It's not that things weren't tidy before Pilar arrived and started staying on the couch, but if given the slightest excuse the tiny wizened will gladly make any place look like someone is trying their best to make it pristine, like the sort of cleaning some people only ever achieve when they're trying to sell their house or have it appear in an issue of Better Homes and Gardens. It never actually seems like she's doing anything, since she prefers to do it when nobody is watching, but in the couple of weeks since she arrived every nook and cranny seems to have received attention in some manner or another.
At this exactly moment Pilar is standing on a chair by the book shelves, singing quietly to herself in Quechua, so soft that anybody outside of the room isn't likely to hear without supernatural sensitivity to sound. She rises up on her toes and stretches to be able to reach a book on the top shelf, which she takes down and turns around in her hands before she starts carefully cleaning off the dust that always tends to accumulate on shelved books. It's like she's OCD about cleanliness but without the compulsive part, just the obsessive one. In truth, she seems to be enjoying herself.
There Pilar is, having fun being alone and doing labor some people would call menial, and then Iris has to come along and ruin it all by observing what the manikin is doing. Iris pushes through the door and kicks her sandals off, first one and then the other, with them both fliping across the room and landing by the chair she tends to prefer to sit in. She even manages to make them both land right-side up, and next to each other, because she's silly. "Pilar!" she says delightedly when she actually realizes the petite Peruvian is there. "Girl, do you ever rest? No," she holds up her taloned hand. "Don't answer that, I know what you're going to say. Oh! Hey, I didn't get to tell you. Apparently I have living family in Burlington. Who'd have thought?"
Oh no! Someone is watching! Slow down! The only possible logic for the fact that Pilar can only work at her most efficient if nobody watches is "faerie logic". None the less, suddenly it's taking her many times longer to do the same work than it was a few seconds earlier when she was alone, and after a few moments of dusting she returns the book to the shelf, hops down off of the chair, and picks it up to carry it back where it belongs. "Hello Iris," she says to the dragon while she works. "I'm pretty sure you know what I'm going to say because we've had that conversation before." Even through a combination of rather monotone voice and her accent, the faint mix of exasperation and amusement is still audible. "It also seems like it makes sense you might have relatives somewhere, even distant ones. The question is what does it mean for you if you've found out who they are?"
"Oh yeah," answers Iris, while flashing a sharp-toothed grin at her friend. "That explains it, doesn't it?" She heads to the chair she kicked her sandals over to, sprawls into it with her legs over one arm instead of sitting like a normal person, and spends a moment smoothing the feathers on one of her arms. "Well, for one thing it means I get to be Jewish." That's probably not exactly how the process works, but oh well. "But also, I have no idea. I'm not sure if they even want to meet me. Then I'd have to decide what to tell them, since the truth isn't really a great option. I'll figure it out. So what have you been up to? Have you found a good spot for your farm or whatever it is?"
Did someone say 'Jewish'? Look who's here! It's the golem. It's almost like 'protecting Jewish people' is Gisa's whole purpose in life. Though, really, unless 'buying more wine' is how Gisa is protecting the Jewish people, she isn't directly attending to these things at the moment. The door from the alley opens and she comes in carrying a paper bag inside a plastic bag, with three bottles of wine inside. "Shalom, my friends," Gisa offers, absently dusting her hand against her stomach. "Have I interrupted?"
"Isn't anyone generally allowed to be Jewish, if they genuinely wish to be and put in the effort?" Pilar asks while she heads to where Iris is seated and sets herself down on the edge of the same chair, in space made available by the fact that dragons don't know how to properly use furniture. They think piles of gold are beds, after all. "Shalom, Gisa. You haven't interrupted. We're just catching up on recent events. To answer your question," she turns to look at Iris. "I haven't yet, but there are a couple of sites that might be promising if we knock down the empty buildings that are there."
"Gisa!" Iris says with her common enthusiasm for the other people in her life. "No, no interruptions." When Pilar sits on her chair in front of her, Iris shimmies closer until they're touchinig, then reaches out a hand to gently rub Pilar's back, mindful of her claws. "I think, in my case, I get to be ethnically Jewish, and to decide if I want to be religiously so. Evidently. I'm still working it out. Gisa! Do I get to be ethnically Jewish?" Before waiting for the answer she grins at Pilar and says, "if you need help demolishing buildings, I'd be glad to lend a hand."
