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Characters: Toph and Temeraire

Location: Their apartment

Rating: PG, tops

Time: Feb. 10, afternoonish

Description: For all that they're partners, the two really don't know that much about each other's lives back home. We're fixing that.

Toph hated stitches. Completely and utterly hated them. They itched and annoyed her and just gah.

To try and keep herself occupied, she was listening to one of the audio books she'd bought, using Tem as a bed. The disc was playing on the fancy CD player, and she didn't have her headphones in since Temeraire liked listening to them almost as much as she did.

The book today was some fictional one, and it involved this guy who wanted to marry a noblewoman (as a side plot. Toph's books were always the action-y type, but sometimes you just couldn't escape the sap).

"'But being noble has got to be better than my life', he said. 'I mean, you get all these...freedoms I don't!' I shook..."

Toph snorted. "Freedoms my eye," she muttered. "I sure as heck didn't get any."

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He was thinking for a moment.

"I am quite sure it would snow, except in the courtyard, because the flagstones are warm enough to melt them once they land. It does become wet due to that, however."

She made a face. "Snow sucks," she muttered. "It's cold, and wet, and it makes everything all blurry." And she couldn't adapt to it, like sand. Sand was just little earth bits. Snow was water.

"I do agree, it does get cold, and I would rather you stay inside nice and warm inside the castle if it ever snows. If we're ever there."

And that was a big IF.

As in, IF they ever had any mission in Scotland, he'd take a small detour over to the castle, to at least let her see this world's equivalent of it. There are many similarities, and from what he's heard, the England of this world still keeps its old castles very well, or as well as it possibly can.

"But we're not there now, so it is best not to worry about that, Toph."

"We'll find a mission there some day," Toph promised. "And China. I really wanna check that place out." And all of the other 'Asian' countries she'd heard about in the books she checked out. They sounded like the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. "Do people live in the poles?"

Yet another round of blank stares coming from him.

"From what I have read and of what I understand, it is extremely cold at both the Arctic and Antarctic. Only several animals live close to the poles, and there are several scientific research centres in the South Pole, but otherwise are not heavily populated."

Temeraire ~~The Walking Encyclopaedia~~ is simply one who likes to read a lot and know a lot, and has by now seemingly gobbled up a lot of the science-y things. At least, the rudimentary ones, as he thinks it to be.

"And if you do not like snow here where it is the warmest, I doubt you would like it there, for the entire continent of Antarctica is mainly covered with ice."

"Oh, I know," she agreed. "But back home, the Northern and Southern Water Tribes live at the poles, and I was just wondering if people do here, too." Obviously people could thrive in a desert here, so the poles should be easy, right?

He shook his head, "Hm, I do not think that is possible. Negative seventy degrees Fahrenheit is much too low for a human to handle if they are to be living there. Nothing is able to grow on such lands, if it can be called that. I do not know the specifics, but that it is difficult to live there is a point that is made quite well in what I have read."

A pause.

"But how is it that the Water Tribes are able to do so? Is your world that vastly different from ours? I know the bending is completely different, but the poles seem to be more hospitable if you say that there are whole groups of people living there."

Which is very interesting, in and of itself.

Toph explained what she knew of the poles: that the Tribes lived on the shore, that Waterbenders were really useful, and that they were talking about opening up trade with the rest of the world now that the war was over.

"A lot of their vegetables came from the ocean, I think," she finished. "Stewed sea prunes, kelp, all that nasty salty stuff."

He made a face.

"While I do not mind a tunny, I am unsure about these sea vegetables, as you call them. Kelp is fine if dried and salted, and then placed in a tasty dish... but otherwise, I think I might be inclined to agree with you on that aspect of it.

How about where you are from? What sorts of foods did you eat?"

While they were on the subject~

"Pretty much the same stuff Mushu makes. Rice, noodles, soup, fruit, basic stuff. The meat's different, but there's no chicken pigs or boarqupines or zebra seals here, so."

She missed roast chicken pig. That porky, chickeny smell was delicious.

"...."

Let him process that.

"Chicken pigs? Boarquipines? Is that a mix of a boar with a porcupine? Zebra seals are probably what I am imagining, but for me all of them are two completely different animals. Each one.

Zebra seals... it would be a wonder to look upon one."

But not eat one. Seals, he learned, were not too tasty, but have to do in a pinch if one is running out of real food whilst at sea.

She couldn't help it--Toph laughed at Tem's confusion.

"Chicken pigs are just what they sound like, and boarqupine is spicier than pork," she explained. "I only had zebra seal once, but it's pretty good. Not too fatty."

She really lived in a very interesting world, he thought, aside from knowing that there were dragons that also lived there. She probably thought this all weird and rather foreign, but she has remarkably kept pace and gotten used to it to a very good degree.

