Log:Does Not Pass The Bechdel Test

Does Not Pass The Bechdel Test
Tricky Leopard Seals...
Participants Regina, Etsy, Lumi	30 August, 2017 Three women have dinner and talk about a man.
Location
A hotel is booked on Reggie's card, groceries are bought, supplies are picked up, and finally people are converging on the suite. Some of them have been there for a while, which is why the place smells like cooking meat. Since she didn't want to make Etsy wait any longer than necessary she started out with a dish that she's just now putting in front of the mermaid, a platter with a few pieces of expertly cut and plated sashimi. In a pan on the stove there are steaks searing. There doesn't seem to be a vegetable in sight. "Are there any kinds of meat you don't like?" Regina asks of her companion. True love IS giving a Fairest your AmEx and asking no more questions. Reggie is caught up in the whirlwind that is Etsy, but at least he's enjohing it, right? "No! I like all of a meats!" Etsy sent a message to Lumi, letting her know where they were staying, and she's sitting neatly, eating the sashimi like other people eat popcorn. "I like a goats, I like a sheeps, I like a mooses, I had a mooses once, it was not that great but I do likes it." She's sitting happily on one of the chairs at the small kitchen island, swinging her slippered feet. There probably aren't that many nice hotels in a small city, so it turns out Lumi was already staying at the same one. When she gets a text inviting her to come visit she shows up just a couple of minutes later, with a soft knock on the door. There's an iceberg in the hall! The sashimi might be gone faster than Regina can slice it, but that's okay with her. She's already moved back to the stove to check the searing of the steaks there. Satisfied, she grabs the pan, opens the oven, and puts them in there to finish cooking, and then turns to lean against the counter right as the knock comes. "I'll get it!" she says, hurrying toward the door to let the supposed stranger in. When she gets there she flings it open and then asks, "who are you? Oh, Etsy's friend! Do you eat steak?" "It are a Lumi!" Etsy offers cheerfully from her seat at the kitchen's island. "Come and eat a fishes with me. I am saving for you some of best fishes." And if that's not a statement of friendship from Etsy, what IS a statement of friendship from her? NOTHING. When Regina tries to pretend she doesn't know Lumi, Etsy covers her mouth with her hand, and giggles that musical giggle, popping another bite of tuna into her piranha-toothed mouth. Lumi is short, so she looks way up at Regina when the door opens and there's a giant in the doorway. Her expression doesn't shift or change, either in reaction to that oversized presence or to the dreadful attempt at deception, she just stares impassively and then replies, "As she said, I'm Lumi." Then she comes in, since she's invited. "I do eat steak, and fishes too. What kind of fishes are we having, Ms...?" Possibly she's a little better at pretending they're strangers, and she's not the one who actually got Regina her new identity. "Lumi! What is that, Swedish?" Regina is really selling this lie, isn't she? "It's Regina. I mean Hazard. Regina Hazard." She closes the door after Lumi and starts back to the kitchen at a rapid pace. It's not that she's hurrying, her legs are just very long. "I'm a Spring Courtier, and a Knight of the Knowledge of the Tongue. Which is why you're going to be glad you came over here to eat, I assure you." When they get to the kitchen again she says, "Etsy, I found an ice sculpture! Can we keep it?" The mermaid just covers her face with her hands and laughs helplessly into them when Regina keeps trying so hard to sell the lie. The harder she tries, the more the mermaid giggles. "It is a Finnishness," the mermaid giggles, hiccuping and picking up a bit of eel to bite. "Yes, can keeps an icebergs. Hello, Lumi. Glad it was easy to finding us. Is staying heres?" "Finnish, like she says." Lumi keeps up her side of the lie, but unlike with Regina she actually does sell it. The problem is, Regina is about has opaqe as a clear summer sky. "I'm a Knight of the Utmost Silence, which of necessity makes me Winter." Even that is largely obvious to anyone who knows her Entitlement, since either the faint mist or the play of shadows or something always seems to conceal her mouth from view. She takes a seat by Etsy, looks at the plate of sashimi, and then asks, "which is for me? Yes, by the way. My room is in the same hotel. There weren't many choices." "That's a real place? I always thought that Finland was a myth! Hah!" Regina peeks in the oven to check the steaks, then just reaches inside to touch one of them to test doneness. By feel is the best way! Usually not done in the oven with bare fingers, though. "There's more fish if you don't see something on the plate you like, Lumi. Tuna, yellowtail, salmon, eel, octopus. A couple of minutes on steaks." She closes it again and looks at Lumi. "If you want something greener, and not just