The Definitely Not A Date To Go Buy A Porn (Thimb, Ka'Ri)

Thimb did not own many clothes. Well, that wasn't quite true. She owned lots of clothes, they were just almost all work clothes. Sturdy bland fabrics, resistant to fire and acid and their ilk. She had worn her best dress when she was first called to the fey tower- well, second best, her best was for things like weddings- and now found herself at a bit of a loss for what to wear to go meet Ka'Ri to go visit the smut peddler. It didn't really matter. That smut peddler had seen her on her way back from deliveries with Hamish sprawled out over her shoulder, both of them exhausted and dusty after hauling things about, but... she wanted to look nice. Eventually she realized she had spent too much time dithering over the blue or the green tunic, and grabbed the blue, since Hamish liked that one better.

She rushed off, hoping not to be late, and kicking herself for taking so long, Hamish flying beside her, unhurried or bothered. Their shape was usually somewhere between a rat and a large barn cat, but she wondered not for the first time if there was a way to expand that so she could ride them. If there was, the pair had yet to figure it out. Eventually they made it to the meeting point by the clock tower, Thimb doubling over, panting. Hamish perched on the stone ridge above her, looking around for Ka'Ri and being very easy to spot. They had decided to go less like a peacocks muted cousin today and looked more like someone had fluff dried the offspring of an owl, bunny, and dog, somewhere around the size of a kitten. Their tail wagged happily behind them. It did not occur to Hamish that Ka'Ri had only seen them in one form, but even if it had, it wasn't hard to figure out it was still Hamish.

CW: Gender Dysphoria

Ka'Ri didn't know why she had been so eager to volunteer to join Thimb at the bookseller's. She had assumed Sunrise would have been the better choice given her profession and greater knowledge about bardic traditions.

But instead, there was no one who volunteered to be with Thimb and that hurt Ka'Ri. She didn't know why no one else could see how amazing Thimb was. A magic scientist genius who seemed to know everything from making magical shapeshifters to histories of bardic novels. She was... amazing.

She didn't know who nudged her Thimb's way but she was grateful for it. She knew Qiao wasn't going to be available until sundown and she wasn't meeting Sunrise, Sithani, and Glen until high moon. She had little to do before then, so shaking and nervous she had volunteered to tag along.

As she tucked the majority of her coin pouch and new cover story clothing into the secret space under the floorboards of the flat and sent one of the youngling crew members to give Qiao a head's up of her later visit as was his plan after meeting Laerdys, she felt sweaty.

She glanced into the mirror and felt a strong revulsion. Her chin was not smooth, her chest looked flat against her tunic and jacket, and everything was just... wrong. She wanted to look her best for Thimb, but that was a distant memory on a belt she would not be getting back.

Stop it, Ka'Ri chided herself splashing water on her face and armpits and ran her razor across her skin until it felt smooth to her touch. In truth a part of herself was screaming that this was unprofessional and she should cancel entirely, but a larger part would not have passed this up for the world. Especially when Thimb had smiled so brightly when she offered to join her.

Get it together, Ka'Ri, she shouted at herself internally. You're a pirate, damnitt, act like it!

Without again looking at the mirror, she donned a clean tunic from the recently washed pile, stuffing a balled up rag into each bra cup to regain a little bit of lost form, tilted her cap at an angle that a girl in a bar had once called rakish, and strode off towards the marketplace.

Unlike the Feytower, she felt wholly at home in the crowded noisy streets of the marketplace. Though her instincts did crave to lift a few of the less secured pouches along her way. But I don't need to do that now and it'd look bad if I missed this mission because I was busy being manhandled by jackboots.

At the sight of the clock tower, her heart pounded and she found herself moving faster until she saw some sort of owl bunny cat dog trying to jump above the crowd.

"Hamish," she cried out loud, quickly weaving through the crowd to where Thimb stood.

Her mouth ran dry. Her in a dress was already amazing enough, but seeing Thimb standing there in a blue tunic and trousers was something else entirely.

"H-hey Thimb, thanks for letting me tag along," she stammered looking for something to say to disguise her growing infatuation.

[OOC: I'll let you two talk a bit before setting the scene; the seller isn't actually at the Northside Marketplace so you'll have to walk a ways from your meeting place. Ping me when you're ready for me to drop in a nice big bulky description.]

Hamish let out a noise that sounded like what a happy owl barking might and flapped their wings in greeting. This also caused Thimb, who had been leaning heavily against the clock tower catching her breath to shoot upright, trying to hide her panting, her face flushed from her recent run.

Still, her whole face lit up like a torch upon spotting Ka'Ri as she waved her new friend over. "Ka'Ri! Hi! Thanks for coming! I'm a bit lost at how to go about this whole sneaky question asking business. I thought maybe I'd claim I was buying it as a gift and ask if they had sold any other books to people looking for a gift for her? I've never done something like this before so, uh, I was kinda hoping maybe you had?" she asked, her voice going up half an octave at the end of the sentence. Hamish hopped down from their perch, landing on Thimb's shoulder. She did not seem to notice.

