"Pastry?" That was a word she wasn't terribly familiar with. She'd heard it before in her travels north, but never at home. She screwed up her inked face trying to think of where she'd heard it, and even repeated it to herself a few times. "Is that the kind of bread that has a lot of butter in it? And you have to keep it cold or else it doesn't work? I think I had something like that once, but never at home. It's too hot to do anything like that there. We do lots of buns though, either baked or steamed. And flatbreads too, do they have that up North? Someday you'll have to make me an apple pie, and I will make you proper curry and show you coconuts."

Ridahne gave an understanding nod to Darin's tale of how her and her mother got by after her father left. Neither of Ridahne's parents left--they were madly in love with one another--but yet she still found herself without a mother at a young age. She knew that pain, the sudden chaos as the rhythm of her family's life was suddenly upheaved. She supposed she was thankful that both she and Hadian were well established on their own by the time their father was lost at sea. 

"Ravi would tell me that you and I were not so different as I thought." She said with a sad smile. "We might have different stories, but I know the chaos losing a parent can wreak on your life. Emotionally, but also in a practical way. We were always poor but we made it through just fine. When Ikali got sick, we suddenly found ourselves with half the income, and Hadian and I had to fend for ourselves while my father was at sea. Ikali was usually the one who went hunting, too. She taught me a lot about how to handle cats, horses, and about the Dust Sea. But there were some lessons I had to learn the hard way, and I ended up becoming a hunter at far too young an age, for better or worse." She smiled. "I feel like that worked out in my favor in the end.  Anyway, it turns out that you make a lot of money being an eija, and even more as an eija-alihn. Except I never had anything to really spend it on besides a horse and some good tattoo ink. I sent a lot of it to Hadian so he could focus on getting married--I wonder if he has while I've been gone? But when we get to Azurei, I will see to it you have all the chocolate and coffee and coconuts you could ever want." 

Ridahne looked down at her feet, scowling at her shoes for a moment before unlacing them and peeling them off with some difficulty. It hadn't been long since she'd taken them off, but it sure felt like it. And why she'd put up with them for all this time sitting in Konie and Talyn's home, she didn't know. "Hmph, no, there wasn't much free time," she chuckled. "But when I was younger I apparently liked to spend it getting in trouble. I fought a lot. Not all of them were real squabbles, some of them were, you know, playing. A wrestling contest or something. I swam a lot, even when I got older. It's true, the ocean does taste like salt. It's a cruel thing to live in the driest place in all of Astra, and have this big huge body of water right at your doorstep, but you can't drink it. The salt in it will make you sick and even more thirsty. But the waves are fun to play in. I spend a lot of time diving for shellfish and sometimes seahorses. Rich people like to keep them as pets, and they'll pay a hefty price for them. When it came time to chose a sigil (if you make it to the courts, suddenly your clan is important enough for a sigil) I chose a seahorse for that reason. I've done a bit of bone or stone carving, but Ajoran's better at it than I am. I do a lot of tattooing, for myself or others. I actually wanted to be a master tattooer when I was a little girl, but for whatever reason they didn't take me as an apprentice. What about you? I know you play the fiddle, but what else do you do when you have the time?"