(no subject)

[every_blossom_blooming]

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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[every_blossom_blooming]

"Well, try. Otherwise we'll be broke but pretty. Wait, maybe that's not a bad idea."

Nina offered Inej her arm, not sure if she was up for touching just yet. But she wanted to offer, and she would keep offering until the day Inej took her hand again.

"Where my family came from, women wore little flower crowns before they were married and they wore a great big one when they got married. Then it was modest head coverings after that, if any at all."

[tricktofalling]

Inej tucks her hand gently into the crook of Nina's arm, touching fabric rather than skin. The barrier makes it acceptable contact. She can't do much lingering contact--Kaz's new tendency toward softness in Darrow has been next to agony for them both--but she can do this.

"In the Suli, once you start your monthly you're supposed to cover your hair, but before that girls don't. My father used to give my mother wild geraniums and she'd braid them into her hair, but we didn't have anything like crowns or anything. Patterning on aprons and such, though. Blouses. Things like that."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I miss the embroidery," she sighed. Maybe she'd find a way to recreate it someday.

Nina picked up a basket with her free hand as they wandered into the store and she immediately steered Inej toward the florals. They were mostly fall colors but there were buckets of spring and summer flowers that they kept on hand year round.

"Maybe we can find you silk geraniums."

[tricktofalling]

Inej sighs, a little wistfully. "It's not the same. They don't smell right. And then you get the essential oil, and it smells too much of it, and it's just..."

She shakes her head a little bit. Deftly, she plucks Nina's bag off her shoulder and puts it on her own. If she's in charge of the money, she ought to be in charge of the money.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina pouted when Inej took her bag but she didn't make a fuss. Instead she started examining the flowers and garlands on offer. She wanted to peruse first, then she would start picking things out.

"Well, maybe no geraniums, then. But something lovely that you like, just tell me if you see something or put it in the basket."

She hesitated a moment, but eventually she asked, "How are you doing?"

[tricktofalling]

The trouble wasn't seeing lovely things. Inej was, remains somehow, an optimist. Terrible things have happened to her and she does not view people as very good, but the world moves on, an she has seen the beauty in terrible, ugly places and terrified girls and monstrous boys. The trouble is that it is hard to want lovely things when it feels like chiffon layers.

She shrugs a little bit. "Today is alright." Which is to say, some days are better than others. She is visible today. It's a small thing, but a victory.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I'm glad," she said gently. "Would you... rather talk about something else?"

Nina didn't want to push, not on this. And there were still things they needed to deal with, like the fact that she was still hurt and angry by how Inej had handled some things, but now wasn't the time. It could wait. They were both here.

[tricktofalling]

Inej is quiet for a second. She thinks of the flower crowns she remembers Ravkan women wearing, and selling, in Ketterdam and in some of the cities her family's caravan passed through or near, and she begins to pluck flowers she thinks would go well. She's conscious of price, quantity, quality. As she might ever have been.

Finally--and it's a firm shift, away from her troubles, her feelings, and a bit away from what she's done--she asks, "How are things with you and Geralt?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina blushed faintly at the mention of the witcher. She shrugged her shoulders.

"They're good. Apparently little Suli girls with more knives than manners don't scare him. Or at least, don't scare him enough that he hasn't stopped coming by."

She gave Inej a little look, one that promised that they would eventually address the events of that evening. But not now.

"We're going to... I don't know. We're. We're something," she said.

[tricktofalling]

Inej doesn't meet Nina's gaze. She's aware of the look. Things are strange. She meant to come and talk to Nina, but time got aware from her and now things feel disingenuous. It feels more real just to be present--as present as she can be--and to ask and be honest.

"Thank him for me," she says softly, picking out a sheath of fake wheat and holding it tenderly. "For helping you deal with the body. He didn't need to do that."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina gave Inej a little smile. "I did promise you I'd take care of it," she said.

"I'll tell him. Maybe if he hears that he'll believe you won't appear to threaten him again. He's quite concerned, you know, about my little Suli friend just appearing places to remind him that she's lurking."

She sort of hoped that would put a little smile on Inej's face, anything.

[tricktofalling]

It would have, but she's fixated on it for a moment, on the memory of it, and she isn't really thinking of Geralt and--well, she hadn't really threatened him, he would have known if she had threatened him.

She stares at the flowers, silently a moment.

"Thank you, though," she finally says, and then moves along the row of flowers.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina adds a few stems to the basket. "I'm your friend, it's what I do." She left it at that. Neither of them needed to linger on the memory.

"I think I want to see if I can find any really good ribbon. I remember ribbons on crowns when I was little."

She suddenly ached for home. Not just the life she remembered in the Little Palace, but the life that had come before that.

[tricktofalling]

Inej nods. "Yes, definitely ribbons."

She plucked a couple of small black-eyed susans and small sunflowers out of a bunch and looked at them tenderly. Ravka was a curious place to Inej, home but not quite, but sometimes she does miss it. Now, looking at flowers, standing there with Nina, she misses it.

She puts the flowers in the basket. "Come on, let's look at ribbons."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina happily wandered into another aisle to find embroidered ribbons. It took some doing, but she did find what she wanted. "You look so pretty in yellow," she said as she browsed and looked down at the flowers in the basket.

"And it would stand out gloriously against your hair."

[tricktofalling]

"Most any color will," she says. It's easier to take, just then, the the compliment. She knows it's one, but she doesn't want to hear how pretty she is. It still feels raw.

But yellow's a good color. Bright, cheerful. Fall, but a far cry from the dreary, rainy falls of Ketterdam.

"And you'll do reds, won't you?" she asks, looking at the flowers, and the ribbons, and knowing Nina. There's always red somewhere with Nina, if she can help it.

[every_blossom_blooming]

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."

[tricktofalling]

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.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"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."

[tricktofalling]

"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."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"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."

[tricktofalling]

"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.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"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.