third floor common room - saturday noonish

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He'd spent most of yesterday evening practicing what he'd been reading from the book. It all came down to disciplining his mind, which was quite a different thing from the seeming hibernation his had been through for most of his life. That said, he had progressed into a slightly more advanced exercise which involved accurate visualization.

And, it seemed, more trouble than it was worth.

The book told him to enter his mind, the blank space he had created there through previous exercises, and to make for himself an orange complete in every sense of the word. He was to know the feel of it, the scent of it, the heft of it, the shape of it, the exact color, pockmarks or spots, the taste of it--

That was where he kept coming into trouble. Because he was still thinking about food from his discussion with Karal earlier and when he got to the taste, he kept wondering how this or that might taste with the orange instead of focusing on the taste of the orange itself. That wasn't a problem until he started to get aggravated.

And an orange dropped into his hand.

Now he had a stack of the things, each one tasting less and less orangey as he got more aggravated and his mind scattered worse and worse. He only hoped the grunts and growls he was making weren't waking anyone up. Thankfully, the bunny curled up next to his leg seemed to be sleeping through them

[ooc: open as common rooms are and feel free to take one of the many identical oranges on the table; they'll taste like just about anything but straight orange so feel free to use your imagination!] [and that exercise is based on a book I can't find just this moment but was very good!]

Comments

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora wandered into the common room and looked curiously at Liir as he was growling. "Is there something wrong with the oranges?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"They don't taste like oranges," he said with a deep sigh as he put down the most recent orange (bacon-orange? What was I even thinking?) and picked up the fluffy orange bunny. He woke up but cooed upon seeing who was holding him.

"You're welcome to them if you like," he continued tiredly. "Though as I said, they don't taste of orange, exactly."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"They don't?" Sora grinned curiously. "Uhh.. sure I'll try one."

He grabbed one and unpeeled it, eating a section. HI fac vaulted. "WHOAH!! It tastes like it's pineapple!"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He nodded. That had been a particularly distracted moment.

"My apologies," he said with a wince.

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"No it's good!" Sora grinned. "It's really cool. I'm Sora by the way, I don't know if we've met before."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He shook his head.

"No, we haven't," he said, sure. He'd have remembered. There was something about him that reminded him of Dorothy, except... less wooden. More genuine. Something to the smile.

It seemed to reach his eyes.

"Liir," he introduced himself awkwardly. He held up the rabbit.

"If you know Andrew Wells, this is him for the moment."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora titled his head at the rabbit. "I've heard of Andrew, but I didn't know he was a rabbit." He waved awkwardly. "Hi."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"He's not, usually," he said, giving the bunny a soft kiss between the ears. The bunny gave a low grinding noise, followed by rubbing his chin on Liir's fingers.

Liir smiled and settled him on his leg.

"Usually, he's a boy. A handsome blond boy."

The rabbit cooed and Liir petted him absently.

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"Oh cool," Sora nodded totally beleive them. "I turned into a lion cub once, but only when I was on a particular world," he explained and continued to eat his pineapple orange. "How did he get turned into a rabbit?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Quote 'Fandom weirdness' unquote," he said with a shrug, reaching over to get another bit of cilantro for the rabbit. There was a little skipping jump from the rabbit before he went for the greenery. Liir smiled down for a moment before quirking.

"Do you travel to many worlds?"

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora nodded with a smile watching the Andrew Rabbit. "Yeah, I used to at least. I was kind of protecting them all."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

That got his attention.

"Protecting them? From what?"

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"Things called the Heartless and Nobodies," he said. "They steal people's hearts and if they get into the heart of the world they destroy the world too."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"I didn't know that worlds had hearts," he said quietly. "Though... you mean they kill people?"

Though he was curious as to why these Heartless and Nobodies were capitalized. It meant something very specific to an Ozian.

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora nodded. "They do, I didn't know they did either before I was chosen." Sora took a deep breath, this was going to be difficult to explain.

"Kind of? When your heart is stolen you get turned into a Heartless, then your body gets turned into a Nobody. Heartless are very animalistic and jsut go after hearts without thinking. Nobodies are intelligent and ruthless and some of them even look like humans."

He totally didn't count Naminé and Demyx in those descriptions.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He held back a bitter bark of a laugh. Had this boy been to Oz? Another Visitor, one he hadn't met?

"And if they go after a heart and get it... does that fix them?"

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora shook his head. "No, all the hearts pool into the World That Never Was. The leader of the Nobodies was trying to collect them all to make themselves have hearts again, but we stopped him since those hearts weren't his," Sora explained looking kind of far away.

"I even had my heart taken once."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He blinked. That didn't sound... logical. He didn't know why a heart would 'pool', except for blood and that didn't sound right. There was an awful lot of capita letters in all this.

That meant it was important.

"Why do they do that?" he ended up asking. "And how are you still alive?"

