milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Luna Lovegood walks into the bar with her nose buried in Beyond Basilisks: The Hidden World of Experimental Breeding.

She seems only vaguely aware that she has stepped from Hogwarts into Milliways. Her attention is on her book. And on the faint rustling sound that has been following her since the end of her Transfiguration class. Clearly, she thinks, her ear for detecting nargles is improving.

In actuality, the rustling can be attributed to the sign stuck to the back of her robe – a piece of parchment with LOONY LOVEGOOD in purple and puce.

It's fairly lurid. And flashing.

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Luna nods.

"Yes. Luna Lovegood," she says.

"I always that that Loony rather showed a lack of imagination."

Or possibly the brilliance of simplicity. It's hard to say sometimes.

He chuckles a little. "Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it works, but I bet they don't bother to come up with anything else. Um. Not that they should tease you enough to need to."

Honest and truly, he does not know if her apparent indifference to mockery means he can, or should, be as casual about it. It's not an attitude one encounters much.

Luna long ago decided that many things simply aren't worth getting upset over. Name calling and pranks mostly tend to fall in that arena.

"Well, sometimes what they do come up with is far less nice. So I don't mind Loony so much."

Though, really, the true meanness isn't as frequent.

Enzo really has no idea how you respond to that, if the speaker isn't looking for sympathy.

So he doesn't. "I'm Enzo Matrix."

"It's very nice to meet you, Enzo."

She looks at him, inquiringly.

"Are you always green?"

"Unless I'm converted into a human, yeah. I'm a data sprite. We come in different colours. Different shapes, too."

"Really?"

Luna looks quite interested.

"You're awfully big for a sprite, aren't you? They tend to run small -- about the size of pixies."

"You mean pixels," Enzo corrects. "Milliways scales us up or something."

Luna is not sure how pixels would differ from pixies. The word is unfamiliar to her. But she files it away in her head to look up in the library later.

"That is smart of Milliways. It would be a terrible thing if someone accidentally squished you."

"I don't think that'd happen. In our world, we don't even exist on the same... level as humans. I mean, we're energy, not matter. If Milliways didn't do its thing, you probably couldn't see or touch us at all."

"Oh."

Oh.

That concept raises all sorts of interesting possibilities. For why things that exist cannot be seen.

Luna gives him a close look.

"You're certain you're not a nargle?"

"I've never even heard of a nargle."

Luna thinks.

"Well, I suppose it's entirely possible that a nargle wouldn't call himself a nargle. Nargle is a name we've assigned to them, but they may call themselves something else entirely."

She sounds much more as if she's talking to herself than to him, but after a moment, she focuses back on the boy.

"Do you like to nest in mistletoe, perhaps? Or steal odd socks?"

The reasons for the sign are becoming clearer.

"Why would I?"

"You would have to be the one to tell me," Luna says, reasonably.

After all, she's not a nargle.

"The speculation is something about the berries, but you'd know better than I would. The sock stealing we tend to just attribute to mischief. Nargles have stolen any number of my socks."

"I live in a dormitory," Enzo says levelly, "at the Guardian Academy, in the Supercomputer. When I'm home from school, I live in my sister's house. I sleep in a bed, and I've never stolen anyone's socks, even as a prank."

"Oh."

Luna looks rather disappointed.

"That's a shame then. It would have been exciting to speak with a nargle."

Just to know that nargles could speak.

"I'll take your word for it."

"But it's an interesting idea," Luna says. "That they may be energy and not like other invisible animals at all."

That would make them harder to find than other invisible animals. Thestrals, for example, are invisible to most people, but are still quite solid if a person encounters one.

"I'll have to write to Dad. Maybe he can invent a way to see them, if that's the case."

"Maybe," Enzo says, less scornfully, because she actually has a point. They couldn't be like sprites, sprites can only exist inside some kind of hardware, and he's pretty sure mistletoe doesn't qualify, but there are other energy-beings in other worlds who aren't thus restricted.

"How do you know they're there, though? Do they make noise?"

"No one is really sure. You just see the evidence that they've been there."

Missing socks and the like.

"Dad's been tinkering with ways to catch one, though. He's quite brilliant, you know."

"What is he, a scientist?"

"After a fashion," Luna agrees.

"He's an inventor, and he edits and publishes the Quibbler. And he's something of a naturalist."

He's a Renaissance man, Xeno Lovegood.

"So's my dad. A scientist and inventor, I mean."

"Really? What does he invent?"

Mr. Lovegood's interests rather run the gamut.