OOM: Christmas dinner with Pyrrha and Egil

[ostro_goth]

[[Ctd. from here.]]

Teja opens the door, laden as he is.

His usually comfortable, creatively untidy room is still that -- there is even Ferdinand the cat, sprawling all over Teja's bed, fast asleep. There are simply two new doors, one of them leading to a kitchen that provides all the modern comforts and appliances as well as a space to comfortably sit and eat, the other leading to Egil's room in Loki's apartment on the 12th floor.

One better should not think about how that works.

Comments

[ostro_goth]

"Neither do I," Teja says, emphatically.

He puts down the cheese grater and picks up Egil to lift him onto the bed so he can lay with Ferdinand.

[scarred_grin]

"Teja, Teja!" Egil says happily, before settling in against Ferdinand. He won't chew on his tail anymore, he'll just pet him in his clumsy-baby way.

"I like your decorating style. Not fussy, not pretentious. The kind of place you can live in."

[ostro_goth]

"It is not decorating, merely furniture, and some modest creature comforts," Teja says. "What I need -- a bed to sleep, a table to work, a fireplace to linger by. A bath."

Teja does love his baths.

[scarred_grin]

"But it's you," she says. "Somebody else could have perfectly utilitarian furniture and it wouldn't be the same. This suits you."

She sets about frying the plantain slices.

"That's about what I have, only my work supplies and my projects are a lot messier."

[ostro_goth]

"They are things as I would have had when I was alive," Teja says. "When I was new here, I suppose the room was meant to help me feel at home."

[scarred_grin]

"How do you want it to be when we're living together?" she asks. "You get to choose how it'll be. It can stay the same, or it can be something different."

Family pictures are the only thing that is not an option. Pictures are going up.

[ostro_goth]

"If this sort of comfortable mess is safe for Egil to be around, then it should stay as it is," Teja says. "But the house in Tuscany can use some changes; there are things there that do not really serve well."

[scarred_grin]

"If we're putting in workshop space, we'll have to be really careful about it," she says. "Especially when he's old enough to walk but not old enough to know when things are dangerous."

If she's going to be doing carpentry, well. She doesn't know if that can be childproofed.

[ostro_goth]

"Then we must lock the workshops with the dangerous things, when we are not in them," Teja says.

[scarred_grin]

"And he's gonna need a room there, too--not like the one here, I think it should be a different style. There can still be plants and things, but not a forest room."

Something more... local, maybe. Whatever the average kid in Tuscany might have, or maybe what a Goth kid would've had.

[ostro_goth]

"He must have a room with a good window; the Tuscan countryside is ornament on its own," Teja says.

[scarred_grin]

"When he's older, he's getting art supplies," she says. "All the art supplies. He needs a little table he can work at, just like we have, but all his own."

[ostro_goth]

"Any child needs that, for his drawings and homework and play," Teja agrees.

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah, but he really needs one," she says. "All the creative energy he's got, from his biological family and from us? I don't know what he's gonna be called to make, but he's gonna make something."

And she'll support him in whatever it is.

[ostro_goth]

"He shall be free to make what he wishes; including nothing of substance, if the mood strikes him," Teja says. "We cannot yet tell what he would pur his mind into."

[scarred_grin]

"Artsplosion," she says. "Everybody's got one, they just don't always know what form it's gonna take. But everybody needs an outlet for it, and kids even more so--they got so much energy, and if they can't put it to creation, they put it to destruction."

That's a long way off, though. Right now he's enjoying just lounging with Ferdinand.

[ostro_goth]

And Ferdinand is enjoying cuddling up with Egil.

"He might research things, rather than make them -- some children do," Teja says. "But whatever it is he might wish to find about, we shall let him have all he needs to do so."

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah."

She slips her arms around him from behind, hugging him for a moment, resting her chin on his shoulder.

"This is nice, cooking together--you grate cheese very well, you know that?"

[ostro_goth]

"I would be useful in other ways, also," Teja says, with a little smile, turning round to look at her.

[scarred_grin]

"Do you think you can handle the rest of the plantains?" she asks. "There's not much to it, really. And then I can start in on the meat."

She doesn't want to make him cook if he doesn't want to, but if he doesn't mind, she's more than happy for the help.

[ostro_goth]

"I can," Teja says.

The cheese is grated, in any case, and shall remain grated.

[scarred_grin]

"Leave 'em in until they're about as done as these are," she says, gesturing to the ones on the plate. "You can snack on some if you want to. I always end up with extras."

And so, on to seasoning and preparing the meat.

"Do you like cooking?"

[ostro_goth]

"I cannot cook, except what is needed on the road, or on campaign," Teja says. "Fry fish over the fire, dress venison, make stick-bread and the like."

For that, he is handling the plantains quite well.

[scarred_grin]

"I can teach you some stuff, if you want," she says. "Nothing complicated, just... you know, if we're off in Italy and you need to cook dinner for yourself and Egil or something. Say I've been called away to some top-secret international spy conference or something, and I took your bike so you can't drive into town and go to a restaurant."

[ostro_goth]

Teja nods. "I could live on bread and cured meat," he says, "but Egil must have food proper for him that he would eat, so he must not get hungry. I wonder if he would eat moretum?"