2022-01-02 - Chicken Noodle Soup For the Soul (And Body)

It's snowing outside-- because that's exactly what January mornings need-- but inside, at least, there's solid proof that the furnace works: 5 Oak Avenue is pleasantly warm, and the kitchen? It smells amazing (as long as you happen to like the smell of chicken soup, mind).

Una's humming as she stirs the soup in the book dutch oven discovered in the depths of one of the cabinets. The kitchen is her happy place, and though she's been out a fair amount these past few days, today is definitely a day for staying at home: she's still in her pyjamas, hair messily knotted atop her head.

Somehow, the creature shuffling downstairs manages to hit every creaky step, some of them twice. Della's a far cry from the put-together woman who first walked in the front door, but at least she's not the soggy sponge of the last couple of days - way to start 2022. She comes accessorized with the telltale outline of a tissue box in one of her robe's capacious pockets, and her hair's messy too. "...Morning?"

"Still morning, at least for another hour or so," says Una, without turning around: she's busy peering into the soup pot, taking in a sniff and then adding something more from one of the jars of spice lined up on the countertop. That done, she turns, giving Della a cheerfully sympathetic smile. "How're you feeling?"

Della has to think about that one, and settles for a good-humoredly suspicious, "How long have you been up?" Still thinking. "Alive." She nods. She inhales through her nose and it doesn't even make much noise, but the scent's enough to bring her further into the kitchen, though she gives probably-doesn't-want-to-be-infected Una plenty of space. Eventually, "Ambulatory." Then, "The next one should begin with An-, but I give."

"Anaesthetised?" Una suggests, after a moment's pause, one finger tapping to her lips. "I've been up a while. Weird dreams, and then-- I don't know. The kitchen was calling my name, maybe. Soup's nearly done if you want some. It felt like a good day for soup." And not at all 'my new roommate is sick and chicken soup is good for that.'

Della rewards that with a brilliant smile, or at least what would have been one if she weren't all clogged up and groggy and generally bogged down; "I had weird dreams too, but chalked it up to dextromethorphan. Speaking of anaesthetisation." She retrieves a tissue and snuffles into it, folding it over before transferring it to the 'dirty' pocket. "Soup. Soup would be amazing. Think I can even taste it today, maybe. Sorry I've been - " she waves a hand as if to say 'everything,' or perhaps intending to somehow convince the nearest chair to pull itself out for her.

Una cants her head to the left, giving Della a somewhat lingering glance, her brows furrowed. "What kind of weird dreams?" she wonders, more serious than the question surely requires. Though she's clearly interested in the answer, she doesn't wait for it; turning, she opens up one of the cupboards to pull out a bowl, setting it upon the countertop. "No need to apologise for that! We all get sick."

"It's annoying, though. I hate being sick," says Della. The chair still isn't moving, so she reaches out for it. That still doesn't work. She gingerly tries a step or two closer and, now that she can actually touch it, achieves limited success. She leans on it. "Running. Chased. Books flying out at me, or maybe making me read them. I didn't wake up with any paper cuts," that she's seen, "so there's that. Hunting a way out. And lemon-basil ice cream, in January."

There's a clatter from Una, still facing the soup, as Della expounds on her dream. Her face isn't visible, but if it were? Her expression would look awfully uncomfortable, all brows furrowed and eyes wide. She exhales, reaching to pick up the ladle again, and actually start spooning soup into the bowl. "Huh," she says, quietly. "That's weird. Dreams, I guess. The ice cream sounds amazing, though." Now she turns around, far more composed. "You want toast with the soup?"

"Reminds me of a book I read once. Not the ice cream part, and I guess in the dream it wouldn't have to be January; it could be any time really, which is sort of the point of dreams... toast, toast would be good. For me." Della's still eyeing the chair, and now shuffles around it, cautiously moving to actually sit. "So tired of ginger tea. Do you like tea? I should know. I know these things," ordinarily.

Sympathetically, "It's a bit hard to get to know people, properly, when you're unwell." Una sets down the soup on the countertop so that she can add some bread to the ancient-but-still-functional toaster. Then she brings the soup over, setting it in front of Della with a flourish. No spoon (yet).

"I do like tea. I'm more of a coffee person, but they serve different purposes, right? Coffee for waking up, and tea for... comfort, I guess."

Della's head tips forward, and she gazes into the soup as though it were tea, the sort with fortunes. Carefully, always carefully, she lifts her hands and rounds them around the bowl. "Maybe I should have coffee," she supposes with more reluctance than her typical down-it-all mornings. Then, quickly, "Not that you should make it! Thank you, did I say that? For the soup. Balsamic strawberry is good too, I know they have it everywhere but I still like it when the berries are really ripe. Can we grow strawberries? Except I don't know that it would make enough." She lifts the bowl, slightly, then sets it down. "Maybe you already have strawberries."

