milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: One commission, two gifts and an unexpected visitor. Small warning for a bit of blood and gore.]

Weyland returns to the bar sometime later, when he has recovered enough to appear calm again, and he carries the gifts he has made up to the bar. It looks like it's going to be another Atlantean night.

He takes a seat at the bar, and waits. There's one person in particular he's waiting for and several others he'd be very happy to see, but really any distraction would be welcome.

[open until it scrolls!]

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"Oh, yes."

She shrugs down into the boat, shoulders hunched.

"She was... mostly cordial. All things considered."

"Family seems to have a habit of turning up in the most unexpected places," he says. "They have their own agendas, and we, it seems, are stuck watching them play it out."

She looks at him strangely.

"Has someone in your family turned up unexpectedly?"

"My brother Egil did," he says. "Did I not mention that? Very unexpected indeed. I could almost believe that I had imagined the entire thing."

"You didn't."

She sits up, tilts her head at him.

"That seems odd, after all this time. Was it here?"

"It was at home," he says. "He came into the forge while I was working--walked in, from the outside. He isn't happy with me."

He takes a sip of wine.

"Why not?"

"He says there is a war on," he says, "and that I need to take a side. That I haven't taken one. Have I not been fighting all this time? But he does not answer. Says I must find him, that he cannot stay in the forge with me. I could have healed his injuries, would have given anything to have him with me again, but--he was gone."

She listens quietly.

"It almost sounds like a dream."

"But it wasn't," he says. "There was blood on the ground where he had been standing, and... he left me something. Something no living person could have given me, something very real."

"Yes?" She tilts her head, expectant.

"A star," he says. "An actual star. Glows as brightly as you could imagine it would."

"A star," she repeats, slightly bewildered, deadpanning to hide it:

"Does that fit in your workshop?"

"It fits in my hand," he says with a nod, and takes a sip of his drink. "A very small star, but a star nonetheless."

She tilts her head.

"Is it something significant, from when your family was together?"

"I don't remember," he says. "But it feels like it belongs to me. It feels right to have it in my forge. It balances out the dragon."

"The dragon..." she repeats, remembering only a brief conversation about it.

"The one that signals the end of the world, is it?"

"The very same," he nods. "I keep it outside the forge; I do not trust it inside. But there's a warded area outside that nothing can cross without my permission."

A pause, and a drag on his cigarette.

"Nothing except my brother."

"Apparently," she says, eyebrow raised.

She takes the moment to take a drag.

"But he wouldn't be the first thing to cross the warded borders without permission," he says. "Assuming that something other than strange fortune brought that egg into being. I hope the wards in my world are not failing... but then, if the world is ending, can I expect them to remain?"

"Doesn't sound like anything will remain," she observes. "If the world is ending, anyway."

"But will they hold back the destruction?" he asks. "Will they keep my forge safe, while the rest of the world burns and is drowned? I built it in a land where the final battle should not be fought--it's already in the charred lands of the fire giants. There's nothing left to burn, there. The gods will not go there, if any gods remain."

She takes a drag.

"Guess time will tell, if nothing else."

"It will," he agrees. "Sometimes I wish I were more of a seer--but what comfort is there in knowing what will happen and being unable to change it? Better not to know. At least you're less bored."

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