It wasn’t common that Emery and I had been thrown out of our own house. In fact, I was pretty sure it hadn’t ever happened before. But that sure didn’t stop Emery’s siblings from doing their utmost to throw us out.
“Just go.” Rylie said. “The two of you are too damn perfect for your own good.”
“Seriously.” Demi followed. “I promise, we’ll take good care of your girls for the one day it takes for you to go enjoy yourselves for a bit.”
Even Cierra was on their side, comically shooing us out of the house. “C’mon, Moms. Just go.”
“Just go!” Stena echoed, copying the shooing motion that Cierra was doing. “Just go, just go!”
“We’ve got this.” Kota promised. He was a little more reliable sounding than Emery’s sisters. Something about his lack of over the top enthusiasm came off as more sincere. “You two need a break. Not just a few hours, but a real, legitimate break.” He insisted. “You’ve either been in full-on mothering mode or training mode since the day you were married. No one will suffer if you take a day for yourselves.”
“Actually.” Demi said, tapping her chin, “Take two. Stay in the city overnight. If you want, you can even take three.” Our girls were nodding along with her sagely.
Emery crouched down to be face to face with both of them. Relatively speaking, anyway, since Cierra was a fair bit taller than Stena. “Didn’t you two just complain about us not spending time with you?”
“That was last week, Mom.” Cierra said, rolling her eyes. “Now you should go.”
Emery and I both eyed her suspiciously. “You just want to skip out on training for a few days, don’t you?” Emery said, poking Cierra in the chest.
The girl giggled. “No…” she half whimpered. “I’m glad you started teaching us.”
Emery stood, still unsure. Cierra seemed genuine enough. “Alright, then Kota or Talya will still teach you while we’re gone.”
Cierra nodded, seemingly perfectly happy with that.
“...Did you bribe them?” I asked Rylie, as a joke. But when Cierra turned to look up at Rylie and she started to act shifty, I did a mental doubletake. “Really? You bribed children?”
Rylie huffed. “To get them on our side? Yes; okay?” She threw her hands up in frustration. “The two of you are infuriating enough on your own, but when you add Cierra and Stena into the mix, you’d never take time for yourselves.”
“And you need to.” Demi cut in.
“And you need to.” Rylie echoed. “So, yes. While you’re gone, we’re gonna play dress up!”
Cierra and Stena giggled happily, clearly excited by the idea but poorly trying to hide it. Emery crossed her arms. “Fine. We’ll go.”
I smiled, and tweaked Cierra’s nose. “Have fun while we’re gone, okay?”
“We will!” She cheered.
Emery and I took turns giving our girls hugs and kisses goodbye, then moved to say goodbye to Emery’s siblings. Vale also appeared to say goodbye for now, though Ieji was somewhere else - presumably in the Basin, but we didn’t know where.
And then we were off. It was just after breakfast and we hadn’t even really gotten dressed for the day yet. Storage rings were incredibly convenient things, and the ability to have every necessity available at the drop of a hat was one such luxury. We had several changes of clothes each, as well as money and anything else we might need on what was turning out to be a surprise date night. Maybe a few date nights.
Emery and I dipped into one of the unused homes on the way from the Basin to quickly put on more appropriate travel clothing, which really just amounted to some slightly thicker, less sleepwear-like robes. After that, we made tracks. At our speed, it didn’t take us very long to reach Flowing Dragon City’s gates. We were there before lunch time, and really had nothing hurrying us along.
Once we made it through the gates, we stopped by Jade Pearl Tea, as was our little tradition at this point. As we approached, Ava waved hello although she was already helping someone else. We opted to just take a seat and relax for now. There were a few two chair tables around, so we picked one a little away from the street to help curb the noise a little. As we sat, I noticed Ava give me a nod, telling me that she saw us sit.
“So, we’ve been kicked out of the house for at least a day. What would you like to do?” Emery asked. “I suppose we should find a place we can sleep tonight at some point, but there’s no shortage of inns around.”
“Agreed, but it’s still better to get that squared away earlier rather than later, right?” I said. “Otherwise, what else is there to do? We could go shopping if we wanted to. I figure some place nice for dinner is a given.”
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“Should we visit the Dragon Pavilion? Say hello to Lyn?” Emery asked, leaning back in her chair, thinking. “Or maybe we should see if her competitors are any good, then report back to her…”
I laughed. “I bet Lyn would love to hear our opinions on her competition.” After a pause, I continued, “On the other hand, I can’t imagine her not having all of the information on every single one of them already.”
“That’s true…”
“Good morning, ladies!” Ava said as she approached cheerily. “It’s not quite lunch time yet, but would you like any food? Or just some tea?”
Emery and I shared a quick look. For this, we didn’t need our actual Qi connection to communicate. “Just tea, I think.” Emery said.