Ka'Ri beamed back. Her instinct was to hug her and she knew that Thimb had accepted hugs before, but she didn't know if that would be socially awkward. Like, the last time everything was super intense emotionally and this time they were just going on a mission together, so was that out of place. Especially with the... feelings she had been having, that could definitely be seen as too forward.

She settled for reaching down and scritching Hamish.

"That's one method we could try. If he's the type to keep receipts, we can try to get a peek of those. We can also claim to be looking for a certain volume we know she had and express dismay that we can't find it, leaving an opportunity to ask about other purchasers. Honestly, you've got a lot of leverage because you know the seller and you're super smart and inquisitive and stuff so he's probably used to lots of questions from you."

She blushed suddenly, remembering the books she saw at a glance on Gwyn's shelf. So many about lady pirates. She knew in the abstract that there was a certain fascination surrounding pirates among shorefolk. Certainly some of the other women on the crew had girls in every port who maintained a long-distance metamour network with each other. But it wasn't something she had much experience with in the personal. She supposed her awkwardness had a habit of breaking the mystique early on.

"So, um... where should we head to find this merchant?"

Thimb flushed under the praise, and Hamish stretched into the scritch. "Right! That, uhm, it's a bit of a walk, but this seemed like a good place to meet, I hope that's okay?" she asked. "It's this way though," she said, starting to lead Ka'Ri through the crowd, Hamish stretching up to try to make it easier to pick Thimb out should they get separated (a trick they started for Jarek, although it was always easy for Thimb to find Jarek in a crowd).

Why was she suddenly feeling shy and awkward? She liked Ka'Ri, and Ka'Ri had been nothing but warm and kind to Thimb. There was no reason for this. "So, uh, do you read... those kinds of stories?" she blurted out in a stammer in an attempt to make conversation.

[[I think this is a good time to tag the BLOCK OF SCENE SETTING in?]]

Ka'Ri blushed and felt her hand begin to shake. This was it, where Thimb realized that Ka'Ri was definitely not smart enough for her. Still, honesty had done a lot of good of late, so she decided to give it a chance.

She awkwardly scratched her head. "Yeah, uh, I'm afraid not. I'm... I'm not much of a reader in general. That kind of fancy stuff sometimes flies over my head with all the metamours and words that mean something different than what they are. Plus, it's really hard to keep books dry on a boat."

Not that that stopped Captain Caroline, but then she was the smartest person Ka'Ri had ever met before today.

She felt a sudden flush of mortification as she realized how that might sound. "But I mean, I think the stuff's real pretty and I really admire folks who can just dig into them for fun rather than just for work."

She scratched her head some more and started to glow bright red. "The... um... that series on her bookshelf. Do... do people write stories about pirates a lot? Like, is that a thing?"

[OOC: I normally wouldn't do this, but this is too cute to interrupt and you have a long walk ahead of you, so have a new thread to pop into as ye please.]

[Continued in Guilty Pleasures.]

Thimb nodded at the point that books were hard to keep dry. She had ruined more than one by leaving it too close to a simmering pot (which was why mending was the first cantrip she learned). "And they're kind of expensive, too," she added on. "I could never save a copper of my allowance when I was a kid, I spent it all on books and candy," she admitted, "but Jarek wasn't much into that- well, the candy he was," she corrected, "which was good because we could buy more types if we pooled our allowances, but I was on my own for buying books. A lot of the wizards will swap with me now, though, so strangely I spend less on them now than I used to," she said with a half laugh.

"Although," she blushed, "promise to keep a secret?" she asked before continuing on, confident Ka'Ri would, "I know I said I bought those bardic romances for one of my cousins... that was a lie," she said in a dramatic whisper as if this was a revelation, "I buy them for me."

"Oh," Ka'Ri said. She figured that was the case at pretty much the first time she had tried that lie. That was basically route one for people embarrassed about exploring something to the point that it had become an in-joke among the crew that they all had the same cousin shoreside who was into all the things they were just first starting to explore.

Nonetheless, it wouldn't behoove her to behave like this wasn't a big moment for Thimb. She smiled sweetly down at her and brushed the hair out of her own eyes. "Thank you so much for sharing that. I promise I won't tell anyone else. You have my word as a woman of the sea."

She felt her cheeks warm and risked dropping an arm around her shoulders as they walked. Ka'Ri told herself it was to help keep her safe amongst the heavy foot traffic, but deep down she knew she just wanted that little bit of connection and touch.

"So, what types of bardic stories are you into," she asked gently, not knowing the full scope of what she was getting into.

