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Even the air is unfamiliar. Qiyana feels nothing but uncomfortable. In her dreams of grandeur, this isn’t anything like she imagined going outside would be. She thought she’d be walking into uncivilized bits of land, people who are stumbling all over themselves and just waiting for her amazing guidance.
But as Ezreal shows and tells her about the valoran continent, she discovers she was… wrong. Where she expected to find animals grabbing at each other’s legs and feet, there’s societies with so many different cultures she finds it hard to hide her actual amazement.
Qiyana feels incredibly humbled but also incredibly uncomfortable. Like, now that she’s here and her dreams have been crushed, she just kind of wants to go home. Everything is too much and too big and too loud and suddenly she feels like the little girl, locked in her room because she’d upset one of her sisters.
It doesn’t help when Ezreal is the last person she’d think to confide in. Ignoring the fact that Qiyana, regardless of the person in front of her, wouldn’t exactly think to confide in them anyways. If there’s one thing that’s consistent, even now that she feels like she’s always on the verge of a panic attack, she’s extremely arrogant and would never drop her mask of confidence.
Qiyana Yunalai is an untouchable woman. Even when her immune system flares up at the unfamiliar food and drinks, at even just the new bacteria in the air, admitting to Ezreal that she’s sniffling because her body had gotten used to such an isolated environment would be social suicide. To the extent that she would rather hide any signs of illness, keep it under lock and key.
Qiyana doesn’t speak piltovan. She doesn’t speak any language besides ixtali, there’s bits and pieces she may recognize from the shuriman language, that’d carried over from it’s ancient version to it’s modern, but it’s been so long since their language has drawn any inspiration from shurima, they’re not exactly comparable anymore. It’s changed so much, she can’t hold a conversation with a shuriman, even if she may be able to listen and understand the gist of whatever they may mean, even when missing vital information.
So, as much as she hates to admit it, Ezreal is her only hope of communication. Somehow, the boy speaks decent ixtali and they’re yet to meet anyone who speaks a language he doesn’t. A lot of the time, she wants to smack him up the head for his pronounciation and she has, even when being stubborn about potentially helping him learn. She’s given him advice, hints and tips but she’s refused to actively teach him.
There’s something about it that hurts her pride. Same with learning any other language, she refuses to learn their forms of communication and expects everyone to accommodate her.
The sun blinds her. At least the light of the day should feel the same, but even that feels overstimulating and new. It’s not like they only got here yesterday, it’s been a few moons and yet, as autumn comes, she keeps finding new sensations that she isn’t sure she likes.
Her hand wanders above her eyes, shielding them from the sun. It seems like the boy next to her never shuts up, so at this point, she’s completely shut out his voice. Whatever he’s saying, she isn’t listening, ignores any notion of him trying to get her attention, as well. Only once she actually wants to say something as well, she lets his voice fade back in, but she ignores whatever he’d said.
Completely interrupting him, she rolls a strand of her hair inbetween her fingers. She stands out like a deer in headlights. Like a colourful phoenix inbetween flocks of pigeon. Like a sore thumb. “You keep rambling on and on and I’ll leave you”, she says like it’s a threat to him at all. Ezreal huffs a laugh. “Like you’re going anywhere without me. C’mon, Qiyana.”
He’s right, but she doesn’t admit that. There’s nowhere she can go without him. Noone she can talk to without him. She’d miserably hunger and dehydrate without his money and guidance and it’s such a pathetic display of her that she hates every reminder with a burning passion.
His face is so annoying.
He’d said something else that she doesn’t register, but he’s pointing at something that vaguely looks like a clothing store. She gets the gist of whatever he means and her expression cringes. “I’ve told you no a million times. I’m not wearing pil-tovan clothing.”
Ezreal looks back at her, then shrugs. “Suit yourself. Let’s tell everyone the ixtali princess is waltzing around piltovan streets. Put a sign on your chest while we’re at it, abduct and sell me!”
