[Gift] Ambrosia & Amaryllis: Chapter Two

heeeey fu naxia
FuN
little bunny fu fu!!!!
ohhhh that’s cute isn’t it? 💐

What do you want?

youre like
good at tea right?

I can make tea.

yeah sure but aren’t you like GOOD at it

That’s a subjective question.

ok well let’s just say that you are bc it’ll make things WAAAAY way easier than if i gotta debate yr tea making skills
and also i’ve had yr tea before!!! it was good!!!!! 🍵
you should be more proud of yr work you know

You should be more clear about your intentions.

right im getting there!!!
so ok primrose is sending me on errands (yuck) but he’s having me bring tea to dove which isn’t so bad
or like ok he wants me to bring LEAVES from the embassy so that dove can MAKE tea
if i bring some stuff from my garden will u help us make some fun tea?
ooh we can invite some other buns and sample lots of different teas!!!!
dove gets as much of the fancy embassy stuff as they want though before anyone else can touch it that’s the rule 😤
anyway
will you help?

What are you offering in return?

isn’t it nice to just have a fun party???
judging by your lack of response i am guessing no
ughhhhhhh fu naxiaaaaa pls
ok listen
how many bags of leaves from my garden do you want?

How many guests are to be expected?

idk 5 or 6?
i think i wanna invite solana i haven't seen her in a while

Two of the large bags.

a big bag and a small one

One large bag and three small ones, each in different flavors.

five mini bags and they’re all different

Six. And I get to bring Luciano to the party.

lmao you drive a hard bargain little bunny fu fu
deal tho

Do you intend to keep calling me that?

no ma’am
anyway lemme text jackal i’ll tell her to set some time aside!!! thx fu naxia 💛🌷🍵

- - -

HOME-GROWN LEAVES
💥
DEGREE-PERFECT WATER TEMPERATURES
💥
AND A FULL ARRAY OF SWEETENER OPTIONS

what

💥
STARRING JACKAL 🐶🦌
💥
DOVE 🕊️👼🏽
💥
JUNO 🌷🌸
💥

what

AND FU NAXIA 😱👻
💥
FEATURING SOLANA AND LUCIANO
💥
THIS WEDNESDAY
💥
IT’S
💥💥💥
TEA TIME
💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
unless you and dove are busy that afternoon then we can pick a different night
also you interrupted my movie trailer :(
you read that as a movie trailer right?

juno what the fuck is wrong with you

- - -

Juno tells everyone to arrive at two and then arrives herself half an hour earlier—it would be disastrous for one of the others to show up before Juno, and Dove deserves far better than disastrous.

“I just wanted to make sure I had time to set up!” she says, and pulls tin after bag after parcel full of leaves and petals and buds out of her backpack. Dove offers, again and again, to help Juno sort them, but she bats their hands away and shoos them off and says, “This was my idea, so I’ll take care of it!”

In the middle of a cuckoo clock’s two chirps, there’s a knock on the door, and Jackal welcomes in Fù Nàxià with Luciano in tow. They’ve brought company, too; a single guyst, a fiendish red glow snapping like fire from the tail of their black body, joins the various gray wisps of spirits perpetually circling Fù Nàxià, twirling and hovering around her. Occasionally, the guyst dips low to the ground to hum back and forth with the stellaram at Luciano’s heels.

“You brought friends?!” Juno says, cheerfully bewildered.

“Oh, is that okay?” Luciano asks, suddenly glancing this way and that and starting to lean over to scoop up his stellaram.

Half a step behind him, Fù Nàxià looks at Juno and then Jackal with a tight-lipped smile. The ghosts around her groan, their mouths stretching open and displaying a black void behind their maws. Their incorporeal forms cast gray shadows over Fù Nàxià’s stone-smiling face.

Juno very quickly stutters out, “Of course! Obviously! Always!” while Jackal manages a, “Sure thing.”

Luciano sighs, relieved, and sets the stellaram back down.

“Oh, what a cutie!” Dove sighs, and starts to scurry over, only to halt in place and ask, “Can I pet them?”

“Absolutely! Their name is Vela.”

While Dove coos as they scratch Vela’s face and pats their poofy black wool, Fù Nàxià strides right ahead towards Juno. Ever-smiling, she says, “We have, of course, an arrangement.”

“Most people start with ‘hello’,” Juno says, but balks against Fù Nàxià’s unchanging expression and scampers off towards her bag where she's left it in the living room. She returns with her hands full of little drawstring pouches, and Fù Nàxià laboriously opens the strings of each one and examines their contents.