Una's bright smile answers the thanks: she's inordinately pleased to have been able to do something helpful for someone else. Stepping back, she wanders towards the toaster-- not finished, yet-- and also the silverware drawer, which amazingly not only has spoons, but also specific soup spoons. One of these gets brought over to Della.

"Strawberries. That's an idea. I don't really know what's in the garden-- we'll have to check. I'd love to make ice cream this summer. I wonder if there's a churn anywhere." The kitchen is big enough, and full enough of random shit. "There was coffee, earlier, but I drank it. I can make more, though. So this dream... do you think it wanted you to read something really specific? Or random?"

Of course Della thanks her for the spoon, too, whether or not the silverware's actually silver. "A churn." Della holds onto the spoon before actually using it, yet; perhaps it's in contemplation of churns, and summer. "I don't know? It wasn't..." finally the bowl of the spoon dips into the bowl of soup, slowly, incrementally. She moves it while it's still not fully submerged, slowly still, and watches what the broth reveals and hides again. Then all at once, as though reawakened, "It mattered what but maybe it also mattered to do." She nods. "To read one of them. Or more of them? Like it wasn't random like rolling dice but it also wasn't this one and only one until death do us part." She swallows.

Una is thoughtfully silent for a few seconds, and perhaps might have been for a few more, but: bing! That's the toaster, and that means that there's toast to collect (without touching it; she's good like that, and also there's a wooden tool just for that purpose), plus butter, all of which needs to be delivered to the table. "That's interesting," is what she says, then, backing away again so that she can lean up against the counter, fingers wrapping about its curved edge on either side of her body. "Dreams are, in general. Been... having weird ones since I came to town."

And Della misses the tool. Maybe next time. She does sip the soup, though, shallowly from the side, and isn't so sick as to not make appreciative noises. Then it all changes: eating quicker, verging on ravenous, though congestion means pauses to breathe. And between spoonfuls, "Think it's the mattress?" she asks. "Or cats, are you allergic, did your grandmother have some? Or the dust. Or - microclimates are a bitch sometimes."

The enthusiastic way Della eats the soup is clearly a pleasure point for Una, whose smile verges on the positively smug. "Mm," she says, a little non-committal. "Might be. I don't think there was a cat. But-- I also don't know much about her at all, so there's that. It's been a bit unsettling."

So is the fact that, behind Della, there's a clock on the wall where the big hand is spinning in circles. It's caught Una's gaze, and she's abruptly staring at it, wide-eyed and wary.

"Do you like cats?" Della asks with quick concern. "And your grandmother - " has to wait for one of the larger chunks of chicken, which means her eyes actually travel to Una's face, and then they widen too. She starts to turn, a little warily, as though she expects a bug on the wall.

"Clock's broken," says Una, hastily, eyes half closing as if in hoping that, by doing so, she'll stop the clock from... doing whatever it is doing. She doesn't-- but maybe that's enough to explain it away. Tearing her eyes away from it, she adds: "No, no, I quite like cats. I've never had one-- never had a pet-- but they seem nice? I've never lived anywhere where pets were possible, before, but maybe..."

"Oh," says Della with some relief, but looks anyway, enough of a swivel that it's probably more exercise than she's had since she got sick - and then she's happy to explain it away: "Oh, probably a battery thing." Even if the clock's too old to have batteries. "Ours always did that during the time change, or when something shorted," and the year did after all change, besides. She stretches her shoulders, sniffs, and blows her nose. "I miss - Cats are wonderful, I think. Your parents, um, were they estranged? From your grandmother?"

Una's, "Yeah," is firm: absolutely. Batteries, or something similar. "I'll take it down and have a look at it, later." Della's questions draw a pause, and in lieu of immediate answer, she turns about again: this time she's aiming to put coffee on, setting out two mugs after she does so. "We could get one," she offers, when she turns back again. "As long as Jules doesn't mind. My mom, she left town at seventeen, pregnant with me, and never looked back. I never even knew I had a grandmother until she was dead, but evidently she knew about me."

"Oh," says Della, charmed. "That would be lovely. ...If Jules doesn't mind," she adds more perfunctorily. There's soup to eat, stories to hear. In time, "That's amazing, that she did know, that she thought of you. I'm sorry you didn't get to know her, though - she didn't leave any diaries, did she? Tear-stained? Fountain ink? Or maybe dipped with a feather quill, this house seems like it should have those."

Una smiles. "We can ask her and see," she promises. It's far too soon for the coffee to be done, but she turns to glance at it, anyway, watching the first droplets of black coffee begin to drip into the pot. "Mm, no," she says. "Not that I've found, anyway. And my mom won't talk to me about her, so that's a dead end. But--" She glances up, shrugs. "There's plenty of other stuff in this house to do with my family. Jules found a book written by one of my ancestors, even. I mean, it sounds like he was an asshole, but, still. My grandmother might've been too."

