EVE+SIEG; you are not kosher

[endofthetale]

Who: Evelyn & Siegmund
When: Tuesday, 5/10
Where: Nenakret, Safta
Before/After: --
Warnings: swearing


It was strange, having been isolated as an Earthling in Zenderael for so long and then suddenly having an influx of fellow displaced people. Stranger still to walk into the Nenakret and see the Eiffel Tower looming over the World Library. Siegmund had been to Paris a few times with his family, on vacation. He'd seen it before. Here, the familiar tower combined with the familiar Library made both seem alien.

He kept to himself, wandering through the Nenakret to observe its new additions, though he did at one point run into a couple discussing a map in German, and stepped in to help. It felt good to speak his mother tongue again with someone who understood it (and it felt better to help someone in need). It left him in a strangely upbeat mood.

He stood now in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral, staring up at it. It fit in oddly well beside the native Saftan buildings.

Already, the Zendereans were taking advantage of its placement. Stalls lined the square around it, selling potions, general wares, or food. He stood near one of those food stands now, slowly becoming aware of a growing hunger thanks to the smell of meat in the air.


Edward's jumpy tension had yet to subside, thus Evelyn had spent the extra warp fee to visit the Nenakret in search of a remedy for her. (She even left Eranthis with her, to keep her company and keep her safe.) The market had nothing that she hadn't already tried. Chamomile and peppermint tea just weren't strong enough! There had been whispering, not-whispering, and flat out loud gabber among the older women about strange new buildings appearing from 'Earth', but it wasn't until she saw the Eiffel Tower protruding from the city that she actually realized she hadn't honestly believed them.

With the way she was tilting her head back to see the entire thing, it wasn't unreasonable to think she might topple backwards.

She didn't.

She did stare for a good minute, though.

The Eiffel Tower! She'd never seen it in person before! What else, what else? Notre Dame Cathedral, was it really--?! (She didn't know! But it looked impressive!) She stared at it, lips parted in awe.

Fifteen feet behind and to the left of Siegmund.

She noticed him once he moved. Excited to greet him, she followed.


One thing being an assassin granted him was the instinct to sense when he was being followed. He stopped suddenly and spun around, his expression hard--and then he saw Evelyn and it softened as he let out a sigh.

"You," he said, but he wasn't in the sour mood he usually was, so it came out with more fondness in the exasperation that he'd have liked.


She beamed. "Me!" said Evelyn, linking her fingers together behind her back. "Hello, Siegmund. Are you here to shop, too?"


"I was," he said, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. He liked looking for new coats in the Nenakret because the styles were just so varied. "I was distracted." He nodded toward the Cathedral behind him.

Curiosity struck him. She was American, how much traveling had she done? "Have you ever seen it before?"


"Ooooh," she said, nodding in understanding. Then, "Nein!"


He didn't smile--Siegmund didn't really smile--but his expression warmed and he made an amused noise. In a bad mood he would've felt mocked, but he was in the right mindset to just find it funny.

Nearby, at one of the food booths, a pair of Earth-natives were having a discussion with the person manning it. One familiar word grabbed his attention: kosher.

He forgot Evelyn for a moment, turning to watch the two of them struggle to convey this concept to the Saftan behind the counter. He'd been living here long enough to have figured out all the common food items, and knew enough to figure out the more uncommon ones on the fly. It was another situation where he could help.

He glanced at Evelyn, holding up a finger to signal her to wait while he turned and walked over to them. He interrupted with, "Shalom," asked what the problem was, and if he could help. By the time he walked away, he'd left them with enough knowledge to have a basic understanding of what was kosher in Zenderael.

He felt good about that. He was smiling as he walked away.

And then he saw Evelyn and remembered she was still there, she'd seen the whole thing. He froze, smile fading. Um.

Well there went whatever image he'd been maintaining around her.


She wasn't listening to the conversation, hadn't heard what caught Siegmund's interest, but she waited patiently, watching his exchange more than listening to it. His body language spoke volumes. He was invested. He was confident, knowledgeable.

Content, too, apparently.

Wait, nope, now caught red-handed.

"What were you helping them with?" she asked cheerily, returning the smile he had a few seconds ago with a bright one of her own.


"Nichts," came out much too quickly, too quickly to pass through his internal translator and come out as 'nothing' instead.

A beat, staring back at her. He pushed his glasses up. "...They liked to know what is kosher here."


Her brows rose at the rapid answer, but it was his explanation that caused her to tilt her head in curiosity. "Kosher?" she echoed. "Jewish?"