“This will do nicely,” Fù Nàxià says, and puts them all inside her own purse. “And what do I have to work with for the party?”

Juno brings Fù Nàxià to the kitchen counter and talks her through the leaves and petals she’s brought, all arranged in their cups and bowls and bags—”I haven’t told Dove,” Juno says conspiratorially, her voice low enough that the commotion of Fù Nàxià’s Guyst cackling as it chases Vela across the tile keeps Dove perfectly distracted, “but these ones are the ones from Primrose. Enough to serve, anyway. It’s gonna be a surprise once they taste the tea!”

Fù Nàxià listens carefully and sets up her own accoutrements: a mortar and pestle, a whisk, her own teapot and its set of matching cups all in deep purple (except for the Phantomile in its cracked black cup, set down beside the rest as though it perfectly belongs), strainers, and the skull.

Juno realizes too late that she should have told Fù Nàxià explicitly to not bring the skull.

After an awkward few minutes of staring at it, Dove watches Fù Nàxià pick it up to set elsewhere on the counter and they manage to stutter out, “Is it real?’

Fù Nàxià chuckles and moves on with her preparation.

“Lemme hold it,” Jackal says, grinning.

“How strongly are you hoping to be cursed?” asks Fù Nàxià with a pleasant smile.

Jackal does not hold the skull.

The knock at the door, then, is a welcome reprieve, despite how aggressive the pounding on the wood is. Juno, Dove, and Jackal all race to extricate themselves from Fù Nàxià’s preparations while Juno says, “That must be Sol!”

Juno makes it to the door first, and gets to watch in real time as Solana’s expression shifts from idle rest to puffing her cheeks out in indignation at the mere sight of Juno before her.

“You came!” Juno cries, undeterred.

“You didn’t really give me a choice,” Solana scoffs, and shoulders past Juno, ignoring Juno’s arms opened in greeting. Still, Solana has dressed just a little more cutely than usual, with jewelry matching her frilly skirt too well to be a coincidence.

Solana very nearly trips over Vela in her march forward into the apartment as Vela fails to find traction against the tile and skids on along.

“Get your ghost to quit causing trouble!” Jackal snaps towards Fù Nàxià.

“Yǎnguǐ?” asks Fù Nàxià, glancing over her shoulder. The guyst in question perks up, hovering a few feet higher than at Vela’s level to look over the kitchen island at Fù Nàxià. It does not stop quietly snickering. Fù Nàxià shrugs, and returns to working the leaves she’s packing together. “Well, trouble is as trouble does.”

She does not elaborate.

Juno leaves Dove to take Solana’s jacket, then skips over to the kitchen island so she can lean over it towards where Fù Nàxià works at the counter with her back to the activity. Juno asks, “Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“You are absolutely not to touch anything here,” Fù Nàxià says in a tone entirely too friendly for the way the spirits surrounding her all turn to look at Juno at once with a chorus of discordant rattles and groans.

“Yes ma’am!” Juno says, already on her way back to the others.

“I didn’t think you were gonna come,” Jackal is saying to Solana. Jackal rests back on the couch, taking up most of the seat with her arm spread out and one leg folded over the other.

“Yeah, well,” Solana says, and glares sidelong at Juno as she approaches. Solana harrumphs, folds her arms, and leaves it there.

“I’m glad you did!” Dove says. “Are we expecting anyone else?”

“This is the whole party,” Juno says. “It’s not too much, is it, Dove?”

“No! No, it’s nice,” they say. Finally, Jackal successfully coaxes them to sit next to them on the couch. There’s not enough space for them to not lean into her a little. “Do you two want to sit, too? Or… Luciano?”

The circles Luciano had been pacing around the apartment take him back to the others. He smiles brightly. Vela has toddled back to his side, and he has a teacup cradled in both hands.

“No, that’s fine! I’m not done yet.”

“Wait, have we started drinking already? Am I late?” Solana asks, and the hellfire at the edges of her face flares once and then shrinks back.

“Oh! No, this isn’t tea, this is Lapsang Souchong,” says Luciano, pronouncing each syllable with the deliberateness of someone teaching a name they have full confidence in, and presents the teacup before him. With Juno right behind her and standing on her tip toes, Solana peers down into it and squints at the spirit inside. Only from this close can they hear the soft, weepy noises the phantomille makes. Luciano says, “I’m taking them for a walk!”

“A walk,” Solana repeats.

“Fù Nàxià asked me to!” he says, and puffs out his chest. “I asked if I could help and this is what she wanted.”