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"I don't know why they do that," Sora shrugged. "King Mickey might be able to tell you, or Ansem the Wise if he was still alive since they did the actual research on them."

The young teen took a deep breath. "My heart's special, or so I've been told. It's pure." There might have been a faint blush on his cheeks as he said that. "It's why I'm a Keyblade bearer and able to defeat the Heartless Nobodies restore the worlds. When I got turned into a heartless, my friends called out to me and I was able to return," he shrugged.

It was one of those things that he tried not to think about too much, it made his head hurt.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Oh. Pure.

Well... that was never going to be his problem. He was about as pure as an Ozian boulevard. His heart was full of a good dose of cowardice, bits and pieces of viciousness, and a side order of vindictive fury. No. Maybe Andrew.

"That sounds..." irritating "irritating. I mean, the whole of it. Being pure and saving worlds. Very difficult."

Though at least the boy knew what he was doing. He had that going for him. A cause. Someone to fight.

Perhaps that was why the Wizard had left at last.

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"It can be," Sora nodded in agreement. "But, it makes people happy," he said with a slight smile. "And making people happy is good."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Huh.

"Generally," he said, almost curiously, "I've found a warm, home-cooked meal and a bit of attention to detail can do the same. Though I suppose it's on a smaller scale."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"Yeah," Sora smiled brightly in agreement. "But it does do the same thing. I like to make people happy, but my cooking doesn't really do that," he laughed sheepishly.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He looked sideways at Sora.

"And why do you say that?"

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"Because I can't cook," Sora smiled. "It's either inedible, or makes people sick."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He gave a very flat look to that.

"You can save worlds from Heartless and Nobodies and you can't cook?"

He snorted and picked up the rabbit, pulling his bag onto his shoulder as he placed the rabbit into his pocket. It took him a minute to settle in the spot before he popped up to look out and that earned him a pet.

"Come on. I bet I can show you how to make something simple, even if you wouldn't serve it to others. I can't imagine how you could make something inedible."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora blinked and looked a little wary. "Well it's not as hard as it sounds," he said and got up to follow Liir. "I mean, cookies? Yeah, burnt to a crisp, hard as rocks or tasting like a chemical explosion."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Liir fished out a small bag of cookies: chocolate hazelnut, stained glass, and orange cranberry drops. There was also a strange sort of caramel in there wrapped in wax.

"Cookies are simple enough. I'm sure if we do it step by step, you won't have any trouble at all."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora's eyes widened at the side of the bag of cookies. "Those don't look really simple."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He couldn't help laughing just a little.

"They're all simple," he said. "Some more than others."

He held out the bag to Sora.

"Try them all and whichever one you like, I'll show you how to make it without burning it or making it 'inedible'.

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora looked a little dubious, but he was always willing to try it. It would probably make Liir happy after all.

"Uhh okay." He pulled out one of the stained glass ones and looked it over with a smile. "These ones are cool!"

Kairi, Naminé and Riku would really like them.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He grinned.

"Those are actually the easiest," he said with a smile, "though I'll have to pull out the rolling pin and see if I've got more of the candies for the center. What color would you like to make?"

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

"Red, pink, blue, uhhh yellow?" He said listing off colors that made him think of his friends.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He laughed.

"I think I have enough for those," he said as he held up a finger.

"I'll be right back."

He returned with a bag of flour, the rolling pin, and a bag of candies.

"Could you sort those by color?" he asked as he handed over the bag. "Put them into piles on the counter, unwrapped if you can."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Now that was something Sora could handle!

At least he thought so. He smiled brightly and sorted them by color, unwrapping them as he did and also keeping an eye on Liir to see what he was up to.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Liir was simply assembling the ingredients, simultaneously writing them down so that Sora would have them should he want to make them himself.

"I'm going to let you do this," he said. "And I'll just watch and guide you where it seems necessary. All right? It wouldn't be very helpful if I just made another batch while you watched."

He scritched the Andrew-bunny. Andrew-bunny was appreciative.

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora went headlong into most things with confidence, but he looked over the ingredients that Liir was laying out on the counter and could only stare at them blankly.

"So uhmm, I need flour first right?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He nodded and held out the bowl filled with the appropriate amount of flour.

"The amount is listed on the recipe," he said smoothly. "Generally, you'll want to measure things out before you start if you're prone to making mistakes or trouble. For one, you won't be rushing to get things done. For another, you'll know before you start if you're missing something."

[key-of-heart.livejournal.com]

Sora nodded. "That's a good idea."

That way he wouldn't mix up the baking soda from the flour.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Now we preheat the oven," he said, originally unfamiliar with this concept himself but he'd adapted easily, "and prepare the baking sheets like so."

He did it for Sora, but showed him how to do it explicitly.

"And now we get to the fun part," he continued pointing to the ingredients.

"Mix them up. Good and smooth. It's going to get rather thick rather quickly but just keep going. You look strong enough."