"I did." He produced the pocket watch in his palm as he uncurled his fingers, as if he'd had it on him the entire time. He didn't, of course, but he had a way of organising and reorganising the world to a system he couldn't really describe but made perfect sense to him, and the beauty of that was being able to find anything he kept away and retrieve them whenever he wanted to.
"It's a nice watch," he said, clicking the lid open and eyeing the long, thin black line tick the seconds away.
"And I would have sent you something in return, but you seem to have trouble staying put." Funnily enough he knew quite a few people who had the same tendency to come and go. It seemed rude to send out something despite knowing where people were in his country, especially if said persons wanted to be left to their own devices.
"I have a question for you," he started, noting one of the waitresses looking at their table, making her preparations to come over.
"How would a vegan know that 'imitation chicken', for example, tastes anything like chicken, if he or she has never had chicken before?"
Capitalism wasn't at all interested about vegan lifestyles and the disparities between genuine chicken meat and something made out of tofu and laboratory chemicals, but the chicken parable was quite relevant to the world they lived in.