milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It's a Sariel!

In the bar!

More descriptively, it's an in-uniform Sariel in the bar with a cup of tea (ginger this time, by the scent rising with the steam) and an old-fashioned copy of The Lost World. She's got one of the seats by the fireplace, and every so often her gaze strays from her book to the sparkly fish swimming in the flames and back again.

Come talk to her. That, or come pick up the leaf green bookmark she hasn't noticed falling to the floor. Whoops?

Just don't spill her tea. Starfleet officers generally do better when they aren't scalded by their own drinks.

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Almost any other man who's come in from Cologne in 1260 would gape rudely at a black woman. And probably get people discussing which bar rule racism breaks.

Urquhart, however, has lived in the orient for several years, in the Golden Age of Islam, a society where the sons of rulers and slave-girls became rulers themselves. Sons of blonde Western slave-girls as well as sons of black African slave-girls. Racism didn't exist, as long as you were a free Muslim man.

There, Urquhart learned to see people's colouring as a sliding scale, from ice-blond to coal-black, unimportant in comparison to the people themselves. People that were either clients or marks or bystanders or obstacles in the way, admittedly. But in Baghdad around 1250, judging people by the colour of their skin got you exactly nothing.

So, seeing the bookmark on the floor near the young woman, Urquhart just picks it up. He bends, his hair touching the ground, then stands straight, towering at his six foot five, and extends the bookmark to her.

"Is that yours?" he asks, politely.

Edited 2010-02-19 11:46 (UTC)

And the daughters of black African slave girls? Slaves who got freedom?

Sariel's been fortunate in her dealings with people in that respect; the only other man she's met from Urquhart's era is a good, and metaphorically rather colorblind, friend of hers now. Let's not get into just which bar rule homophobia breaks; that's for another day.

Sariel doesn't truly startle when Urquhart addresses her, though she does flinch slightly; when someone speaks unexpectedly near your ear, you're just about going to. "Excuse me? Oh." Dark eyes take a moment to track from the towering figure to what he's holding. "Yes, it is--I hadn't realized I'd dropped it. Thank you, sir." She's polite, if a little reserved.

There's a hint of something not easily defined on the odd word, the odd syllable. Whether or not 1260 has an analog for it is probably more up to a person's universe rather than their world.

((OOC: Say sorry for the superslow answering this, Maru. I've been dealing with an attack of RL, and then spywear needed vanquishing.))

The daughters of African slave-girls and important men? Usually were one of the wives of only slightly less important men. An Assassin's apprentice never got to see them. If they, say, needed some upstart slave-girl dealt with, they'd send a eunuch to the master Assassin.-

But when he came to Milliways, Urquhart had soon learned not to judge people by the standards of his day. Having known two very different standards in life had helped with that. People being upset at him slapping a village idiot had done the rest.

"What are you reading?" he asks, still very politely.

All the better for Urquhart, then. Especially considering which bar rule slapping folk breaks. All philosophy aside, that's a little bit easier to figure out.

All the better, too, for Sariel that she's not from Urquhart's time and world. She's no upstart, at least not in one sense, but things being what they are--well. She wouldn't fit. For many, many reasons.

There's a seat nearish Sariel's own, unoccupied for the moment - snag it, Urquhart! Sariel leaves the title of the book in question out of the equation for now, probably deliberately. She doesn't know this man's where and when just yet, after all. "This is a novel from--" the slightest of pauses. "--I'm not certain that this will mean terribly much, but it comes from roughly four hundred years before my time."

She's treading carefully. It might show, just slightly.

Urquhart sits in that spare seat, and smiles at her.

"I don't know when your time is, do I?" he says. "But to look at your clothes, you're from not earlier than the second half of the twentieth century, probably later. So four hundred years before your time is still long after my time."

Beat.

"Which is 1260."

"The year is 2369 for me," Sariel says, and darned if she doesn't sound slightly embarrassed at being caught in her own careful wording. "You're right." Beat. "I'm sorry. I wasn't sure of exactly--" she lets that trail away.

That bookmark's being put to it's intended use; in the book it goes. Now that it's shut, the title is visible. Sariel's attention is on something else for the moment, though. "1260 on Earth, sir?" One can never be too sure.

"On Earth," Urquhart confirms. "And Christian reckoning, not Jewish or Muslim. They count the years differently."

He looks at the book. It's so convenient that people write the title on the outside cover, not just the spine, in the future.

