D5 LA: Fish and Flowers to Sooth the Soul

[Suzume Hitomi]

This was definitely turning into a self-care sort of day wedged around the stressful fish market and...Hitomi is looking at messages on her densai as she walks into the gardens with a confused and slightly worried expression. They want her to...what? Why?

With a shake of her head, she tucks the latest Imperial Connections Dragonfly Generation communicator into a jacket pocket. The weather today makes the long vest-jacket of golden-hued wool comfortable without the personal-temperator. Full skirts in a chocolate brown and silk blouse of smokey cobalt blue complete the stylish autumnal look. She tucks her loose hair back as she comes to a stop in front of some engineered chrysanthemums with long, twisted petals in gold and bronzey-orange.

[Kuni Iwane]

Even if Iwane worked with plants and knew the local flora rather well, he was no gardener. The specimen in his laboratory were all decidedly dead, his small group dissecting their roots and stems in search for new potential active compounds. This didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the gardens, even if he found himself staring at some of the small bushes with an open disdain. Both had been studied extensively for pharmaceutical use. Hundreds upon hundreds of hours had been spent on the project, only for the team to discover that the all compounds they had managed managed to extract were too unstable for commercial use.

Lost in his thoughts, he almost bumped to a Sparrow woman, Iwane stepping to the side at the last moment. "My apologies," he murmured, offering the dark-haired woman a sheepish smile. "I was lost in my thoughts."

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

With an apologetic bow, Hitomi minimizes any offense, "No worries Crab-sama, nothing to apologize for, I've been pretty distracted, myself. It's been so busy, and here are these flowers just waiting to be noticed."

"I hope the Fortunes find you well on such a chilly day. Ah!" She reaches into a skirt pocket to find a card. "Suzume Hitomi, of Feather Your Nest."

[Kuni Iwane]

Iwane looked around for a moment, as if to figure out where the exceptionally distracting flowers were, before his eyes settled on Hitomi. "Um, yes." He offered the young woman a bow. "I find the cool weather a pleasant change." Shiawase was a paradise with hellish temperatures.

"Kuni Iwane, Gensei Iyakumono." He almost reached for a business card, deciding against it, at least for the time being. "Fortunes have been kind. I hope your day has been similarly blessed." His voice was soft and mellow. "Feather Your Nest?" Iwane asked, tilting his head to the side.

He had to admit that, despite her apparent humble origins, Hitomi was rather fetching. "I'd ruffle your nest..."

[Suzume Hitomi]

Her own card already out, she offers it with both hands. "Yes. Antiques and handicrafts from Rokugan. So few actually manage a trip there, so it brings a touch of that out into the Empire."

"I apologize that I'm not familiar with Gensai Iyakumono." She has a voice trained for the court, pleasant and clear. "Though my day has otherwise been mostly peaceful, though Daikoku's blessings passed me by this morning." She sounds more amused than frustrated by the morning's poor showing in the marketplace. "Actually used the fine weather to explore the Bay a bit."

[Kuni Iwane]

Iwane took Hitomi's card in his hands, inspecting it as decorum demanded. "Mhm, I see," he mused, tucking the card into his sleeve and pulling out one of his own, presenting it to her. "It's a long journey." Besides the distance, the Rokugan of old had little to offer to most. Unless one was on a pilgrimage or associated with the Brotherhood, the old home was but a relic of the past.

"We research and develop pharmaceuticals," Iwane explained. "Using what this world has to offer." He nodded at the two bushes he had been eyeing earlier, making a small sign to ward off bad luck. "Fortunes are fickle." Shrugging, he turned his attention back to Hitomi. "Yes, I quite like it when it's a little cooler. As nice as the weather is here, the heat can get oppressive."

"What brings Suzume-san so far from home?" His voice rang with a hint of curiosity. Iwane couldn't remember meeting a Sparrow.

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

She gives his card the same consideration and examination he had shown hers. Goodness, this was a lot more complex, very corporate. Definitely sticking to -sama there.

