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.

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She nods, slowly.

"I'd like to see it."

"Right now, then?" he asks. "I can go upstairs and get it for you, if you'd like."

"If you have time," she agrees.

"I have nothing but time, in here," he says with a small smile, and tosses back the rest of the glass of Atlantean. "I'll be right back."

"Good," she says, returning the smile and taking a drag.

He carries the boxes toward the stairs, and returns a few minutes later without them, but with a small leather pouch instead.

"What shall we have to drink, then?" he asks, as he approaches her table once more.

"Something aged?"

She glances curiously at the pouch.

"And a parasol, of course."

"...Atlantean, then?" he asks, eyebrow raised. "And the parasol. I wouldn't want you getting sunburnt out on the lake."

"Oh, yes. I have to maintain my... olive... tone."

Melpomene stops there. One might get the impression that she doesn't think much about sunburn.

He chuckles, and gathers a bottle of wine from the bar.

"I've been in Minnesota too long. Too used to the dangerously pale."

She shakes her head.

"This is why Minnesota is clearly not the place for me."

"Back home, back in the day, I was even paler than I am now," he says. "But then, when there's no sun at all for part of the year... that'll happen."

"No doubt."

The edge of her mouth quirks.

"Shall we get out into the daylight, then?"

He collects a parasol from the bar as well, and offers it to her.

"Assuming I won't burst into flames at the touch of sunlight... yes. I'm feeling brave."

She gives him a look, through the smoke.

"Let's hope not."

She goes to the door and pushes it open with her free hand.

He walks along with her. "I don't sunburn, actually. Nor burn from fire, so that may be the reason for that."

"That sounds... extremely useful, in your line of work."

"It is," he agrees. "I used to be able to burn, but that was a very long time ago. I suppose it's just my element, now."

She tilts her head as her feet splash into the shallows.

"What changed?"

"I don't know," he says. "I just can't, anymore. Oh, if I try I can manage superficial burns, but they never stay."

He reaches into the leather pouch and pulls out what looks like an origami bird made of silver, about the size of his hand.

She leans in to look at it, intrigued.

It probably looks a bit like something that some overpriced foreign design house might make and sell for holiday ornaments or decorative paperweights. It looks solid enough until, with a small smile, he throws it at the lake as though trying to skip it across the water--

And unfolds itself, origami-like at first, but then--somehow--much more ornately, until finally, a large metal swan stretches its wings and untucks its head out from under one of them.

Melpomene applauds.

"Beautiful."

"Ah, you like it?" he asks with a small smile, as he motions the swan boat closer. It paddles its feet below the surface and ducks down at the edge of the water, stretching one wing out as a bit of a ramp to climb aboard.

"I was hoping you would."

She steps cautiously onto the wing, wondering fleetingly if it will break, before casting that worry aside-- if Weyland means it to be sturdy, it's sturdy.

"Of course. I don't think I've seen a thing you've made that I didn't find amazing."

She smiles and turns back halfway up the ramp. "My critics are somewhat harsher, it seems."