Piping Hot Quarrel (Safiya vs Eva/Karla)

"What do you mean, the things we ordered got robbed?!?"

The taller figure at the pickup station in town slammed her fist on the counter, her tail swaying back and forth angerly, and gritting her teeth to boot. This was supposed to be a very simple task, just come down, get the things that were being shipped out of country, and come home with them. Easy. Things were never easy. The other figure next to her, much younger, blonde, with a thick tail of her own and absolutely massive horns on her head, was looking a little distressed at it all, and jumped when Safiya's hand slammed on the counter. "U-Um...m-maybe he means it was just...delayed?"

"No, I'm afraid it wasn't." The man at the counter was unperturbed by her outburst, his tone as placid as could be. "We got word that bandits raided the convoy on the way into town. My men were lucky to get out of that alive, and we were left with...nothing."

"Bandits?!?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "But the only things on there was food and provisions! If they wanted emergency food so much, they can grow it themselves!"

"U-Uh..." The younger girl spoke up. "If...I-If we can't get our order...c-can we at least get a...r-r-refund...?"

"I'm afraid there is no refunds, miss."

"WHAT?!?" It took all Safiya had not to climb over the counter after hearing that. Dhriti noticed it too, and was very quick to grab Safiya's tail in preparation. She was too consumed by anger to notice it right now. "Your men lost our supply, and we can't even get compensation for it?!? You know that stuff was for hard working individuals and orphans, right?!?"

"That is not my concern, miss. Now, if you are done, I have other orders to ge-"

"W-Wait!" Once again, she spoke up. "B-B-But...the listing says that accidents will be c...compensated..."

"That..." He looked over at the sheet. "Is correct. But that, is for humans and midara. Not cultists."

Ah, so that's what this was about. Now it all made sense. "Dhriti, I'm about to make a scene." One of Safiya's hands lit up in fire.

Dhriti, for her part, was holding her back by the tail. "Safiya, no! You just got out of probation! Just let it go, w-we'll be fine...!" People were starting to notice the outburst a bit...

The two sisters had been passing by when they heard the loud quarrel between the midara and the man, which drew their attention. They were able to pick up a little of the final parts of their argument, that of compensations and whatnot. Eva, the sword toting one, seemed rather.. angry, and much to the protests of her perturbed companion, approached the group of them.

"Hey, can't help but overhear your problems and I'm rather curious about it. Say, mister, would you mind having me read that contract? Just the part about compensations."

She had a strange sense of confrontational confidence about her, like she was about to lay into the man. Was she defending the midara? Karla was close to follow behind, looking like a nervous wreck, trying to pull Eva back but to no avail, as her weak arms barely even made the swordswoman budge an inch.

"E-Eva, who gives a shit, let's just go home..."

The man looked at the new person inquisitively. An idea very quickly formed in his head, as it does for people in his profession. "Are you adventurers? Contracts are strictly between me and my clients, but that isn't important right now! Perfect timing, my completely legitimate business is being hounded by these cultists! They're unable to accept my laid out rules and regulations, and have resorted to threatening me!"

"WHAT?!?" Safiya looked close to snapping, and was only being held back by Dhriti's hands on her tail. It was started to make a scene, as people were giving them looks. Hushed murmurs were going about them, and a few of the looks were ones of disdain at the two of them. Perhaps the local opinion of this "cult" wasn't exactly in their favor...

The younger one was starting to notice it too, her gaze going back and forth between them. "S-Safiya...maybe we should j-just go..."

The man made a very convincing cowardly flinch back at Safiya's burning gaze, shielding himself using the counter. "Y-You see?!? Nothing but beasts, the lot of them!" He continued, even as Safiya's gaze grew more and more angry. Even she was starting to see this was a lost cause, but she couldn't just leave it like this.

Eva bangs on the table with her fist, interrupting the man in the middle of his attempt at playing the victim. She doesn't care if people are staring, this is just wrong.

"General beats specific if you don't point it out. So unless the contract this lady signed explicitly singles out cultists, I suggest you give them their money back. You don't want to be victim of an unfortunate event from bandits from out of town, do you? Besides, what did these cultists do to be discriminated against? Yeah, they're weird at times, but the vast majority of them are harmless, even if they appear threatening."

Eva moved between Safiya and the man now, and reached over to grab him by the collar. "I don't like cowards who hide behind others while they do vile things. If you want to deny someone your service, do it before they pay, okay?"

