milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Rae had been thinking about making pie. Apparently, though it is still early June in Independencia, it is Liberty Day in the bar. And time differences are no reason not to celebrate! So she had gone down to the kitchen, thinking about having a few pies ready to sell around lunchtime.

The problem is, a foul stench billows forth when she opens the fridge door to get the butter, and the bulk of the room inside the fridge is being taken up by a hulking great mass inside a plastic tarp that Rae is sure wasn't there a few days ago. Oh gods, the smell is overwhelming.

Against her better instincts, Rae gingerly maneuvers the edge of the tarp so she can see what's within...

It's a moment later, when she recognizes that the cloudy bulb set into the side of the mass nearest her is an eye, that she lets out a shriek and flails back into the kitchen counter island, dropping the metal mixing bowl to the floor with a loud clang.

(ooc: Disappearing for picnic-making, picnic-having, and eventual fireworks-watching! Will be back late tonight to pick up any and all tags! <333)

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"Fair enough," Autor says, and takes a long pull from his water bottle. He carefully withdraws it from his lips at her question, so he doesn't choke.

"Oh, um, that," Autor says, and raises the leather book in a salute to hide the barest hint of a flush. "That is the final couplet of Shakespeare's sonnet twenty-seven. One translation of the piece is that a person who works all day because of someone they admire cannot sleep because their 'jewel' invades their thoughts at night."

He is not about to mention the line about zealous pilgrimages.

Rae smiles slightly, nudging him with her shoulder. "Sounds awfully romantic to me."

"Some sort of pass-phrase, then, for getting at the things you're looking for?"

Autor squeaks at her nudge. "It is not," the boy says. "He ends up exhausted."

The boy clears his throat, settling on her question. "It is, yes," he says. "I have to use rhyming couplets to access what I've stored in there. Thankfully, Shakespeare is a gracious lender."

"Exhausted for the sake of love?" she suggests.

"I didn't... actually read most of his stuff. I know of his plays, for the most part, but I've never seen any of them. I liked his contributions to the language, mostly. He invented so many words that are outright common now."

"I always liked pedant," Autor says, completely and very blatantly ignoring her suggestion. "Gnarled is a good one, too. And lonely."

He tilts his head. "I've only seen The Taming of the Shrew," he says. "We might be able to get a video copy of one of the plays from the Bar, though augh. They're probably horrible."

"Yeah, you would like pedant, pedant," Rae smiles slightly

"Transcendence.' 'Vermillion,'" she says, slowly. "It just feels good, in the mouth."

"Why would they probably be horrible? Wouldn't they be just as likely to be good as be horrible?"

"Because televisions in general are horrible," he says, adjusting his glasses and popping his nose in the air. "Naturally."

Then he grins, shouldering his backpack and pocketing his sylladex. "Shakespeare is the king of rhythm. If he needed a word or phrase to fit, he played with it until it did. Grovel. Swagger. Ladybird," he says. "Walk with me?"

"What makes them horrible?" she asks, not at all following his logic.

"Tranquil, circumstantial, rancorous," Rae replies, smiling. "Lay on, Macfluff."

"They aren't books," he says simply, as he steps forward. "And people watch them much too loudly."

Autor raises a brow, but matches her grin. "Obscene. Hot-blooded. Dishearten. Thine face is not worth sunburning."

"Music isn't books either," she makes a face at him, but it's foiled by her grin. "And you couldn't sunburn my face if you tried."

"And there's a lot of stuff around here that people call music that isn't," Autor says, shaking his head sorrowfully. Oh, if only he had a lawn to tell people to get off of. "You, minion, are too saucy."

"And ill-tempered, sanctimonious pedants who call people minions who aren't," she points out, wry. "Which just... beggars all description."

"Oh, no!" Autor says, chuckling. "Feeling vulnerable? Maybe this is a malignant schoolboy love letter. Is a devil incarnate with a heart of gold such an improbable fiction?"

"Your love letter, spectacled schoolboy, wouldn't be sent to me," she grins at him.

Autor stops walking, and clings to the straps of his backpack. "Oh," he says quietly, and his cheeks glow rosy as he stares at his feet. "O let my books be then the eloquence, and dumb presagers of my speaking breast?"

After a moment, he saunters forward again. "No, truly, for the truest poetry is the most feigning, and lovers are given to poetry," he says, grinning wickedly, "and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign."

Sunshine gives him a very emphatic side-eye.

"More matter, with less art," she quotes. Though, in this situation, the meaning would be less get to the point and more speak plainly, doofus.

"Well, the passage generally means lovers write lies, but it's even funnier in context," Autor says, lighting up with an easy smile. "In response to the question, 'is poetry--as an art form and otherwise--true,' the character Touchstone means that the best poetry is imaginative. Shakespeare, on the other hand, hints at deceptive."

The boy adjusts his glasses. "It's a commentary on how given to wit--and exaggeration--both lovers and poetry can be, and how each inspires the other... Regardless of which truths are presented, or if the manner they're being presented in can even be said to be 'true' itself..."

Which is a roundabout way of saying that the letter idea is a grain of sand stuck fast in his heart--though he doesn't know it yet. His blush renewing itself with a vengeance at the mere thought of written truths might clue him in. Eventually.

More matter, less art?

She has half a mind to simply repeat the line. Her looks probably says so.

Instead, she offers, "It is possible that by their exaggeration and wit, their supposed lies, both poets and lovers seek to tell the truth."

"Just... in a roundabout way."

Like some lovestruck poets around here she could mention.

"Oh," the writer says, laying a cool hand on his heated cheek. "I hadn't even thought about that interpretation."

He squeezes the straps on his bag again. "Anyway, I'm probably boring you. Are you feeling any better?"

Which is as close to saying 'dead fish' as he'll get.

Edited ('straps on his hag' ... idek) 2013-07-05 18:01 (UTC)

"You're not boring me," she says, nudging his shoulder with her own. "You're distracting me. Which is... yes, it's helping."

"So, thanks."

"Shakespeare is the finest of distractions," Autor says primly, "though he is not to be taken lightly, lest his bawdier works sully the mind."

The boy manages to keep a straight face.

"I'm sure he'd be disappointed if his bawdier works failed to be just as distracting as his higher-brow writing. They deserve their own, due consideration."

"Tch," Autor says. "And they were and are given such dues. I mean, I can't... say that they weren't written well."

He clears his throat. "Though I confess that I understand the jokes quite a bit more now that I frequent a tavern."

"Well, that's better, right?" she grins at him. "You have good friends who'll make sure you don't miss anything."

She may be thinking of Poins as well as herself.

Autor was thinking of Poins, too, but dropping him into the same sentence as Shakespeare seems like flirting with disaster... And Autor can be an incorrigible flirt.

"Would that they would, sometimes," he says, offering her a crooked, Rae-only smile. "I almost don't recognize myself."

Edited (this phone >_>) 2013-07-05 18:47 (UTC)