"Anyone is allowed to convert, if they do so sincerely, yes. Though I do not like the verb 'convert,' because that is something you do with file types or the like. That is a conversation for another time, however. "Ah, are we talking about the farm?" When Iris greets her enthusiastically, Gisa crosses the room and leans to kiss Iris, once on each cheek. Apparently her education on Jewish socializing starts with 'how to say hello.' "Shalom, shalom," she repeats, reaching briefly to touch Pilar's shoulder but not pushing further contact on her at the moment. "You get to be ethnically Jewish. You don't get much choice. That is what you are." Her fiery eyes glitter, and she goes to put the wine away. "Do either of you want a glass?"
Pilar leans back slightly into Iris's touch, even if her literally wooden features don't betray much via expression, and when Gisa touches her shoulder she looks up at the golem from her seat and then touches the hand with hers, brass fingertips on stonier hand for a brief second before she drops the hand back to her side. "Embrace Judaism?" she suggests simply, her contribution to that part of the conversation. "I'd like a glass of wine, please. When we start the farm, is there anything that would be important and meaningful for you to have a part of the project? Something you would like those who take part in it to be able to share with one another?"
Iris curls around Pilar a bit more to return the kissed cheeks from Gisa, since she's sitting crosswises on the chair behind Pilar anyway. "Shalom," she enthuses. "I'll take some wine, certainly! And I guess I have no argument with not having a choice in that particular matter. As long as it's not against the rules to be a dragon, or to be awesome, anyway. I can't really help either of those any more than I can help my ancestry. I might as well embrace them all! I don't have anything in particular, Pilar. I just want to do what I can to make your dreams for the place a reality."
"Embrace is good. I like a Hebrew verb which is something like... naturalize, like a citizen. It is not a verb that we use often when talking with goyim -- non-Jews -- because there is already a perception that Jews are disloyal citizens of whatever country they inhabit. But the verb in the Torah that talks about becoming a Jew is more related to a citizen naturalizing. To joining the Nation of Israel. Which is neither here nor there for Iris, because she was born a native of that Nation." Gisa takes out the wine opener, screws it into the cork, and pops open the bottle. Sweet reds are her favorite, and she gets three glasses, filling each 2/3 of the way full. "Hmm. I do not know what it is possible to grow here. But if we can have a greenhouse, and grow things, that would be lovely. It might be nice to have some niche things for the bookstore. A willow tree, a myrtle tree, a certain species of lemon called an etrog, and ... well, a palm tree. We'd definitely need a greenhouse for the latter two. We only need them once a year, but... it would be nice to be able to supply them locally, rather than shipping them in. That might be too much fuss, though. If it is, no bother." She carries all three glasses over, and hands one to each of the others before heading to her favorite chair to settle in. "What do you want to have?"
Pilar leans back against Iris once greeting kisses and touches and everything else are done, she listens to the thoughts of others about her project, and she takes a glass of wine when it's offered to her. Always, she seems content to listen or even sit in silence except when there's something that needs to be said, or she's asked a question. "It's important to me that it provide a place where people can work together to grow food. I'd like much of that to be what grows naturally in this climate, but I want greenhouse space as well. I also want workshop space that people can share, with tools and equipment that most are less likely to have at home. If I can find a large lot and a building with a flat roof space suitable for using as a location for a greenhouse, that would be great." She takes a drink, seems to think of something, and admits, "as long as the policia don't convince themselves that the hispanic immigrant must be growing marijuana in the greenhouse hidden on her roof."
"Vegetables. Blech," Iris teases when talk of growing things in dirt starts, because the carnivore doesn't find that a very attractive prospect. She has expressed more than once that she supports vegetarian or even veganism as ideas, even if she doesn't partake, though. It's easy to tell she's teasing. "If we have to we can build a building," she does point out, taking the glass of wine from Gisa and drinking after she comments. "You probably don't want it far outside of town where it's inconvenient for people, right? Especially anyone who doesn't have a car." She fixes her lizard gaze on Gisa. "What are those used for? What even IS a myrtle tree? I thought that was some kind of turtle."
"Those four plants are used together in a holiday ritual. Something like ... palms on Palm Sunday, only much older." Gisa knows that Iris was raised by Christians, after all, so it's an easy explanation. "I could explain it, but I do not want to detract from talking about Pilar's project. So tuck it away for when we talk about holidays." A soft chuff. "Mmm. Well, there is that. We can make a great show of what it is we are growing, contact the newspapers, announce our opening. Nothing to hide, and all that."
