Title: Price of Knowledge
Characters/Pairings: TristEva, Ruel, Amalia.
Notes: A "cabbages and babies" prompt from Spearance, the shameless little thing.
Just because they're in love doesn't mean she's not going to go around correcting the Iop. Certain... measures have to be taken, Evangelyne tells herself. But... for once, she's not going to do it. Directly, anyway.
"Ruel," she says and her voice must have inadvertently taken on the sombre tone of a court member delivering the death sentence because the moment he turns around to face her, the old man pales significantly.
"I need you to do something for me," Evangelyne starts.
"Oh?" he replies with the usual 'oh twelve gods why can't these kids just leave me the heck alone?' expression coupled with a growing suspicion that he's going to like this proposition considerably less than usual. If that's even possible.
It is. Oh, it so is.
"No," he blurts out, aghast. "It was a joke. I didn't—he can't be that clueless—"
As one, they turn to look at Tristepin who's managed to annoy some giant forest creature into marauding again and Amalia is following him on her vines, screaming that he better not disturb the gentle balance of nature or by Sadida's invasive thorns, she'll disturb him. Tristepin yells right back that he's only playing and she needs to stop being such a girly girl. And to also watch out for those rose bushes.
"I'm not doing it," Eva says firmly, heat rising to her cheeks: this is only steeling her resolve. "But somebody has to. That's you."
Ruel isn't all that sympathetic: "There aren't enough kamas in the world," the elderly Enutrof hisses with all the conviction utter horror gives him.
o o o o
After a spectacular show of sheer stubbornness only really old people can muster, it shows, astonishingly, that there really aren't.
There is, however, always bluffing and bogus accusations of theft - which shows to actually be true, after all, as Evangelyne disapprovingly receives a few, ahem, souvenirs from the Royal coffers before she points him ahead to his doom. He skulks off with the air of a dead man walking.
So Ruel pulls a curious-looking Pinpin aside and, hopefully, tells him certain things pertaining to cabbages and birds and bees and other appropriate metaphors to do with the local wildlife.
Yes, Pinpin is right: Just because they're in love doesn't mean Eva can correct him all the time.
Sometimes she'll get other people to do it instead.