Nano. RolePlay

"Heavens, no!" She wasn't the one who had mentioned a blood sacrifice in the first place. "All I want is to get back where I belong, preferably using moral means." The fact that there was a "preferably" in that sentence betrayed how desperate she was at this point. Sacrificing, or at least bending her morals would have been inconceivable to her in normal circumstances.

He did not understand what morality had to do with anything. Morality was something for old mages with long white beards to discuss. Not spry, young and beautiful magicians such as he. Well then I don't see the issue. Can you still carry things or will your brittle bones break if I hand you things to carry ?

She was vaguely aware that maybe she should have been offended by the other’s comment, but she wasn’t. After all, she was old, and therefore frail, those were mere facts. If anything, his concern for her health might even have been polite if voiced differently. "That depends on what you hand me to carry, I suppose." Some of the books in this library looked fairly okay, whereas others looked sure to break her back, and maybe a couple of other things in the process.

HRP:

There was of course a simpler solution for this particular problem. If the old lady was too frail to carry the heavy spellbooks, he could simply — SCRRRRCH —  rip out the necessary pages. (Magoras would kill him for this. Or he'd at least attempt to strangle him. (It's fiiiiiiiine. He knew a few bookbinding spells.)) He rolled them up like scrolls and stacked them up in a basket. There you go.

HRP:

Had he really just…? Yes, he’d just ripped out pages from what looked like a venerable and important book. Yeva was almost surprised that she was still shocked by that gesture, considering how casually the other had just mentioned an impending blood sacrifice. She made no comment, though, and simply took the basket with the severed pages.

HRP:

And up they went. They had much to prepare if they wanted to perform the ritual for tomorrow. All right, the young magician said as he dropped his tomes onto an already pretty full table, I've got most of the necessary items. We'll just need to gather some fairy dust. I'm all out. He turned around. How much longer do you think you can still walk before your legs give in and you absolutely need to rest for the night ?

She repressed a sigh as best as she could. She felt as if she had been walking or standing for hours (she had) and she was really too old for this. "Ideally, I would prefer to rest as soon as possible." But right now was not an option, was it? "How far do you reckon we need to walk?"

He made a face. Of course he made a face. What else can one expect of a teenager ? Ugh. Fine. Why don't you stay here and... I don't know... cook supper or something. I'll go fetch the fairy dust by myself. You'll slow me down if we have to stop every two meters.

Bold of him to assume that she was capable of cooking supper (or anything). His suggestion was more appealing than walking who-knew-where looking for who-knew-what, though. And if Nastya could find her way around a kitchen, surely it couldn’t be that hard? "That sounds reasonable." Or not, but her threshold for deeming something reasonable had been somewhat lowered recently.

Very well! And off he went. Until his head popped back inside, that is. Ah! Don't touch the mushrooms. Although they're all edible, some have unpleasant side-effects. And off he went (again). Oh! And! His head was back inside once more. Those spices on the spice rack are not spices. Don't use them. Off again. You know what? And in... Maybe you should just write down whatever you use just in case, yes? Bye now! Gone for good.

By now, Yeva was almost afraid to touch anything in the kitchen. Not to mention that her knowledge of cooking and raw ingredients was already fragmentary to say the least. And of course hoping for some modern, civilised equipment like a fridge was too much. She looked through the cupboards, careful not to touch anything she wasn’t 100% to recognise. Eventually, she gave up trying to make anything too complicated and made some cheese sandwiches and put water in a kettle to boil it. Her host could tell her which leaves were safe to use as tea when he came back.

A surprisingly smart choice. Also very boring, but then again, they couldn't all be as interesting as Navi, could they ? What's this then ? Were the first words he uttered as he stepped into his home a reasonable moment after he left it. A slice of cheese between two slices of bread ?

The sandwich. A fantastic invention of 18th century England. Navi certainly had never seen the likes of it.

"Indeed." If he was going to state the obvious, so could she. "I was wondering if any of these were safe to use as tea." She pointed towards the rack containing many different dried leaves of all colours, shapes and sizes.

He tentatively took a bite of his sandwich. Tasted just like... cheese between two slices of bread. Why did he expect anything else ? Oh yes, it's mostly tea. Everything is quite safe to drink.

"Mostly tea" ? That would have to be good enough for her, it would seem. So without further hesitation, she picked a few of the most normal-looking leaves (and ignored, for example, the thick blue and purple ones) to let them brew in the now-boiling water she had prepared. She then took a sandwich herself, because her last meal seemed very, very far away.

Once again : a safe, but boring choice. Although perhaps the hallucinatory leaves were not everyone's... cup of tea. So how old are you ? Navi asked while stirring honey into his tea. The look on his face didn't spell "curiosity". It was more like... academic interest.

So no one had ever told him that it was rude to ask a lady’s age. Oh well, Yeva wasn’t one to be embarrassed by the number of years she had been alive, so why not answer him. "68, why?" She couldn’t read the look he was giving her, which was enough reason to wonder what prompted the question.

OOC:

Only 68 and already so wrinkled ? Genuine surprise. He was still young. Only a boy, really. He had no intention of looking like an overripe avocado at her age. Especially since he stole Magoras' longevity spell. If he could make it work, there was a distinct possibility he might outlive this old lady by several centuries. Navi simply refused to make that happen if his body aged as well. Whoever said old wizards needed to have long beards and grey hair ?

Again, his comment showed an astounding lack of education. But again, as a guest who depended on him to have a chance of going home, Yeva could hardly berate him for his rudeness. "Indeed. And how old might you be?"

I'm 16. Old enough to think he knew everything of life, but young enough to still be commonly mistaken for a girl. His androgynous looks and pubescent body made sure of that. I think.

"You think?" That was unusual. She expected that these days anyone knew their own age. Granted, the place looked very rural, but still… It was yet another reminder that she was very, very far from home.

Well, there's no spell that is entirely accurate with guessing the age of any individual. And according to Magoras, it's notoriously unreliable on children, thus... yes. I think. Can't be sure. He glanced at himself in the mirror anyway. I'd say it's fairly accurate, no ? I can't be much older than 16.

He needed a spell to guess his won age? "Can your birth record not tell you your age?" Wait, scratch that. "Do you even have a birth record?" What kind of ill-managed and backwards place had she ended up in if he did not?

Maybe some people have birth records, Navi answered, hiding the fact he never even heard of a birth record, but not I! I was found as a child, so we had no idea when I was born. Which explained the need for a spell.

Oh dear. He was an orphan and she had just blundered into a sensitive topic with the delicacy of a drunk bull in a china shop. "I’m sorry."