<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/53/Onnecamug3.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 3rd, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Dinner Time<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Agatha's House<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Elisabeth, Agatha, Christian<br/><hr/><br/>Onneca was at her happiest when she was returning Agatha's hug with a chaste peck to the cheek, and modestly modeling her new dress, and letting her mind swarm with ideas for dressing Elisabeth up. It was the warmest welcome she could've hoped for. "Buenas noches, Christian." It was slightly different, the word she used,<em>buenas- </em>but only to a trained ear. She never offered any correction, because she'd been raised to be polite. She pinched the creamy cloth of her dress with both hands and gave a little lift with a bow of her knees, because she'd been raised to curtsy. "I am happy to meet you."<br/><br/>She was not sure what to think of him, and he was not sure what to make of her. The masculine thing to do would be to man up, to puff out one's chest and stand by the caliber of one's virtues. Onneca, though, was achingly feminine. She would not make it easy on Christian, and to the Mexican tailor, he was equally inscrutable. Most men were.<br/><br/>Doing as bid came naturally to her, and though there was certainly a shaker of ground pepper bounding around the kitchen, Onneca preferred to do things with love, slowly, so they could be appreciated. Whatever difference in taste existed between shaker pepper and freshly ground pepper was for the masters to decide. There was a difference, though, in her investment in the final product, and how sweet it would be as a result of her work. She was a hard worker. A good wife, by the traditional measure of things, and that fact never went unnoticed by the matchmakers of Gomorra. It was a blessing to have just one of them, the implacable Lady Boyle, in her corner.<br/><br/>Firm little black peppercorns jingled into one of Aggy's mortars, a firm nonporous bowl for grinding ingredients down to paste, invaluable for cooks and chemists and apothecaries alike. This one, if she remembered right, had been handed down during a gift exchange. It wasn't a giving of gifts, exactly, but a swapping around of unneeded things that was tradition since the days of the pilgrim settlers.<em>Do you already have one? </em>someone had asked, and they might find it ridiculous that between the three women there were easily a dozen different mortar and pestles. The ones that ground down verdigris in Aggy's shop could not be used to produce pepper. The ones Elisabeth used to powder the leaves for her delicate teas would not be the same once they'd been touched by the strong spices of Onneca's kitchen. A woman understood these things.<br/><br/>The pepper crackled down between mortar and pestle, releasing a faint, hot scent of the stuff in its freshly ground state. It was a different scent from regular pepper, a crisp and fresh scent, with a hint of scorched coriander or popcorn on the verge of popping. "Si, we can get some silk," she said. The bodega was increasingly a<em>we </em>as she hired on the help of fellow seamstresses and weavers, a helper to run the counter, an apprentice tailor. Onneca kept her gentle hand in it, though, much like she had her hand in the cooking, prepping the spice, doting over the skillet. "Only it does not breathe. You will be hot in it."<br/><br/>The skillet was several times hotter than the California sun as Onneca worked over it. Too hot to continue to wear the multicolored rebozo all swaddled from her cleavage to her throat, and so she let it unravel down her arms, and allowed her tanned sternum to release some heat. "The silk can be loose for air to move through, or the dress can be very low in the back. It is a little daring." She kept her back to the kitchen, her slender hips physically against the front of the stove, perhaps having second thoughts about the plunging neckline she'd chosen. "But, there is a very soft linen maybe you will like instead. This is maybe what I showed you before, si? It is golden ivory, very sheer."<br/><br/>She gave her arm a rub as the fact of the matter hit her. "It will be difficult to make the golden ivory," she admitted, "if there is trouble in the Maze. The fibers must stay and soak in the water." But this was not the time for politics, and so that was all she said on the matter.