfamiliar word carefully, not wanting to mess it up like an uncivilized goblin or anything, "find entertaining? Me, when I'm bored, I just start tinkering. Once I get started, I can easily fill up a whole day before I even realize it."

On second thought, maybe she shouldn't switch out that big old house of hers with a smaller apartment. It certainly gave her plenty of space for her experiments.

"It's a game. I don't know checkers or chess." Why should she.

"Entertainments are... stories told with moving images." She said this slowly, not sure whether the uncivilized goblin would understand.

"They have those here too, but they make no sense."

"Well, sure," said Amaya, "but what kind of stories? Back home, I guess the closest we would have are plays or puppet shows. They usually like stories of brave knights saving desperate damsels, but I never cared much for those. I'd rather see ones where the damsels took care of the dragons themselves."

She grinned a little, tilting her head. "You probably mean like those televisions like what we have at the shop, or maybe those holosuites Quark was always talking about. Don't understand 'em, really. Why would I want to spend my time just staring at a box? At least with the holosuites, you can do stuff, but then it's all fake, what's the point?"

"It's relaxing," Seivarden pointed out. "And we have lots of different stories. Historical dramas, tragic love stories. Happy ones too, of course."

She added, frowning: "Damsels and dragons? Is this some kind of gender thing?"

Amaya's head tilted the other way. "I guess, in a way, kind of," she said. "Old ideas that are thankfully starting to go out of style. Damsels typically being young ladies, usually of a particularly..." She made a distasteful face, "fainty persuasion with loose blouses," though she herself, it couldn't help be noted, had a rather loose blouse herself, "that seemed to forget the basic tenants of bein' a person. And dragons, while definitely real, although I admit, I've never seen one myself, though they say there's one lurking deep underneath Daventry, are usually a metaphor for all the things in the world that might corrupt a damsel's general...er...um...damsel-ness, I guess. Buncha hogwash, if you ask me. You can definitely tell it's the men writing all that nonsense."

Edited 2018-04-28 21:44 (UTC)

"Terrible," Seivarden agreed. "We don't have that, of course. What are the dragons a metaphor for?"

Not that she expected the stories from Amaya's universe to make sense.

And what about that loose blouse?

"Oh, y'know," Amaya waved her hand dismissively, "the oppressive threat to 'womanly charms.' Innocence, daintiness, virginity." She snorted. "Like how if a lass hasn't got a knight in shining armor to protect her from all those things, the dragon'll get 'er, a fate worse than death!" Another snort. "I think I'd rather stick with the dragon."

"...Although," Amaya added after a moment, "knights do have all that armor and weapons that are going need mendin' and fixin'."

She was, above all, a practical woman.

Seivarden blinked. "That made no sense at all. Well, mending armour did."

"Well," Amana smirked, "that's really the only important part, anyway. Guess there's no dragons where you're from? Or...outdated gender politics, for that matter?"

That had to be nice. The last part. She had nothing against actual dragons, mind.

"Neither," Seivarden confirmed. "You see there are lots of good reasons why I want to go back home."

She had never seen a dragon, but she doubted she'd miss them.

"Well," Amaya said again, after a moment of thought; it was a bit difficult to wrap her head around, to be honest, since this place was quite a bit more interesting that Daventry, even with its possible dragons, but it was also clear that they were coming from very, very different places, "then I hope you find your way back eventually, sooner rather than later. And if you wind up needing something made to get you there, well," she hitched a thumb to the building behind her, "you know where to find me, I'd be happy to help."

"I..." Seivarden couldn't think of anything she might need, but this person had been friendly enough.

And was wearing gloves. That was unexpected. Perhaps it was necessary for her work.

"I will keep that in mind," she said, adding: "We never introduced ourselves. My name is Seivarden Vendaai." She bowed slightly.

Amaya was never much the bowing or curtseying type, but she did bob her head a little. "My name's Blackstone," she offered, her head now nodding toward the sign. "Amaya Blackstone. Good to meet'cha."

"A pleasure to meet you too, Amaya." That was more politeness than a sincere comment, but Seivarden didn't dislike her.

"Oh, and I understand I'm supposed to ask which pronoun you prefer." She tried not to upset Peter by getting it wrong.

"Which...pronoun?"

Grammar wasn't a particularly hot topic in the schools of Daventry, and whatever Amaya had learned, it had been...probably decades, so it was her turn to be the confused one in the conversation as she tried to remember exactly what that was.

Well, she remembered a noun was a person, place or thing, so a pronoun had to come before a person place or thing, because pro- was at the beginning or something? Or being for something. She was definitely for people, places and things...

She scratched behind her ear a little.

"I suppose I don't really have a preference."

That seemed a safe bet for something you didn't really know what it was.

"Oh, good," Seivarden said, pleasantly surprised. "People here do make a lot of fuss about them. I'm just trying not to get into fights over it."

Or upset her roomie.

Well, if they were making a fuss over them, whatever they were, Amaya certainly hadn't noticed, but clearly she hadn't had a problem so far, so she wasn't about to be worried. "I imagined avoiding a fight, in most cases, is probably the best route," she allowed, though she found a faint smirk, "though sometimes not as fun."

"I usually don't enjoy fights," Seivarden said with a sigh. "But constant arguments are unavoidable on this island, in my experience. I had a hard time even making the staff at the Perk to make proper tea, not to mention that someone thinks I'm like the enemies in his universe."

"Can't expect a place named for a coffee maker to be great at makin' tea," Amaya reasoned thoughtfully, "but they do what they're named after pretty well." She shrugged a little. "I prefer to make my own, anyway, cobbled together this great perkolator that'll make four cups at once, and that usually gets me through the morning. Never thought of something to make tea, though, maybe I'll have to get on something like that. And what universe is that person from, where all the enemies have polite conversations with fellow townspeople on sunny Saturday mornings? I'll take that over dragons and wizards any day."

Seivarden wrinkled her nose a little. "I prefer tea, but there aren't any tea houses on the island. I can make it at home, of course, but sometimes it's nice to get out of the house. I wish I had a proper tea flask though, but no one here has heard of those."

She added: "Dragons and wizards don't talk much then, do they?"

She had just had a polite conversation with Kanan when he suddenly got angry. That was true.

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6 Unicorn Street; Saturday Morning [04/28].

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