Sweet Tea With Extra Sweetness [Inanna, Reida]

This woman spoke funny. The peculiar kind of funny where Inanna wasn't familiar with the phrases that she used but all she knew is that she wanted to remember them and maybe use some of them herself. Cute as a button had a nice ring to it, right? Though she wondered if that was Ms. Reida's way of talking that made it sound really nice to her ears.

"No way, is it really that simple? That's amazing!"

Her eyes were lit up with wonder like something so simple could've been comparable to an incurable disease being cured and she had seen it at work.

"So what do ya do now, darlin'?"

She asked, trying really hard to copy Reida's accent and mannerisms without any understanding of it. Inanna just thought they sounded pretty cool and different. Quirks were nice, right?

"Yes'm it is, just tea n' sugar and that's all ya need. Make sure ya don't use too much of either one though, otherwise it's gonna come out tastin' like cought syrup, and that ain't whatcha want."

A lot of southerners tended not to like it when people did poor approximations of their accent, and generally speaking, Reida was very much one of those southerners. However, given this was a child, and she certainly wasn't doing it maliciously, she simply chuckled and gave the girl a little pat on the head, finding it earnestly endearing more than anything else.

"Now ya just let it steep for a while. Takes time, so ya can't rush it. Sometimes, if ya want somethin' extra fun, you can put it into a glass jar while it steeps and set it outside, or on the windowsill. Then the sun'll heat it up durin' the day again and let it steep extra nice. That's called makin' sun tea, if ya wanna try it."

"Yes'um.."

Inanna started to mumble to try and emulate the accent a little better to little success, she could work on it later! It was pretty rude to the sweet tea goddess to be more focused on her way of talking rather than what she was saying, right? Inanna thought she'd be pretty sad if someone was more fascinated about her ears than anything she said of course.

Speaking of though the pat to her head did make her beam a little in delight when Reida's hand praised her. She did lean a little bit into the head pat, showing her weakness as her head moved to get the southern woman's hand a bit closer to her ears out of habit when her own mum pat her head. It was just habit though!

"Yeah! Let's make sun tea, Ms. Reida! I should teach you something too since you taught me something right? What do ya wanna know?"

Reida certainly noticed that Nanna seemed to lean into the pet in the same way a cat would, and she made a mental note of that for the next time she offered the girl a pat on the head. Did they have any big jars around here? Well, they had some big tupperware, that should be close enough, right?

"Alrighty, we can get a little bit made. What sorta stuff do ya know, darlin'?"

She was perfectly willing to enjoy a lesson from this girl if she wanted to teach it, really. Reida enjoyed spending time with children, and as she filled up the plastic container she'd found with water, her smile grew just a touch, even as the look in her eye became a little bit more sad.

She'd missed things like this.

Hmm, she was honestly wishing that Reida had told her what she wanted to know and then she could go from there but she had it swapped around on herself. The red eyes really thoughtful as she racked her brain for answers, it was made even harder because she was far more fascinated with Ms. Reida and learning about her than she was with taking the lead.

Inanna did want to give back to her though and make it a fair trade, and maybe she'd even get Ms. Reida to smile a little bit. She already had a small one on her lips, now she just had to make it bigger!

"Well'um, lemme think. Do you know how to make pancakes? Um, probably right if you know how to make this sweet tea and sun tea. What's somethin' you wouldn't know?"

This was hard! Every time she thought about it Inanna found herself with another question for Ms. Reida rather than something to share.

"Oh! I know. Do you know how water works? Water evaporates and goes up to the sky, then it falls down as rain and it repeats. That's pretty cool,, right? I learned that in school ages ago when I was in Africa."

Reida didn't rush the little girl, simply pouring in a good bit of tea into the water and mixing in some honey. Sugar wouldn't dissolve just in sunlight, obviously, so that was a no-go, but honey worked perfect.

"That is neat, I didn't know that was how all that worked. Ya think there's ever any trouble if all the water evaporates and ends up goin' somewhere else?"

Naturally, Reida was already entirely aware of how the water cycle worked, and this wasn't new information to her. She even knew the answer to her own question. But she didn't want to make this little girl feel bad about it when she'd seemed so excited to share the info, so Reida maintained the illusion of ignorance on the topic.

"Somewhere else? Like where?"

What if wit went somewhere else, Inanna hadn't thought about that. What if it wanted to go somewhere else but it was trapped? Well that didn't sound agreeable to her, she briefly started to anthropomorphise water while thinking about what water probably would and wouldn't like.

Too much.

Eventually she shook her head free of the thoughts, Ms. Reida really had her thinking about that huh?

Carrying the tea over to one of the windows, Reida moved the curtains and set it on the windowsill, letting the sunshine in to warm the water and start steeping the tea. She looked pleased enough with the situation, but she was mostly still interested in Inanna's little thought experiment.

"Well, let's say there's water in a lake, and it gets mighty hot so it evaporates off a bit. Then the wind blows it away to the ocean or somethin', where they don't need all that water. What happens then?"

This, too, was something she knew the answer to perfectly well, but she continued to entertain the little girl. It came naturally to her, really, and her smile had grown a bit more as they spoke.

"Oh, uhm."

Inanna looked a little confused, she had just spouted some random piece of trivia that she was aware of from her time in school. That felt like ages ago since she and Alex were together in Vastime.

"Well, if they don't need all that water they probably share it with somewhere that does. I think that'd make that place happy if they shared water, right?"

That was an exceptionally precious answer, and Reida couldn't quite help but reach out and give her another little pat on the head, giving attention to her ears this time.

"Makes sense to me. Sharing's important for keepin' the world goin', after all."

Even if she hadn't really lived too happily in a long while now, that didn't mean Reida had forgotten how to help a child out. Besides, things were better now, so she wasn't the bitter old woman she'd been even a year ago. It was nice.