Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Mike and Ralen - Meet Cute

Mike had leaned closer when it looked like Ralen was going to kiss her again, but then he pulled away making her look a little silly. Why that little ... she thought to herself as she grinned. "I noticed that. You're still a naughty, little girl. ...." she told him. She was finding it quite fun to call him a girl.

She grabbed for the spoon without looked except from the corner of her eye. "Come here you," she said to it, though since she was still facing Ralen her words stood to be misunderstood. "So, you want to play hard to get with me?" she teased Ralen as she squished the little voice in her head that was shouting at her that she did not look like a woman and thus should try to act like Mike and not Mikayla.

It was hard to do, since Mike was her minus being male where as Mikayla was pretend for when she had to or was treated better as a traditional looking girl. She made for a boyish man, but it was often better than being an ugly woman.

Ralen smirked, and spun the spoon just out of reach as Mike reached for it. "Oh you have no idea," he taunted. "When you grow up with brothers, you learn to use what comes naturally." He spun the spoon in the opposite direction, just out of reach.

"As for playing hard to get, sirrah, you haven't seen hard to get until you've met my father. And sadly while I take after my mother's physique," he patted his belly, "I got the brains of my father. So," he glanced at Mike shrewdly, "You ought to know that the only woman I ever plan to play hard to get for, is the one I plan on marrying."

"Hey! I - " Mike protested when the spoon moved 'by itself'. "Is that so," she asked as her eyes drifted to where he patted himself and a bit lower before heading back up again. "Well, this should be an interesting two weeks," she said thinking on what he'd said. She wasn't in the marrying state of mind at this point, but she figured that was what long engagements were for. Besides there was no saying that their mutual teasing would ever go that far, so what was the harm?

On a whim Mike leaned forward more and tried to kiss Ralen. Pay back for the kiss he'd given her. If he dodged, well she had three days before it could be Mikayla's turn with him so there was a chance she'd sooner or later catch him unaware and get her pay back then.

Ralen grinned. "You have no idea," he repeated. The trip back was definitely going to be more exciting than his trip out had been. Was that a good thing?

He was distracted with the spoon in the soup, otherwise he would have dodged, instead he found himself kissing Mike again. And he totally forgot about the spoon, until it came flying towards them, bouncing off Mike's head to distract her from the kiss and he could pull away.

"You keep it up," he began and stopped shortly. There was nothing between them. It was just...well, he had no idea what this was. It wasn't flirting anymore, that was for sure. "And the soup is gonna burn," he finished lamely.

(I had most of this already written before your last post.)

Caleb returned humming the tune to a popular bawdy song and carrying two limp rabbits in his hand. He sat down by the fire and began to skin them. Seeing what had just happened with Mike kissing Ralen and getting hit with a flying spoon, the warrior addressed them, "You know, we have two tents you could use at any time. ..." He wasn't sure what had been going on but knowing Mike as well as he didn't he suspected a few things. "And I'm cleaning rabbits so you don't want to watch that anyway," he said to Mike. She jerked back and rubbed her head where the spoon had hit her. "You were stirring the pot," she reminded Ralen, not caring if her words could in any way be taken to mean something else.

She turned to look at Caleb and reached a hand out to pet the ear of the one of the rabbits. She held its ears and folded them around its head. "Oh, sweet cute fuzzy bunny," she said to it, "Why must you be so fuzzy and adorable and so delicious at the same time?" She really loved animals and she didn't like watching them get cut up, but they had to eat and rabbit tasted pretty good, better than squirrel by far.

"You act like such a girl sometimes," Caleb teased his brother. Mike sighed,"Do I?" For a moment she wondered if he'd finally figured it out, but no it was clear he was just trying to insult her. "Don't ever change, Caleb. If you changed the would would surely end," she said as she patted his arm. The fighter made a sign by his head to suggest his brother wasn't all there up stairs. "Don't push your luck, Caleb," the wizard told him sharply.

"Sorry, I just...reacted," Ralen excused the spoon-incident. Then he looked over at Caleb and gave him a nod in greeting. "Need some help with those rabbits?" Not that he'd ever skinned a rabbit in his life, but surely it couldn't be that hard. "I'd love to learn."

He wasn't just doing it to get away from Mike's confusing flirtations; it would also make the process faster and get the food ready sooner. He settled down next to Caleb and brought his knife out, trying to imitate the knight as he skinned the rabbit.

"You hit me with a spoon," Mike said with annoyance. "You're lucky it wasn't a rock," Caleb said as he stabbed a rabbit between the shoulders and began to pull the loosely attached skin from the meat and bones. "Just watch me, It's not too hard. The fur and skin is nice and loose on rabbits so it's pretty easy to do. You can cook them whole or cut em up and drop em in the pot. If we keep adding to it it should last until we get to the next town," he told Ralen.