"The Lost World?" he asks. "What is it about?"

That at least takes care of interplanetary difficulties. The inter-universe ones are another story, and Sariel knows it.

"That's true," she agrees. "We have another calendar system in my world as well," she adds, though she doesn't elaborate - rattling off the stardate connected with any given day might be too much information in one go. Best to leave it alone.

Her eyes move from Urquhart to the book now resting in her lap, then to her teacup just before she raises it. Again, she's plainly choosing her words carefully as she answers. "Explaining all the details would take some time." Especially as there's a six hundred year gap and more between Urquhart's world and challenger's. "A group of--" pause, "--adventurers, scientists and scholars, are searching for--" another pause, another cautious word choice, "--a region where creatures no longer alive anywhere else on Earth still survive."

This could very easily turn into an extreme case of lost in translation. How do you explain dinosaurs alive and well in Brazil's rainforests? For that matter, how do you explain a colonized South America? Lord, how do you explain the newspaper industry to a man from the Middle Ages?

"And afterwards, they write an account of their adventures that nobody believes?" Urquhart grins. "People in my time* used to go on long journeys and tell strange stories of cephalopods and dragons and faun girls**. And Prester John; they always go look for the realms of Prester John in the east."

Beat.

"The further east I got, the less people had heard of it. People on the other side of the desert are just people for whom we're the legendary people on the other side of the desert."

Urquhart is very well travelled and well read, for a medieval man. And rather unflappable.

*Marco Polo was only six years old at the time of Urquhart's death, but the principle of the 'tall tale about an adventurous journey' already existed.

** This tag is brought to you courtesy of Umberto Eco's delightful novel 'Baudolino'

Edited 2010-02-27 17:03 (UTC)

Vert watches the bookmark flutter to the ground before her eyes, and then she peers up at the young woman who is lost in the firelight.

The shadows and reflected shards of light take on that same undersea green tint as she pulls herself more into her physical form. That still means she's laying on the floor, her chin propped on the heel of her hand, the tatters of her dress drifting in an invisible current.

"Cherie? I do believe you dropped this."

She points, ever helpful, to the bookmark.

It isn't often Sariel hears that form of address aboard ship, if she ever has. Lian might use it if she's tipsy; Sonya might if she's elated or drowsy or both, but even if, even so, Sariel's the only one in her circle of friends whose language has the word.

you ain't changed a bit

It's not often she hears it in the bar, either.

If she ever has.

To say she's not at least a touch thrown by the appearance of--is she a shapeshifter? someone like Yrael? another Endless? Sariel doesn't know--would be a lie. To her credit, she doesn't stare openly. She does, however, blink. Once. Twice.

A little slower on the second than the first.

"Excuse me?" That's as much inquiry as uncertain introduction. She takes a second to distinguish green from unexpected green. "Oh, thank you. I hadn't realized I'd dropped it." Her voice gives away a little of that surprise, but she's certainly polite. She hasn't reached for the bookmark in question yet. Give her a second to put the book it goes with down.

Every so often, there's a hint of something difficult to define coloring a word, the intonation of a vowel. It could be just a little

cherie

familiar. Just a little.

((OOC: Squeeee! Say sorry for my epic slowness tagging this thread; I was dealing with an attack of RL, and then an attack of evil spywear.))

Vert, for her part, simply blinks back up at the young woman, with wide green eyes. Two delicate and oddly elegant fingers retrieve the bookmark and extend to Sariel, never taking that intense dark gaze from her features.

"You look familiar, have we met before? Or am I misremembering?"

And one hand reaches out in turn. Sariel ends up with that bookmark in her possession by the reach's end, and if her own fingers brush Vert's, it's utterly unintentional. "Thank you." That's still a little shy. Sariel's hand is small, warm and dry, all soft skin and neatly short nails. She's not fidgeting under that intense gaze as yet.

This isn't Desire. Sariel's fairly sure of that. Fairly. ... "I don't think we have, though I could be wrong. My name is Sariel, ma'am."

Why she leaves rank and surname off, she doesn't entirely know. Maybe it's an instinct. Maybe it's Vert's influence. ... Maybe it's a little of both.

"Pleasure to meet you, Sariel." She savours the name, letting it roll off her tongue like champagne bubbles.

"You sure we haven't met before? Never a drop of absinthe has passed your lips in this life time?" A single lick of flame forms at her brow, flickering and dancing at a pace far slower than one might expect a flame to dance.

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