milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

There is a woman sitting in a chair near the fire. She's not terribly big, and has delicate bone structure. She's got curly black hair, and big blue eyes, and truly eye burning taste in colors for clothing.

Every fifteen seconds she shakes her ankle, causing the bells on it to ring cheerfully.

She's also knitting sweaters. Three of them, at the same time, using her hands and both inner sets of handling tentacles on her arms.

The tentacles have no slime, no suckers, are not weirdly colored, and do not look grafted on. They're a perfectly normal and natural part of her body, exactly the same color and texture as her skin.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And one's getting brushed in a sort of casual, hand-going-by-knitting gesture as Deitmar heads by to take a seat opposite Suzi.

Sime need touch, and if Sime need touch too much they might hug. It's a pre-emptive thing.

Suzi grins at the contact and says, "Hi, Dietmar. The brown is new? Is it real or dye?"

"New," Deitmar agrees, "dye. I went back to my world. My attempt to enter government protection failed. I'm trying to avoid detection for a while until I can reach them again and arrange another rendezvous. In the meantime, I'm," he tries to find a good way to sum it up and then realizes she can sense his feelings about it and simplifies, "in the situation I wanted to avoid.

"...I left you a note."

"That's why I'm not lecturing you." Suzi allows, nodding her head firmly, "Or clinging and crying. Thank you for the note."

She really didn't expect more than what she got. "Is there anything I can help you with? Um. And. Well, you're of the House of Farris. We've got money now."

Deitmar drops his voice. "Thank you for not." SERIOUSLY. "What happened?"

Suzi sells jewelry in the bar. Ryan sells nonmagical metal weaponry in the bar. It pays the tabs, sure, but it's not exactly the expressway to wealth.

"Rachel left us money." Suzi says a number.

It is a VERY VERY BIG number. She's even adjusted it to his world's inflation.

It will pay for many beeping things.

"What? What did she do now?"

There were plans. There was something she wanted him to do.

"She left." Suzi says quietly, "She'll still be doing her thing? With her planet? But she won't be back physically."

Deitmar nods. He doesn't mind the missed goodbye, really. It's his way. And he can still do what she asked him to. That will work.

"How have you been? I've been away for some time."

"It was longer here than it was for us." Suzi admits, "I was only gone a week and a half. I got government people holding guns on me, then I got permission to take the citizenship test."

"Could they have hit you?" Deitmar goes for the important part. A healthy Suzi is a gone before they pull the trigger! Suzi. "You'll pass, I'm sure." As long as she studies at all.

"Oh, I've memorized pretty much the whole book so I don't worry about that." Suzi says firmly, "They wouldn't have. They were almost as scared of me as I was of them."

"I knew you would," Deitmar says.

"Good." This is only healthy for all concerned.

Suzi beams at him again, "Thank you for not being dead."

"Did you think I would be?" Deitmar goes down this new conversational path.

"Not really?" Suzi says, "But it might have happened? With, you know. All the stuff? So I'm glad it didn't."

Deitmar sort of shrugs and sort of nods. He doesn't do either with much detectability; it could have happened, but it didn't.

"I don't know how long it will be before we're in government hands," he says with a touch of cynicism as to how desirable that is. "But if we spend more time in the forest than the towns, we minimize our chances of being seen."

If that happens, well, hairdye.

"Anything you need, get from the Bar." Suzi says firmly, "I'm useless in the woods, but I can at least make sure you've got money."

"All right," says Deitmar. He's nearly packed for this trip back, but it's not like he won't likely have to make another visit before they're out of the woods. And it's fun to be rich and be able to say things like that, so why argue if she wants to?

"Are you doing Christmas work already?"

"No, I'm just fussing. I hate not having anything to do. I'll probably give them to the hospital?"

She gives a lot of knitted things to the hospital.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only