Kire couldn’t help but grin when Ruli admitted to missing coffee. She sipped hers slowly, not wanting to be done with it too quickly. While they were still able to have a steady supply of coffee back home, wherever home was for the particular time period, they’d had to ration it. That meant there would be several mornings of watered-down coffee, to help stretch their stores. The continent had been unstable after the throne was usurped, and that meant there were certain luxuries that became harder to obtain, especially when they’d needed to be more mobile. 

“Which one of you smokes?” she asked as they strolled towards the vendor. “My cousin, she’s a healer, and she would smoke like a chimney. She’d even use some herbs for it, too. It’s—interesting,” she said with a smirk. “Food, maybe. And we could ask around about botanists while we’re at it.” She drained her own mug. “There’s one place we passed that was grilling fish and squid, we could—” 

Kire dropped her mug. She turned, drawing her sword halfway out the scabbard, her eyes wide in alarm. [i]What was that?[/i] The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she looked at the crowd, down the busy streets. She knew that feeling. Like Ikegai’s magic, but different. [i]Gemini.[/i] It was only a second, a whiff of iron in the air, but it was gone. Kire’s hand never left her sword-hilt, even when she realized she couldn’t catch the feeling anymore and instead noticed the people looking warily in her direction.