Then again, she always told him that nothing is ever normal, even more so in this world, and there's nothing else aside from just getting used to it. Yet, he himself still clings on to his own ideas and ways of doing things.

"Seals are not too tasty, especially if one eats only them for a long stretch of time. Perhaps the zebra seal is quite different in flavour, if you say it is pretty good. Or perhaps they also prepared it in some way that was ideal.

Now that has gotten me somewhat hungry."

Talk of food eventually does.

"I think we have some leftovers in the fridge?" That was something Toph still had to get used to. Leftovers. They never had food leftover after meals back home. They just ate it all right then.

It was also a new thing for him as well, seeing as he was able to devour entire cows and sheep in the first place. Now, leftovers are still very good, but it was something he had adjusted to as well.

"In that case I am much obliged if you could heat them up for me in the microwave."

Another new invention for him. England had taught him about it in his first days in Death City. As much as he missed the man-country, all he could be glad about that is that he was at least returned from whence he came.

"Oh, and if you would be so kind as to put some of that dried spicy pepper flakes into it, I would greatly appreciate it."

The really, really small things, they are still difficult to handle.

Toph nodded and stood up. "Where are the pepper flakes?" she asked, heading into the kitchen. Being the only one of the right size to move most things in the kitchen meant that she knew were everything was and could navigate it safely. Gray, way back then, had even taught her how to use the microwave, guiding her hands to each button and telling her what number was what (they had managed to find one that had the number buttons sticking out, not in a touch pad like most). She still tended to lose track of the smaller bottles, though, since Mushu moved those.

"I am unsure, but I am quite sure I can tell you. Hold on a moment..."

He stood and followed her, his nails starting to make clack-clacking noises as they got to the kitchen area.

"I can look for it and tell you which one it is. Ah..."

He smelled the air a bit for a moment with his forked tongue, trying to see in which one of the cupboards it could be.

"Try opening the second one from the right on top. It smells strongest there."

Toph grabbed the stepstool and opened the suggested cabinet. She opened all the bottles until she found the dratted pepper flakes. Unfortunately, that was almost every last bottle in the cabinet.

"This would be easier if there was some way to mark the bottles for me," she grumbled, stepping down.

He saw her go through her own process of going about this. It was indeed rather time-consuming, and if she could have some sort of way of tell--

Wait a moment. He'd read about it before. He had come across it well before he was partnered with Toph, when Mr. England was kindly helping him with the borrowing of books from the library. The thought had not occurred to him until now, but he should have thought about it before.

"Oh, now I feel like a right scrub," he said, as he sulked a little as he felt a bit of shame. First for not having thought of it before, and second, because now he felt he had let her down in some odd manner for not having told her about it.

"I read something, some time ago, about a way that blind people are able to read books. There is a certain way of marking things that allows them to read perfectly well."

"Braille?" Toph snorted. "Tiny little bumps that are supposed to make characters and words and all that? Puh-lease." She'd heard about it. It wasn't interesting to her. "My hands aren't sensitive enough for that."

Which was a lie, actually. Even if she had calluses and such on her hands, they were remarkably sensitive. She just didn't want to use something for someone who was handicapped. She wasn't handicapped. She was just blind.

Oh.

She knew about it.

That most certainly changes things.

"Then you do know about it. Even if you say that your hands are not sensitive enough for that, it is a process through which one learns how to read. I am quite sure that you are very capable enough to do so, if only you put your mind to it.

And yes, they do make out words. It is a sort of code that one only needs to learn, is it not?"

Of course she knew about it. When she first got here, everyone was suggesting it. It annoyed the hell out of her.

"I don't need to read!" she retorted, probably a little more vehemently than she really meant. "I've managed for thirteen years without it. I just need a way to mark the stupid spice bottles."

A little bitter? Maybe. Back home, it wasn't a big deal that she couldn't read. Someone was always willing to read something for her, and most entertainment was live, anyway. Here, it was mostly recorded, and people seemed sour when she asked for someone to read out the menu for her.

He nudged her lightly ~~despite her handling the spicy pepper flakes~~, to see if his touch could help calm her a little. She really did seem to have a rather staunch stance on this, however.

"If you could learn, perhaps we can read something together, and that would be fun, would it not?"

He is quite sure he's told her about how it was that he learned how to read in the first place -- by Laurence first reading to him every night before he went to sleep.

Toph nudged Temeraire in return before getting out the leftovers and added the pepper with a sigh.

"How could you read tiny little bumps, Tem?" she asked. "They're not letters."

"I could not, but you could. Braille is not letters, exactly, but they represent letters. As I said, it is a sort of code that you can decipher with your fingers, and thus render you be able to read.

I am not capable of doing so because I have scales and claws and am more liable to badly scratch a braille text, whereas you would be able to deftly read it when you've enough practice."

And oh, that pepper and that still-pleasantly-fragrant food are making his stomach rumble a bit.

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