The crowd around them started to whisper and gossip at the display, people abuzz with talk. Someone was standing up for cultists? Were they members as well? Sympathizers? Or perhaps they just didn't know who they were...either way, public opinion clearly wasn't on their side. Even with things that seemed blatantly wrong, no one was really thinking about that.

"Unhand me!" The man, for all their actions, seemed rather unperturbed by the threats, as he pulled Eva's hand off of his collar. "The way you speak shows you don't have any idea what they are..." The man points a finger at Safiya. "That one was a criminal! Had a bounty of a hundred thousand gold on her head at one point! And instead of putting her to pay for her crimes, the cult took her in instead! And she's far from the only one!"

"That was years ago, and you know it!" Safiya had a snarl on her face as that information reached the crowd. They were getting anxious and restless already, and things were looking pretty bad.

"STOP!" Dhriti's voice cut through the crowd. She was scared, from the look on her face, but she couldn't just let things continue to escalate. "W-We'll go, if that's what you want. Please, no violence...we don't want that, honest..." She tugged on Safiya's tail, urging her to follow along. The last thing they needed was an assault on the covenant's name. And even Safiya knew that riling up a crowd would look really bad on all of them.

The man nodded with a smug grin, knowing the crowd was on his side. "See that you do." He shot Eva a look as he retreated into his stall, his composure not breaking once. The crowd started to disperse, with a few looking behind them as they walked at the two of them. Clearly, the resentment was there. Before Eva could say more, Dhriti reached over to grab her arm, stopping. "Please don't...it's okay, really. If you do, you'll be outcasted even more than we are."

"B-But... What about your food?..." She sounds half confused and half sad. This blatant discrimination wasn't sitting well with her at all. The smugness of the man only succeeding in making her angrier. But it was probably best to simply forget about it, at least for now.

Once out of public ears, Eva would have asked to talk with the two women, with Karla following behind and just staring. "Hey, if it's okay, can I ask some questions about your situation? I'll be real, what happened.. didn't sit well with me, and I'd hate to leave it like that."

"You're not from around here, are you..." Dhriti tried to force a weak smile, even if she was a little despondent about the whole thing. "People aren't really fond of the covenant around here, for...a few reasons. We're working to fix that! B-But..." She let out a long sigh. "It's not going so well..."

"There goes a supply line...Jhal isn't going to be happy to hear that. That's the third one in two months that tried to swindle us." Safiya clicked her tongue, still heated from all of this, before she turned to the woman. "Sat well with most of them, at least. That was for our emergency stores, for the record. We still have time to find new transit for another shipment, before it becomes a problem. Still gets under my skin, though...I was this close to just grabbing his face, and...!" Her hand lit up in flame at the phrasing, making it very clear what she intended.

"No!" Dhriti was the first to cut her off. "If we had gone offensive against that man, not only would we have to pay for it, but it would only make us look worse!"

"I know that! I know..." Slowly, the flame in her hand died out. That same hand balled up into a fist with frustration. With that, she turned her attention to the two others. "So what's your deal? Considering you jumped in on our behalf, that's worth at least that much. More than most outside of the Grimleal, at least. What do you wanna know?"

"Well, I just want to know why you're being discriminated against like that. You don't look like bad people, and being scammed out of food is a scummy move, no matter the context."

Eva, finally coming up to the group, says, "Maybe we can get the food on your behalf?... It's whatever, but they don't know us to say no, and all that... Heh, maybe we can learn a few tricks from you in return." Karla smiled at her sister's offer, and nods along to it.

"Cult business." Safiya's curt answer to their question would hopefully answer their concern as to why such things were happening the way that they were. "People are afraid of us. Plain and sim-"

"Safiya!" Dhriti chimed in, pulling at her arm. "We're not supposed to use the c word! Covenant! COV-EN-ANT!"

"Right, right...covenant. People call it that so much I tend to get mixed up." Dhriti practically pouted at the answer, but the dismissive response was all she was going to get out of the older woman. "And we are a little low on funds, at the moment...if you're treating, I don't see a reason to say no. I'm not particularly beaten up by the whole thing; we're used to this. Dhriti, though..." It was clear it affected the smaller woman much more than Safiya, who wasn't used to people being this way in comparison. "I was going to find some way to cheer her up anyway. If I brought her home like this, people would think I did it to her."