"Mostly the shop brings me. I'm not well suited to seeing the Empire by joining the Imperial legions, and with several siblings ahead of me, have no great responsibility to inherit. So I bring a bit of home with me and try to share a bit of connection to heritage and our past." She retains the card in hand, noting his warding.

"Are those...dangerous?" the Sparrow asks, nodding toward the bushes.

[Kuni Iwane]

"A noble task," Iwane murmured, wondering how much demand there was for antiques. "Oh. How does your family find antiques this day and age? I would assume that finding really old pieces would be very hard."

"No, they are not," he replied with a smile on his lips. "Both of them are utterly harmless and utterly useless. We spent a better part of three months trying to figure out if Blue Crestbell there could be used to produce novel antacids." Iwane pointed at a tall shrubbery with small star-shaped bluish flowers. Long stalks of stamen surrounded a morbidly swollen pistil, making the plant appear utterly alien.

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

She looks at the odd flowers, tucking away the question of wardings against evil becoming a ward against uselessness, or so it seems. "It is an interesting looking flower, at least. I'm sure I've seen it in some arrangements, though I don't think it's in the most current volume I have of flower symbology." Of course Doji training included being well-versed on the language of flowers, with the most commonly referenced tomes recording the symbolic flora, ancient and modern, being written by Crane artisans and masters of etiquette. But you couldn't possibly include every flower in the star-flung Empire. "At least, I think I'd have remembered something so striking, if it were in there."

"As to antiques, you would be surprised. While major items from Rokugan's early history are mostly held as family artifacts, or relegated to museums or temples for study and veneration, later eras didn't think of their eras goods as anything particularly important. So many end up in odd places, buried in middens until some time goes by, and now they're of historical importance, you know. Plus there are the artifacts from the early eras of the dead civilizations to catalog." She considers how to cut down the complexities of the whole thing for a moment.

"The bulk of all that ends up in museums, if it wasn't hung onto in private collections. But the museums only have so much use for the mountain of chipped pottery we have available. The historic districts are trying to look like living spaces, so they make new pottery with traditional methods rather than making use of extra pieces from the era. So...what to do with those? Why not make them available for those looking to touch that history?" She shrugs somewhat depricatingly, "I honestly have mostly bits of those dead civilizations, and a number of pieces repaired by myself, but most of my trade is in the modern-made items using traditional methods of one era or another."

"Sorry for the lecture, but the provenance of such things is a bit complex," she says with hands spread in apology.

[Kuni Iwane]

snip

Iwane, on the other hand, had never seen such a book. "I'll have to take Suzume-san's word for it," Iwane replied, sincerely enough. "My company is more interested in practical applications." She could hear him sighing softly. "As interesting as the plant might look, it's entirely useless." He sounded almost upset with the fact, his voice ringing with frustration. "I suppose, I suppose it is interesting to look at."

Much like Hitomi was.

"Isn't the... stuff from the gaijin civilizations buried in the ground?" As it turned out, Iwane's grasp of history wasn't particularly good. It wasn't that the Crab sensei and creches didn't teach history. It was more that the few lessons he had had focused on the more recent events. "Or in museums?"

[Suzume Hitomi]

snip

Hitomi wobbles a hand. "Some is, some isn't There was plenty in circulation before the plagues. But then, yes...worry about the disease, and general superstition let them lie for a while. But archeologists started working throughout those areas after a couple centuries. And again, the museums only need so many Ivindi nose rings in their collections, or the little carvings that are as common as netsuke in our early ages." As she speaks, her investment in the topic is obvious; hands gesturing, features animated.

"After so long, there've also been waves of revivals, so it's fascinating to find a 20th century idea of what a 12th century vase would be. One of my specialties is the clothing version of that, which is actually been at least a bit marketable with the current round of parties and events," she says with a bit of a laugh.

She shrugs. "Not as useful these days at the applied work you're doing, I suppose. My Crane training may have steered me a bit from Sparrow practicality." Glancing around the garden she asks, "are there plants here that did pan out? Or is this mostly intended as material still to be examined?