3rd October, 2022; Restaurant Jaffa || @tiagoixora
Laeponia was not much of a cook, which was a fact that probably wouldn’t surprise many people. Her priorities had always been the same growing up, even if Marcelio had tried his level best to broaden her horizons beyond tactics and violence. She had, at least, learned enough to get by — but she suspected some of the items in the care package her fathers had sent had been a purposeful challenge.
Most of it, she knew what to do with. Marcelio might not have managed to teach her much, but what he had was permanently ingrained in Laeponia’s steel trap of a memory. The rest, however, she was well aware that the challenge lied not in her ignorance, but in her subsequent willingness to ask someone for help.
She wouldn’t call Tiago Ixora a friend in the same way she wouldn’t really call anyone a friend; the General wasn’t on Leora to make friends. She did, however, have to eat, and as soon as she’d discovered Jaffa as one of the restaurants not only willing to cater to her alien restrictions but genuinely interested in the challenge of making her decent food, she quickly became a regular.
So, it was to Tiago that she took the small, neatly packed cargo box of what remained of her homeworld’s birthday gifts, setting it inobtrusively at the end of the bar and waiting to catch the owner’s attention before smiling her usual muted, polite smile. “Evening, Tiago. I was… hoping you could help me.” She unfurled the top of the box so he could take a peek at the contents.
“I’ve got some Venpalan spices and a couple of vegetables that I’m… not entirely sure what to do with, and I’d rather not leave these rare commodities to my unskilled hands,” she admitted with a rare sheepishness — the General wasn’t exactly good at broadcasting what she didn’t excel at. “I was hoping you could help me make heads or tails of them.”