#ryft

“Ifth na aaht grush.”

Rysn watched, riveted with fascinated horror as some of the--was that gravy?--dripped down her girlfriend’s chin. Lift had insisted on purchasing chouta from a street vendor today, halfway through their daily walk together through the streets of Urithiru, and Rysn wasn’t quite sure if she could handle the gruesome spectacle.

“It is that gross,” she muttered, slowly wheeling her chair along. Her new chair allowed her to move herself, which made courting situations significantly less awkward. Or, rather, it would, if Lift would see sense and stop shoving that stuff in her face. “I can’t believe you’re willingly eating that.”

Lift shrugged, taking another enormous bite. Had she even swallowed her first? “Taysh guh.” She grinned at Rysn’s expression, letting more dribble out of her mouth. “Whuh, yuv neveh eeshen sheeh fooh?”

Rysn wrinkled her nose, offering her a handkerchief. “I try not to eat street food, no.”

“Ish pah of cutcher!” Lift protested, ignoring the handkerchief and wiping her sleeve across her face. She swallowed. “Aren’t you all about that stuff?”

“Only to an extent. I accept the cultures of other people and participate in them as much as is respectful. But I don’t think I need to get so involved as to partake of things like that.”

Lift stuck her tongue out, pointedly taking another large bite from her chouta before responding. “Fooh ifh sfarvin’ impah-en in culfuh. Efspefuhee sheeh fooh.”

“Especially? I agree that food is important in cultures, but I think street food is more like a detail of culture than anything else. Definitely not important or edible enough for me to want to eat.”

“Yu neveh yo unhil yu fry.” Lift held out her mostly-eaten chouta invitingly. Rysn leaned away from it. “Eveh Kaahaiin ‘ikes ih.”

“Does he now?”

Lift courteously swallowed again. “He won’t starvin’ admit it if you ask him. But I seen him buying it, when he thinks people don’t see.”

“I don’t blame him,” Rysn said dryly.

“It’s just ‘cuz he’s embarrassed to admit he was snooty and wrong. You should try it, then you and him can be secret chouta eaters together.”

“Absolutely not. I am not going anywhere near that stuff, Lift. I’ve dealt with a lot of things I didn’t want to deal with, and I’m not about to add that to the list.”

“Your stormin’ loss.”

Storm it, they were nearing the end of their walk. Rysn felt a growing pressure to get Lift to get rid of her chouta. She wanted to give her a kiss goodbye, storm it, since Lift was leaving for her first assignment soon. Who knew how long she could be gone? Radiant missions really varied in length and intensity. And they were dangerous. What if… no, she couldn’t think about that now.

Did Lift want a kiss too? Enough to stop eating it?

Rysn glanced deliberately at Lift’s face, still smeared slightly with gravy. “In fact, I’m not going near any part of it.”

“Okay. Think you said that already.”

“None of it,” Rysn said, trying to emphasize her stare.

Lift stopped dead, forcing Rysn to stop and roll back her chair just a bit. “Oh, come on.”

“I mean it.” Rysn leaned back, raising an eyebrow, trying and failing to keep a smirk off her face. Lift mirrored her expression, then made a different face at something Rysn couldn’t see.

“Shut up, Voidbringer, you don’t even eat.” Lift began to walk again, taking another big bite of her chouta and chewing with a pout. “Nuh ohf ih?”

Storm it, it wasn’t working. “None.”

“Hm.” Lift shoved the last of it in her mouth and didn’t speak again until she’d swallowed. Ha ha. “But you might like it.”

“I doubt it. I don’t like the look of it.” Now if she could just fix the taste issue… ah. “Would you care for a mint leaf? I think it’s from Shinovar. Does wonders for the breath.”

“They eat leaves?”

“You can eat it, but some people just chew it.”

“Huh.” Lift took the leaf and sniffed at it. “Smells nice, but it looks like a starvin’ vegetable.”

“Just don’t look at it and you’ll be fine. It doesn’t taste like a vegetable at all.” Rysn rolled her chair in front of Lift to get out of the way of a large cart. The Merchant’s Quarter was such an inconvenient place to be confined to a wheeling chair.

“Hm.” She could hear Lift chewing. “You could eat chouta without lookin’ at it. Maybe that’d work.”

Rysn stopped her chair, and Lift circled to stand in front of it, facing her. All traces of the leaf had disappeared; she must have swallowed it. “No, because I would’ve seen it first, and I would know. It doesn’t look like it tastes good.”

“So if you could taste it without looking at it at all, would that be better?”

Rysn frowned. “I suppose, but I don’t know how you’d ma--”

Before she could finish, Lift leaned down, carefully grabbed her face, and kissed her.

Caught off guard, Rysn made an embarrassingly squeaky noise before regaining enough sense to kiss her back, one hand drifting up to touch Lift’s hair. Lift took advantage of Rysn’s still-open mouth to slip her tongue just along the inside of her lip, eliciting a small gasp. Some part of Rysn was slightly scandalized--they were in public, in a primarily Alethi society, surely this was inappropriate--but the rest of her didn’t care enough to pay heed to it. She leaned forward just slightly--

And just like that, Lift was pulling back. “Was that okay? I didn't ask about kissin’ you that time and usually we ask if it’s not--”

“No! No, that was--yes, that was good.” Surely her own voice wasn't as high as she was hearing it.

Or perhaps it was, judging based on the faint, sly grin that appeared on Lift’s face. “Good. There, you’ve tasted it.”

And, Rysn realized with a start, that was true. Her mouth did not taste like mint. Lift’s grin grew smug as Rysn’s expression morphed to shock, recovering the unchewed mint leaf from her hair and twirling it. How had she done that? Rysn felt a faint blush rise to her cheeks, and she tried desperately to think of something clever to say in return, but her brain was still trying to process that kiss.

“I--you--”

Lift laughed, and Rysn couldn’t help but smile despite herself.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“Dunno why. Wyndle says it’s completely in character.”

“What, tricking someone into kissing you to make them try new food?”

“Yep.” Lift looked at the ground, somehow seeming less sure of herself. “I should do that more. Maybe when I get back.”

Rysn forced a light laugh. “Yes. When you get back. That means you have to come back now.”

And with that, she hit the nerve they’d both been avoiding. Lift smiled again, a little more subdued, and Rysn cursed herself. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll have to now.”

“Who knows?” Rysn stuffed as much cheeriness into her tone as possible to make up for her brief slip up. “Perhaps I’ll even like chouta when you get back. Then we can share.”

“Share, huh?” Lift pretended to think about that, expression visibly lightening. “Like I shared taste with you just now?”

“Ew, Lift! That’s gross!”

Lift laughed again and leaned down again to give her a peck. “It ain’t more gross than eating a storming leaf.”

“Well, you’ll never know whether or not you like it if you don’t try it.”

Lift raised an eyebrow, then miraculously produced the leaf again and shoved it into her mouth. “I guess you’re kinda right. I’ll keep eating this stuff if you eat chouta.”

“I can manage that.”

“I’ll check,” Lift warned, backing away. “Right when I get back, I’m gonna check to see if you’ve been eating it.”

“I’ll make sure to eat it right before you get there.”

Lift’s grin returned, and she winked before turning and breaking into a run.

Rysn watched her go, absently raising her right hand to her lip, very gently running her tongue where Lift’s had briefly been.

She’d come back. She had to. She was a storming Radiant, for the Almighty’s sake. There was no sense in losing sleep over it.

Besides, she had other things to worry about. Like the face that she’d just promised that she was going to eat chouta before she came back. Storming thieves, with their sneaky tricks and plots. Storms take Lift and her stubbornness.