every_blossom_blooming | (no subject)

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Nina was feeling.. festive. Or she wanted to. The weather had finally turned again after a brief heat wave and the nights were chilly and the days were crisp. She could smell woodsmoke and dying leaves and it was absolutely wonderful.

So she called in Inej, hoping to gently root her out. She asked the Suli girl to meet her at a craft store in town - she had plans to make something from home, and maybe Inej was Suli first and Ravkan by chance, but Nina wanted to make something for her, too.

Despite harboring a lingering anger for the way Inej had broken into her apartment to make a point to Geralt, she did smile when she saw her friend.

"I'm going to make flower crowns," she announced happily. "And I need you to make sure I don't spend all of my money."

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Nina rolled her eyes at the dismissal and she tried not to press too much. Maybe any bold color would look lovely on Inej, and be bright against her hair, but that wasn't the point.

"Of course," she said. Red was her color, but more than that it meant something to her. "I suppose green might suit me, too. It would bring out my eyes."

Inej goes through a few of the red ribbons, trying to find one that seems good. She comes away with a few, thinking of the few times shes seen these crowns, mostly in passing. She's seen more of the big wedding wreaths than anything, remarkable as they were, as her mother told her not to stare.

"Are you going to need help putting them together?" she asks.

"I don't think so, but I wouldn't mind company while I work, if you're so inclined."

Nina found more ribbons, yellow ones and green ones, to go with Inej's crown.

"And you can help me cook, too, or bake or... something."

"I'll try to make fry bread," she says with a soft smile. It won't be the same on a stove top, but she bets she could still manage it with the supplies that Nina has been accruing in her kitchen. It's been ages since she's made it, but it's a simple thing, deliberately. "With lots of honey."

"Because you love me and want me to be happy," Nina said. She bat her eyelashes at Inej before she wandered back toward the flowers, wanting more and more.

Even if she didn't use them all right away, she wouldn't mind having them around.

"I need a job," she sighed. "I'm not entirely sure what to do with myself. It's been so long since I felt like I had a choice."

"You could look into one of the cafes or something," Inej says softly.

Really, what she wants to say, is that Nina could work at the Crow Club with her and Kaz. She knows Kaz would be more than happy to have her, and it's not a gambling den like the one in Ketterdam was, and nobody would ask her to do anything that she didn't want to. But it seems a line she can't cross. Because of Kaz. Because of a lot of things, and the way she's acted recently.

And she knows how much Nina loves bakeries.

"I thought about it. I'd eat my weight in pastries," she said with a mournful sigh. "I don't know... I'll figure something out, I guess. I feel like I have a very specific skill set at the moment."

She could learn, though, so there was that. No one here needed a Heartrender, and if they did, she wasn't sure she wanted any part of it.

Nina knew Kaz and Inej were both comfortably working at the Crow Club. She knew that the place here had nothing to do with their old ties to the Dregs, and probably had its name only because Kaz had built the first one up on his own, and planned to do the same here.

But for the time being, she could barely bring herself to step foot inside, never mind spend hours working there. Working for Kaz. And she supposed she appreciated Inej not even bringing it up.

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