World Tree MUSH

    El Camino Al Atardecer is, as usual, a conglomeration of people and places along a reddish gold path. It seems that Julia has been placed with a gecko person who grows grapevines on the outside of a stucco house. Outside are planters, with various fruits and vegetable plants growing in them. The gecko woman is watering the plants and talking to the young girl about the plants and how they grow. Julia seems to be enjoying the gardening, perhaps reminded a bit of her rural life.

    From his normal-guise shopping trip, Jun has switched to his transformed form, to be assured of being able to get into the place. So he's able to fly right now. Hopefully someone told him where Julia would be, otherwise he'd have to search from above. Either way, he will eventually find where she is! As he floats down to the gardening area, he greets both the girl and the gecko gardener, "Hello there." He doesn't feel like he needs to hide his abilities from Julia now, since her being here proves that she knows magic is a thing. He offers a bow as he lands. There's a transparent plastic bag on his arm, containing a handful of smaller paper bags.

    Julia has some veggies that Kelsey (who she introduces as the gecko lady) has had her pick while weeding in a basket. Julia smiles at Jun and waves. "Hello Jun."
    Kelsey gestures. "Your guest is welcome to some of the harvest, Julia." Then she goes back to yanking weeds out of the planter boxes.
    Julia fishes around in the basket and pulls out a very bright red tomato and offers it to Jun.

    "Oh, thank you, Miss Kelsey," Jun replies, with a bow. "I promised Julia I'd bring her some candy -- I know it's not as healthy, but I went to a few of the artisan places that use actual sugar." Suddenly TOMATO! Jun chuckles quietly; it'd have legitimately been a giggle if his voice was higher. "Thank you," he notes, accepting the fruit. Because it's a fruit! "I'll slice that up when I get home, and put it on some bread." Tomato-mayo sandwich!

    He'll start digging through the bag then. "Well, candy is made a lot different now..." he explains. "Overall it's a lot sweeter, because they use something called 'high fructose corn syrup'. It looks like... clear molasses, I think. But it's way, way sweeter. You'd probably think it tasted like just pouring a bowl of raw table sugar into your mouth. So I looked for candy that was made with just regular sugar."

    Julia looks at Jun funny. "Make a caprese sandwich. Foccacia bread, slice of mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, basil leaves. Nona likes... liked making them for lunch and they were really nice on a hot day."
    To the candy, she scoots over and watches Jun rummage through the bag as he explains. She makes a face. "They make an even sweeter kind of corn syrp? Yuck."

    The suggestion of how to treat the tomato gets a blink. "Oh, now, that does sound good," Jun admits. "I'll have to try that -- I've never eaten anything like that before." he eats a bit differently now. Particularly of late.

    He nods to her seeming not pleased at the idea of sweeter corn syrup. "It's pretty highly processed, and I try to stay away from it when I can. It's a guilty pleasure every now and then, though." The first thing he pulls from the bag? Taffy! It's in individual, paper-wrapped thin 'straws'. "I tried this, I don't think it's too sweet," he notes, offering some of the paper-wrapped 'straws' over.

    Julia takes the taffy stick with a curious look on her face. "Not like taffy I've seen." She unwraps it and takes a bite, chewing it. "Hey, that's pretty good."

    Jun smiles. "I thought you might like it -- I'm glad I was right." He explains, "They have a food truck that's a wooden wagon actually being pulled by a horse. Inside the wagon there's a small kitchen, and they sell it out the side. It's a bit expensive compared to other candy, but I think it's worth it."

    Rummage rummage rummage. And he comes out with... Smarties! A handful of rolls of those powdery hard candies wrapped up in cellophane! "The company that makes these, they have a line called 'Originals', where they use the original recipe, with dextrose instead. So these might be more familiar."

    Julia ers. "I shouldn't eat too many sweets at once, might get an upset tummy. But I can save them for later, right?" She remembers her grandmother simply letting her eat as much Halloween candy as she wanted one year, and the feeling was not... fun as Julia recalls.
    Julia glances at Kelsey. "Miss Kelsey, did you want any candy?" She holds up a roll of Smarties that Jun has. 
    Kelsey wanders over, brushing the dirt off her gloves and sticking them in her back pocket. "What a kind young man. Oh, Smarties. I always like how they'd dissolve in my mouth when I was a kid." She carefully takes the roll. "'Original'? I wonder if they taste different than the ones I'd get in junior high..."

    Jun nods. "Yeah, it's fine if you save them for later," he agrees. "I just wanted you to have something that you might find familiar, because there's going to be a lot of unfamiliar stuff for you in the time ahead. I can't bring back any of the stuff from... well, from what was to me 'way back then' -- and I don't think mochi or daifuku would have really been something you'd know very well. But I can try to find these things for you."

    Kelsey's words get a nod. "Oh, probably," Jun ventures. "They might not be as sweet, since they're made with a different sweetener. Dextrose isn't as sweet as the artificial sweeteners that use now. "Those I didn't try beforehand, because I figured that Smarties were the same apart from what was used to sweeten them."

    Julia furrows her brow and shakes her head. "Nuh uh. But they sound like they'd be nifty, Mister Jun. Nona always said don't knock something before you try it. You're... Japanese?" The child probably only knows what Japanese are through the post-war propaganda machine, but she seems oddly not prone to carrying on the portrayal of them as an enemy. She quickly adds. "Nona said they used to say bad things about Italians when she was little and that I shouldn't believe everything on the radio."
    Kelsey thanks Jun for the candy, pocketing it, and goes back to her plants, humming as she does so.

    Jun nods at the question about his nationality. "Jun Hisakawa is my name," he replies. Since he never actually fully introduced himself in all that chaos, just 'Jun'. "Though 'Jun' is a weird name, maybe, because you can call a boy or a girl that." Which, given his situation, is probably fortunate, but... well. It's probably still weird.

    He pauses a bit, trying to think of how to say the next. "And, well... the reason I wanted to make sure you were gonna be okay is because I kind of lost my parents too. Kind of. They're still around, but... well, do you remember Aurelia saying that some people were so different their parents wouldn't believe it's them?"

    Julia nods. "Like Kelsey. Somebody named Doctor Worm did something bad to her and she can't visit her family now." She's chewing another piece of the taffy, listening to Jun.

    "It was... not quite like that with me," Jun replies. "There were people doing bad things, and they killed a dragon because they were after his power. I happened to stumble across the dragon when it was injured, and he gave his power to me to keep them from getting it. But he was a boy dragon. I was a girl then. So it's not so serious as what happened to Miss Kelsey. But if I were to go to my parents and say 'hi Mom, Dad, I'm back', that... would not work."

    Julia nods quietly, looking around at the vast array of kinds of people who call the Sunset Road home. "It's nice that so many people here want to help each other. A lot of them had bad stuff happen but they help each other anyway. Kelsey helps out her friend Lizzie with fresh produce so Lizzie has the good stuff to cook in her restaraunt." She looks solemn for a moment, thinking about the past she was torn from. "I think I'm going to be okay here. Aurelia said she'll visit, and you visited, and I think you'll be okay too." Julia opens her arms with a warm smile, offering Jun a hug.

    Jun nods. "I'm glad, too," he notes. And oh hey, hug! Which Jun does indeed accept, returning with a hug of his own and a quiet, "Yay!" And he chuckles as he leans back. Though then... he sighs. "It's just unfortunate that 'people doing bad things to other people' is such a widespread cause of misfortune. Not just where magic is concerned, either. I guess we all have to make the best of things. And maybe that's where people can either go wrong, or go right."