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That thunderstorm the other day had kept Sunshine indoors - she'd brought out the big guns, so to speak, and cleaned her rooms to chase away the blues.

Today, though, has been gloriously bright. And Rae isn't one to miss an opportunity.

So there is a baker, in an tangerine-hued tank-top and deep purple jean shorts, flopped unceremoniously on a large rock at the edge of the lake, seeing to the very serious business of soaking in the sunlight.

It's clearly occupying all of her concentration. That, or she's fallen asleep.

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Rae stares up at him, blinking. This guy is almost as bad at lying as she is.

Might as well play along.

"Was he outright laughing in between the muttering as he danced, or was it more a darkly humorous chuckle?"

"He's Teja."

That's enough of an answer to that question, Atton thinks.

"Well, at least it hasn't gotten too bad then," she nods, solemnly. "He's not so far gone that I can't probably snap him out of it, next time I see him."

"I think he might be having a lot of sex with a trickster god," Atton says sagely, "or he told me he was, at least."

That's not technically true, in the sense that it's a total lie, but that doesn't matter to Atton.

From her reaction, that hadn't even occurred to her, and is much more serious than pretend glitter-guilt. "Oh please tell me he's not that dumb."

She'd warned him about Loki.

Atton frowns.

"Well, I was just lying, but you seem to think that's actually possible," Atton says. "He did seem really happy to be glittered by this Loki dude."

"Literally glittered or metaphorically glittered?" she asks, warily.

Sunshine herself is, at the moment, more iridescent than usual. The subtle, barely-there pinpricks of light from the sunlight-web set into her skin has nothing on actualfax glitter.

"Literally. Is it possible to be metaphorically glittered?"

"No idea, but I've been surprised before by how slang and idiomatic speaking translate across dimensions."

"So... Teja hasn't had sex with Loki? You were just making that up? I ask because in all the stories that survived, people close to Loki tend to end up gruesomely dead or otherwise severely inconvenienced for a very long time, and I'd rather nothing happen to Teja."

"I dunno. When I mocked him about it, he didn't seem to understand what I was getting at, but it's Teja. He doesn't understand it when I accuse Will of being a cannibal who washes his hair in the arterial blood of his victims, either."

Rae looks a little ill at the mental image, pale despite the sunlight.

"Put a lid on the gore, would you? Who's Will?"

"Will Scarlett? Yey high, scar on his face, bright red hair, adorable?"

"...Can't say I've met him," she says, still rather green about the gills. So to speak.

"For the record, he's not a cannibal, right?" Just to make sure. One never really knows, in Milliways.

"No, no, he's not."

"Good to know," Rae replies. "The vampires are bad enough without adding cannibalism to the mix."

"Vampires?"

"Yeah," she nods, wondering with a twinge of jealousy if this lying glitter-guy comes from one of those lucky worlds without them.

"You know, vampires? They're super-strong, super-fast, nocturnal, drink blood, pretty reliably go up in flames if exposed to sunlight?"

"Not ringing a bell," Atton shrugs.

"Lucky you," she says, dry.

"Yay!" Atton beams. "They sound very friendly and cuddly."

"You'd think that, from their description, wouldn't you?" There's a faint, wry upturning at the corners of her mouth.

"So, it may come as a surprise to find out they're really not."

Though all the scars that grace her arms, shoulders, neck and upper chest might give the surprise away.

Edited 2012-08-09 03:00 (UTC)

"I dunno about that, they sound like they'd fit in just fine on my world," Atton says thoughtfully. "And my world was the cuddliest place."

"Tell me about it," she says, curious, as she leans back on her hands.

"Binary star system, only inhabitable planet in the system. Heavy light-and-heat absorbing cloud layer means that the sunlight never gets through - but there's alternating warm seasons, where the sky is dark, and cold seasons, where the sky glows in just about every possible colour, of between five and fifty years," Atton says.

"Wildlife is either calorvorous or carnivorous - the human colonists are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain. But it's interesting wildlife, at least. We have monster crows, which can pick up a child's crying from ten kilometres away and snatch it away to feed its chicks; snow wraiths, which are telepathic swarms of calorvorous insects that suck the heat from people; Kazic wolves, er, huge wolves," Atton gestures with his hands, having to move a little to do so. He mimes out a length of about seven or eight feet, "with prehensile, razor-bladed tails - they were my clan's emblem. The Old Things, but unless you're a miner you're not likely to ever see one. They're all in hibernation at the moment, way, way beneath the ground.

"Territory is divided up between the clans. There are about twenty-six in total, but they're mostly indentured to the three biggest," he says. "Or they were. We were orbitally bombed about fifteen years ago, civilisation hasn't really built itself back up. I've not been back properly for a while."

.... She is left staring.

"I feel I should offer you a drink." And full membership in the Our Worlds Are Horrible; Don't Come Here club.