🍎 Text, anon

[bolderfell]

What's the deal with tomatoes. They're just messy fruit full of water.

Comments

[speakerstone]

I've been lucky enough to at least get some type of meat, usually. Mostly other fowl. Birds with a menacing aura to them, the kind where a terrible metaphysical woe awaits your future, something beyond your human comprehension.

That, or you have to stop the caravan to wait for some poor fellow to emerge from the bushes.

[bolderfell]

A caravan? So you're a traveler. Merchant family?

[speakerstone]

Not exactly. We travel, yes, but not for selling wares.

You could say we take in and distribute knowledge, but we wouldn't dare ask payment for it. It would go against all our ideas.

[bolderfell]

Don't typically see scholars having to tuck into mystery meat from 'that one guy.' Or turning down money out of principle. Usually the opposite.

So why do you travel?

[speakerstone]

We travel to aid the common people and add to our knowledge stores. To protect the innocent, gather the stories of the past, present, and future, and share what we know with others, even if we come into danger because of it.

[bolderfell]

[He takes a moment to mull that all over until it resolves into something more familiar to him.]

Sort of like traveling apothecaries, but with history instead of medicine. The good kind of apothecaries, anyway. Saving lives, honing your craft. Pretty admirable a profession.

[speakerstone]

That's...actually, pretty spot-on! There are those among us who dabble in healing if someone needs it, but there is only so much we can do with what we know.

I cannot imagine being anything else. There's something magical about traveling from place to place, wondering what the next town will bring. Even with the dangers we faced, I miss it more than I can say.

[bolderfell]

Believe it or not, stranger, I understand the feeling. Got no such noble trade of my own, but I wander for my own reasons. It suits me, going where my feet take me, drinking in the local color, seeking out new ways to challenge my skills. Can't even remember the last time I stayed in one city this long.

[speakerstone]

Huh. We have an understanding, then. I can't say I thought I'd find a fellow traveler rambling into the void about the woes of fruit.

I've found friends in stranger ways. Once we've drunk in all the color we can, perhaps we could go camping out in the space wilderness, avoiding tomatoes at every turn.

[bolderfell]

Hah. Only if you promise to share your stories around the fire. The chatter in these 'kareoke bars' and cat cafes can't hold a candle to what I get at the taverns back home. Haven't found one place yet that comes close to slaking a man's thirst for tales.

[speakerstone]

What in God's name is a cat cafe

[bolderfell]

A cafe's sort of like a tavern, but it offers teas and coffee rather than ale and people don't start fights inside. A cat cafe's that, but with cats in it.

[speakerstone]

What

There's just...cats

Loose cats???

Wouldn't they climb up on the counter and knock over the beverages

How many cats

[bolderfell]

The one I know has space for 18.

1/2

[speakerstone]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

2/2

[speakerstone]

THAT'S SO MANY oh my god

Honestly, what an achievement!

Think we can't put 18 rowdy cats in a small space and still run a functioning business? Think again, naysayers!

[bolderfell]

[Pfft. Well, he wouldn't normally share this, since it leads to where he 'works,' but she just seems so enthused. Where's the harm?]

Read more about it if you want. Just touch the gobbledygook I'm about to write that turns blue.

[Or whatever color Sypha's browser turns hyperlinks.]

[speakerstone]

This is amazing. So many. I'm in awe.

Do you happen to work there, or are you just a fan?

[bolderfell]

[He takes a good, long minute to decide how to reply. Only once he's determined that one someone in particular has no reason to come after the anonymous tomato-hater he's been talking to, he admits:]

I work there. Wouldn't otherwise have paid much attention to the place.

[speakerstone]

Well, you might just see me there one day.

Not by myself. I just want to see the look on a grumpy so-and-so's face when he walks into a room with eighteen cats. 🐈

[bolderfell]

Ha. As long as patrons order something and pay for it, they can come in as grumpy as they want.