milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Death is sitting at the bar, eating a curry.

Delicious curry.

While most of those that come to Milliways are used to seeing Death eat curry, some are not.

And one of those, a medieval man named Edward Poins is trying not to stare in stricken trepidation?

Death would come to this place??

A little girl speeding through the room at about chest height stops and hovers, staring.

"Uncle Enzo! There's a skellington!"

When Death becomes aware that he's being stared at, he turns towards the man and grins amiably.

Well, grins.

Hello, small green child.

The man will stumble backwards, filled with fear, then falls over a stool onto his back.

Death watches this, then stands up, takes a step forward, and offers a hand to him to help him up.

Are you hurt?

"I'm not green!" she says indignantly. "I'm cyan!"

This all-important distinction may be made clearer as the definitely-green Enzo jogs up with an even smaller child in his arms.

"I fight him?" enquires the latter.

"Wha… no, Ana. No fighting anyone here. Hi. Sorry."

Oh.

In Death's defense, he doesn't have much of a color sense beyond 'black.'

Yes, do not fight me, he says to the other child. Not in the bar.

Or. Ever.

"Okay."

"Sorry, she's used to skeletons being something to fight. But this one's not a Game sprite," he informs Ana.

"Is he a User?" Mairi asks.

"Kind of."

"Let me yet live, Death, thus I would beseech you," the man stammers, recoiling from the hand, "tis not my time and place here, so how could it be my time to die, that you would come and fetch me?"

Death leaves the hand out for an awkward pause.

No business in the bar, he says finally.

Not a user, he says helpfully. Nor the used.

That goes right over their heads.

"You're bigger'n Daddy," Ana decides. "But he got skin. And muskles."

"Where does your food go?" asks Mairi.

Somewhere else, he says.

"Mine goes in my tummy. What're you eating?"

Curry

"What's curry?"

Poins takes the hand.

"E'en Death must keep the rules?" he says, and stands. "For sooth, 'tis such a place of miracles!"

It is a spicy dish from Klatch. Like stew, but hotter.

I don't know about 'must,' Death says. I choose to.

"What's Klatch?"

It is a country.

"So you are truly the one chargéd by God to reap all life on earth, and bring the souls of men unto their judgement?" Poins says.

A lord to make kings tremble on their thrones -- for sooth, one of the few that even wayward Poins would not call 'thou'.

Not by a god, says Death reproachfully. But otherwise, that is an accurate description.

"What's a country?"

Enzo fields this one. "It's what Users have instead of systems."

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