A Culinary Experiment (Lysianne)

Regarding the shelves with a trained eye, Toris browsed along the aisles of food, condiments and other various items, looking for things to stock up his cupboards with. He wasn't very sure if the English supermarket would have some of the things that went into traditional Lithuanian fare, but he was confident in his abilities to adapt in the realm of cooking. In fact it was one of the few things he was confident about. He hummed an upbeat tune as he headed towards the breads section, target locked on a loaf of dark rye bread.

He was so focused on the package that he didn't see the blond-haired woman that turned the corner of one of the aisles. A collision ensued.

One good thing about Lysianne's scholarship was that it paid for her food and housing. Which meant she could save her money for more important things like shoes. Now, now, Lysianne wasn’t a materialist. She simply enjoyed variety and that included shoes and clothes in general. Like most girls her age. But now even if the scholarship paid for her groceries she still had to go to the market and choose what she would eat and since she was what you could say a lousy cook. Not that Lysianne didn’t try; she had grown up with a father even worse at cooking than her.

Thinking of her father made Lysianne feel a bit homesick. She remembered when her father and brothers would go to the supermarket and she and her brothers would go running around in the alleys to find everything on their grocery list. Her lips turned into a sad smile. Maybe she could try to find some food from home. There would probably not have anything Quebecer but something Canadian would do trick. Oh, she could try to find maple syrup. They must have maple syrup somewhere in here. Even with the six month she lived here, she still didn’t know where most items were.

Lysianne decided to head toward the bread section, or at least what looked like the bread section to her. She rolled her not so full cart and suddenly collided with something or someone.

“Phoo!” Toris exclaimed as the breath was knocked out of him. Looking up from his position on the mopped floor of the supermarket, he saw a young blond woman with a cart, now kind of askew. Blushing heavily with shock, he picked himself up and completely disregarded his fallen basket, the contents now sitting helter-skelter on the same floor he landed on a moment ago. He moved to the woman and began to apologize profusely, as per usual.

“A-ah, Miss, I-I’m so, so truly sorry about that! I wasn’t paying attention to anything! Really, please forgive me! He scrunched his eyes up and bowed his head to her, relieved that the store was nearly empty, and that he could avoid a scene. But to have the extreme misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time-! Toris repeated his apologies. At this point, he noticed that his food selections were all over the floor, so he quickly smoothed off his tenth ‘sorry’ and crouched down and began to pick them up, berating himself on his clumsiness.