A book! ...but an asshole. Illness has added puffiness to Della's features, but the stock-market-worthy rise and fall of her expression still slips through. "Maybe... do you have any sense that she knew it was coming? Or was it a quick thing? Were there church people coming around with casseroles? You'll have already looked in the library... I keep meaning to spend some time there, but keep getting distracted," but she can soothe herself with more soup. "This is so good. And diaries don't seem meant for downstairs anyway."

Una drums her fingers idly upon the countertop, and shakes her head. "It seems like she kept herself to herself. The Irving name's not unknown, but it's not particularly known, either, you know? So I don't know." She's pleased-- visibly, visibly pleased-- by Della's praise, but evidently not inclined to comment. "Something about the library creeps me out," she admits. "But you're right. If there are diaries, they're probably not in there."

Della purses her lips, then reaches for the toast; the butter doesn't melt as well as it might have done, but she breaks the result into triangles. "No rush, then," she supposes about the library. "Maybe it wasn't used much... I wonder about aromatherapy." The quickness of her speech ebbs and flows, and she's getting to look (more) tired, but she continues to make glad headway with the breakfast. "Perhaps you'll find her mother's, describing her as a wild teen in her time."

A furrow of Una's brow for mention of aromatherapy, but she makes no comment on it-- just glances back at the coffee machine. Nope, still not done. "And then her mother's, all the way back to... well, since before the town was here, I guess. Full of wild chidlren who don't listen to their mothers. Family's a weird thing, when you're not used to having any. More soup?"

"Precisely," Della agrees with an expansive smile. "Soup... some more would be nice, please. Maybe half? Two-thirds? In case I can't have it all. Did your mother stay wild, or did she settle down?" Evidently she's at least back to herself enough to look after the coffee, too, though it catches her focus a little too long before she blinks it away.

Una picks up the pot from the stove top, bringing it over to the table so that she can add another ladleful (or two) to Della's bowl. "Coffee'll just be a minute," she promises, having caught that glance. By her expression, she gets a certain amount of satisfaction from feeding people: she's pleased, maybe even verging on proud. "Mm. Well - she had me, and once you have a baby at eighteen, it's hard to be wild and be a good mom, I think. But she never came back here."

"But she was a good mom," Della murmurs, satisfied between that and the soup (two, please). She slouches, enough that she can rest her head on the high shoulder and still eat, even if it's more slowly now. "You don't seem terribly wild, yourself."

Una's nod confirms it: a good mom. There may be some caveats to that (but who doesn't have caveats to the way they were parented?), but there's no hesitation anyway. She sets the rest of the soup back on the stove, which is turned off, now, and heads for the coffee, pouring two mugs. "My wildness was in..." the way she pauses, there's a story here, but she goes with: "...not going to college, the way mom wanted. The way I was supposed to."

Della's spoon pauses, then resumes; still, she's slowing. With care, "I hadn't spotted any toddlers roaming around."

Una's snort of laughter is immediate, at least. "No, I escaped that much. Mom might've understood that." She doesn't offer additional explanation, though: just brings Della one of the cups of coffee. "Milk, sugar?"

Della's expression wobbles, but in the end she lets herself look relieved, or maybe can't help it; humor still brims in her eyes as she says, "Both." Only, "...No, I suppose I shouldn't," and this is a woman who could be a mother (or could she?) looking woeful. "Either. With the cold." She sniffles, this time for effect. "Mmm. College."

"That would have upset my mother, too."

"Do it anyway," advises Una, turning to the fridge to collect the milk, and then the sugar on her way back past, and bring them to the other woman. "I promise not to feed you any more dairy, otherwise. College-- would have been a good thing, I know. But it didn't work out. Sometimes... things happen. And here I am."

Della gives them a frankly longing look... but, "When I'm better." She nods once, and pushes her drained bowl away in favor of more liquids, even if they are caffeinated. Especially if they're caffeinated. "Sometimes... it's not the right time." At least for dairy. She rolls her head on her shoulder, then switches shoulders, then decides, "I'd better nap after this." A little smile, "Not on your kitchen table. Thanks, Una."

Una drinks her own coffee unadulterated, it seems, but she's got an easy shrug for Della's firmness against the lure of the sweet and creamy. "It's my pleasure, Della. Rest up-- we need to get you properly back on your feet. I'll put the soup in the fridge, if you get hungry later, ok?"

Drink for every time Della says, "Thanks." This one's murmured, and blurry.

"Go," orders-but-not-orders Una. She's smiling though. For now? She's got milk and sugar to put away. And her own coffee to drink.