Ziva was extremely pleased with herself. She had been right, they all really liked Ducky. Loved him even. Not that she was surprised, he was a very charming and engaging person. So charming and engaging that the game didn't actually get started for thirty minutes as he recalled them with tales of Hallowe'ens gone by.
"Was it a cooked turnip you carved?" Fakhir asked in a puzzled tone as he lay down a few letters to collect twelve points. "Turnips are incredibly hard vegetables."
Ducky shook his head. "Oh, no, it was raw turnips."
"Did people use daggers or something to carve them?"
"Surely it does not take that much effort to cut up a turnip?" Francisca asked as she inspected the board before she made her turn.
Fakhir just gave her a look. "I have had to cook with it at work. It needs our largest, sharpest knives. And that is just to get it into cubes. It would be a lot harder to carve faces in them."
"Which is why we quickly changed to pumpkins when they were imported from the Americas," Ducky told him. "Much softer flesh."
"Good old America," Amelia said with a grin.
"Thankfully we did not import your propensity for making pies out of them."
"Yuck," Pamela agreed.
"Pumpkin pie is amazing," Amelia protested. "Especially with ice cream."
"It's disgusting."
Ducky tried to defuse the argument by explaining, "The UK doesn't really do dessert pies beyond apple and one or two others. Pies for us are meant to be savoury."
"The only way to do pies," Pamela stated goadingly.
Around a table of at least five different nationalities, Ziva did not expect the culture clash to be between the American and the British ones.
"It is your turn, Pamela" Francisca said loudly, obviously not wanting to hear yet another British versus American argument.
Neither did Ziva, truth be told. They tended to go around in circles with no end except for both women insisting that their country was better. The rest of them weren't like this, though Fakhir and Ziva didn't really mention their respective countries for fear of sighting the other. There were enough wars in the Middle East without bringing one to the scrabble table.
Pamela ignored Francisca and leaned over the table to poke a finger at Amelia. Francisca made an annoyed noise. She must have a good word.
"You strange whipped cream concoctions are not pies."
"They are!"
Ziva hoped that she really didn't have to stop a fight. She suspected that it would be easier to get between two Marines. Women could be vicious.
"Is this how the American Revolution began?" Fakhir asked her under his breath.
Ziva choked back a laugh and shook her head.
"That was to do with taxation without representation," Ducky whispered, eyeing the two women with interest and then sniffed, crossing his arms. "Waste of perfectly good tea."
Fakhir and Ziva both gave him confused looks. What did tea have to do with the American Revolution? Wasn't it the British that drank a lot of it?
"I'll explain over tea, my dear," Ducky assured her.
Ziva nodded, that sounded like an interesting topic to cover anyway. Learning about this country she was currently residing in (and intended to stay residing in) would probably be a good idea.
She eyes the two, still bickering, women. Though, she didn't think she'd ever understand the people here.
"Apple pies are the only dessert pies allowed," Pamela declared, folding her arms against her chest.
"Which are American."
Pamela snorted. "What? You don't have enough culture of your own so your stealing from the 'old country'?"
That glare that Amelia directed at her was downright dangerous. Thankfully, Francisca prevented an eruption by throwing the bag of letters at her. Apparently, she had had enough."
"Take a letter before I take a spoon to both of you!" she scolded.
Chastened, Amelia meekly did just that.
Francisca's threat worked and there were no further arguments from Pamela and Amelia. They were, quite rightly in Ziva's opinion, terrified of the small, Mexican woman. Which at least meant they could return to playing scrabble.
"That's not how you spell spider, Lukas," Pamela scolded as he tried to add a 'd', 'e' and an 'r' on the end of the word spy. "It has an 'i' not a 'y' in the middle.
"Are you sure?" he asked, squinting at the board, he'd left his glasses at home.
"It's not a word related to espionage at all," Ducky told him.
"Maybe it's an alternate spelling?" He asked hopefully.
Amelia shook her head. "Sorry, Lukas, not this time."
He pouted at that but lifted his letters and looked at the board with a frown.
"Why does English use 'y' as 'i'?" Lukas complained. "German doesn't do this. German vowels make sense."
"German has long and short vowels," Ziva had to point out.
"Which make sense!" Lukas insisted.
"We don't need another argument you two," Pamela said, eyeing a calm Francisca.
Somehow, they had got onto the safe topic of their favourite Hallowe'en sweets. This, of course, had started Ducky off on the origins of Trick or Treating. Which was actually quite interesting.
"I'd quite like to try soul cakes," Pamela said, munching on a handful of chocolate covered pretzels. "They sound tasty."
"Sounds too spicy," Lukas said scrunching up his nose. "It would burn."
"They are supposed to be sweet spices," Ducky pointed out. "They shouldn't burn you."
"Lukas doesn't like cinnamon," Ziva said with disdain. "Or ginger."
That was almost incomprehensible to her. How could someone not like cinnamon? It was unnatural.
"I like simple flavours," he argued.
"Boring," Ziva corrected.
He stuck her tongue out at her.
"You don't add the right amount of cinnamon to you dishes anyway," he grumbled.
"A lot of cinnamon is the right amount of cinnamon," Ziva argued.
You did not follow that 'half a teaspoon' nonsense in recipes. You could barely taste that!
"That just burns your mouth," Amelia argued.
That's all it took for the game to be abandoned in favour of arguing about how you were supposed to use cinnamon. Apparently, everyone had quite strong opinions on the topic.