milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Cool," Cal says. "Sounds like it was fun."

"It totally was! We fell out of the rigging."

That's the part with all the sails and stuff, right?

"You okay?" Cal asks, even though he clearly is.

"Yeah, we hit a lot of stuff on the way down."

So reassuring, that is.

Very.

"Oh. Well. Good," Cal says, bemused. But Enzo appears to be all right, so he leaves it at that.

"How do humans decide what gets a holiday?"

For Cal, who has not yet worked out what is behind all the nonsense going on today, this question is completely out of left field. SO he flounders for a few seconds.

"Uh. Uh, I - I don't really know. A lot of them are religious. Celebrating the good things," he adds, what with religion and Enzo still not being one of his favorite combinations. "Others are just - fun."

"This is one of the fun ones, right?" For all he knows, there might be something in some religion involving pirates, but...

Confused pause.

"If this is a holiday, it isn't one I've heard of."

Unless it's a very strongly themed Halloween or something, but it isn't that time yet, is it?

Now Enzo's confused. "Bar usually only dresses people up for holidays."

Cal can't decide whether this piece of information is unnerving or reassuring. This is a regular occurrence?

"I did ask what was going on" - sort of - "but all I got was this." He shows Enzo a napkin that says, Arrrrr.

Enzo bursts out laughing. "Bar's pretty weird sometimes."

"Yeah, I definitely noticed," Cal says a bit dryly. He is smiling, though. No need to spoil Enzo's fun.

"It's almost Hallowe'en again, right?"

"I don't know," Cal says. He's said that a lot during this conversation. "I - don't even know what month it is here. It was May when - back home. Almost my birthday, actually. Doesn't mean anything here, though. I'll have to ask what month it is sometime."

It seems odd to think of Milliways going by an ordinary calendar. It would definitely be the first ordinary thing about this place.

"It's September here," Enzo informs him. "There's a calendar on the board, 'cause of the werewolves."

"Oh." Cal never looks at the board. "Thanks. I guess I don't have to ask then."

Weird. Almost like travelling in time; he is, as much as he'd bothered to think of it, still mentally in June. It's a little more disorienting than he would have expected it to be.

"No problem. So Hallowe'en's... October, right?"

Cal nods. "Yeah. At the end. The thirty-first."

He's still kind of caught up in the calendar thing, or he might be drawing certain conclusions by now.

"Cool. I wonder what I'm gonna be this time?"

- what?

Oh.

Oh, now Cal's catching up.

"Does she - do this - on Halloween, too?"

He is not paying close enough attention to mask the alarmed look on his face.

Which leaves him wide open for snickering!

"Yeah! Only it's not all pirates, and sometimes it's not just clothes!"

Oh god. Maybe Cal will just stay upstairs that day.

"Sounds interesting," he says lamely.

"It totally is! Last time, Sis and Matrix and me were these weird fuzzy things, I don't know what we were, and I had a magic bag of stuff!"

". . . a magic bag of stuff?" Cal repeats bemusedly, possibly establishing a record for how long he has been able to go without doing that during a conversation with Enzo.