Lunch break

Koa had received a clumsy underwater hug after his gift of the obsidian axe, and an eager nod at the gesture towards the food vendors in the market. Tal was starting to feel a bit peckish after all this unaccustomed swimming and he had no problem buying lunch for his buddy--

He just hadn't been entirely sure what to think about that lunch once they'd found it.

Sashimi was not usually in his vocabulary, but when the shark-toothed vendor had insisted on pressing a couple of sticks of some kind of meats - alternating chunks of red and white - into his hands, Tal hadn't argued. He'd already paid for two bubble-globes of some kind of fruity, smoothie-looking... liquid?? and he wasn't about to turn down free food.

Even if it was probably a prank from the Mer on the two humans who had bumbled into the Underwater City for a little vacation adventure.

At least Tal had surreptitiously watched someone else drinking from a globe and thought he had it figured it out, but he definitely didn't want an audience to the potential pitfalls of underwater snack time. The longer he was under the sea without drowning the less panicked he was feeling, and this time he was the one to kick out hesitantly, looking for someplace a little less crowded...

The weird underwater gardens seemed like a good place to eat. There weren't many other people swimming through it at the moment, so Tal led Koa to a big statue of some kind of headless chimaera and handed over the Dragoon's half of the meal with a gesture for his friend to eat up!

Strapping young man that he is, Koa will never turn down free food, even if it's very, very strange. Having escaped the bustle of the market in favor of far quieter climes, Koa is ready for their makeshift picnic... though how to sit when underwater remains something of a puzzle. In the end he decides on a classic method, filling his pockets with enough rocks to keep himself from floating away. Triumphantly Koa accepts his meal from Talyson.

And thus begins challenge number two.

The meat-on-stick is easy enough, popped into his mouth one at a time and - through the magic of magic - somehow swallowed without too much seawater accompaniment. Koa savors the tasty seafood, closing his eyes and humming out bubbles as the slippery fish slides down his throat.

The smoothie, though - that's another story. The young man furrows his brows in a frown, looking from his glass to Tal's and back, deciding to wait for the courier to demonstrate exactly how one consumes a liquid while also surrounded by it.

Some might say that Tal didn't need rocks in his pockets when the rocks in his head would do the job just as well. And maybe they weren't wrong, because he did seem to be naturally un-buoyant - but he still ended up having to wedge himself under one of the statue's raised paws to stay mostly still in the gentle current of the Underwater City.

He would have nibbled at the suspicious meat if he'd been able to, but the surrounding salt water made that a difficult prospect and he was forced to take full sized bites that luckily weren't too full of saline. His face screwed up into an expression of confusion and uncertainty at the first couple of bites, but by the end of the second stick he almost looked like he was enjoying the weird textures and flavors - even if they took a lot more chewing than he was used to!

Moving to wash the food down with the tropical-and-sea-fruit smoothie, he spun the globe around until he found the small section that was thinner than the rest - the size of a straw, if he'd had one that wouldn't have malfunctioned catastrophically under water - and put it directly to his lips, tilting his head back. It took a little deliberate suction, but the smoothie pushed aside the gelatinous flap that had been sealing it in and filled Tal's mouth instead. The flap conveniently resealed itself when he stopped sucking on it, preventing the rest of the drink from floating away.

He swallowed and gestured for Koa to try his own drink, nodding a much more vigorous approval of the sweet (and only slightly salty) flavors of the cool treat!

Koa watches on in silent bemusement as Tal fiddles with the drink, mimicking the spinning of the globe until he uncovers his own quasi-straw. Still quite skeptical, he places the thin tube to his lips, blowing speculatively out of some instinct to test a science he can't hope to understand.

But Tal seems able to work it out, so it stands to (his) reason that Koa can, too. The first sip is tentative, the second more substantial as cool smoothie drains easily onto his tongue. Raising his eyes in pleased surprise, Koa glances at Tal again before slurping down about half his globe, the dense liquid a strange but not unpleasant capstone to a strange picnic indeed.

Tal paused his dessert to watch Koa wrangle the soft globe with its tasty treat into position, an encouraging grin on his face. His thoughts weren't too far off of the Dragoon's on the matter: if the courier could figure it out, a bright and promising young man like Koa should have no problem overcoming the challenge of underwater drinking. He was pleased to be proven right as the other man solved the puzzle, and only then did Tal go back to enjoying his own smoothie.

The headless statues in the gardens were still fucking weird, but overall it had been a pretty pleasant place to take a little break from the even weirder people and buildings and everything in the busy city. Tal slurped up the rest of his drink, the soft-sided container gradually collapsing as it was emptied until it was small enough to be balled up in his hand. He eyed it with some confusion before hesitantly tucking it into his pocket with a wrinkle of his nose. The texture wasn't great, but he didn't want to get arrested by mermaids for littering!

Pushing way from the statue he'd been using as an anchor point, Tal looked around with some confusion. He wasn't entirely sure where to go next, and he looked back to Koa with an expressive shrug and a vague gesture all around them before pointing in three random directions. He shrugged again, treading water to try and prevent himself from drifting away from his friend as they tried to come up with a charades code for: where to next?

Finishing his beverage, Koa too crushes the container into a ball, glancing around to see if any trash cans could be found nearby. Another question to add to the multitude brewing in his brain: how do merpeople dispose of garbage? Are there systems of tubes to take them to the surface? Undersea volcanoes into which it's thrown? Is everything biodegradable? Has biodegradability been invented yet?

Ultimately, these questions are too complicated for right now, and so Koa settles for copying Tal and shoving the wrapper into his pocket.

Stretching out the best he can, the Dragoon readies himself for the next leg of their trek. They're going to be very sore after this, what with all the swimming and water resistance. Koa purses his lips expressively, an exaggerated thoughtfulness his contribution to the charade discussion of where to next. He remembers seeing a sign for some sort of basin, which he can only assume to be a decorative bowl? It sounds neat and low-effort, and so he points in a northeastern direction, ready to continue their undersea adventure and maybe, hopefully, not get eaten by mer-sharks on the way.