Solana opens her mouth. Juno slaps an arm around Solana’s shoulders before she can say anything and Juno says, “Thanks for keeping things running smoothly, Luciano!”

Beaming with pride, Luciano heads back over towards Fù Nàxià while the others glance uncertainly between each other.

“Anyway,” says Juno, “I’m gonna set the table up—I do not want your help!” she adds, and Jackal squeezes her arm around Dove’s shoulders before Dove can stand up. “This was my idea, technically I'm the hostess, I’m doing this work for you. Oh, but Solana, will you come with me?”

“Seriously?!” Solana snaps.

“I just really like your company!” Juno says. Solana’s face turns pink, pinker still as Dove giggles, but she only grumbles a little as Juno leads her away by the arm. Fù Nàxià sends the two of them from the kitchen to the dining room table—or, at least, the stained folding table that Jackal must have acquired once she decided by virtue of Dove’s presence to have higher standards than eating alone while sprawled out on the couch—with plates and teacups that don’t have weeping spirits inside them, then offers them each one teapot at a time to bring back. Solana watches intently as Juno sets each place at the table; a plate for snacks, a plate for their teacup to rest on, one spoon, two spoons…

“What’s with all the spoons?” Solana says, her expression furrowed.

“It’s a tea party! We’re going to be fancy about it,” says Juno, and holds up the tiniest spoon she’s ever seen. “Fancy people use too many spoons. Right, Dove?”

“Huh?” they call back from the other room.

“You definitely had to use, like, five spoons at a time back in the meadows, yeah?”

Laughing, Jackal sits up straight and puts on the most pompous voice she’s capable of as she says, “This spoon is not for eating anything, under any circumstances. This is our fancy spoon for holding fancily.”

“That’s not how it works!” Dove laughs, and even Solana cracks a smile as she helps set the table. She adjusts each teapot over and over, placing them in a perfect circle, then goes back to the kitchen and returns with a lazy susan to set at the very center of the table and place all the teapots upon instead.

“Oh, Solana, that’s such a good idea!” Juno says. Solana puffs up a little, proud of herself, and even she can’t maintain a complete frown.

Fù Nàxià brings out the rest of the loose teas herself, arranging them neatly in little bowls in the middle of the lazy susan. Luciano follows close behind her and diligently sets one napkin down at a time at each place.

“Thank you, Luciano,” Fù Nàxià says, “You’ve been a great help.”

“Any time!” Luciano says, beaming. “What should I do with the rest?”

Fù Nàxià takes the left over stack of napkins herself, and pulls a chair back for Luciano before she leaves to return them to their place. Not daring to presume which side of him Fù Nàxià wants to sit on, Juno instead moves two seats down. None of the chairs at the table match; she finds herself at what must be the least comfortable folding chair available, but it isn’t by much.

Juno leans in towards Solana as they finish setting places, and she glances over to the living room, where Dove laughs cheerfully at a joke Jackal is telling. Juno whispers, "This teapot here is off limits, okay?"

"Why?" Solana asks.

"I haven't told Dove, but there's special tea for them," she says, "and I want it to be a surprise!"

Free of her usual complaints, Solana just nods, and Juno grins cheerfully and bumps her shoulder against Solana's. That provokes Solana's usual grumbling, which Juno ignores entirely.

“We’re just about ready!” she calls, “Come sit, you two!”

By the time Jackal and Dove make it over, Fù Nàxià has returned and sat down at Luciano’s left; evaluating the situation, Jackal swiftly takes the seat next to her so that Dove ends up between Jackal and Juno. Solana had been standing near Juno, shuffling sideways towards her as Juno claimed her seat, and so she sits between Juno and Luciano—though she waits to pull back her chair until Juno sits, which only happens once Dove is seated. Vela has wandered over in the meantime, and no one has the heart to shoo her from under the table where she sits at Luciano’s feet. Yǎnguǐ, in the meantime, joins the spirits ever shuddering around Fù Nàxià. Here and there, he looks towards her, and Juno catches the warning sharpness in her eyes when she looks back.

“You’ll like this one, Luciano,” Fù Nàxià says, and reaches for a teapot on the lazy susan. She pours the tea for him herself and passes the sugar along next without asking. The others take this as their cue to dig in. Fù Nàxià introduces each tea, spinning the lazy susan to make sure each pot is displayed. When she comes to the last teapot in the circle, this one borrowed from Jackal’s house instead of brought by Fù Nàxià herself—it’s off white from antique age with pastel blue swirls and flowers painted into it and only slightly faded—she says simply, "This is a classic white tea blend. I haven't done much to the leaves provided, really." Juno can’t help the way her eyes light up when Fù Nàxià looks to her, then turns and says, “Dove, I think you ought to try this one.” Fù Nàxià even stands—Luciano starts to follow, but is dismissed with a short wave of Fù Nàxià’s hand—and pours the tea for Dove herself.