"That's not-"

"You know I'm right."

Eva sighed. "It's.. a tough world I guess. Anyways, what supplies do you need? I'll see if I can get you the stuff myself. Probably from a different street though..." The swordswoman pulled out a small paper and an inkpen to list them down.

Meanwhile, Karla approached Dhriti, "Why do you two even.. stay here? Don't they treat you like shit? Just find somewhere else for your cu- covenant..."

Despite the offer, Safiya waved Eva off. "A nice offer, but what you could offer probably wouldn't cover it. Most of it was food supplies for the orphanage branch, which, coincidentally, Dhriti is usually in charge of." She looked behind her as she was distracted by Karla's timely conversation. "A lot of it was provisional, and we have reserves. Worse comes to worst, we can just look for a new supply line. If you really wanna help, though...Dhriti gets down on herself really hard. Help me cheer her up before we get home and it'll help more than you think. I'll owe you."

And down she was, at least a little bit. It was obvious in Dhriti's body language. "No! Well...some people do. But the covenant treats everyone that's a part of it well! And so does the goddess! The Grimleal is at least 400 strong right now and growing! We can't really just move, even if we wanted to...and why should we?!? Just because we're different, or because we worship something different than someone else...or because we look different..." Her hands went to her large, oversized horns that curved in front of her. "The goddess welcomes people that don't have anywhere to go...a-and for people like me, s...she gave us something to do with our lives! B-But people are afraid of us because of it..." She sniffled, as little tears started to form at the corners of her eyes. "It's not fair..."

Karla sighs internally, cursing the thought of trying to talk to people for the nth time. But, she does try to console the distressed woman. She wraps an arm over her shoulder, "Hey come on, there's no need to be so upset, that's just how life is. So long as these people you're in charge of appreciate you, everyone else can go to hell."

Eva grimaces at her sister's talk, "Yeah, I'll take your offer to cheer her up. What does she like? A certain food or drink? A book to read? A group activity of some sort?"

Although her attempts at cheering up the girl were in earnest, it wasn't quite the right angle to go, as Dhriti whimpered a little. Safiya covered a small chuckle at her words with the back of her hand. "Quite the character, isn't she? Normally Dhriti loves kids, but we can't really go back to the cathedral empty handed...that'd just make us look like we failed. We'll fix this to at least some capacity before we head home. That said..." She thought for a moment, before an answer came to her. It's not like they could form a new plan with her being as distressed as she was.

"...Dhriti, don't you have a spot you go to outside of town for times like this?"

The girl whipped around to face Safiya with a look of shock on her face. "W-What?!? You know about that?!?"

"Well...yeah. Was it supposed to be a secret? Everyone knows about it."

The girl let out a sigh. "Well...I thought it was...okay, fine. I guess I could use some unwinding...b-but you can't tell any-"

"Everyone already knows." She let out an even bigger groan, a little peeved by it all. "And besides, everyone's left you to it. We'll go there for a few hours, unwind, come back, get some food and plan out what we're doing next. Deal?"

Dhriti looked between her and the two others with her, before relenting. "Okay..."

Safiya looked at the two of them next. "Looks like you two are in for the long haul, today. Welcome to the day to day life of the Grimleal, at least for the day." She slapped the two of them on the back as she walked forward, with Dhriti already leading the way out of town.

Eva and Karla followed the fiery woman, unsure of what that place is, but they had given their word, at least one did.

The taller woman motioned them onward, as Dhriti led them joyfully out of town. The sandy dunes outside the locale meant you could see for miles on end, through the warm sand. Luckily, their destination was visible almost immediately: right behind a rolling dune was a collection of large palm trees surrounding one of the few spots of greenery.

Upon stepping in, Dhriti let out a large sigh, taking in the surprising crisp air, a far cry from the arid heat surrounding it. The grass was growing, wildlife was living peacefully, and more than a few animals were keeping themselves hydrated on the watering hole in the middle. Without a word, she wasted no time as she leapt for one of the palm trees, climbing with surprising speed to sit at the top of the large branches, giving her a good view of the entire desert. Animals of all kinds approached her in her calm, zen-like state.

"And there she goes. Welcome to Dhriti's secret spot." The animals avoided Safiya as she walked forward, picking some of the fruit growing from the trees in the oasis, and lobbing a mango to each of them. "She doesn't let just anybody know about this spot, you know."