milliways_bar | (no subject)

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autor

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Looks like it's going to be another blooming awful year.

The pile of letters has spilled into the bar again, and Chris has spent the last ten minutes just gathering them all up to process.

He has the Naughty/Nice book on the table. It seems to be glowing slightly, and if you listen to it, you can hear the sound of a pen scratching inside it. He glances at it once in a while, with a slightly worried frown, before going back to his work.

"Bloomin' furbies! No no, not again, they all woke up last time..." he mutters, putting all these letters into the 'Unsuitable/expensive present' pile.

[ooc: SEE BACK ROOM POST HERE.]

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Autor blinks. And blinks again.

"Excuse me," he says, opting for politeness to mask his befuddlement. "Do you... come around here every year?"

"I certainly do." Chris says, looking at him over his glasses.

Autor's lip quirks. "And you are who I think you are," he says. "St. Claus?"

"Call me Chris." handwave. Sigh. "And what would you like for Christmas?"

"Nothing," Autor says, raising his teacup as he logs away the reaction. "You look like you have your hands full already."

"One more won't make a difference." Father Christmas says, shrugging. "I got a lot of work to do."

"Genuinely? Nothing, unless I'm allowed to give it to someone else, and then it wouldn't really be a gift from me, I'd think," he says. "Plus, I can get it from the bar."

He offers him a one-shouldered shrugs. "Can the reindeer really fly? How many elves do you have?"

"You can request them for other people ~~if you stick them on the sign up list~~." Father Christmas says.

"Yes, and none." he adds. "The elves are centralised, they send the toys out to us."

"Interesting," he says, to both comments. "Who is us? Just you and Mrs. Claus?"

"Not married. Me and the other Father Christmases."

Edited 2013-12-01 23:21 (UTC)

"Ah, pardon the assumption," Autor says, sipping his tea. "It's fascinating that you all work together."

He tilts his head again. "Do you really live in the North Pole?"

"Nope. I live in England, where we have supermarkets, the internet, and pubs."

Autor cracks a grin. "That is fantastic. I assume you have some sort of centralized warehouse where you hold all the toys?"

"Pretty much." Father Christmas nods. "The rest is my garage."

"So does each of you cover a region?" he asks. "Do you really have some effect on time, to get it all done in one night?"

"Oh, you're asking for trade secrets now, Autor." Father Christmas says.

Yes he knows your name. He's Father Christmas.

Autor's brows shoot into his hairline until he realizes--oh, right, this is St. Claus.

"Which list am I on?" he asks, lip lifting.

"Can't tell you that, kid." Chris says, gently. "It's not fixed until Christmas Eve."

He looks at the book, which is still making a scribbling sound.

"Oh, now you've got me thinking about your metric," Autor says, raising his cup to the book. "Like, whether or not a large good deed at the end makes up for a years' worth of small, bad ones, or if they're graded by rank."

He's joking, naturally, but his tone is curious, too.

"It's not about numbers. It's about your soul."

"That is a universal theological metaphor, isn't it," the student says. "Judgment for an appropriate reward. I don't envy you the job."

"It ain't up to me." Father Christmas says. "I merely consult the book. The judgement goes through the Ministry."

"Ministry?" Autor says, blinking. "Apparently the mythos surrounding your work is largely incorrect. Who are in the Ministry?"

"Ministry of Elf." Father Christmas says.

"Course, if people are naughty in front of me, I can write them in."

He shrugs. "And yeah, can you imagine how hard it would be for us to work if we gave everything away?"

Most of the time it works by people not believing.

Autor nods, absorbing this. "Why are you telling some of it to me, then?" he asks, highly amused. "Not that I don't appreciate it, because I do."

Chris laughs.

"Because nobody will believe you, kid. Besides, you're not from my world, I only work here as an anomaly in the system. Took a lot of squaring with the ministry."

Autor sobers up. "No, no they won't," he says distantly. Then he shakes his head, shrugging that off. "Who pushed for that change? You? Why not catch everyone here in their own worlds?"

"You're talking a very complicated bit of transdimentional magic there, lad." Chris shakes his head.

"Some people here ain't had the Christmas they should have."

"I can name a few I'd put on the 'nice' list, yes," Autor says, with a one-shouldered shrug. "Do the naughty ones really get coal?"

"They get a booby prize, as it were. May not be coal though."

Autor smirks, but it's a pale imitaton of his normal expression. "Right, it can't be something truly nasty," he says. "That's not part of the fun."

"I've left books on anger management before."

Autor snorts. "I didn't know those even existed," he says, "but it sounds like a good booby prize. What else do you give?"

"Boring stuff usually. A wet sponge. A spoon."

"Ew," Autor says, wrinkling his noise at the thought of a moistened sponge. "Where do people receive these?"

"Under the tree." Father Christmas says, shrugging.

"Oh, right," he says sheepishly. "For some reason I figured you'd be handing them out individually."

"Hah! Had one fight in here already." Chris says. "Not planning on any more."

"A fight... over Christmas presents?" Autor asks, furrowing his brow. "No wonder you hand out anger management books. What was the outcome? And the cause?"

"I was testing which side of the list he should fall on. And it ended with me stamping 'Naughty' on his face in red ink."

Autor grins. "Ah. Was his booby prize especially bad that year, or about the same as the others?"

"He's the one that got the book. I believe he burned it."

"That doesn't surprise me," Autor says. "Though it does seem strange that he'd be so invested. Do most people around here make the nice list on average, or am I allowed to ask that?"

Edited (clarity) 2013-12-06 23:50 (UTC)

"I can't really tell you that."

Autor taps the side of his nose. "Trade secrets," he says. "Right. Trade secrets. Thank you for telling me what you could, Chris."

"No worries, you take care and be good."

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