Josie!!! Very pleased to have the chance to yell a little about now I'm tracin' all my steps to you, even though picking ONE THING is very difficult. The entire concept of Depatar and their permits / paperwork for everything plus the hilarious things that Luke and Bodhi have to sign for is honestly endless amounts of hilarity and I salute you for bringing this fic to us. Here's the section I'm picking, though if you throw more ♥️s at me, I could come up with more!
They buy kebabs from a cart on a street corner between shops, braised brualki with spicy red peppers wedged onto skewers that Luke’s eager to get his hands on. But when Bodhi attempts to order Menkooro the owner of the food stand, a diminutive Ardennian, glowers and points two of her six hands directly at Luke. “How old is he?”
“What? Oh, he’s—” Bodhi throws a startled look over his shoulder. “Wait, how old are you?”
Luke gapes at him in dismay—how old does Bodhi think he is? “I’m twenty-five!”
“Are you sure?” The Ardennian narrows her eyes. “I don’t have a permit to sell to anyone younger than twenty-three.”
Luke beckons Ayy over a little frantically to show the identification tied to his ‘costume’ and therefore the permits. “I’ve been old enough to drink on my homeworld since I was a lot younger than twenty-three,” he mutters.
“Those rules don’t apply here,” Ayy reminds him, as the Ardennian looks over the datapad in question and, apparently mollified, sets a couple of tumblers and a bottle of Menkooro on her cart counter while Bodhi sorts through his credits to pay. “Although there’s at least one tapcafe on the other side of town that allows the consumption of mind-altering substances at an age you might find more amenable to your specific life experiences, so long as a minor’s designated guardian has—”
“Signed a permit, I got it,” Luke says. He eyes the tumblers. “Do we need one to be able to walk around with open drinks?”
Ayy beams at him and holds out the datapad. “Wonderful! You’re catching on!”
SO FUNNY!!! I also really love the commentary about how young Luke looks. Bodhi having no idea how old Luke is is very funny and also... #relatable.
For my 🗨️ with fell in love with the fire long ago, sorry I know I'm Mairon obsessed right now, but I'm overdue for talking about how much I enjoyed writing cat!Mairon making air biscuits and slow-blinking at Artanis:
“Don’t,” a voice drawls when she strides over and rests a hand on the top book.
It’s Mairon’s voice, soft and amused, coming from the direction of the window, the chair—the cat.
Artanis looks back and finds two golden eyes staring at her now. Mairon stretches one paw upward, flexing tiny claws.
“It’s not ready yet,” he says. “Besides, I left all my materials back at the Forge. It will be better when it isn’t on paper.”
Artanis has many things she wants to say, but what comes out of her mouth instead is, “Why are you a cat right now?”
Mairon rolls over and blinks at her very slowly, twice.
I heard Charlie Vickers's voice (how fondly amused he sounded when he said "don't start" in ROP to Galadriel!) and then... you know, I just think it's funny that Mairon feels free to say affectionate things in cat body language when he absolutely cannot say them with words just yet. (It's the slow blinks for me, folks!!!!)
[ask me about fic quotes!]
