"So tea by engineering and cooking by chemistry are going well," she says to Tina. "Do you want to see if you can get anywhere with a musical instrument by leaning on resonant frequencies at some point?"

"Ooh, sounds like fun."

"We will definitely have to do that at some point, then."

Sargon smiles slightly.

"Maybe we should get Anwar. He can eat food and maybe, if we're very lucky, express an opinion on the tea."

"Good plan. I'll go find him." He gets up.

"Good luck. Here's hoping he wants to be found."

He turns out to be very findable.

"Success!" he announces, sitting back down as Anwar steps into the room.

Then Anwar can have food and tea.

His opinion on the tea is, "Hm," with a small smile.

This qualifies as an opinion! A positive one, even!

It's great!

(It's sort of not surprising, this really is damn good tea.)

It's really touching how concerned these two are with their captain.

(She had them pegged as probably all three veterans of the Independence War; until now the only one she'd been sure of was Erika--not hard, considering how she sported that brown coat. But this--the concern, Erika's description of him as the most honorable person in the 'verse--she's pretty sure he was their commanding officer, at some point, or at least the senior man in the unit whose orders everyone trusts and follows regardless of whether he has any technical authority to issue them. Understated reactions, disproportionate enthusiasm on Erika and Sargons' parts at such a small show of happiness--he was worn down bad by the war. The name, the manners--probably someone fairly highly socially placed on Evaras, when there was an Evaras. And a good enough man to earn such fierce loyalty.)

"Your tea is amazing and everyone loves it," says Tina.

"Thank you."

"The food's pretty great too but I helped with that part so I sound more egotistical if I say so."

"And heaven forfend that you sound egotistical," says Anwar.

She giggles.

"It sounds a bit like she's earned the right to be egotistical with respect to engines."

"I absolutely have."

"Bea's apparently teaching Tina to cook and make tea and so on. And might do something with musical instruments later."

"It's exciting. I'm excited."

Sargon smiles again.