milliways_bar | (no subject)

Mary comes into the bar from her room upstairs today, wearing a floor length dressing gown and a rather hunted expression (which is somewhat amplified by the way she skulks along the wall, heading for the door to the outside). Rationally, she knows that no one in Milliways will care what she’s wearing underneath—a get up that she had had to confer with Bar at length to settle on. But eighteen years of ingrained propriety and modesty are hard to shake.

Mary takes the path down to the lake where she divests herself of her robe and shoes. She lays them carefully on a rock, and reaches back to make sure her hair is securely braided.

She had found a new book in the Milliways library; a slim volume apparently compiled by experts titled 101 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do. Some of the things the book listed are things Mary already knows how to do (Sew on a button). Others are things that she’s sure she’d be excused for not learning (Operate a computer).

But one of the book’s most adamant passages had been about the importance of knowing how to swim. This is an activity that Mary has never had the occasion to learn, but she’d taken it to heart. This will be her first attempt.

God willing, she won’t drown in the process.

Mary takes a deep breath and wades in up to her knees. It’s a start, right?

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Elrond is out for a walk. He hadn't considered going for a swim, but the moment he sees Mary, he realizes that it is indeed a fine day for doing just that.

He inclines his head in her direction with a small smile. His first meeting with her had been very awkward but she was fully excused as it had been her first visit.

Mary does recall the man, even though the circumstances surrounding their first meeting had not exactly lent themselves to coherence.

She gives a small smile in return and, hands folded, gives as proper a curtsy as one can while half-clad and standing barefoot in a lake.

"Good day, sir."

"I hope the water is to your liking," he says, with a pleasant smile.

It does seem like a good day for swimming.

"Um...."

Mary look uncertainly at the water. She's made it as far as her knees--she's not sure about going much further. She doesn't know if that qualifies as liking.

"It is pleasantly cool," she finally says.

He looks up at the sky, briefly shading his eyes, before looking back at her.

"And the weather is nice too," he says. "I could almost be tempted myself. Do you swim here often?"

And if no, should he mention the fish woman?

It's hard to say whether or not that knowledge might send her leaping for the nearest dry rock.

"I don't swim. At all."

Mary raises her chin a bit.

"But I'm going to learn."

Somehow.

He nods. "That is very sensible," he says. "Swimming is a good skill to have and it makes traveling by boat a good choice."

It is obviously less of a good choice if being on the boat and then suddenly not, might kill you.

"I don't really travel by boat," Mary says. "At least, I've never had occasion, to."

She generally keeps her feet on dry land.

"But a book in the Milliways library was quite adamant that it was an important skill."

So she's decided to give it her level best.

"Are you a sailor?" she asks, curiously.

He laughs, a free and open sound with hints of streams and leaves and the light of stars.

"No, far from it. But my father was. He was called the Mariner. My very first years of childhood were by the sea and my brother and I used to play in the surf. It is also a fine form of exercise."

"He must have been quite a good sailor."

Mary can practically hear the capital 'M' in Mariner.

"I've never been to the seaside. But I understand it can be quite lovely."

Mary doesn't get far from Meryton very often. Milliways aside.

"It was his life."

And it was. In so many ways.

"The seaside can be both beautiful and terrifying," he continues "To those of my kind who have ever dwelled far from it, it is said to be able to instill so intense a longing to travel across it, that they may very well fall seriously ill from it. But I do not think it often has that effect on Men."