OTA: pie makes everything better

[offthebeatenpath]

It wasn't that Em had forgotten. But a commissioned piece had been giving her fits for days, and she'd finally had a breakthrough that had kept her at her easel enough she hadn't been paying close attention to what day it was, or spent enough time online or around other people for someone to mention Friday the thirteenth, or the, according to many, more notable day after.

It was only the third time since she was born that March thirteenth had fallen on a Friday again, and she went and missed it. Not that it made a difference; no one in this reality had known it was her birthday, and she wasn't really one for celebrating it anyway.

As soon as she'd seen it in the New Age shop, she'd known what deck she was buying for her birthday this year - Mucha artwork, reworked to follow Rider-Waite imagery. She'd played around with similar ideas in the past in her own paintings, and she was curious to see what the deck designers had come up with.

Then, in memory of a fallen friend in another reality who loved both puns and math, and missing the bustle of a castle kitchen full of friends baking pies, and even more eating them, she stopped in at a bakery she'd passed a few times. Then she sat at a table by the window to introduce herself to her new Mucha deck, occasionally remembering to take a bite of key lime pie or wash it down with a sip of her coffee before it got cold.

It wasn't the Pi Day or belated birthday she would have had back home, but here and now, it suited her. Maybe she'd splurge, get a whole pie to take back to the boys.

[[I flaked on giving Em an EP on her Friday the 13th birthday, so have a little something for Pi Day too. Feel free to notice her (or her tarot cards) through the window, or while coming in for pie of your own. Not a bad time to meet her. Besides, pie.]]

Comments

[offthebeatenpath]

"Reading people mostly takes practice. You read audiences well from what I've seen. That's a similar skill, just with a group that kind of averages things out.

"I have other reasons for preferring decks both the majors and minors are illustrated over the ones with pips for minors," mostly appreciating the artwork and having something to project. Em's powers worked with just a regular deck of playing cards, if that's what she had to hand. It made poker games interesting.

"But I think they're probably a lot better for other people to read with. There's usually so much going on, one part of the picture or another is bound to stand out in the moment."

[jageskro]

Jag shrugged her words about him and audiences away. That much he was good at, and he was better than average at reading individual people. But it was nothing to good card readers, and he knew it. There was no self-deprecation there; it was simple fact.

"Is your foresight always - well, on?" he asked curiously. Could she read cards the normal way, that was what he wanted to know.

[offthebeatenpath]

Em waved her hand back and forth, yes and no. "I can look at the cards or talk about what their usual meanings and stuff," like they've been doing today. "But if I'm trying to read them, I'll see something. Maybe not exactly what I want to know, but something related."

She remembered back to a conversation she had once with Lorna, scientist and sceptic and coming at things from a very different perspective than Jag. "And there's some kind of pull between me and what cards show up, You could do a reading for me, without me touching or even looking at the cards or knowing the question, and still wouldn't get a random result. I wouldn't See anything if I didn't look at the cards, but the cards would be dead on."

[jageskro]

"And here I thought I'd known the real deal," Jag remarked with an amused half smile. He sucks on his spoon for a few seconds, then grins. "Seriously, you can't tell me that's anything to do with genes."

[offthebeatenpath]

"Well, I can. I just can't prove it." In this world.

It actually hurt some, him not believing her, even though she understood why he didn't. And that was with knowing what it had taken for her to believe she was a mutant when she lived in a world that knew about them. It didn't hurt as much as having to hide, though, and at least with Jag she wasn't alone.

"Silly me, being a fortuneteller and artist, and not a geneticist. What I get for dropping out of school, I guess."

[jageskro]

"I guess I shouldn't have either," Jag stated with a smirk, although he didn't sound sorry at all. More like cheeky. "'Cause it makes no sense to me."

He was very happy about not having gone to school after his parents had taken off, honestly. He hadn't liked it there, and he knew now he would have hated it even more after being taken in by the circus. Drina and Kennick's homeschooling was all he'd needed.

"Then again, a lot of science doesn't."

But he didn't feel that science the way he could always feel a fire, burning inside of him.

[offthebeatenpath]

Between Sabine being Sabine and Em's own curiosity, she'd spent a lot of time studying after leaving Sacred Heart, but she'd always been more interested in the humanities than science.

"The only science I'm really good at is chemistry," she offered in a cheeky tone not too different from his. "And by chemistry, I mostly mean baking." Although honestly, she was more cook than baker.

"Even that I know when to leave it to the experts."

[jageskro]

"For the record, I will never ask you to leave it to the experts," Jag stated, and ate his last piece of pie. With great and obvious relish. "Even experts as good as these."

There was something about the baking - or cooking - being done by someone you knew and cared for, and about the lack of transaction involved, possibly, that made it all better.

[offthebeatenpath]

"Hey, any time you want me to cook for you," she started, even as one snag came to mind that she quickly added, "when I don't have artist's tunnel vision at least, all you have to do is ask."

Looking down at the deck of cards in her hand, Em shook her head. "Or just being in the general area when I'm cooking is probably enough. It's always better cooking for someone else than just for myself. And I don't do it as much here in London as I did before."

[jageskro]

"Consider me up for it whenever I'm around," Jag assured her with a grin. He was never going to turn down food, never mind good food. But even food in general; it was a thing.

[offthebeatenpath]

"You'll have to give me some ideas on your favorites." Whether they were already in her repertoire or not. She liked trying out new recipes, especially when she had an eager guinea pig. "I'll surprise you at some point."

[jageskro]

"Sure, I'll make a list," Jag agreed, although he wasn't serious. That would feel really odd, to be honest. But if she just happened to be cooking whatever she wanted, and she had enough for him, now that wouldn't be so bad. At all.

[offthebeatenpath]

"No you won't," she answered, although she nodded as though agreeing with him. "I'll just have to figure it out for myself. And in the meantime, you can make do with French and some Italian, or whatever I happen to feel like deep frying that day."

[jageskro]

"It'll be such a hardship," Jag promised her with a shit-eating grin.