milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

...

Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes...
Tomorrow comes!]

He can hear a distant song, the fading echo of drums, and there is a light that is too bright to be of the world he knows. He stumbles toward it, eventually all but falling through a doorway into...

Well, into he isn't sure where. He looks around him. Surely his comrades should be with him also, if this is indeed the afterlife the priests often spoke of. But there are no faces he recognizes, and he does not believe that the world beyond would take the form of a wine shop even if such a place did exist.

Bloodstained, tattered, smelling of gunpowder, he weaves his way toward the bar, feeling an overwhelming need to sit.

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He takes another sip, using the time to gather his thoughts.

Eventually, he manages, "What is this place?"

"Milliways, the Bar at the End of the Universe. It ain't Heaven or Hell but someplace in between, you're not the only dead man that ends up here. My father's here."

"And your father is dead, is he?"

He frowns and rubs his forehead. "Forgive me. It is quite a lot to take in at one time."

"Don't apologize, I ain't explainin' it well. Yes, he is, I saw him shot then met him the first time I came here. Do you want somethin' harder than just water?"

New patrons seem to do better with a drink of something strong.

"No, thank you. I think it would be wiser not to."

He doesn't drink much at any time, and he feels he will likely need his wits about him now.

"Right, I can see that. Um, I'm William Evans of Bisbee, Arizona Territory,"

Then he names a year in the late 1860s as he offers his hand, maybe introductions will help.

He takes it and gives it a brief shake. "Enjolras. Paris, 1832."

He sits back again to sip thoughtfully at his water.

"It is...I'm afraid I do not understand how such a place is possible. How are you from three decades in my future and yet you have been here longer than I?"

"Cause Milliways don't make that much sense. Do you know the story of Rip van Winkle? How time doesn't move the same for him when he goes up on the hill. Milliways is sort of like that, time's not movin' in my world and other worlds and times all meet up here. There are worlds with magic and gods and all sorts of stuff, I don't understand,"

He knows he's going on and stops to watch Enjolras to see if its making sense. Though its nice to meet someone who's from a time a little closer to his own though Paris might as well be another world from Bisbee.

"Magic and...gods?" He really is having trouble taking this all in, but he does a good job of disguising that. (He also does not know who this Rip van Winkle is.

"Are you not dead, then?"

"No, I'm alive, but not everyone is. You can't tell just by looking. Yes, I've been coming here for years and I'm still not used to that part because there isn't magic in my world,"

He has friends who are powerful wizards and Others and his girlfriend is a demigod, its still strange.

"You say 'world' as though you occupy but one of many."

"Well, every person comes from somewhere different. Sometimes you get folks from your world but not always. My father and another man, who's alive from my world are here. There used to be another man but I haven't seen him in a while. I don't know if there's any sense to it but its how things are,"

He doesn't miss that Charlie Prince hasn't come into Milliways for a while but he does miss Doc Potter.

"But that is preposterous. We come from different places, but surely the same world."

"We might be. Probably a better chance of us bein' from the same place than some others. I don't really know enough about how to tell."

"Then how can you be sure there are any at all who come from different worlds?"

"Well, some things its pretty obvious like when someone's a wizard. Other than that at least for me, I'm not sure. Many folks here are from pretty far in the future, so they know if their history matches up with my time. I don't try to think about it too often. It usually leaves me feeling pretty stupid,"

He gets enough of that at home and here at times but he tries to not go looking for it here.

"A wizard?"

He pauses, finally taking a bit of the bread. (It seems odd to him that he should be able to eat and drink even now.)

"I was going to say that it seemed fantastical, but my very presence here is no less so."

(OOC: Now I have to go sleep. Is slowtime okay? I'm enjoying the thread.)

"Yes, they're not the most fantastic people I've encountered here. It seems as if once you accept the big parts of Milliways than the rest is a little easier. Not fully and I still get caught feeling confused but you get used to it,"

He saw Milliways falling apart though he wasn't here for the end and the beginning but after that, it takes more to surprise him.

Edited 2013-01-14 05:07 (UTC)

[ooc: Of course!]

"What would you say are the 'big parts'?"

"Um, the dead, that's the biggest one for me cause I wasn't expectin' to ever see my Pa again. I guess how powerful some folks can be and never seem it. One of my good friends can turn into a tiger if she wants."

That, at least, earns him a raised brow.

"That would be quite the ability."

He wonders, briefly, what the soldiers would have done if they'd suddenly found themselves face to face with a pack of tigers where there had only been students before.

"It is, yeah, she still surprises me when she shifts."

"It seems the sort of place that will take some time to become accustomed to."

"Yes, it does but there's good food, rooms upstairs and a library as well as space out back. There's space to figure it out."

"How long do we stay in this place? Those of us whose lives have ended."