She frowns, crosses her arms over her chest like she suddenly feels uncomfortable in even her own skin. “Screw that. Like they’d ever be able to lay a hand on me.”
With a self-righteous grin, Ezreal only agrees to gloat. “Right, because you got me to protect you. Noone’s taking my prize.”
“In your dreams, maybe.”
Qiyana is an untouchable woman. She learns, Ezreal is untouchable, too. In all of his adventures and all of his messy words, she learns there’s no room for anyone else in his adventures and dreams. Whatever’s possible in his eyes, it doesn’t include anyone but himself and maybe his imaginary parents. When she pictures his future, she sees him all alone, on a throne, where she’s invisioned herself unlimited times before, too.
At the end of their adventures, each of them envisions themselves at the top, with no room in their hearts for anyone. There’s just no space and no time. Qiyana never saw herself with anyone and even less so has Ezreal.
“You’re insufferable”, Qiyana says, stomps on the ground almost like a child throwing a tantrum. Her spoon drops into the soup in front of her. “Oh, now I’m the problem? When you’re the one who can’t compromise on anything?” Ezreal gestures frantically with his hands, waving her off. It’s glaringly obvious that he doesn’t want to listen. His own spoon lands on the table with a loud clank, bits of his soup splattering on the table.
She should’ve understood that he’s just as bad as her by now. But she doesn’t, because she’s just as stubborn as him. Maybe it’s because she’s been humbled so much by this experience, because she’s completely at his mercy if she refuses to branch out from her tiny, tiny world.
“I can’t compromise?? I haven’t eaten in days because I, mind you, kept throwing up!”
“I think you’re just being dramatic. It can not be that bad”, he dismisses her completely and it makes her flare up. She’s so close to reaching over the table and grabbing him by the throat. Make sure no sound ever comes from that annoying mouth again. Stuff his mouth with whatever she manages to claw out of his throat.
She pushes down her violent thoughts, then shoves her bowl towards him, places her head in her hands. “I’m not eating that.” She wants to go home. She just wants to be home in her comfortable bed, with the food she’s used to and the people she’s used to. She wants to breathe ixtal air and she wants to eat ixtal food and never hear a word of piltovan ever again.
She is sure she has already lost a lot of weight on this trip. Food has never been this difficult for her. Normally she’d get the grandest meals and as much food as she could ever want to stomach but whatever Ezreal is usually carrying, she’s very sure is absolutely inedible.
So, even when she tries, upon his terrible nudging, she never manages to keep it down for longer than 10 minutes. Her stomach twists and turns and makes sure even when she tries to be less of a spoiled princess, she’ll look whiny and selfish.
Ezreal huffs. “You’re never satisfied, you know that?”
In any other scenario, she might put her hands on her hips, proudly declare that, yeah, that’s kind of her thing. The empress of Ixtal is never satisfieed until she has all of runeterra under her thumb. That’s what she’d like to say, but instead, she slumps in her chair, says nothing in return.
For a moment, she catches a glance of pity on his face — or empathy, it’s the same thing to her — and she wants to take the bowl of soup and throw it at his dumb, stupid, ugly face. Instead, he says something uncharacteristic. “Ugh— fine. C’mere. Let’s go. We’re eating out.”
It’s not what she expected him to say. She expected him to eat his bowl, like there’s nothing wrong with it, and then take a nap or something. Let her starve to death, or until she loses her ego and admits the real problem.
“If you say something stupid I’ll change my mind”, he adds, before she gets a change to open her mouth, takes the bowl from in front of her, then pours it into the sink. With a shake of his head, he stacks them, puts them aside. She gets up, a bit startled, a bit paralyzed and confused, but she nods.
“I— okay.”
Turns out, there is a much easier solution to feeding Qiyana that Ezreal could have taken this entire time. It’s not like he doesn’t have the money, he’s just so minimalistic, he lives off of small food portions and dried adventurer’s rations. Never saw the value in good food. Like the food’s taste just doesn’t matter at all. And in a way, he does still think she’s being overdramatic.
