Nitin gives a polite bow to the girl that was named Cirice. "Tis a pleasure to meet you, I am Nitin, an old friend of Keyke's." He gestures to me as the crowd follows directions I give out. At the instruction, he follows through with the details given and hinted at. He grabs a pot and fills it partially, allowing for room to have water to actually boil the meat. As he fills the pots, he notices a lack of a specific element. "Do you guys need some fire to cook it on?" He holds up a hand, holding the fire spell if needed.¹

   Off in the crowds, I am dealing with not just adults, but hungry children. It's easy to tell the adults off because they understand time for good food, children just want now, now, and now! They truly are the most demanding customers I could have met. So I played along, pointing to the group saying that dinner is on the way once it's on the plate.² I do little lies that are still half truths to appease the kids, a part of my mind really hoping that the cooking goes well.

---

1. Fire Bolt

2. Smooth Talking

At first, Veliky has difficulty finding Cirice, and a brief moment wherein she blankly registers the empty space where she'd expected Cirice to be. But it doesn't last long before she hears a sound like a CRACKing twig, only ten times as loud and twenty times as visceral. It draws her impartial eyes up, and it's there, standing atop the crucified crab like a painting of a dragonrider in flight, that Cirice can be seen above a sizeable gash left in the carapace -- a gash that context clues would indicate was left by Cirice's blade. Then, carrying the preverbal fruits of her labour on a platter of light, she hops down and lands delicately on the indelicate cobblestone. Veliky might be impressed by the grace, but the elegance is hampered by how Cirice's clothes are now drenched in crab-juice.

“We’ll need to cook all of this before we harvest the rest. Oh good you got pots! I don’t suppose you have magic for cleaning clothes you could teach me?”

She smiles for reasons that Veliky can't fathom; how anyone could be so enthusiastic about wading knee-deep in crab meat is beyond her. Would Veliky do it if she had to? Sure; there few things she *wouldn't* do out of necessity. But with a smile? When it's likely to require a cold shower and a deep-clean after the fact? No; Cirice is an enigma, to be sure. And Veliky doesn't even get the chance to formulate some snarky retort; she'd just opened her mouth, but Cirice turns her head and chirps again.

"Oh hello new friend!”

Veliky's disarmed. She's locked and loaded with sass, but her target's out of range. Now seeing that Cirice's attention is diverted, and that Cirice has likely forgotten her own question, Veliky just lets out a sigh before turning to the new subject of Cirice's attention. It turns out to be that elf called Nitin -- who gives Cirice a nod.

"Tis a pleasure to meet you, I am Nitin, an old friend of Keyke's."

He gestures to Keyke, who seems to have taken on the role of coordinator for the unfortunates, immersed in the crowd. Nitin grabs a pot and fills it partially, allowing for room to have water to actually boil the meat.

"Do you guys need some fire to cook it on?" He holds up a hand, holding the fire spell if needed.

"Hold off." she replies with calm authority. As natural as Cirice's grace and Keyke's eloquence, issuing orders is a simple equation of input and output in Veliky's mind (although she isn't dressed for command). "We'll have everything brought out so that people can grab their shares as soon as it's ready."

In quick order, Veliky goes about just that; with a few words and pointers to automatons that'd otherwise become like decorations in the street, she organizes them to bring tables from inside the cafe, and line them up in orderly fashion. The grey-blue ambient outside casts them in a far less hospitable light than inside, but they'll serve their utility just as well. Also brought and laid out are the pots, the pitchers of water, and a few bottles of Blixt™ Aqua (for Veliky; regular water's one thing, but Blixt™ is never free). In a couple minutes, the environment is transformed from a simple street side to a professional event with lines and all.

Veliky's part in all this isn't highly involved. Her only responsibilities are to oversee and make occasional adjustments; such is administration. It gives her plenty of time to watch the Blixtbots™ go about their clink-clanking business, and to watch Keyke arrange the thankfully patient attendees into lines. She definitely has that urban guile, and trained empathy to match -- a bartender, to be certain. Whether that's all she is has yet to be seen, though Veliky has doubt enough.

'...Now should be good.' With arms stilled crossed in oversight, she turns to Nitin and gives him the go-ahead with a minimalistic nod toward the pot, at which point he leans down releases fire in little bursts beneath the pot -- controlled bursts to ensure that it reaches just the right temperature. She beckons Cirice over, to bring her crustaceous haul for boiling.

'An old friend...' She gives some time of thought to Nitin's words, but it doesn't take her long. They're clearly more than that. What they are, Veliky couldn't say, but she knows when something's being hidden from her. Not that it matters much; there are plenty of reasons, innocent and otherwise, to keep secrets. But if the reason is something that concerns her, it's sure to come out eventually.

Before long, Cirice comes over, still carrying a veritable mountain of that white-red meat on a platter of moonlight and yet wearing that energetic smile as brightly as before. And here, watching from afar and behind a smog of humidity as Nitin and Cirice -- and a few the bots, when needed -- go about the final preparations before the public can dig in, Veliky's reminded of Cirice's question from before and how Cirice simply moved on before Veliky could even formulate a reply. If she'd had the time, she probably would've said something like 'You'd probably make good use of it.' It's a mundane jab, but Veliky does feel a little bitter at not being able to use it. This is something Cirice does very often: like a bird, she'll chirp her song to completion and then promptly move on to the next, with hardly a rhyme and rarely a reason. She really is the most energetic person Veliky's ever met. Even Astrid doesn't compare (at least, not in the same way). And at times, Veliky does have trouble keeping up with the lavender hummingbird that barged into her life mere months ago and flipped her world upside-down. As always with Cirice, every second spent in her presence is like standing beside a maelstrom of ideas and emotions that zips between topics as if it were on a schedule.

Veliky sighs again. "Would it kill you to pay a bit more attention to me...?"

She freezes. What's this thought? Did she say that out-loud? For a moment, she panics invisibly and darts her eyes around. Thankfully, nobody seems close enough to her -- least of all, Cirice -- that she'd suspect them to have heard her inane mutterings, or else she might have some mind wiping to do. But even so, what was she just thinking?

...The lack of work must be getting to her more than she thought if she's thinking such clearly nonsensical things^[1].

She shakes doubt off like a cloak, just in time to hear a familiar sound amidst the commotion. It starts off faint, but quickly grows in both intensity and frequency. It's a befittingly nautical sound, as at-home in the ocean as a kitchen: bubbling. And as she looks over again, she sees the pot begin to boil, steam rising high into the air.

And that means it's time to get to work, which is something that Veliky is thankful for -- thankful for the distraction that it always provides. And to start it off, she looks over to the crowd and says in a loud, but calm; and commanding, but casual voice:

"Boil's on!"

---

1. Smooth Talking