Room 413 [evening]

[notqueenyet]

Aravis was fairly certain that of all the bad habits she could have taken up, smoking was one of the worst.

However. The boy from yesterday had intrigued her, and though she hadn't enjoyed the cigarette, she'd gotten herself a pack today in addition to some loose tobacco and the far-more-familiar hookah, though it looked different from what she'd

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[bloody_luck]

"Do I smell smoke?" Mat asked from the door.

[notqueenyet]

"Yes, but it's the intentional sort," she assured him, blowing out the window. "Hello."

[bloody_luck]

"Hello," he replied. "We grow tabac at home, so I thought it smelled a bit familiar.

[notqueenyet]

"I'm trying out my new hookah," she told him, beckoning him in. "I met a boy who let me try a vile cigarette yesterday and it made me nostalgic."

[bloody_luck]

"Hookah?" Mat repeated as he walked in. "I don't think I've ever seen one. I use a pipe."

[notqueenyet]

"I'd like one of those but I couldn't find one that looked like a lady might use it," she noted. "A hookah's like a very big pipe. You smoke through these long things."

[bloody_luck]

"I can't recall any woman I know smoking," Mat mused. "You do at home?"

[notqueenyet]

"Not since I left my father's house," she admitted. Yes, at the age of fourteen. Behold the healthy habits of young Calormene teenagers. "It's really more of a man's thing in Archenland, too. But these things make it very easy to lie around on pillows and gossip while smoking, plus they often are flavored with lavender or cinnamon. Very feminine."

[bloody_luck]

"Ours taste like tabac," Mat said, laughing, "though Two Rivers leaf is the best in the world."

[notqueenyet]

"Modest claim," she observed, grinning at him.

[bloody_luck]

"Oh, I had no bloody idea," Mat said, "until I was off with Rand on the other side of the bloody Spine of the World and an Aiel clan chief asked if a peddler had a casket of the stuff my da might have harvested."

[notqueenyet]

"The Spine of the World?" she asked, tilting her head.

[bloody_luck]

"Much more poetic than Giant Bloody Mountain Range, isn't it?" Mat replied. "The Aiel call it the Dragonwall, and it's pretty much where civilization bloody stops."

[notqueenyet]

"...it just stops?" she echoed. "There's an end to it?"

[bloody_luck]

"Well, there's a nation where silk comes from, but no one has ever seen anyone from there. Ever," Mat said. "It's strange."

[notqueenyet]

"As though they just don't exist?" she asked, tilting her head. "It sounds like Narnia and Calormene's divide."