"While you two do that, I think I'll go take a bath in the river. If I'm need holler," Mike said, "and only the idiot is allowed to come fetch me if it's something important," she added quickly not wanting Ralen to stumble upon her while she was washing. That would be very inconvenient.

Ralen just grinned and pointed at Caleb, who had pretty much said what Ralen was going to echo. "What he said. And very well, your highness," he said, making a shooing motion at Mike. "Go bathe in yonder lake and make thee...handsome. Just no perfume." He called after her as a joke.

Then he set to work, copying Caleb in skinning the rabbit and chopping up the meat as best he could before dumping it into the soup to boil.

"So...tell me, Caleb," Ralen began suddenly, as they waited for the meat to cook, "Why do they say rabbits' feet are lucky, when to get one, means that the rabbit wasn't?"

"Fine," Mike replied, "But I'm using soap." She gathered what she needed in an organized bundle. Keeping her girl clothes under her other things. She'd need to wash her only dress and her nice undies for 'Mikayla'. Mike left the boys to do the cooking while she washed and looked over the mustard yellow dressed to see if it would pass one more time or if she'd have to waste money on a new dress, money she didn't have to waste on something she would very rarely use.

Caleb stared at Ralen a moment as if to see if he was being serious or not. "Have you heard the saying 'multiply like rabbits'?" he asked. "I think it has something to do with that. At least it seems to from what I've seen and what Mike says." He finished the rabbit he was working on first and started to clean the hide. Furs were worth a little money and Mike always seemed to be saying that they needed more money.

Ralen let Mike have the last word, snickering to himself.

As for his question, Ralen was being perfectly serious. Though he was just gobsmacked by Caleb's reply. "What? Multiply like rabbits? That's because they can like reproduce almost instantly, right? Or really quickly at least? But what does that have to do with rabbits feet being lucky?"

"You don't get out much do you?" Caleb said to the rich man, "Luck, lucky. .... Think about it. .... Some people think that you get the abilities of the lucky thing, but I guess without the down sides. At least that's what I was told." The fighter wasn't sure what else he could say about rabbits' feet or luck. "So what do you do when you're not doing ... this," Caleb asked waving at hand at the camp for 'this'.

"I get out a lot, just not with people who know these kinds of things," Ralen muttered. He scowled as he tried to put two and two together and...didn't reach four.

"Um, I guess that makes sense then...I wonder if bear paws would be luckier?" He chuckled, briefly before Caleb was asking him about what he did when he wasn't traveling.

"Well, I help my father out with his crafts. Granted he has the time magic, but the rest of us can make the pendants and charms and jewels that he puts the magic on. I can do the stuff that neither Darien or Zane can do because I don't have to physically hold the item. I can use my magic to keep it steady, so I'm often doing all sorts of crazy things my father deems necessary." Occasionally they were even dangerous, but Ralen had yet to get hurt, although it usually came at the loss of whatever piece he or his father had been trying to work on at the time.

(The song isn't mine. It's an old one from the 1500s)

"A bear's hide would be for strength," Caleb replied. After a few moments he asked Ralen, "Uh, you do know where babies come from though, right?" It wasn't often that he meet someone that knew less than he did about something and Ralen sure seemed to not know things that Caleb had figure out a long time ago.

From the river two similar voices drifted up in bits and pieces toward the camp. The couple? were singing parts of a bawdy song, an old one and almost fit for mixed company if you didn't know the meaning of the words and didn't mind songs about drinking.

Mike's voice sang quite clearly form so far away of doing things with a woman which sounded very out of character for him from what either man at camp knew of. After a longish break of silence an overly high and somewhat over done female voice continued the song. Most of the song could not be heard from the camp.

By the river Mike had laid out her dress and nice underthings to dry on the grass and she was practicing talking normally and talking in what she hoped was like the sweet voiced girls she'd often envied growing up. She was hidden from sight mostly behind some trees and at the angle of the ground she could not see if anyone was behind her. The wizard sang to herself while acting out the parts, bowing and such for the male part and curtsying and so on for the girl parts as she pranced along the shore and kicked at the shallow water. She was having a good time and was quite sure the boys couldn't hear her, and that if they for some reason needed her it would be Caleb that would come after her.

"Fair well maiden, then quote he," Mike sang loud and clear, as the song past the half way mark.

"Adieu, good sir, again quote she," the female voice sang a little quicker than had been usual. The two voices were getting better at closing the pauses between them.

The female voice sang alone after some time and was drawing slightly nearer to camp, as Mike was trying to keep up the voice longer than she had been able to up until then.

She sang on for a while in her fakey girl voice, now dressed again with her clothes still damp and her dress and good underthings folded neatly under her cloak for her to smuggle them back into camp.

"To blush it is a woman's grace, and well becomes a maiden's face. For women will refuse the thing that they would choose, cause men should them excuse of thinking ill something something something fair maids, you know my mind, say what you will." Mike quickly found that he couldn't sing that long with that voice, it hurt her throat too much.