Pilar takes a large drink out of her glass of wine, turns, and then reaches toward the glass in Iris's hand. "If you're going to 'blech' about plants, you can just give me that plant juice," she says in her largely toneless voice. She doesn't expect Iris to actually give it to her, though, and doesn't really try to take it. "I want the place to be one that is open to anyone who wants to take part. That includes the police, and if one of their officers wants to come and see the place to see what's going on I would be as receptive to showing them around as anyone else who is curious. Communism is for everyone, except the greedy capitalist pigs."
"I thought of something I want," Iris says out of the blue, while moving her wine glass out of Pilar's reach. Her arms are like six inches long, so that's not hard. She sticks her tongue out at the manikin and then continues. "I want a pinball machine." Why? Why not. "For everyone, of course, not just for me. I'll share! I am pretty sure you won't have problems with the police unless you start keeping people out and putting up barbed wire fences and generally trying to be secretive."
"Or actively causing problems for them. That's generally when they start looking at you funny. As I said, we should do a grand opening. Make a fuss about inviting people in. And then after that, if they want to show up, well." Gisa rolls her shoulders easily, and there's one of her small, fleeting smiles at the interplay between manikin and dragon. "Somehow I thought wine might be one of Iris' exceptions to her dislike for plants. Is beer also?" She's teasing, gently so, but teasing. "Of course we should also have a name for it. I don't think most of the locals will understand or find it funny if we call it the 'fully-automatex luxury queer space commune,' as on-the-nose as that might be. And we can't launch it into space anyway."
Pilar's arms are NOT six inches, but they're not very long either. It's not hard for Iris to evade her. "Coffee. I think she only consumes vegetation if she can drink it." She stops reaching for the wine, drinks more of hers, and then gives Iris's leg a gentle pat before she gets up. "I wanted to call the place A Common Treasury," she says. It might sound strange to anyone who doesn't know what it refers to, and probably makes complete sense to everyone who does know. "Thank you for the wine, Gisa. I'm afraid I might have drank too much of it. Suddenly I feel like it's time for bed. And yes, Iris, we can have a pinball machine if you insist."
"Beverages don't count," Iris says with amused laughter, not insulted at all. "I CAN eat vegetables anyway, it's just that too many of them and not enough meat doesn't agree with me and they don't taste that good." She slides her feet down to the floor when Pilar vacates the spot in front of her on the chair. "Beer is fine. Coffee and tea are great. Anyway, have a good night Pilar." She smiles at Gisa. "Should we go out to the shop, so she can have quiet in here?"
"Oh, I thought the pinball machine went without saying. Many of us like those sorts of games. It would prove a draw, if the plants are not." Gisa leans back in her favorite chair, and gives Pilar one of her small, genuine smiles. "Pilar. I apologize for pushing you to sleep on a bed. I am used to people who do not take proper care of themselves, and used to having to make people not drink themselves sick or go without food or something. I should trust you to take care of yourself and to know what you like. So I am sorry. And, of course, you are welcome for the wine. Sleep well, sister." Gisa rises to her feet, then, and nods. "We should, yes, Iris."
Pilar pauses in response to Gisa's apologies, and then after a moment answers with a small nod of her head. "It came from a good place," she says. "Thank you." She goes to take care of her own dishes, in this case the wine glass, without saying more on the subject because sometimes she isn't the most talkative of people. What needed to be said was.
"Good night, Pips," Iris says while rising from her chair. "I'll spend a little time looking around for spots for the Treasury as well, maybe tomorrow." She starts toward the door, but stops on her way to add another comment. "I'm glad you're here." Then she slips out to the store, so that any further conversation doesn't keep Pilar awake.
"Gerrard Winstanley," Gisa comments to Iris, after a moment, as if it took her a second to remember exactly where she knew the phrase 'The Common Treasury' from. "A good reference. I like the name." This is all said as she, rolling herself to her feet, follows Iris out to the main shop. There's another chair out there with a golem butt-dent in it, and lo, there goes the golem butt, into the chair. Thump.
Iris makes her way out to the main area of the shop with Gisa, leaving the back room to the automaton to use for shutting down for the night in peace. "It's the Diggers and all that, in England, right? Who promptly all got murdered because the world wasn't ready for people to be that cool yet?" She only vaguely knows the story, but she may have looked it up when Pilar mentioned the name in the past. When Gisa sits down, Iris (careful of both drinks and the usual dangerous dragon parts) sits down on her lap (so long as there doesn't seem to be any resistance to this plan). "So, turtle trees?"
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