milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It's hard to stay hidden in your room, avoiding certain people when Bar has cut off your access to room service. Eventually you will be forced to leave in order to forage food and drink from the main bar.

Which is why Helena is stood at one end of the bar - the end closest to the stairs - begging for forgiveness for skipping out on her bartending shift so that she can get her room service reinstated and go back to hiding away from...

"Come on, I said I was sorry... now can I please get a soda and something to eat?"

[Tiny-tag of romance: Valentines day plot.]

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"And you can't really explain an inter-dimensional bar to the folks back home..." she says nodding in understanding.

Carlotta nods.

"Will knows, but the others wouldn't understand."

"And he didn't think you where crazy? Wow. It must be true love."

"Well I had an accident a few years ago, and got my life saved by this place." Carlotta says. "He's seen the scar from the surgery I had."

"What kind of accident? What happened?" she asks, frowning.

"I was kicked in the head by a startled unbroken horse that my spoilt cousin-in-law Fern tried to ride for attention." Carlotta says. "Teja and Demeter smuggled me here when I was in a coma, and Will met them then. He came to the hospital with me and stayed by my bedside until I came to."

Soft smile. "I was only sixteen then. I'd probably have thumped him if he'd suggested we'd end up married."

"Well, marriage is a big thing for most 16 year olds to think about."

For some 25 year olds too: all Helena can think about when she thinks about marriage is how her mother ended up; how Mrs Asaro ended up. God, even how Aunt Grace ended up - and how she won't let herself end up like them.

Carlotta nods.

"Well I don't think either I or Libby would have expected to be married before twenty." she says.

"And yet here you are, huh?

How old are you exactly?"

"Nearly nineteen." Carlotta says.

~~Except her canon is so confusing that even her mun can't remember for certain.~~

"I was still in school when I was eighteen."

Doing her degree, in Mafia studies. In one way or another, everything in Helena's life comes back to the 'family business'.

"I left school earlier this year." Carlotta says. "Most of my friends went to university or jobs and a few into lives of leisure. Apart from Libby and I, the only other girl from our year married is Angela, who was supposed to be going to finishing school abroad but changed her plans when the war broke out. Libby finished school at sixteen because she got a taste for farming."

"Didn't you want to go to university at all?"

"No, my ambition is to be a ringmaster." Carlotta says. "A degree would be a waste of money and time."

"I don't think education is ever a waste of time or money. It might not be for everyone, but it's not a waste."

Carlotta frowns slightly.

"No offense intended, but that's a rather narrow-minded way of looking at things, very much centred on your cultural background rather than mine. Many circus folk never go through formal education but turn out perfectly successful. To be a ringmaster you need to be literate and be able to do accounts, but much of the rest is made up of things that formal education can never teach.

I'm an acrobat. A trapese artist. A horse trainer. There is nothing a university could teach me that would make any difference to my career or life. So why should I try and take a place away from someone who wants to get a degree to, for instance, become a teacher?"

"Narrow-minded?" she counters angrily. "Because I think education isn't a waste of time? There's nothing 'wasted' in learning about something you don't know about, even if it isn't going to help you in your chosen career. I never said anything to belittle people who haven't gone or to suggest that they couldn't be successful."

"Actually, I feel like you are belittling me." Carlotta says hotly. "Learning Shakespeare won't feed my evacuees. Doing calculus won't save the stables. Writing an essay about war won't win us this one.

Some of the girls I knew at school would have learned a damn lot more spending a few weeks travelling with us than the same time in a university. I have eyes, I have ears, I meet people with all sorts of knowledge, and I'm more than capable of picking up a book in my free time!

Education for the sake of it might be trendy for you in the twenty first century, but in my time most people learn skills in order to get a job and not starve."

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