Can You Give The Girl A Hand? [Kyra]

Turns out when you’re homeless, you care a lot more about the weather outside than you might otherwise. Not that Ione was actually homeless, she just… chose not to settle in a single location. Yes, that was it. Anyway, being of a transient housing situation, she found she preferred places that were warmer. Streets get really cold overnight, that’s all. The fact that occasionally, completely coincidentally you see, that buildings would collapse when she was nearby made it hard to find one place to stay. Which meant she was running out of places in the warmer southern part of the country she could stay without immediately being run out of town.

Personally she would much rather leave Fiore and head to a warmer country down south, but the war made it difficult to travel when you had no papers. She wasn’t a vagrant, she just kind of lost them when her parent’s house, again completely by coincidence, collapsed when she was inside. Just really bad luck, that.

But yes! Since she could not leave FIore, southern Fiore was the best she could hope for while she was homeless, I mean undecided on a permanent residence. Which was why Reinford was so great! It was in a nice area, had a beautiful sea to enjoy, and lots of machines and stuff. Ione did not understand machines, but when they randomly stopped working no one blamed her for it. That was nice.

So while she was still trying to find work someone with her unique magic could accomplish, at least she could relax and enjoy a delicious (and most importantly cheap) bowl of soup. She was pretty sure they watered the soup down, and it truthfully tasted awful, but beggars can’t be choosers. Oh no, was she a beggar now!? Being homeless was bad enough!

Okay, breathe, have a self identity crisis later. Eat soup. Soup good for Ione. Yes, she could eat soup. Carefully she brought up a spoonful of the soup to her lips, only instead of tasting its unique and totally not at all bland flavor she heard the splash of something falling into her soup.

Looking down she saw her hand, still holding the spoon, in her bowl. The moment she saw it, though, it immediately popped back to where it was supposed to be, now minus the spoon. Her magic was terribly inconvenient like that. Once the hand was back she stared at it for a few moments wearing a frown, as if making sure it was going to stay put. Then she picked the spoon back up and returned to eating.

Normally finding someone’s hand in your soup was a bit off putting, but since it was her own hand that made it okay. Right? Yeah, she was pretty sure how things worked. As she ate, she quietly looked around to see if anyone else had spotted the Mystery Of The Soup Splash (part one). As no one was screaming or looking at her in disgust, she assumed that she was safe for now. Having only just found a place that offered cheap watery soup to the housing impaired, it would really suck to get driven out now.

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While partaking of her barely palatable soup, Ione found herself approached by another room. This seemed like a big deal, as usually only creeps approached her. Which was totally fair, Ione was adorable after all. Was that why this girl had approached her? That would be neat. Unless she was a creep. Could women be creeps? Ione wasn’t sure.

She didn’t look creepy. She was super pretty and had super fluffy hair. Like so fluffy. It made Ione want to pet it. Would that be rude? Yeah that would probably be rude. Don’t pet the fluffy girl. Yet. So why had she approached Ione then? Was it because Ione was cute? Wait, she’d already had that thought. Actually, was Ione cute right now? The lack of owning her own bath made staying clean harder than it used to be, but she still did her best. Did she have something in her teeth? Vegetables liked to get stuck in her teeth, they were rude like that. They should learn to not be rude like Ione, who had made the grand sacrifice of not petting the fluffy haired girl. Wait, what had she been thinking about a second ago?

…

Suddenly she realized she had been silent the entire time as she thought about why the girl had approached, creating an awkward silence. It was a bad habit. Habit rhymes with rabbit, and rabbits like carrots. Oh, and carrots were a vegetable! Right! Vegetables in her teeth. She decided that was probably unlikely, it had been weeks since she had eaten any vegetables.

And the awkward pause had gotten longer while she was thinking about the awkward pause. Well that was awkward.

“It’s absolutely awful,” she finally answered in a cheerful tone that did not match her words. “It’s the best thing I’ve had in weeks! Would you like some?”

As she started to offer the fluffy haired girl some of her soup, she noticed that with all the awkward silence it had begun to cool. “Oh no, it's gotten cold. It’s okay, I can fix it!”

Now she stared at the bowl, trying to control the chaotic magic within her body. The air around them cooled, and then a moment later steam began to rise again from the soup. Moving heat from one place to another was not the most useful of magical skills, but it certainly was handy when one had to cook without access to a kitchen. Rats tasted much better when she cooked them first. Not that she ate rats of course, that would be gross. And Ione was not gross. She was cute. Probably.

“All better!” she announced, offering the bowl and spoon to the other girl. Then she remembered this soup was all the food she would get today and pulled the bowl back to herself with a sad expression. “Sorry, Ione can’t share. Ione’s tummy would be very angry at her if she did. And angry tummies are extremely rude. Unlike Ione, she is not rude at all.”

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