--- Lily ---
Kat continued to run her fingers through Lily's hair silently until Marigold had been gone for around a minute. "So... is that really what you want? Not that I don't think magical candies that let you change size are boring or anything... but it didn't really seem like something you'd want," said Kat.
Lily let out a long puff of air as she wiggled on Kat's lap a bit to get comfortable. As she was doing this she chewed over the question for a few moments to get her thoughts in order. "Well, firstly there wasn't any books. Plenty of other things like vases, paintings, a few sculptures... all alongside the obvious rings, necklaces and weapons. No books though.
So there wasn't anything I felt I HAD to have.
"From there, my mind went to like... storage rings or backpacks... but Thyme gave me an explanation of how those work while I was in the medical bay and everything I now know about them seems to point to the idea that they wouldn't work at all on earth and wouldn't survive travel to other dimensions. The rings especially, but maybe the bag too?
"Now I can't be certain they wouldn't work... but I only had a few moments to think this all through so I decided 'Probably doesn't work' was a good enough reason to discard them. From there I went over everything else I found and tested... but I didn't really want any of them either. The boat would be super suspicious if I even wanted it.
The staff has already given me some bad memories and the rest... no so useful. Well, the necklace that's meant to save you from damage seems cool...
"But you know, based on the fact it didn't save me from Blue's spells or March's punch soured me a lot on it. It probably needs full charge to save you... and recharges super slowly. Which is really not what I was hoping but seems to be about right.
I might have gone with that if it'd saved me at the end there... but if it HAD saved me I'd have a chance to pick it myself, not by taking a treasure from Marigold.
"Which... when I got to that point in my thought process made me a bit annoyed. I know you said it'd be rude not to accept but I didn't want to just take her prize. Which of course, led me to the idea of splitting those candies. I'm still worried they won't keep if we take them back home, but at least this way Marigold gets something.
Heck, she gets most of them, so if something goes wrong we haven't waisted too many. We might even get a renewable supply!"
Kat gave a slight nod as she bent down and gave Lily's nose a quick kiss. Once Kat had confirmed Lily was blushing she spoke. "Right, that explains why you picked something that you can split, and the fact you knew about those candies and not others that may or may not exist meant you'd pick them over others that might be on offer... but do you actually WANT them?"
"I think there are plenty of treasures that would be better if I knew about them, and they'd keep... but I'm not that interested in them. The candies do seem useful, and I can split them with Marigold so... could I find something better for me specifically? Yeah probably. Could I find something better to ask Marigold for? I honestly doubt it," explained Lily.
Kat let out a long sigh. "Sorry, I should trust you know what you're doing. I guess I'm still stuck in worrier mode. I'm sure you knew what you were doing when making the choice. Though, it seems a lot of that thinking was done after the fact... you are right about how little time you had to decide so it's probably fine those justifications came in retrospect,"
Lily gave a nod to Kat and then the pair went back to relaxing. Lily shifted so that she could sort of hug Kat while still remaining on Kat's lap. It involved having her face pulled in against Kat's stomach but that wasn't something Lily would classify as a downside. The pair simply enjoyed the atmosphere for a while.
Eventually though, Lily did have a question, "So what's the plan? Now that we're done with this round of the tournament in just about every way. Are we going to stick around here? Try to head back to that town? What's the plan?"
"Well that's mostly up to you isn't it?" said Kat without a hint of shame.
"Bah, I don't want to plan everything! You should have some input," grumbled Lily.
"Well... I don't know really. I'm happy to stay here spending time with you... but I also don't want to spend too much time away from Sylvie if we're not really doing anything but relaxing. At the same time... having some free time to properly train would be really nice. Even if we don't train all that much... just being in a world with magic makes training so much easier.
"We don't have to hide from anyone. You won't be massively suppressed by the world. If we're at the in specifically, Thyme or Mint will be providing us food... honestly part of me wants to stretch whatever time we get out as long as we can before D.E.M.O.N.S starts complaining because aside from that one issue of not seeing Sylvie this is just about the perfect place to spend some time,"
"That is... honestly a rather good point," said Lily. "I was mostly planning to treat this as just a vacation but if we're training as well we can justify spending some more time here. Maybe it'd be best if we just... didn't plan? I mean, we plan to stay for a bit obviously... but perhaps we just go with the flow? Don't get any ideas of 'staying five days' or 'staying three nights' or whatever.
We can just... hang around until either Thyme or D.E.M.O.N.S kicks us out... or we decide to leave instead?"
Kat bit her lip as she thought the suggestion over for a bit. "Honestly? I can't think of anything better then that Lily so I suppose we're going with your idea,"
"Wow, what a flattering way to put it," retorted Lily sarcastically.