Travels on the road wore on the city-dweller Cedric much more so than the durable Onion, though their pace was slow. Even among hunting parties, the Soa rarely made trips from their mountain villages without their families. The few Soa who engaged in trade with the city were no different, and the children made slow traveling companions.
They still had a few more days to pass through the increasingly dominant buttes to the mountain pass of Eora Swou. Among the other travelers neither Onion nor her companion had been willing to venture anything in Nüish and Onion was confident her accent in pidgin Eirdren would quickly give her away.
Gregor had not been lying about her new role as Gael the leper. To play a more convincing infirm, he had forced her to don heavy wrappings which had the even more important role of covering her distinct bronze Nü skin. Her attire was vexing in the summer heat and to make matters worse, the shabby cart she and Cedric sat in jostled with every pothole and then some.
Before parting ways, Gregor had treated Onion to a meal together and in the dullness of travel, that is what mostly occupied her thoughts. He had not been shy about expressing his extreme dissatisfaction at the idea of leaving the Nü and Cedric without the bei'thal, without a conduit of communication between himself and Onion, but the decision was not his to make. He told her he could only make it up to her by treating her to some decent food before her journey.
"You see this?" he had commented, pointing to the bulgar dish topped with flower stems and thin slices of rein and boar meat, "Cedric can cook up the best tasting parla anywhere in Eirdred. This parla is not terrible, but it is more worthy for the gulls when compared to the parla of that man. While you two are in such close company, make sure that you get him to cook for you as much as possible. Don't let that man's talent go to waste while it is still yours to take advantage."
Not waiting for a response from Onion, he happily delved into chatty banter headless of her interest in it. "That is how I first came to meet Cedric in Eirdred." He paused. Unseen by Onion, he savored the strange flavor of the words "first met", as if he had buried the memory of their true first encounter under the burdens and joys that had accumulated over the years that passed without his friend. It was as if he truly forgot when the world was flat. But he kept those thoughts in the deepest recesses of his mind, and that was neither here nor there anyway.
"I caught him out at the market in the Durendul District. Rel's host overwhelm me if I don't admit they have the best seafood available, imported from the Outer Crest." Gregor resumed his exited small talk, using the Eirdren term for the archipelago Onion called home, as the Nü had no such term for all of the hundreds of islands. Only to mainlanders was she an Outer Crestan. To herself and her kin, she was a Nü first, and a Deezh'ullan second. Never did her loyalties extend beyond that. Nonetheless, she had come to understand the term over the few years she had resided on the continent.
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