milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Jamie is . . . getting twitchy.

Beyond that door somewhere is his Home. It's close. He knows it. But he needs Joris to get there, and Joris - and Helen - aren't ready to leave yet.

And Jamie isn't ready to tell them about his hopes of getting Home soon.

So there they are.

In an attempt to stave off twitchiness, Jamie's doing his best to fill his time with as many activities as possible. Today it's toasting marshmallows in the fireplace. It's fun to see the rats make faces as the goo drips!

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Laugh. "Don't mind if I do, then?"

Jamie offers out the stick so that the other boy can pull one off, if he'd like.

"There's more where these came from. I picked up lots - I reckon that offering people candy's always a good way to make friends, and it never hurts to have more people on your good side."

He grins. "How have you been?"

Bonzo does pull one off, and begins munching.

"That's good." Pause. "I think you're right. And I haven't been bad." Another momentary pause. "Then again, things don't tend to go too badly around here."

"Don't say that," Jamie says, in (mostly) mock-alarm. "You do know you're tempting fate."

Jamie doesn't really believe in fate. But he does believe in Them!

~~How true that is...~~

"Oh? You're not the first person to tell me that, you know?"

"I'm not surprised," Jamie says, with a snort. "Everyone knows talking too loudly about how well things are going is just asking for someone to start thinking they ought to change that. It's common sense."

Not that this ever stops Jamie from doing it . . .

Smirk. "Does talking loudly about how badly they're going help them get better?"

"No," Jamie says cheerfully. "It just makes you depressed. So really you can't win."

Roll of the eyes.

"Lovely." Pause. "By the way...marshmallows? They're good."

Jamie grins.

"Aren't they? I've eaten lots of food in lots of worlds; when I come here I only get the best."

"Milliways is like that." Pause. "Milliways is almost always like that."

"Well, it is," Jamie admits, "but I more meant, with the choice of anything - why would I pick something I didn't like? And you can get some things that are terribly expensive on other worlds for awfully cheap. You should see the price of purple apples in New Franzia."

"Purple apples?" Blink. "I know what you mean. There are a lot of things we don't have on the ship that you can get here."

"I haven't seen them anywhere but New Franzia. I think they're bred special or something."

(Do you breed apples? Jamie has no idea. But they must come from somewhere!)

"I haven't come across something food-wise that the bar can't provide yet."

"There's probably not any limit on it. I haven't either, but..." Pause. "My requests don't tend to be from multiple worlds, either."

"Most people's aren't, I reckon," Jamie agrees. "And even I've only been to a fraction of the ones that are out there. I wonder what it feeds the really funny species."

Pause. "How many worlds are there?"

"Hundreds. No -" Jamie shakes his head. "More than that. More than anyone could count, I think."

There's a bit of a 'wow' factor to that.

"Really?" Pause. "That's..." Glance around. "I guess it's not that surprising, but still..."

"I know."

Jamie glances out the observation window - it seems to convey sort of the same idea.

"Not surprising really, but awfully queer to think about all the same."

"Before I came here, I'd never thought of there even being different worlds. Just the thought of so many..." Pause. "You know, there's one thing it does mean: The answer to 'what if' does exist."

And I've got to live with the answer to that which I found, too...

"I'd never thought of it either. Nobody on my world had," Jamie says, rather ruefully.

"Nobody on most worlds has, really. Everyone's so caught up in their own."

"True. Not to mention having no evidence of other worlds..." Shrug. "Heck, I can't even talk about Milliways back home. People would think I'd gone nuts."

Mental note to self: If ever arrested, start talking about Milliways. A lot.

"There's a good many things people just don't want to know."

And even more things that they might want to know, if there wasn't the Them factor involved - but Jamie knows better than to talk about that.

"True. Or that they couldn't quite wrap their minds around, even if they wanted to."

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