Thimb looked around conspiratorially before she began to answer, "Well, lots of them, to be honest. There aren't a lot that feature us smaller races," she said with a roll of her eyes, "and when they do they tend to be..." she trailed off, failing to find the word she wanted and instead making a face. "Oh! Except dwarven men. Lots of stories about them, but people don't look at gnomes or halflings and think 'ah yes, I would like to fuck them'!" she sighed at this. "But I like stories that have high adventure! Noble knights, rakish rouges, dashing pirates..." she trailed off with a wistful instead of sad sigh.

"I know that someone like me isn't meant for that sort of thing, I mean, what would I do on a grand adventure? Jarek tried to teach me to hold a sword once, but it was bigger than me, so," she shrugged as if that explained the whole ordeal. "It's still nice to dream though. Oh! But you actually are a sailor! I bet you have all sorts of adventurer stories!" she said, turning the full power of her excited gaze up to Ka'Ri.

Ka'Ri scratched her head some more at Thimb's excited exoticism. To her, it was just part of being on the Osprem's crew. Long days of cleaning the deck and fighting with rigging punctuated by short moments of excitement and near death as they raided the ship of some jackboot loving asshole who deserved it.

It bothered her a little bit that Thimb didn't see her own life as exciting. "I mean, I suppose I do, but I think your life is pretty cool as well. Raising magical beasts, knowing how to read the fanciest of texts, having like cool magic fingertip powers. I bet a tale from your life would rival mine any day."

She felt a pang at the whistful sigh that Thimb had given at the note of rakish rogues and dashing pirates. She decided to lean full in telling the story of the Osprem's raid on Admiral Neckbeard's ship, a truly awful military man who refused to allow women or non-binary folks to join his service and trained his sailors to disrespect bar backs in various ports. She had been the one to pin him to the sails by his underpants, so it was a fond memory to replay.

"Then Captain Caroline sat all the captured sailors together and taught them proper ways to interact with people until she was satisfied. Given our swords were on their backs the entire time, it didn't take them long to get the point."

Laughing in memory and looking at Thimb's smiling face with her arm wrapped around her shoulder, she felt a warm glow deep within her. Part of her wanted to lean down as if to kiss her, but given what Thimb had implied about talls being creeps about gnomes, she was even more hesitant lest she stumble into a social mistake without realizing and hurting "the kindest person I have met since returning to this accursed city."

Her face flushed as she realized she had murmured the last bit out loud. It felt like her internal rigging was in knots and she hoped she could get through the rest of the day without embarrassing herself further.

Thimb was enraptured by the story, and especially delighted to find out ol' Neckbeard ended up pinned by his underpants. She gasped and giggled at all the right parts. She was then confused, "What was that last bit?" she asked, head cocking to the side, totally oblivious.

Hamish however gave Ka'Ri a knowing look, and shifted over to the shoulder that was more out of the way.

Ka'Ri was as red as a fresh sailor on first voyage and felt her cheeks humming with nervous embarrassment.

"Well, I, er... I was... I was kinda thinking about you. You're the kindest person I've met for new since coming back here. It... it meant a lot to me what you did for me and I just... I want you to know that I appreciate it... a lot. Er..."

She looked down at Thimb's lips and Hamish's less than subtle gesturing, but she was determined not to be a creep especially when she didn't even know if Thimb liked her back or even women at all. After all, she was not so conceited to believe everyone who loved stories about pirates were at all interested in having a real one in their bed.

So she just thought what she wanted to add, letting it die on the tip of her tongue.

I think you're really beautiful too.

"You must not have met many new people since you got back," Thimb says bashfully. "Still... thank you. That's really sweet of you to say," she said with an almost shy smile. "And I'm glad I was able to help, although I'm still not sure what I've done that was so grand," she said with a half laugh, "still, if it brought me you as a new friend, I'm glad I did it."

She was a simple, sincere sort of woman. Thimb had never had to worry about hiding her thoughts or feelings. Keeping them reigned in because there was only so much anyone could listen to her ramble on about chimera chromosomes, and she didn't want to wear out anyone's good will, but it still made her remarkably easy to read. She meant what she said, she didn't think she had done anything, but she did quite like Ka'Ri, and she was glad they had made friends. She was, frustratingly to Hamish, completely oblivious of any other feelings flying about, but she did think the other woman was very pretty...

Ah, friend Ka'Ri internalized, trying to cool her jets. Yes, of course, she'd just want to be a friend. Well, I'm grateful for that as well.

"You are too modest. Most people who saw me like that wouldn't have been nearly so kind or understanding," she sighs happily.

And likewise on having you in my life. I feel like it's a really positive thing and um... it's really nice."

She loosened and removed her arm from Thimb's shoulder, determined not to crowd her. "I'm really looking forward to seeing your bookseller."

[Thread Close. You do not get experience points because I feel that would be double-dipping with the actual bookseller thread. You do, however, get a 'ship that launched a thousand shippers. Grats!]