milliways_bar | (no subject)

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While Gimli deeply and truly appreciates the ingenuity of modern forms of plumbing, sometimes the more traditional ways of getting clean are called for after a hard day of work. Streams are good. So are lakes.

The only evidence of this fact, this morning, is that when he appears and settles in at the Bar for breakfast (blasted human-sized stools; one day he shall craft his own furniture!), he still has the odd bit of drip from his beard. But really, other than that? Nothin'.

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A small smile. "Thomas Edward Lawrence, similiarly disposed to you. Do call me Lawrence, however."

The other names were so British.

"As you wish," Gimli says. "Now, Lawrence- I had been given the impression you were in pursuit of some sort of sword?"

"Yes, quite in pursuit of one. It's of a peculiar shape, I'm told - but I've got only the one from the bar and it's rather sub-par."

He pauses. "Tom tells me that you are quite talented - he did go on about your smithy."

"As well he should," says Gimli. "My people are smiths and crafters from the day of our creation. I myself have quite close to a hundred and sixty years' worth of experience before the anvil, and most of that has been spent in the making of arms and armour."

"A hundred and sixty years, you say? That is quite an accomplishment, sir."

He smiled, drawing out a cigarette and offering Gimli one as well. Only polite, after all.

"My people live a long time, and are not considered fit for heavy labour until the age of forty." Gimli shrugs. "I would have worked more, had I not been engaged in other pursuits that had need of Dwarven talents."

He accepts the cigarette, sniffing at it curiously; he's never actually seen one, but the smell- "Pipeweed, is it?" he inquires.

"Tobacco - though I'm sure that the both are similar, I've never heard tell of such things as 'pipeweed'. We do put tobacco in pipes, at any rate." He lights the end of his cigarette with a pop-lighter and inhales, offering it out to Gimli soon after.

Gimli accepts; it's similar enough to the leaf the hobbis raise to be bearable, though it takes him a bit to get the inhalation right compared to what he's used to. "I don't believe I've ever seen the stuff prepared this way."

"It's more convenient than having to roll such things by hand, I think."

He nods, taking a light inhale and smiling. "There is a young woman here who has the fortunate talent of shaping smoke into animals and people."

"Does she, now?" says Gimli. "Knew a wizard like that once. A very master at smoke-rings, and at doing things with smoke that could put anyone else's shapes to shame."

"Well, she's a vampire - perhaps they share similar talents with wizards."

Now he doesn't know that for a fact, but he's only met Mal and doesn't have much basis for comparison with wizards.

Gimli frowns thoughtfully at that. "Perhaps," he says. "I wouldn't know. I recall only one vampire in the legends of Middle-earth, and that one was not spoken of much."

"Only one? I've met a trio at least of them here, so far. One of which I'd known in my time - but I hadn't known about the vampire part, of course."

Not even when they'd shagged - which was a bit puzzling, but Lawrence was always very addled after sex.

"Possibly they are more common in your world than my own," says Gimli. "I've encountered folk from worlds without dwarves often enough; mine may simply be a world largely without vampires."

A nod.

"I myself come from a world without dwarves - quite possibly from a later era of Tom's years." A fond smile - he quite adores Tom.

Gimli nods. "You sound as if you hail of the same country," he notes. "Though I may, of course, be mistaken."

"We are, in fact. Britain - quite unfortunately, I should say. It is a rather unpleasant place to be."

Well, for him.

"Not, I take it, a country as prone to warmth and sun as the one where you got those clothes?" Gimli guesses.

"Rather not. A country as dreary and damp as the minds of those who run it, I should say."

He sniffs with disdain and takes a long pull from his cigarette. "Arabia is considerably more civilized, you see."

"I shall have to take your word for it," says Gimli. "I have never been yet to Harad, the country far to our south where the Men dress as you do."

"Is it a desert?" He has a bad habit of making this the second or perhaps third question that he asks people if he can help it.

Although with Fiona's expression of wanting to take him to a desert of hers...he was rather excited.

"Much of it is, so I am told," says Gimli. "Though in the farthest reaches of Harad, where the stars are strange, they do say the great deserts give way to forests almost as hot as all that."

"A forest as hot as the desert? Surely a man who speaks of such things cannot know what he is talking about."

But he smiles anyway, shaking his head. "I should like to see all the deserts of all the worlds, I think. It would be difficult, but it seems more than worth my time." And it wasn't as if he had much else to do here.

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