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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"Yeah, one of my friends is on Security. He's a stick-in-the-mud."

He accepts the stick and marshmallows with glee and proceeds to toast one.

"Which one's the one you know?

"Her name's Elda. She's a griffin - you know, part-bird, part-lion. I haven't seen her in a bit, though," he says, thoughtfully. "I'd like to before I move on next. She's nice. Who's the one that you know?"

"Clark. Tall, disturbing tendency to wear plaid. You'll know him when he starts lecturing you."

What.

Clearly Clark lectures everyone, not just Bart.

Right?

. . . and clearly the lecturing has triggered a memory, because Jamie brightens.

"You know what, I think I did meet him. Dark-haired fellow, idealistic in that bright-eyed and chipper way?"

"If," he says cheerfully, as he turns his marshmallow over for the best toasted marshmallow-ness, "he automatically started worrying about you like a mother hen, regardless of whether or not you needed it, than that was probably him."

"That," says Jamie, grinning as he picks the next marshmallow off his own stick, "would be the one."

In other words: easy mark!

"And how d'you know the mother hen, then? He decided you were a poor soul in need of aid?"

"Something like that. He's from the same world as me, and, uh, I kinda stole his dad's wallet."

Mmmm. He has achieved marshmallow perfection!

"After I saved him from being run over by a truck," he adds, just in case.

"Sounds like a fair trade to me," says an unperturbed Jamie.

He pops the marshmallow in his mouth, and then commences licking his fingers as he adds, "Though I reckon he wouldn't see it that way."

"Yeah."

People can be so blind to the small mercies of life. ._.

Change of subject time!

"So where're you from?"

He will, in fact, accept lying, as long as it is interesting lying.

Jamie names a city in England that no one has ever heard of because it does not, in fact, exist outside his own world, and then adds, "But you won't have heard of it. It's in England, on my world, for the record. I haven't been back there in ages anyways, though. These days, I am -" he places a sugar-covered hand over his heart and looks nobly upward - "a lonely wanderer."

Ah-hah.

Bart is Moved.

"Yeah? Where you wandering through?"

People like Clark often are, which is the important thing.

"Worlds," Jamie says easily.

"World boundaries, to be exact - the bits where you get from one to another."

In this case, the truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

Huh.

Now he is impressed.

"How's that happen?"

Assuming, that is, that Jamie is not just making 'I wander through other people's Doors' sound cool.

"All worlds have them," Jamie says, with an amiable shrug. "But most people don't know about them or where to find them. I've got a sort of curse, so I find them whether I want to or not."

Which is all perfectly true, if in rather abbreviated form.

"Sucks."

It's actually quite a bit more sympathetic than it reads.

Jamie glances away, with another shrug and a half-grin.

"You get to see plenty, at least. And there's some worlds I'd rather be an eternal wanderer than get stuck on."

And he'll be getting Home soon, he is almost certain. But he doesn't want to talk about that yet. He'll jinx it.

"Makes sense."

It's like Bart can empathize, or anything. Nope.

"Any good stories?"

"Have I!" Jamie glances back at Bart, grin broadening. "Let's see, between almost getting eaten by dinosaurs, almost getting eaten by cannibals, getting chased about by priestesses, hitching a ride on the Flying Dutchman - I'd say I've got one or two."

There's no need to mention the really long stretches of dullness in between all of that, right?

Almost getting eaten by cannibals: THIS WOULD EXPLAIN QUITE A BIT.

"Any of them good fireplace stories?"

Translation: STORYTIME :D?

Jamie is ALWAYS happy to share STORYTIME.

"The cannibal one doesn't make me sound all that clever," he says cheerfully, "so let's skip over that one. Nor does the time I was on the Dutchman, really, but it is a wonderful cautionary tale for why you should try very hard not to end up in the middle of the ocean when you can't swim in case you end up stuck on a ship full of very gloomy monkeys."

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