“Can you bring two pots? One with pu’er and one jasmine?” I asked. “We don’t need four cups though.”
“I can do that.” Ava nodded. She slipped her messy booklet of note paper into her apron without needing to take anything down. “You’re sure that’s all?”
“For now, yes. I think we’re planning to walk around the City for a while today, so I’d rather be on a relatively empty stomach. Thank you, though, Ava.” I said.
“I see. That makes sense; it’s not any fun taking a long walk while stuffed, is it?”
“Not even a little.” Emery said. “We’ve learned our lesson from the last few times we made that mistake. This time we’ll be good and stick to just the tea while we take a short break and then be on our way.”
“That’s fine.” Ava said. “It’s not quite time for the lunch rush, so there’s plenty of open spots - feel free to relax for a while. If it gets busy though, I may kick you out if you don’t order anything else. For the table space, of course.” She winked.
Emery and I chuckled. “Of course.”
Hidden under the table, I triggered my storage ring and withdrew a few taels from it. The money was more than enough to cover the teas. It probably would’ve paid for the two pots three or four times over, but I wasn’t worried about it. Ava was a great proprietress and always treated us well. I passed her the money before she darted away from the table to fetch the drinks.
She tilted her head when she looked at the amount. “Did you want change?”
“Nope.” I said with a big grin. “All yours. If need be, I’ll throw in a little extra if it gets busy to keep the table. We still don’t need any food though.”
Ava nodded thankfully. “Your business is always appreciated, you two.”
“...Really, Ava. Don’t throw in any snacks, please.” Emery said as the woman walked away. “We really don’t need them!”
----------------------------------------
By the time we left Ava’s it was just around lunch time. She had customers finally arriving, so we made ourselves scarce to give her room. While we were settled on not eating too much with the day of walking still ahead of us, we weren’t about to spend the entire afternoon without any food - even if we could.
To that end, it was very fortunate that the main road going into the city was absolutely littered with food stalls. The options were pretty extensive which made it very difficult to decide on anything. And the smells that inundated the street didn’t help.
Everywhere we turned there was another merchant trying to sell skewers of meat, some kind of pastry, or some other deliciously smelling treat.
“So…what do we want?” Emery asked, looking around at the various stalls. As usual, her eyes were mostly attracted to meat vendors. Which was fair, given how appetizing they all looked.
“I’m not against getting a bunch of skewers if you’d like. I want a pastry too, though.”
“Sure.” Emery said, and promptly hopped off toward one of the vendors. I left her to it and walked toward a different vendor who was making pastries. They were simple pancake based batters made into buns filled with various flavors. I paid for two cream filled ones for myself, and a bean paste one for Emery as they were her pastry of choice.
Shortly thereafter, we were back to walking down the street while munching on the food. I had stowed the buns in my ring while we walked, sharing the skewers. Unsurprisingly, Emery had opted to get a cup filled with a multitude of different meat skewers, covering the gamut from beef to pork.
“I had an idea while I was getting the food.” Emery said, pulling a piece of beef off of the bamboo skewer with her teeth. “Well, more accurately, the vendor mentioned it to me. Flowing Dragon City has a pretty robust arts district - and their theater troupes are supposed to be very good.”
My ears perked up at that. “Oh? I haven’t been to the theater in years. Did you want to see a performance?”
“I think it could be a nice after dinner activity.” Emery said around another bite. “Apparently the show they’ve been performing recently is really impressive and acrobatic. They even employed a few Cultivators to enhance the spectacle.”
“That does sound intriguing.” I said, pulling another random skewer from the cup that Emery held. It was chicken. “The performances in Bouquet I saw growing up didn’t really have any Cultivators involved. Most in that city were too full of themselves to perform for others, I think.”
“Well, if they’re all like your family, it wouldn’t be surprising.” Emery muttered. I gave her a bit of a look and she swallowed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes you did.” I said, then sighed. “To be fair, you’re not wrong. I don’t remember my family being that terrible growing up. They were mean and cruel, but…well, maybe I just didn’t notice it as a kid.”
Emery took a step closer and put an arm around my shoulders. She gave me a squeeze from the side. “I’m sorry. We’ve all got nasty things in our pasts that we wish we could hide. But not everyone has obviously horrendous shit like me. Sometimes it’s more insidious.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “You can’t always see the stuff that’s right next to you once you’re used to it.”
“Mhm. Like how everyone’s house has a smell, but when you live there you can’t smell it yourself.”
“Emery,” I said, bumping her with my hip, “are you implying that I was nose-blind to my family’s evilness?”
“Well…I suppose you must’ve been if you didn’t notice it. Your family had some pretty obviously stinky shit in there.”
I dropped the empty chicken skewer back in Emery’s cup and rubbed the bridge of my nose with my now free hand. “Seriously?”
“What? I’m just continuing the metaphor; you don’t usually smell your own shit.”