milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Thirty two week pregnant teen sitting by the fire, looking at a parenting book the bar gave her.
Reading is slow going, and any word longer than seven or eight letters usually means she forgets the first ones before she has worked out the last ones.
She has her feet up and is eating sandwiches as she reads.

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Knox, looking strangely confused, wanders over.

"Did you just see that?"

She looks up.

"I don't know, it depends what you're talking about?"

She tilts her head a little. "Are you all right?"

"Oh yeah, I'm fine. I climb up on the bar and sing Sinatra every day!" Knox takes a deep breathe. "And you missed it. Pity. I wasn't that bad you know." He tries to smile.

"I have no idea waht gripped me. I just...did it."

"Oh that, yes I heard that. I was just concentrating so I didn't see who it was."

It's difficult to follow the flow of a sentence when it takes five minutes to get to the end and can't remember the beginning.

"Maybe you were happy."

"I wasn't. I just got a parking ticket. Next thing I know, I singing. It felt...odd. Like, I don't know, the spirit of some demented ghost was running the show.

"And then it just stopped." Knox takes a seat. "Thank god that didn't happen at the office. I'd never hear the end of it."

"Did you eat something funny?" she asks, putting her book down with a marker in it.

"Nope. Haven't eaten all day, in fact. Been busy at the office. Maybe I haven't eaten enough." He tries to let the whole thing fade to the background.

"How are you?"

"Impatient." she says with a small smile. "I feel like I'm carrying a baby elephant in here."

Knox looks over the small woman with the big belly. "You don't look that big. Not that I know much about the topic. How long till the big day?"

"Should be eight more weeks, but time moves at different speeds at home, so it may be less bar-time."

~~Because the mun is cheating in order not to have the birth in the middle of her exams.~~

"Well, let's just hope you're here when it happens. Or that Big Blue can follow you there.

"And what happens once the kid is born? I assume you have a place to be?" Or he hopes so.

She nods. "I can stay here or go back home. In either case I have somewhere to live. I'd like to stay here, but I don't want to cut myself off from home altogether."

"The war...it's over?" He can't imagine raising a child in a war zone, thoug he knows it happens far, far too often.

She nods.

"Yes, for now. But Mal says it starts again."

War! What is is good for? Ab-solutely nothing!

Knox thrusts his hand over his mouth, eyes bulging. "Goddam it! It happened again!" He takes another deep breathe.

"Your choice - go home and live in an unstable sitaution. Or stay here where poeple break out in song at random. Joy."

"I like it here." she says. "But I have friends at home too. And if time is stopped, I need to know if I am aging or not, because it will be no good for the baby if it never grows up."

"Well, the easy way to figure that out is to see how many days you've been here, and have been at home, and maybe see how prgrnant you were at the start." The melody fades from mind for now.

"Um... I don't think I have that many fingers."

"Then write it down. Take a tally."

She fidgets a little.

"I can't. I don't know how."

"oh."

"That was really dumb of me, wasn't it? I should have..." Medieval society, medieval rules, and that menas girls wouldn't have an education. "I can teach you at least how to do a tally."

She fidgets and nods.

"Yes please."

He asks the Bar for a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Two and two are four, four and four are eight, eight and eight and sixteen

This time he does his best to ignore the music.

"Let's start with the basic. Each line is a day." He draws four lines. "But when you reach five, you draw a line across the other four." He demonstrates.

She watches, then picks up the pencil and looks at it for a moment.

"Where does the ink go?"

"It's not ink. It's pencil lead. It works like ink, but it's dry. Like a crayon?" He writes again. "See?"