girl dinner and food for thought

Being born as a Blade with vast stores of procedural general knowledge about the world around him, Jin knew that Blade elements, while modeled on concepts and phenomena that comprised the natural world, were the same as the real thing.

(Were the entire world composed of ether, they would be. But this was not such a world.)

Blade fire did not consume oxygen, and thus was not bound by it as a source of fuel. Blade water got you wet but didn't hydrate.

As Jin continued along his metaphysical bent, he trimmed florets from an immature head of Bitter Broccoli, and debated the merits of washing it, since it never seemed to get wet and thus somehow never seemed to get clean, even though the idealized end goal of rinsing a fruit or vegetable was usually to remove everything from its surface but the skin.

Blade wind moved the surrounding air but wasn't strictly the same as, or part of, it. Blade earth didn't clot or stain. Blade lightning was artificial in the sense that the inciting charge was induced by the Blade, without direct connection to a ground in the environment.

And Blade ice...

Well, Blade ice could be used to great effect in the late Gormotti summer. Jin usually employed his as a means toward serving Lora a sweet cold treat when the cool night just refused to arrive and she remained restless.

Later that evening, however, Jin realized that in his distraction he'd forgotten to prepare the ice cream, through the requisite several phases of freezing, stirring, and re-freezing the highest-fat Armu milk they could afford.

He looked dejectedly at the jar sitting, all innocence, in the shade. Only one option.

Lora accepted the bowl of pebbly freeze-dried fruit and flash-frozen cream with open delight. It did occur to her, of course, that the form factor was different than usual, but she merely exclaimed, "Thank goodness! I was growing faint!" in a voice so peculiarly quaint that Jin couldn't be sure she wasn't putting him on.

But he watched her taste the first spoonful, then the second, then two or three more.

"Lora."

Getting her mouth around a cheekful of dots, Lora replied, "Yes, Jin?" Swallowing came with a wince.

"I made that from my ice."

"Don't you usually?"

Now Jin owned the pause.

"My ice...that came from me."

Lora set down her spoon.

Looked at Jin. Licked her still-as-yet-burgeoning twelve-year molars. Glanced thoughtfully at the ground.

"So it's like I'm eating you?"

Some hybrid of a groan and a click issued from the hinge of Jin's jaw and throat, but that was all Lora needed.

"Didn't think so. And besides, so what if I was?" She punctuated her rhetorical with another lick of the spoon, and a crowing, cavalier point in the air. "Guess now we know you taste good!"