Still thinking herself far enough from camp that no one could hear her she switched back to her normal voice without much of a pause, "When you drink ale beware the toast, for theirin lay the danger most. If any here offended be, blame the author, blame not me!"

Ralen flushed scarlet. "Of course I know where babies come from!" He wasn't an idiot about that sort of thing.

And then some wondrous music floated on the wind and he tilted his head to the side, listening. Before realizing who it must be singing.

"Is that...Mike?" he asked Caleb. But of course it had to be. No one else was in the area. He snickered at the song, mouthing along to the words as he had been through enough taverns to catch bits and pieces of it himself. Although he'd never quite dared to sing the majority of it around his father or his father's customers.

"I haven't heard that one in ages. Which is a real shame." But more than that he was impressed by Mike's ability to alternate singing roles. "I don't think I could sing that high if I wanted to," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else, before realizing the soup was done.

"Yo, Mike!" he bellowed, not bothering to send Caleb, "Quit yer singin' afore yer soup gets cold!" He winked at Caleb. "Oughtta get 'im moving right quick there."

Most people didn't call Mike's singing wondrous. It was often said that she sounded like a choir boy, which was naturally meant as an insult. The wizard hadn't known she could be heard from so far away, but she assumed they'd only heard the later part of the song after she'd stopped trying to make herself sound more girly.

"Mike must be in a good mood," Caleb said. He wasn't sure how Mike did the voice thing either. He'd almost had thought there was someone else over there, but Ralen's comment removed that notion from his mind. "You hear the one about the dancer from Iylissen?" he asked, "That's a good one too," The fighter chuckled as he summed up the song, something about a dancing girl that was taught a new sort of dance by a group of men. It was one of the cruder sorts of drinking songs where you could tell someone had thought up a tune and his buddies had added the words as they all got drunk and the verses went on and on as they got drunker and drunker.

Mike came into view before too long. She packed her clothes away, keeping her back to the men as she did so. She wondered what Ralen would think if he knew was a woman. Would he find her detestable for her less than feminine ways?

She tilted her head at Caleb and his off pitch half-singing. "Are we going to eat or are you not finished being a carney?" she asked as she gave the pot a fast stir to bring the stuff that had settled at the bottom back up the top.

Amused and enthralled by the even cruder song that Caleb recounted for him, Ralen had to laugh when Mike finally interrupted them.

"Oh you're one to talk, Mike; you should know better than to start a bawdy song, because it inevitably turns into a competition."

But Ralen fetched the bowls--and by fetching, he waved his hand to grab what was closest to draw them closer to the fire where the pot of soup was. "I can pour if you want, so you don't risk splashing yourself," he offered with a grin. "Because I'd hate to hear how high that pretty voice of yours can go," he teased.

(Sorry for the wait post got eaten again so I had to rewrite it.)

"No thank you, Princess," the wizard replied as she grabbed one of the floating bowls and filled it a little under half way full. "You'd likely over pour. Being so used to feasting til you can't move, as you are." Caleb chuckled and said, "He has a point. You aren't quite used to this and as they say, 'A full stomach makes for a dull mind'." Mike nudged her brother and asked him, "Than what's your excuse, Cae?" The fighter stuck his tongue out at her and took one of the bowls.

"Maybe so," said Ralen with a laugh, "but I'm enjoying the entertainment you two are providing."

He brought the bowl back to himself and caught it easily in his large hands, snatching the spoon to taste it--and promptly burning his tongue. "Ow, it's hot," he muttered, before blowing on the steaming soup on his spoon to cool it before trying yet another taste.

It wasn't bad. Then again it wasn't good either. It was better than hardtack or jerky, but that wasn't saying a whole lot. It needed seasonings and flavor and, well, there was no point in thinking about it, because it just revealed to him how spoiled he really was.

"So, of the two of you, who's the better cook?"

"I am" "Mike is" the pair said at the same time. "My dad's a fisherman, gone for months at a time every year and my step-mother died when I was still too young to go out on the boat with him so cooking ended up being one of my jobs. I don't well my cooking would stack up to what your fancy rich people cooks make, but I'm better at it than, Cae here. Also been at it longer than he's been live and only a year short of your whole life as well, M'lady," the wizard replied as she sipped from the edge of her bowl. It didn't seem too hot for her to drink. Caleb on the other hand had to blow on his soup before he could copy Mike and drink it down.

Ralen listened, intrigued. "Wow. You're just all sorts of talent wrapped up in a neat little package, aren't ya."

Deep down he was a little envious, not of the fact Mike had lost her step-mother, but that Mike had chosen to overcome those things by being useful and learning a skill. While Ralen and his brothers had chosen to become troublesome.

He was quiet for a long moment, blowing the steam from his soup. What could he possibly say to that? He had nothing. Utterly nothing.