New Plan, Step One: Provide For My Community [open]

[summerdude]

Magnus needs something to change, so when a Mansion calendar helpfully informs him that it's International Falafel Day back on Earth, he goes to the library for some cookbooks, and then to the kitchen.

He lays out ten different falafel recipes. He gathers the ingredients they list, as best as he can understand them. He has canned chickpeas and fresh chickpeas and dried chickpeas and chickpea flour and box mixes of falafel that say 'just add water!'

Cripes.

"I can do this," he says, peering at the assorted recipes intently for a good ten minutes, and then takes the dried chickpeas over to the sink to rinse and soak.

Comments

[sporesprouter]

She takes her bottle and leans on the counter, thinking. "Some of these aren't new new¹, but out of stuff I'm pretty sure you don't know about... Near the end of Dark Nina had a little get together with some of the other girls about our age that I went to. That was fun." She takes a sip of the root beer, trying to parse the taste. "Huh. That's interesting. I haven't tasted anything like it before.... Oh! I also gave Claudius a quest."

¹Mansion linearity striking again.

[summerdude]

"I heard about the sleepover! Was it fun?" Magnus asks, and then does a double take. "Quest? What kind of quest?"

[sporesprouter]

"It was fun, yes. And I gave him the quest to find out my actual name. Tress is a nickname."

[summerdude]

"Tress is a... what?" Magnus stares at her. "Tress, please, you have to tell me. I promise I won't tell him."

[sporesprouter]

Tress contemplates this for a bit. On the one hand, she wouldn't mind telling him, on the other, he's also Galahad's best friend, and that's a very narrow bridge. She takes another sip of her root beer. "How about this. I'll give you a hint that you can tell him if he comes searching, and you can feel free to make him work for it. And then I'll tell you as soon as I know he finds out."

[summerdude]

"Okay," Magnus says, after a moment of consideration. "But you should know, I'm really good at keeping secrets."

[sporesprouter]

"Okay. In that case... I'll give it a month. And if he still hasn't found out, I'll tell you. And you still get the hint now."

[summerdude]

"Deal."

[sporesprouter]

"Deal. Now I'm just trying to think of a good hint."

[summerdude]

"I can wait."

[sporesprouter]

She shakes her head. "You're going to have to wait enough. All right. The hint is that it's a short name. Not really any longer than just 'Tress' is."

[summerdude]

"Not really any longer?"

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "At least in every way I can think of. I know some alphabets are different, though, so maybe it might have a different number of letters in some alphabet. But it's definitely just one syllable."

[summerdude]

"This is an incredibly vague clue," says Magnus, approvingly. "It's gonna gnaw at me for weeks." He grins at her.

[sporesprouter]

Tress grins back. "Like a rat?"

[summerdude]

Magnus laughs. "Exactly like a rat."

[sporesprouter]

"Gnawing on things is good for rats. I hope gnawing on the hint is just as good for you."

[summerdude]

"Oh, I'm sure it will be." Magnus pokes the mixture. "Think this is ready now?"

[sporesprouter]

"Oh! It should be, really. If it's not, it will get there by the time I heat up the oil to fry them."

[summerdude]

Magnus grins. "I can't wait to learn how to fry stuff."

[sporesprouter]

"It's not too hard. You just have to be careful because the oil might splatter." A bit of oil goes in a frying pan and she puts it on the stove to heat.

[summerdude]

"Tress. You overestimate my knowledge of anything in the kitchen."

[sporesprouter]

She laughs. "Okay, fair. This is just going to be pan-frying, so it's a bit simpler."

[summerdude]

"What's the difference?" Magnus asks, curious.

[sporesprouter]

"Pan frying uses less oil, and since you're not submerging what you're cooking completely, there's a little less to worry about."