He answered with a nod. His hand subconsciously strayed to his collar, where normally the pressure of his fingers against the leather would press his pendant to his skin. The absence of the familiar sensation was just as prominent. He frowned, but quickly schooled his expression back to neutrality, dropping his hand to his side.


She watched his hand move, wondering what the frown was for. She lifted her gaze back up to Siegmund's face. "So you're Jewish and you were helping them know what's kosher to eat and what isn't kosher to eat!"

Yes, Evelyn, as he had already said.

She lifted a finger to her chin. "Does kosher exist here?"


He confirmed it anyway. "Yes."

The question drew a scowl. "Of course it does," he snapped. "Kosher exists wherever there are Jews."


Evelyn's idea of kosher did not extend far beyond 'kosher salt'.

She tilted her head. "What is kosher? What does it mean?"


"It's..." He struggled for a moment, not certain if he had the capacity to explain it properly in English. "It's the rules we live by. God gave us laws for which foods we eat, so we follow it. That's kashrut. Kosher."


She hummed thoughtfully, eyes not exactly on the sky, but somewhere past Siegmund. One of the Cathedral arches, maybe. Eventually, they returned to him.

"How do you apply that law to the monsters people eat here that weren't accounted for there?"


That was such a stupid question, in his opinion. He folded his arms, leaning forward slightly, eyes narrowed at her. "The rules for kashrut don't change. You can make them with anything."


"Like what?"

It wasn't a challenge, but an honest inquiry for an example.


He seemed insulted by the question, though the reaction he gave looked like nothing more than his usual surliness. He was mostly offended by how little people knew about this stuff, because it was all so intrinsic and instinctive to him, after eighteen years of studying it.

"Like." He had to think for a moment, to find a creature that worked for the example. "Like a jamghar." A Zen-native food animal that looked like a pygmy-sized cross between a cow and a camel. "It has cloven hooves but it isn't a Wiederkäuer, so it's not kosher." He...didn't know the English word for ruminant, okay.


She smiled apologetically. "What is a jamghar and a way-- way-- wa--oops!" she exclaimed, hands up and in front of her as her body was jarred by someone passing by too closely, too quickly.

"... to communicate with Earth!" said the body jarrer, voice fading as he grew more distant.

Evelyn watched him go, interest piqued. Communicate with Earth? Home? She looked to Siegmund, wondering if he understood. (Did Zenderael integrate cell phones already?!)


Siegmund caught the conversation snippet as well, staring as the speaker continued on. He glanced to Evelyn, conversation about kosher dietary laws and their application in a new world completely forgotten in light of the possibility of being able to tell his family he was alive.

Yes, he understood the importance of that. His face said as much.

Without another word, he turned to chase down the person who'd said it.


"Ah-!" Then it was--?!

Evelyn ran after him, the possibility of communication with her parents causing her heart to swell with fearful hope. After three months, three months--!

When Siegmund grabbed the man's shoulder, the man turned around, immediately defensive. He stared warily at the two of them.

Evelyn grabbed the side of Siegmund's coat in one hand, her others gripping the front of her forever stained with dirt sundress. "You're talking to people from home? How? We have people to talk to, too!"


Siegmund backed down at the defensiveness, releasing the man's shoulder. He was too intense to look nonthreatening, though.

"The dragons can take letters to Earth," the man explained, cautiously. He was mostly staring at Siegmund, who did not look like an Earth native in his assassin leathers and Saftan coat.

Siegmund's eyebrows rose. He could send a dragonmail to his parents. His sister. His rabbi. Tell them all what had happened, where he was--

And then his elation, subtle as the expression was on his face, sobered.

Tell them he'd become an assassin. He'd done it because he'd thought his connection to his Earthling life completely severed, and now the thought of having the two things connected again, of having to face the consequences of the path he'd chosen, that brought on a sense of dread.

How lucky he hadn't actually killed anyone yet.


Evelyn was not one to cry. It had nothing to do with pride or shame, she just wasn't the sort of person to do it, but now, right now, given this sliver of hope, she felt herself becoming teary-eyed. Her grip on Siegmund and herself tightened. "Where? Where are they? How do I send one? Is it different?" she asked, questions spilling out of her mouth, unable to contain the smile spreading on her face.

She was completely oblivious to Siegmund's internal turmoil.


The stranger explained the process of buying dragonmail stamps at the post office, which both Siegmund and Evelyn were already familiar with. Apparently the answer was no, it wasn't any different at all from using normal dragonmail.