Even when they’re waltzing the streets of piltover, looking for a decent shuriman restaurant. Ezreal isn’t the right person to ask about the food options of piltover, but there are a decent amount of options. Maybe even just some food stand would suffice.
He considers his options, Qiyana looks around, hoping he’ll let her have a say in what to pick.
He spots a few shuriman street vendors, but Qiyana doesn’t seem too thrilled by each. So for a little bit, it feels like they’re back at point zero. Eventually, they find something she doesn’t look horribly appalled by. It’s another street vendor, but it smells pretty good as they’re walking past. Qiyana stares, quietly.
Obviously she doesn’t recognize the dish, but she manages to read some of the letters on the sign, they’re shuriman. At least it’s something even slightly familiar, she thinks. She nudges Ezreal. “What does the sign say?” Asking him is humiliating but so is starving to death, so she ignores the shame rising to her cheeks.
He mocks her by answering something in piltovan that she doesn’t understand, but when she looks at him like she’s about to cry from humiliation and shame, he sighs. “It’s a few shuriman dishes. Poulet Mayo, Tchapati, I don’t know, I haven’t really tried any of these before.” Ezreal shrugs. As much as he gets around and resorts to eating strange fruits whenever he is out and starving, he doesn’t actually tend to eat any of the proper local cuisine. She guesses he’s never been to a shuriman city to do any normal tourism.
She stares at him intently, then back at the vendor, who’s giving them a warm smile, lifting up a bowl, as if beckoning them to come close already. It’s very obvious they’re considering. Qiyana swallows her shame and pride, grabs at Ezreals wrist to drag him over, then shoves him. “I want the—” She pauses, realizes it’s kind of useless to be adding flavor text when the man clearly won’t understand ixtali. She looks between Ezreal and the vendor, then clears her throat. “Poulet Mayo?”, in the general direction of the man, who gives a laugh, says something vaguely familiar in shuriman while he turns around, probably working away.
Ezreal sarcastically claps his hands, leaning on the counter of the food van, as if he’s praising her for placing her own order. This would all be so much less humiliating if he didn’t just make it worse. Clearly the vendor wasn’t too concerned about her weird quirks of language, but Ezreal had told her that Shuriman has about 50 different variations to date, so he might have just assumed it’s one he doesn’t know. She finds a bit of comfort in that.
They do some bickering until the dish is finished, she tells him to stop making fun of her but at best, it makes him throw his hands up defensively.
He pays for the food and they start walking before Qiyana even opens up the bag he gave them with it.
She suggests getting back to his apartment before eating, she doesn’t feel like doing it while walking and sitting out here is just too much for her. There’s plenty of people walking around the streets in ixtali cities too, but it feels so different being in Piltover.
They get back, much quicker than when they left , and she places the bag on the table, sits on a chair, all proper, like she’s not about to eat street food. She might as well pretend, she supposes. Looking at Ezreal, as if she’s expecting approval, she realizes how stupid that is, so back to the food. Right.
It’s still warm, so she gets back up, to get a fork, sit back down, starts to eat. Carefully, almost as if she’s afraid it might be poisoned or whatever, which is a stupid worry, she guesses.
It tastes— better. Much better than whatever Ezreal was trying to feed her, at least, but it’s a low bar. She doesn’t finish, but it at least stays down and she saves the rest for later. Ezreal has gotten distracted with something on the map on the wall, and she looks over it, as if she’d recognize any of the places.
“Ezreal?”, she speaks up, drags him out of his thoughts and he looks over. “Mh?”
Her mouth opens, but her pride wins before she can say the thank you she planned to say and she shoves him, so he messes up the line he was trying to draw. “Couldn’t we have done that the entire time?”
“Hey! C’mon, I was drawing— And no, it’s much funnier seeing you fumble. Ya gotta rely on this piltie.”
She cringes, shakes her head. “No, next time I’m going alone.”
“Oooh, I want to see that.”