"Thank you!" She grabs a cup, takes a drink of water, accepts the fish, and then puts it into the canvas bag she'd saved. "Lovely to meet you, Palla. Have a nice day!"

"You too!" She lifts a hand in an amicable wave.

And off she goes, strolling back to Lily's farmhouse.

Neo waggles her eyebrows in mindspace.

<Yes, I know I passed up an opportunity there,> Sable replies.

The silent girl blows a kiss.

<Thank you for forgiving me for having strategic priorities. Love you too.>

And amicable teasing fills the walk back.

Soon enough, she's knocking on Lily's door again.

Lily opens the door.

"Sable?" she guesses.

"The very same! Don't I look great? Also, how do you feel about fish for supper?" She holds up the bag, opening it to reveal the fish.

"You look fantastic, and I would love fish for supper. Come in, come in." She stands back from the door.

Sable steps in and looks for where to put the fish. "Those eggs of Hazel's are quite something, aren't they? As are their flowers."

"I don't think I've heard about the flowers, but yes, it doesn't surprise me that Hazel has figured out how to do incredible things with a candy egg. Bring the fish in here—"

The kitchen is small and cozy but has enough room on the countertop for the fish. Lily gestures at the bag. "Do you want to wash that to get the fish smell out? I can show you to the water pump and then start preparing the fish."

"Sounds like a plan." She goes where directed to wash out the bag.

There's a water pump right behind the house, with a bit of soap to wash with; Lily assures her the water is also drinkable before heading back inside to get started on that fish.

She washes the bag out carefully with soap and water, rinses it clean, wrings it out, and then finds a convenient hook to hang it on where it looks like it won't drip on anything important. Then she has a big drink of water cupped in her hands from the pump, and then heads back in with a smile. "So, how can I help?"

The fish has been reduced to more manageable pieces by now. "Would you mind chopping some onions for me? They're over there," she nods at a big sack, much bigger than the one Sable just hung up to dry. "One should do if you get a big one, or two if they're smaller. I'm thinking fried fish and onions for dinner, maybe with ginger-glazed carrots on the side."

"Sounds delicious." She grabs whatever's near the top, two if they're small, one if it's big, and then finds a cutting board and a knife and sets to work. Chopping onions is nice and simple.

The first onion to come to hand is fairly enormous. Lily soon finishes tidying up her fish-cutting station and switches to chopping carrots. She comes up with a jar of honey, for glazing the carrots with later, and mentions offhandedly that it's "real honey, not the bee-girl stuff, of course."

"Oh? Hazel mentioned bee-girl honey too. What's different about it?" Chop chop chop goes the onion.

"Bee-girl honey is one of the few things in the world that can cure demonic corruption, but unless you eat it straight out of the bee-girl, it's also a transformative. So I get my honey from regular bees that aren't people."

"Aha. I would rather not become... a bee-girl, I suppose? No thank you. I have plans, and becoming a bee-girl is not one of them."

"If you do get into a fix with a transformative you didn't want, I bet Hazel will know where you can find one that'll turn you back to human," Lily mentions. "They're pretty rare, but Hazel's all over that sort of thing. When you can afford to, though, I recommend just not eating anything if you don't know where it came from or trust the person who's feeding it to you."

"Good idea. Speaking of which, based on everything I've heard so far, it seems like I'll need to go into the city, so I'd love to help out around the farm however much it takes to earn food and water in some portable form for that trip."

"Sure. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of days to have plenty. It's a dangerous trip to make alone, though. The lakeshore is mostly safe most of the time, but the desert..." She shakes her head. "I've never been, mind you, only heard secondhand, but what I hear isn't good. If I were you, I'd wait for the centaur caravan to come through so you can hitch a ride with them. Spend a few nights sleeping rough on the lakeshore if you have to, when my hospitality runs out. You might get harassed by imps and goblins but that's still better than what you'd get alone in the desert."

"You're quite the font of useful wisdom. What sort of things will they want to barter for the ride?"

"They might let you ride along just for your help loading and unloading, or they might want hard gems as payment. Probably not too much, though. They're friendly folk and nobody wants to see an innocent person cross the desert alone."

She smiles warmly. "Thank you for all this." She's since done chopping the onion, so she looks for anything else she can help with for the food prep.

"Here," says Lily, trading a bowl full of carrots for the cutting board full of onions and nudging the honey jar and a little knob of ginger along the countertop toward her. "I'll have your cutting board back to you in a moment and you can cut up the ginger as fine as you can get it and mix it into those with a little honey. Don't use more than half that ginger, but you can use less if you'd rather it be mild." She sweeps the onions into a frying pan set up on the stove and passes the cutting board back along the counter. "There you go."

That can definitely be done. Cut the ginger in half, set the other half aside. Slice slice slice, then come back and chop finer, then finer still, until it's barely bigger than powder. Mix it in with the carrots, then add a bit of honey, looking to Lily to check how much. Mix thoroughly, and then there we go.

Hailey snuggles up to Sable in co-con through the whole process, enjoying food prep together.