milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Without quite knowing how, or why, Olive has managed to find the bar again. She sits in a booth by the door--

(No, for your information she hasn't been watching the door whenever she comes here, ever since Chuck said "Ned's around, some days."

Or maybe she has. Whatever.)

-- Anyway, see the lonely heroine, yonder: sitting. sighing. Drinking a glass of lemonade, and looking generally desolate.

Say hi.

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There's a small yellow duck poking in the space between the heel of Olive's shoe and the sole.

- to be fair, she's quite low to the ground, and also pretty tired, so it's possible the fact that this is someone's shoe hasn't quite sunk in yet.

Olive feels slight pressure on her foot, but it doesn't really register.

Still, her subconscious mind directs her to shift her leg. Olive proceeds to do so.

"- quack!"

Aaaand Duck registers that she has actually been bumping into a person. Uh. Oops?

"Quack quack," she says apologetically, scuttling sheepishly backwards.

"Quack?" says Olive, startled, doing a rather poor impression of a duck.

"Quack?"

Duck peers up at her, suddenly hopeful. Does she possibly speak duck? That might make communication easier!

Can you understand me? she asks hopefully, which of course comes out as "Quack quack quack quack?"

After squinting for a while at the little duck (Olive's never one to give up-- you never know when you're going to turn into Dr. Doolittle overnight), she sighs.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're saying."

Duck sighs too, her shoulders sulmping.

"Quack, quack" she says, wistfully, and spreads out her wings in an avian approximation of a shrug. It's okay . . . no one else can either . . .

Somehow, she can see an expression of sorrow on the duck's face.

(She didn't know this was, in fact, possible to detect. Well. You learn something new every day.)

She leans down. "Were you sleeping in my shoe?"

Duck shakes her head, hastily. She wasn't sleeping! "Quack!" she explains, and then mimes looking for something, wing lifted up over her eyes like she's sighting down it.

Olive imitates her, putting a hand over her eyes.

"You were looking for something?"

"Quack!" Duck nods energetically, brightening. It's always exciting when she actually manages to get her gist across when she's in duck form!

. . . well, in Milliways. At home people really aren't supposed to know she's anything other than a basic duck. Maybe people aren't really supposed to know here, too . . .

Well, too late now. Maybe Olive will just think all ducks perform elaborate mime!

Olive... does not buy this.

Still, luckily, she thinks it's just part of the magic of Milliways.

"What were you looking for, then?"

Duck flails her wingtips energetically in the direction of her neck.

She's either miming 'someone is trying to strangle me!' or 'necklace!'

Olive gets neither of this. Instead:

"Oh, a blanket!"

"Qwu . . . . quack," Duck says, rather doubtfully, and shakes her head firmly.

She's not really surprised that she's not much good at miming . . . and if at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

"Quack!" Now she tries tracing a circle in the air.

"Uh..."

Her face screws up as she tries to combine the two.

"Is it... a... lasso?"

. . . this is closer! Duck quacks again, trying to convey a sense of encouragement-but-not-quite-it.

She squints up at Olive. Maybe Olive is wearing a necklace and she can . . . point to it? Or something!

Tragically, Olive is bare-necked most days. (This is one of those days.)

"I know! Let's do letters!"

Olive finds a blank piece of paper, and scribbles the letters of the alphabet on it.

She puts the paper on the floor, near Duck's eyes. "Okay. Try to point to the letter it starts with."

Olive smiles encouragingly, quite proud of herself.

"Quack!" Oh - that's smart!

Sadly, spelling . . . is not Duck's strong suit. But she will do her best!

She eyes the paper doubtfully, hovers between 'P' and 'N' for a while, and finally stamps with great determination down on P. N comes next, followed by D, E, N, T. She wavers on adding the 'o' for pendanto (which is how it's said in Japanese) and then decides against it.

Olive phoneticizes:

"Pee-nah-dent."

She thinks about this.

"Peanut. No. Wait. That's not my final answer."

Finally, she hits on it: "Pendant?"

You got it! "Quack!" Duck bounces up and down on the table, flailing her wings happily. TRIUMPH.

. . . of course, the pendant isn't any less lost, BUT STILL. You take the little things where you can!

"Okay," she says, excitement dying down as she realizes the same thing. (Figuring things out doesn't mean finding them.)

"So, why's it so important?"

Uh . . . .

Duck looks abruptly shifty, eyes sliding away and wing going to her mouth.

"Quack, qua-qua quack . . ." That's, um, kind of a secret . . .

"Come on," says Olive, with an charming smile. "You can tell me."

The duck visibly gulps . . . and then, reluctantly, gestures with her wings above her head.

Alas, this could be interpreted several ways.