milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Papa!" The voice which sounds through the opening front door is a young woman's, light and sweet and eager. The voice's owner follows in a billow of skirts, glancing back over her shoulder into a homey little hallway as she calls to someone unseen. "Papa, are you quite ready?"

She turns her head -- and falters in astonishment as she crosses the threshold, and her boots hit the Milliways floorboards.

"Papa...?" Her hand falls away from the doorknob, and it swings delicately closed behind her.

She's a young woman of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, her rosy face framed by delicate ringlets escaping from a silk-covered bonnet. Her dress is of blue wool, sloping down at the shoulders, puffed out wide at the sleeves and gathering again at the wrists, her skirts a bell over layers of petticoats, a warm shawl wrapped about her shoulders, gloves on her small hands, a basket over one arm, small boots just visible -- in other words, the height of dainty femininity for 1832, and doubtless extremely impractical and peculiar to the eyes of most of Milliways' patrons.

Welcome to Milliways, Cosette.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It will be again, when you go back through the front door. But as of now it's a bar -- or tavern, or pub, or half-a-hundred other words depending on where you're from -- called Milliways."

She pulls out a chair to give Cosette room for her skirts, then takes her own seat.

"It can take a bit of getting used to."

At least when she's sitting, Cosette can pretend she's wearing skirts under the table. Without that -- well, bare arms are hardly proper, and she wants to offer the woman her shawl, but some poor women wear rags that don't cover so very much more.

"Am I dreaming?"

She's not usually aware of dreaming while she's doing it, but it's a straw to grasp at. It makes some sense, as Diana's words don't.

"You're not the first to ask me that," Diana says kindly. "Or to think that. But I have to tell you that no, you aren't dreaming. Though if it helps you to adjust, it's not a terrible way to begin approaching things."

Cosette weighs this, along with the rest of the evidence at hand, and concludes that she must be dreaming. She looks around the bar, flushes a little, looks back to the woman.

She can't stop herself any longer; she puts a hand to her shawl. "Aren't you cold, madame?"

"Not particularly, but thank you for the concern. I'm not particularly sensitive to any of the elements, thanks both to my birth and to my upbringing."

It's only the truth.

"Do you mean to say that you're feeling a chill?"

Does she mean that she's foreign?

"No," says Cosette, in confusion. "I'm perfectly warm, thank you, but--"

Well, it's not polite to say but you're naked! The other person must be aware. She stares down at the table, flushed and awkward as only an embarrassed teenager can be; she doesn't know how to complete the sentence. Cosette is good at putting others at ease, but less accustomed to the role reversal.

Diana raises an eyebrow, inquiringly.

"Do you have questions? Most newcomers do, and you can be sure I will answer them as best I may."

"I don't understand," says Cosette, a little helplessly.

If it's a dream, very well, but it's a peculiar one; it's hard to know what to do next.

"It's all right. For the moment maybe you don't have to."

Sometimes the only thing to do is ride it out.

"Would you like a drink? Or perhaps something to eat?"

Does she?

Well, why not? It's a dream anyway.

"All right," she says, and smiles, carefully looking past the woman's bare arms and loose hair to her face. "Yes, thank you."

Diana smiles back, bright and friendly.

"All right. Do you have any preferences? I have a feeling what I'm familiar with and what you know may not have much in common."

"Tea, please, or coffee? If that's no trouble."

Or wine, but even in a dream it seems a bit improper to ask a strange, half-naked woman for wine.

"I can pay," she adds.

"Coffee should do well. I'm fond of it, myself."

Diana will get up in a second and go to Bar to fetch it.

Waitrats would be extremely unwise, at this time.

"As for payment -- no need to worry. The first drink here is free."

Because the conversing patron pays for it.

Still, the concept is sound.

Cosette accepts that with somewhat less confusion than she would were she not convinced that this was all a peculiar dream.

She looks around for a server. (While attempting to not look too closely at any of the many scantily clad men around.)

"I will be right back."

Diana moves off into the crowd, approaching the barman-less bar, placing a order, and returning immediately with a tray containing two steaming cups and a small assortment of time-appropriate pastries.

Bar believes in being helpful. Plus she has an inside line.

Cosette is curious, but she can't quite bring herself to stare after the woman with all her limbs so utterly exposed.

She contents herself instead with looking around the room with open curiosity, and a slight flush to her cheeks.

Diana returns, clad just as before, and lowers the tray of coffee and pastries onto the table.

She takes her own seat, repositioning a cup for herself and pouring in a dab of cream.

Then, to Cosette --

"Do you take cream or sugar?"

"Sugar, please."

This woman is quite nice, if one ignores beneath her collarbone or so. Some of her peculiarities can be accounted for by the fact that this is a dream -- well, all of them can, of course, but some of what she's dreaming about is still embarrassing Cosette.

That should not stop her from being polite, though.

"Of course."

She'll distribute the sugar cubes via tongs unless Cosette wants to dish out her own.

(Diana agrees about the politeness. It serves as groundwork for later conversations, too. Dream or otherwise.)