milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Cordelia Vorkosigan hasn't been in the bar since Twelfth Night.

But tonight she's here. She's had a conversation with Mary Lennox, and is now sitting in an armchair by the fire with a mug of coffee and a brillberry muffin.

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Cordelia's eyebrows appear to be attempting to climb into her hairline.

She's no classicist, but has enough general knowledge of old Earth literature to catch and understand the phrase glaukôpis Athênê.

"I thought Athena was associated with owls."

"The Greeks hadn't imported macaws yet," Peach says dismissively, as though this explains everything.

"That would explain it."

She takes a bite of her own muffin half and chews thoughtfully.

"What should I call you?"

...oh, wow, somebody's actually asking her what she'd like to be called, instead of nicknaming her after a fruit? Cordelia is all kinds of unexpected.

Firmly, "It's Picchu. Machu Picchu."

Not that this is going to stop Peach from addressing Cordelia as Cordy, because Peach really has no problem with hypocrisy as long as it's coming from her.

"Isn't that the name of a mountain on Old Earth?"

...nobody calls Cordelia that.

Nobody does a lot of things Peach does. "Something like that."

"And are you associated with Athena, then, Picchu?"

"You could say that." She's amused. "I'm associated with a lot of people. Ask Nita sometime."

"Nita is ... was she there, that night? I don't think I know her."

"Yeah, the wizard girl. Fifteen, dark hair. She's my roommate."

Ah. And are you ...?

I'm not sure what the polite way to ask is. Is this your natural form, or ...?

"That's a little complicated." Still amused. "But I'm not a shape-changer, if that's what you mean."

"I think that's what I meant."

She looks a little unsettled, though.

"Are you a wizard as well, then?"

"A pet of wizards." She adds cheerfully, "We tend to get weird after a while."

"Weird is relative," says Cordelia, judiciously. "Especially here."

"No kidding. If you meet Nita's friend Kit, ask him about his dog sometime."

"Was he there too, that night? -- I was hoping for a chance to properly meet all these people; I barely knew who I was standing with."

"Yeah, with Nita; he's her partner. Puck and Raven were there too - you've probably heard of them, if you know Athena."

She bends down to start gnawing at the chair's upholstery a bit. "So what's your story, stranger?"

"My story?" A small wry smile. "That depends on how far back you want me to start."

"You know best, when it comes to that."

"True. Well, I was born and raised on Beta Colony; I was a captain in the Astronomical Survey, and then I was a soldier, and then I was a POW. And then my life got complicated, because I married Aral Vorkosigan and moved to Barrayar."

"Soldier, huh? Thought so," Peach says. "Complicated how?"

She sounds interested, although she looks a little absorbed in pulling stuffing out of the hole she's created in the chair's upholstery.

Cordelia gives Peach an odd look, sidetracked from her narrative. "Soldier's hardly the most significant part of what I was. I've never thought much of the military."

"Deinên, hêi sun Arêi melei polemêia erga perthomenai te polêes aütê te ptolemoi te," she says cheerfully. "I can usually pick out soldiers, all the same." She pauses to drop a beakful of stuffing on the floor. "Kai t' errusato laon ionta te nissomenon te."

"Dreadful as Ares, she loves the works of war, and the sacking of cities, and the shouting, and the battle. And it is she who saves the fighters who go to war and come back alive." First Homeric Hymn to Athena.

A pause. "If you say so. Though I don't think I understood most of what you said just then. What language is that, Greek?"