“Thank you so much, Fù Nàxià,” says Dove. “It must have been so much work to put all of this tea together.”

“It was,” Fù Nàxià says, not any more unpleasantly than usual as she returns to her seat. “Luciano was a great help, of course,” she adds, and Luciano looks away, but he’s beaming.

“Oh, um, and, Juno!” Dove says, and lifts their teacup while Juno watches with a widening grin. “Thank you for putting all this together, too. I can tell you rea—”

The teacup pauses where Dove has lifted it towards their face, and Dove sniffs once. Testing, they take a sip of the tea, and they give an involuntary little mm! of delight as their eyes go wide.

“Where did this come from?!” Dove gasps.

“Primrose,” says Juno. “They wanted me to bring some of these from the gardens to you, and I thought, well, let’s make a thing of it!” She flourishes with both hands, then slams them down on the table hard enough to make both Dove and Luciano yelp as she says, “Oh, but Dove gets first dibs and all the rest of the dibs on that teapot if they want it, understand?!” Her sunshine turns warm instead of burning intense as she turns back to Dove and says, “There’s more loose leaf for you, though, I promise I didn’t let Fù Nàxià brew it all.”

“Oh, but…” Dove says, and they’re smiling so bright and warm, and Juno can see the way Jackal melts at the sight. “There’s enough for everyone to have a little now, right? For all the trouble you all went to, you really should get to try some.”

Dove pours the tea themselves, and Juno only objects a little, on that same hostessing basis, but she supposes Dove ought to get to mete out the tea so as to leave as much for themselves as they’d like—so she watches with bright-eyed surprise as Dove, once they reach Juno in their circle around the table, fills her cup almost too close to the rim for any milk.

The whole table jumps as Fù Nàxià gives a sharp hiss at Dove’s attempt to pour her tea, and Fù Nàxià snatches back the teacup so swiftly that what little tea could pour splashes on the table. Jackal nearly snaps, but then they all hear a quiet whimper—and the Phantomille in the teacup shrinks back into it.

“This one,” Fù Nàxià corrects, and as Dove stutters out apologies and pours her tea, too, the wispy spirits swirling rapidly over Fù Nàxià’s head settle back around her.

Fù Nàxià waits to drink her tea, even after Jackal starts slurping at hers right away. Solana receives hers last, and Juno only barely notices the way Solana glances towards her, as if seeking approval, in the same way that Luciano watches Fù Nàxià—but Juno hasn’t touched her tea, so Solana doesn’t, either. Instead, Juno waits until Dove sits back down, pours themselves some tea, and sets the pot back on the lazy susan. Once Dove has added milk and sugar and finally lifted the teacup, Juno adds her sugar and follows suit, followed by Solana, then Fù Nàxià. Luciano adds entirely too much sugar, then takes a sip of his own.

“Oh, no wonder you like this blend so much!” Juno says.

“There are two others that Primrose sent,” Fù Nàxià says, “and I would be interested in seeing if all of them have this same sort of…” She makes a short gesture with one hand. “Hm. I hardly know how to describe the quality of it. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”

“It’s good, though, right?” Luciano asks.

“Very.”

“It would make a great hot toddy,” Solana says.

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Jackal cries over Dove’s objection, but they’re smiling—they’re all smiling, laughter and delight over passing teapots and sweeteners. This one is blue but turns pink when you add a little lemon juice (”We have some in the fridge!” Dove says, and Juno is already standing as Dove pushes their chair back), this one is a little too bitter for Luciano’s tastes, this one has a spicy quality Solana will like… Fù Nàxià talks them through each tea, a rare sort of serenity on her face as she talks through the blends she’s concocted, and Juno gleefully explains each flower they came from.

Into a rare moment of silence, the between-conversation taken up by sips of tea and the clinking of stirring spoons, Dove says, so gently, “Thank you, everyone. For everything.”

For a moment, Juno thinks of her visit to the Garden of Virtues to collect the tea from Primrose. Kindness is a virtue, too, isn’t it? She thinks of the day she met Dove, and the day Dove said no, and the day Dove decided where they belonged.

“You don’t have to thank us for anything,” Juno says. “But you do have to pass me the sugar since it’s closest to you!”

And so the laughter and delight starts again, and it lasts well into the evening.