#sumerananubis

Happy Holidays,

It took some time for me to find these, but I heard you like tea. I hope you have a TEA-rrific holiday.

-Cyno

Much like the spoken manner of the writer, the message is short, though with the wittiness only really displayed by "Cyno the Adventurer" if anyone knew him well enough to know this. Within the present itself is a pair of boxes containing desert tea mixes from Aaru village.

Simple and sweet. That's enough to tell Wriothesley that the sender most definitely isn't from Fontaine. But there's nothing wrong with that. He reads the message on the card again, a little amused huff slipping out over the play on words, and then pins it to the corkboard already half-filled with greeting cards. Most of the others come from residents of the Fortress, however, and are - in Wriothesley's opinion - unnecessarily formal ("to the venerable Duke of the stalwart Fortress of Meropide," one begins), so this one adds a splash of color and personality to the collection.

But more importantly, it comes with a practical gift: new tea. He returns to his desk to assess each box in turn. Opening the lid of one releases a scent that's dry, floral, and a little peppery, the way he imagines a desert would smell if he'd ever visited one in person before. He's learned some things about Sumeran tea preparation over the years, mostly gathered by word of mouth from inmates far more traveled than himself, and fills a sachet to try. The rest he transfers to new boxes, each specially crafted to seal out the damp, salty air pervasive in the Fortress, and finds a place for them among the rest of his collection stored on his floor-to-ceiling shelves. They would be pulled out again at some point in the future and shared as a novelty with some special Fontainian guest (Neuvillette, perhaps. Or Clorinde. Or even the diva who's made herself too at home here).