Siegmund nodded, said a, "Thank you," and turned away, taking Evelyn with him to confer with her, leaving their fellow Earthling to continue on his way.

"Do you know where the dragon post is in the Nenakret?" he asked her, voice low as if he didn't want to be overheard.


She piped up with a thanks of her own, then followed Siegmund, hand finally falling away from his coat.

At his question, she shook her head. "No," she murmured, looking, for a second, woeful. Then it passed. "But we can ask! I'll ask." She lifted her head, searching for someone who was obviously Zenderean.

Okay, that woman in the wide-brimmed hat with feathers trailing behind her like a phoenix rooster was definitely not from Earth. Evelyn bounded up to her, requiring several attempts before she gained the mage's attention. The feather-hatted mage did not seem to regard Evelyn with much respect, thin brow arching sharply at her state of dress. Siegmund seemed to fare better. At least he looked decent. And cute. Maybe. The glasses were gaudy. He'd do better in thinner spectacles.

Oh, the wildchild was asking her a question. Huff! Not know where the post was? Obviously an Earther. This boy, too, then, if the wildchild felt she had to waste her time to ask her such a simple question. Alas, she had seen potential in him.

She batted her heavily mascaraed eyes at him before continuing on her way.

Siegmund you just got analyzed by a cougar.

At least you know where the post is now!


Something about that lady made him shudder. He couldn't quite place why.

He watched her leave, warily, finally relaxing once she was out of earshot. He turned to Evelyn. "Let's go."

He could follow directions well enough, even if he hadn't known where the post office in the Nenakret was. He led Evelyn through the streets, easily slipping through crowds (and maybe having to wait every now and then for her to catch up because she wasn't quite as adept at it as an assassin was). He would rather have used the rooftops, but he suspected she had no idea how to roofhop.

When they made it to the post office, an unassuming little building with a sign out front that had a faerie dragon with a letter in its mouth painted on it, he suddenly froze.

Did he really want to do this?


After losing and having to catch up to Siegmund for the second time, she grabbed a hold of his coat again, attributing his slipperiness to excitement and 'Siegmund' more than to 'assassin'.

She broke out into another smile at the sight of the post office, releasing Siegmund's coat to enter. When he didn't immediately follow, she paused, taking a half step back to look at him.


Whoops, caught. He flinched slightly, glancing away, and took a couple steps to follow her. He had time to decide what to write later, this was just buying stamps, nobody said he had to use them to write home.

Evelyn was so excited, though. Would he have been as excited if he'd picked something more respectable? If he'd been a cleric or a paladin or a spellsword or a hunter? He frowned at the mage working the desk as they walked in. It was just buying stamps...


The line was sparse. It was that time of day. Slow pockets in business, it seemed, was universal.

Evelyn couldn't afford many stamps, but she did buy enough for she and Edward to write home at least a few times. She was tempted to buy more stamps, but had to remind herself that the bulk of her money here was going into finding something to calm Edward's nerves. (Maybe writing to home would help with that!)

She fluttered off to the side, waiting for Siegmund, eyes roaming the office. Her waiting ceased when they alighted on a desk area with a quill and inkwell. Oh, oh, oooh, she could write from here. On it. So on it.

She could finally let her parents know she was alive and well.


Siegmund had the money to buy quite a few stamps, but he didn't. He stood at the counter deciding for so long that the mage on the other side snapped at him to hurry up.

He got three. One for his parents, one for his little sister, and one for his rabbi. He handed over the money and tucked the stamps into his coat pocket, and turned away to find Evelyn.

She was already writing. He stopped in his tracks, staring at her, at the quill scratching on paper, and stood there frozen for a moment.

No, he couldn't write yet. He had to decide first what to say, and whether he wanted to say anything at all.

He went outside to wait, hoping she wouldn't say anything about his decision not to write right away.


She didn't notice, too caught up in writing her own letter. Her quill worked furiously, sentences following each other in rapid fire. "Mom! Dad! It's Evey. I'm in Zenderael! It's a place that was a game! I'm safe--" So on and so forth. She wrote about joining the druid's guild, about Eranthis the elemental, about meeting Siegmund and Eileen and Edward, and, of course, Rhys. The Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral were mentioned, but briefly, because at that point she had filled two pages and only just managed to squeeze them in.

She ended the letter with her loopy signature, then sent it off. Watching the faerie dragon zip out of the post office, Evelyn felt her worries being sent off with it, and she felt so much lighter -- a completely genuine lightness.