a lot of meat, I'm happy to oblige." "Reggie had a givings of his credit cards to meeeee," sing-songs the mermaid in her happiest little trill. Oh yes, there will be pretty clothes, and lots of things for the kitchen, and then when they have a house Etsy will buy things to furnish it... "Oh, have at least a one of everythings, Regina does a perfect cutting of fishes so they are like butters in a mouth." In any mouth? Or just in mouths of people who like meat as much as Etsy does? "That seems very..." Lumi pauses to decide on the right word. "Spring." She takes up chopsticks and reaches for a piece of fish, and this is probably not her first time eating sashimi since she handles the chopsticks like she's familiar with them. A piece of yellowtail is claimed, then put into her mouth to be chewed and savored. Once she's done with it she says, "I don't mean that in a disparaging way, of course. This is very good, Regina. I wouldn't have been sure you'd even find fish of this quality here." "Hah! Very Spring indeed!" Regina laughs, but since she's got the most subdued Spring Mantle of the two of them in the room, and hers is enough to make anywhere she walks into smell like freshly sprouting herbs, it isn't something she's likely to take as an insult. "I'm glad that you like it, Lumi. The fish actually isn't very fresh, it's just the secret sauce that does the trick." There is no sauce on the fish. It's very obvious she's lying. "So Etsy, are you and Reggie an item? He's kind of handsome, in a long and cuddly kind of way. I think he likes you, too. Oh! Steaks smell done." She leans over, opens the oven, and takes out the hot pan without oven mits or anything. She quickly sets it down on the stovetop, gives her flipper of a hand a quick shake, and then starts plating and serving. Whereas Etsy's Spring Mantle just kind of takes over everything around her, sprawling green vines and tiny white flowers every which way. Where it gets too close to Lumi, there's a rime of frost on the flower's edges. "It's super fresh fish, look, almost does a wigglings on the plate," Etsy answers, sort of insulted by the idea. "Oh, am not really sures about a Reggies, honestlies, have had bad lucks with a mans, and a womans, and a neithers, honestlies," she confesses. "Is a handsomes," she admits. "But just breaked up with a Maddox about a months ago, maybe three weeks, and do not want to rebounce." They probably mean rebound. "But... is not.. not an items? The mrbl doesn't likes hims." Relationship status is not a topic that Lumi plans to touch with a ten foot pole, because she's a Winter who knows the meaning of discretion. Also, the value of listening learning. She quietly picks up another piece of fish and deposits it in her mouth, then she chews slowly. When it's finished she does venture an opinion. "It seems to me that you probably don't have a need to make any kind of decision immediately. You could wait, and while waiting admire his handsomes." She reaches for another piece of fish while the steak is put in front of her. "Hah! She has a point," Regina laughs when Lumi offers some advice. "I just want to be sure you aren't goiong to be upset if I'm admiring his handsomes too, as long as they're available." She sits down with her own plate, after putting one in front of each of the other women, and cuts a single piece off of her stea to take a bite. "I think I scared him a little bit," she says after chewing and savoring for longer than might have been expected from a woman who sometimes seems like a walking garbage disposal. "Wellllll.... " Etsy offers thoughtfully, and the extension of that single syllable, and exactly how long Etsy draws it out, as if she's thinking about it, is probably all that needs to be said about whether or not the mermaid really minds if someone else is admiring the otter's handsomes. Look, just because the mermaid hasn't decided if she wants something yet doesn't mean she wants anyone else picking the thing up or touching it or looking at it too closely. "Ummmm." And her cheeks flush a furious blue, and she puts more fish in her face. "Am not... for... knowings... for sures... " Compared to the other two, or really compareed to most people, Lumi is a dainty eater. She cuts small pieces, puts them in her mouth, puts her silverware down while she chews, and everything. It just gives her more time to listen, and less time having to say anything. Her cold, dark eyes turn from one Spring to the other in the meanwhile. Finally, between bites, she says, "have either of you noticed how strangely similar the names of the aquatic mammals we know are to one another?" Then she adds a moment later, "mermaids excluded, since I'm not sure exactly what they count as. My apologies, Etsy." "Okay, okay! Eyes off. Hah!" Regina holds a giant hand up in mock surrender. "Or at least I'll try not to stare too much. I might not be able to help myself entirely." Then she laughs, more than just her usual brief barks, and tells Lumi, "I had noticed that! Isn't it interesting? I wonder what it means."