[ The silence is choking.

You are the unfortunate person who got to share their carriage ride with this person, this... "stoic" wasn't a good word for it. It was more like she radiated a cold sort of violence, an aura of death, that one couldn't shake off no matter how they tried. She'd been like that since arriving, and of course it was no wonder what she'd pulled from the Shit Box was a sword and so many other weapons. And yet most of those weapons, save the sword, were unseen now. But you can't forget that they're there. They're just... hidden, and boy, isn't that a little unnerving?

The woman doesn't look at the phone she'd been given. It was literally tossed aside, disregarded like one would a stone in the middle of a walk-path. She doesn't look out the window, either. Her single eye doesn't seem fixated on, well... anything.

At least until, very suddenly, her eye is pointed at you.

She pulls from her kimono a long, kiseru-style pipe. It's almost hypnotizing, the way she also fishes out the tobacco, the match, all with a single hand, managing to light the pipe, place it between her lips, and...

... still keep her eye on you. ]

Oi.

[ It felt like forever, in that relative silence. And finally she spoke. ]

Is this heaven, or hell, for you?

[ At least this was a somewhat familiar, even welcomed, concept. She hadn't settled into a hot-spring bath since the last time she'd been by the Colony. And this one carried a lot less baggage with it, not that she had any idea if she'd ever see the Colony again. She still wasn't wholly convinced she wasn't dead, after all. But at least here she could finally relax a little and let her thoughts finally catch up with her.

She had a sake jug with her, drinking it right from there rather than bothering with a dish, and just kept looking up at the stars. Not a single familiar constellation in sight, huh? So this really was... ]

You don't gotta pretend you're not there. I don't bite.

[ Well, you're caught now. Whether you were actually trying to be discreet or not, Baiken seemed to not really... care. She knew the aura she gave off, after all. It wasn't all intentional. Right now... ]

This isn't the kind of night to drink alone, I guess...

[ Baiken didn't really give a shit about the political situation in Camelot. To her, the Fae may as well have been Gears, and that set some resentment in the pit of her stomach, but not enough to feel like she had any place in their conflict. But the idea of bug catching was weirdly... nostalgic. Not just weirdly, but profoundly. She felt the very idea inspired something in the dustier halls of her mind, recollections of a childhood she had long since lost. Something... from before. Before it was all torn away.

So of course she went bug catching.

Baiken had taken to her new dark magic surprisingly well, incorporating cursed fields with her sword to quickly subdue multiple bugs at once by simply trapping them in a given area. She was able to make a pretty big collection for her and her (possibly unfortunate, given Baiken's personality) partner.

That was, of course, until the frog tried to snatch their haul. But instead, what got snatched was its tongue, by Baiken's hand, having managed to catch it on pure reflex before it grabbed their captured bugs from her partner's hands.

And the look in Baiken's eye, at the frog... ]

Make your peace with whatever god you pray to.

[ Oh god, please talk Baiken down from murdering this frog. ]

[ The whole idea of the synchronization spell sounded entirely Not Her Thing, so Baiken bailed. But where would you find her, then?

Well, deliberately scooping up some of the bull piss infested water and examining it in a glass, taking in its scent, and... pondering something? ]

Ferment it with some rice and cloves... could work...

[ Oh. She's just planning on brewing sake with Simon's piss water. Okay.

Is this something you join her in, or talk hero out of? ]

[ got an idea that doesn't particularly fit these prompts? hit me up! i'm down for basically anything, so hold nothing back, yo ]