She wandered out of the building, smiling warmly at Siegmund when she spotted him. She stopped in front of him, ankles clicking together. Then she wrapped her arms around him, coat and all, and hugged him tightly. "I'm so relieved! This is great! The best!"


Well that was...not expected. If he hadn't been so wrapped up in his own thoughts when she'd initiated, he would've shoved her away. As it was, he went rigid for the duration of the hug, waiting impatiently for it to end, the look on his face a little bit like he'd just been pounced by a rabid fangirl at a con.


Rude, Siegmund!!

It wasn't a very long hug. That he didn't return it was a cue to release him. Evelyn did, and felt not a whit of remorse for putting him in that position. This was a time for celebration! He could deal with a short hug.


He dealt. He just didn't like it.

When she released him, he straightened his lapels and brushed himself off. "You wrote home?" he asked, even though it was obvious she had.


"Mmhm! So they'll know nothing awful has happened to me." A pause. "I mentioned you. 'There's a skinny boy from Germany here, too. He helped some Jewish people figure out what they could eat because he's Jewish, too. It was very sweet.' "

Actually, she had not written that, not... exactly. She was saying it now mostly to get a reaction from him.


He narrowed his eyes at her, obviously displeased by pretty much everything that sentence included. He had a reputation to keep, Evelyn!

...Or did he? Fuck, he didn't even know anymore. He turned away from her, huffing out a sigh, pushing his glasses up. "And you didn't even tell them I'm an assassin," he lamented.


For every nanometer his eyes narrowed, her lips curved higher. Then her smile faltered, and a brow rose.

"Is that something I should be telling them?"

From the way she asked, it sounded like Evelyn thought that was a pretty dumb thing to do.


"Should they know the kind of people you're with here?" He was deadpanning it, but he wasn't exactly serious right now. He was just being Siegmund in an effort to get him mind off of his own conundrum. "That Zenderael corrupts their precious daughter to hang out with assassins?"


"Are you really an assassin?" she asked in return, fixing him a sidelong glance.


Oh, now she was calling his assassindom into question? He snapped around, fixing a glare on her. If he was going to have an internal crisis over whether or not to tell his parents he was alive because he was afraid they'd find out he was an assassin, he was not going to tolerate being questioned on it.

"What proof do you like?" He took a step toward her. He couldn't exactly loom, because he was only an inch taller than she was, but that dark aura of his was good enough to suffice. "The cloaking? The parkour? Do you like to see me kill someone? I don't say it because I think it makes people like me."


Her brows pinched together. She almost looked as if she would pout.

"At heart, I mean. You don't- You don't come off as someone like that."

He took grapes, then refused them, and stared at group hugs like they were the bane of his existence, but he wasn't cold. To be a killer, you had to be either cold or hot, Evelyn thought, and Siegmund was neither.


There was a pause as her comment sank in. He wilted, backing down, all his effort to seem imposing evaporating into the air.

She was right. For all his fronting, he really wasn't an assassin at heart. He tried, but he felt bad about killing monsters, and he'd never killed a person. He didn't even know if he could. He liked to tell himself he could, he made up scenarios in which it happened and he went on unaffected, but it had never happened, and he couldn't be sure he would be unaffected.

But he tried so hard to seem like the kind of person that could kill! The failure frustrated him, and the emotion came out on his face as he straightened and looked away. "Then I have to fix it."


"Are you a very hateful person," asked Evelyn, stepping to his side to see his face, "to want to kill so badly?"


He flashed her a glare. "Yes."

No. No, he wasn't hateful, just angry and easily annoyed, and he only wanted to be a good assassin because he thought that was what he should be. His feelings on the matter were complicated, and ran very deep.

Right now, he'd rather stick to his facade and pretend he didn't have any misgivings at all.


Was this normal teenager surliness or something darker at work? She couldn't tell. Either way, his determination left her downhearted. Her eyes fell to the paved ground for a moment, then lifted back up to Siegmund's face.

"I'm looking for something to help with nerves," she said, smile small, but hopeful. "Will you come with me?"


In what was definitely a complete contradiction to their prior conversation, he scrutinized her for a moment, and then answered, "I guess."

It was better than sitting around at home agonizing over his decision.


She brightened immediately, hands clapping together in joy.

"Great!" she said, then took Siegmund's hand in hers and lead him towards the main market area. "Now, I've tried chamomile tea, peppermint tea, feng shui--" (what she remembered of it, the accuracy of which was debatable...) "-- fresh fruits, sessions, but this friend of mine, nothing has been able to unwind her..."