Welcome to Gaia! ::

Naeria wasn't usually the one who ended up going into the main part of town for supplies, but sometimes the others were busy, and so the work fell on her. She was getting more used to her human guise, at least the strangely round ears and the tan skin, since she had to use it just in case when she went to the stables to check on Portabella, but she still did not know how to act when she was around large amounts of other humans.

The documentaries had helped some.She was wearing her wolf ears, since she had seen a video on the internet that had called them a kind of street fashion, something that young humans wore to places like the mall.

Now she just had to figure out how to navigate this place. There were so many stores in these twisted hallways that something should have had food for sale, but she didn't see it right away. It was hard to focus, though. The florescent lighting was beating down on her from overhead. The humans that she passed kept staring at her for some reason.

She did not know why, but she did notice that none of them seemed to be wearing wolf ears.

Finally, she saw a sign in the distance that said kitchen. That looked promising. Wincing against the lighting, she hurried into the aisle.

There was no food. There were boxes. There were electronics. There were knives, for some reason. After blinking for a few long seconds, she did manage to put together that this was for kitchen supplies, which meant she was no closer on her quest.

Unless she was just missing something? Aria peered at the only other person in the aisle, trying to see if she would actually find this fondue.

Aria didn't seem to mind that someone was staring at her chest. That was how it always went, with the humans. Even if she could have programmed her glamour to make her shorter, she wouldn't have. She wanted to feel as much like herself as possible.

"Pro-" she tried, and then tried again, "Proprietary?"

Words were hard for her in general, even ones from her own culture and language, but this was one that she had never heard before.

Her nose wrinkled as she said it, all the same, her expression matching the woman's, though not for the same reason. "That word? It sounds like, um. Capitalism."

Scam did, too. She knew that one, although it was hard to wrap her head around the concept of people lying to other people, or manipulating their products, so that people got less value than they expected.

She was in a conversation now, so she might as well ask.

"This is not where you buy the food, is it?" She glanced up at the sign above them. "Do you know why it says kitchen? Is that a scam, too?"

"That is terrible," agreed Aria.

She was not really surprised to learn about even more ways in which humans and their companies were making life more and more complicated for other humans in an attempt to collect as much currency as possible. What was interesting here was the fact that she had run into another human, even within this mall, this place of commerce, who seemed to agree that it was unnecessary.

Her owlish yellow eyes were bright as she watched the woman.

It was true that she had come out here for food, but suddenly she was much more curious about the surrounding appliances. Aria was always ready to learn from experts. If she was an expert on shopping for appliances, and willing to share her knowledge, then this was a perfect research opportunity.

Were there loopholes in capitalism that she could find?

"I need to buy food sometime today, but some of these might also be useful for our house," she said, glancing back towards the boxes. "Which ones do you think have more value?"

The woman's enthusiasm had already gotten Aria's attention, but the notepad that she drew out and flipped open got her interest. Aria stepped forwards so that she could see what she was writing. Her English was getting better, so she didn't have to worry about the problems that her translator ran into when interpreting text nearly as often.

What she saw on the paper made her heart beat faster.

Not only did this woman question capitalism, she carried supplies with her to make cost-benefit analyses on the go, in order to make the best decisions possible in her everyday life. This was, without question, the most logical human that Aria had ever seen.

"We have space," she said, tapping on that column. "So far we have the stove. The refrigerator. The, um-" she hesitated, although for once it was because she was searching for a word instead of out of pure shyness. "The coffee one, and the one for burning bread."

She hadn't looked too deep in the cabinets to see if there were more.

Of the ones they had, none seemed particularly cool, and that seemed to be one of the major benefit columns on this chart. Aria looked at the boxes. The fondue machine was flashy, but they had already decided against that.

"Which of these is the most cool?"

Aria considered the GlowChef Express with a mixture of awe and horror that only grew as she stepped up to look at the box in more detail. With the pictures of delicately carved radishes, and pieces of toast with faces on them that she found on the side of the box, she could see why this might appeal to some humans. However, the lines about the price and the estimated energy cost had her shaking her head before any words were even able to come out of her mouth.

Aria was slowly starting to learn more about the human concepts of creativity, and art. These were important concepts to Fae-Fae, and to her research, and for that reason alone, she was trying to respect them

This, though? Putting this many resources into the aesthetics of a project that would only exist for a few hours at most before being consumed? The other woman's eyes might have been sparkling, but Aria disagreed with her analysis.

There was nothing cool about this. It was simply wasteful.

"No," she said, although the words came slower because she knew it might not be what the human wanted to hear. "Food does not need to be pretty."

Instead, she walked down the row of boxes towards a blender. "Maybe this one," she said. "It would make things easier to eat."

In theory, Aria could understand what the human was saying about beauty being a source of joy. She could see that beauty-joy in the curve of a mushroom cap, or in a neatly organized list of scientific notes. Toast, though? Again, it sounded like the kind of thing that Fae-Fae would be interested in hearing more about, but for Naeria, those concepts just did not make any sense, no matter how this person seemed to believe in them.

Her opinions on blenders were much easier to accept.

A blender that was more efficient and more long-lasting was clearly the better choice, and if it made foods from scratch like smoothies and hummus, things that were a staple at the Vanguard house, then it would be a good investment of the Vanguard's resources.

"This sounds useful," she said, and then added, even remembering to smile, "Thank you."

There were more appliances she could consider, but this was not what she had come out for, and she should likely get approval before bringing home too many. So, with a nod, she said, "I am, um-" she trailed off, the words failing again as she realized she was back to the starting point, "Going to find the food, now."

Groceries. She remembered that word now. That would be helpful, when she was looking at signs.