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It's a perfect day to go take a walk. Yes, it does look like rain; yes, he's supposed to be memorizing his Marx and Lenin; yes, it's Friday the 13th.

But since the door to Laigle's room seems to have vanished completely, leaving him stranded, it's a perfect day to go take a walk. To explore. To stretch his wings. He avoids the church building site on the principle that construction of any kind is a hazard, and he makes a general effort not to fall in any lakes and get eaten by mermaids, but he has no idea about the shooting range out back.

Whistling a jaunty tune, Bossuet goes to see the sights of Milliways.

((Just because I forgot that Friday the 13th was coming up is no reason for the canonically unlucky to escape fate. He's due to be set on by dogs, but if anyone wants to throw anything else in his direction, he's fair game. Just let me know before you drop anvils on his head?))

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"Tut, you naughty little minx. No bites!" This is definitely an improvement on the morning so far, which involved spilled tea, burnt toast, and a vanishing door. Perhaps his day is looking up!

Be warned, Bossuet will loiter around fussing over the kitty until she finds something better to do with her day.

She takes some steps backwards and looks at him very innocently, then sits, tail curled around her.

"Oh, I know that look. That is the look of the cat who never knocks over the inkwell, who never slips in through the window with a half-dead sparrow in her mouth, who never tries her claws on my mistress's best new stockings. Is that right? Hmmm?"

It's a good thing Enjolras isn't here, or Courfeyrac. It's a good thing Grantaire isn't here. Bossuet wouldn't hear the end of it. He looks around and picks a tall bit of grass, and swishes the tufted end along the ground invitingly.

Edited 2014-06-13 22:10 (UTC)

The cat watches, tail swishing, then she pounces.

A little too enthusiastically, it turns out, as she tumbles and slithers between Bossuet's feet.

Bossuet isn't clumsy, really he's not, but if things keep flinging themselves under him...

He hastily lifts a foot to get out of her way, starts to put it down, realizes she's directly under him, wobbles off-balance for a second, and then gallantly falls over in the other direction, away from the cat. This is the true spirit of self-sacrifice.

The cat jumps away, scared, and hisses for a moment; but then she returns, jumps onto Bossuet's prone form and nudges his face with her nose.

It is unclear if she is trying to encourage him to rise, or if she considers him her rightful prey.

He huffs uncomfortably, but with amusement, and stares up at the sky. "How are the mighty fallen! Laigle is slain upon thy high places. --You, my dear, are a very bad cat."

He offers to rub behind her ears.

Edited 2014-06-14 16:18 (UTC)

She is happy to be rubbed behind her ears.

She's also a very proud cat, having caught the mighty eagle and brought it down to the ground beneath her fearsome claws.

Erm.

She is victorious. She certainly is. Who's a victorious kitty, yes you are.

Lesgle rubs her absently behind the ears and under the chin. "Now what? By the way, I hope you appreciate my restraining my language for the sake of your delicate feline sensibilities. Because the jokes here, Minou, are all terrible."

She licks his chin, then lies down on his chest, claws on his collar.

Edited 2014-06-14 20:37 (UTC)

Well.

It looks like Lesgle will be here for a while, nothing to be done about it. He wriggles his shoulders in an attempt to move the sharp pebble under them into a more comfortable position.

"Are you at all political, Puss?"

She licks her paw.

Her human is a former king, but Bossuet can't know that, and the cat doesn't really care.

"Political neutrality will only take you so far, you know." He regards the cat. Admirable dedication to cleanliness, cats. "Well, I say that. Morally, I stand by it. But then consider the career of our great Talleyrand, whom Bonaparte called a--hmm, how delicate are your sensibilities?--he called him dross in silk stockings, but the language was earthier--well! The illustrious career of Talleyrand, that's an education in political flexibility. I should have said, before, that political disengagement will only take you so far, Puss. One says 'politics' as if it is separable from daily life, but then there you are with your vote taken away from you and given twice over to a richer man."

No, he doesn't shut up. He really, really doesn't.

Murrrrrr, the cat agrees.

Like Hodor, she can only say her own name; and the one thing she can say, in turn, became her name.

She is peacefully lying on Lesgle's chest, comfortably closes her eyes, and gently pushes her paws at his his chin.

He twists his chin out of claw range. "The cravat, please--" It doesn't mind puncture wounds so much as his neck. And actually...it is difficult to talk like this, trying not to get cat-paws in his mouth or his beard.

"Mrrrf," he says.

Victory may in fact be completely hers.

((Oh my god, what perfect catting. At some point, theoretically, he's bound to get up and get treed by the horrible horrible houndeyes but for now I...I think she has completely conquered Bossuet. Trapped, silent, under a cat.))

Edited 2014-06-15 14:22 (UTC)

She is content to go on purring, and kneading her paws against his cravat (if he's lucky) -- for a while.

Footsteps approach, after a while, and the sounds of a bucket being carried.

"You seem to have fallen prey to a cat," a dark, dry voice announces.

"Slander!" He squirms a little, trying simultaneously to talk, keep his chin safe, and see who's here, without disturbing the cat on his chest. "I am fallen prey to my natural gallantry, which bows to Puss here. I stoop to be conquered."

It is Teja the Ostrogoth who stands above him, regarding him with somewhat like amusement.

"She brought down a Frenchman, I say," he declares. "Her name is Myrrh; I brought her from Gotland; she is as great at viking as her compatriots. She conquers, and takes what she has caught."

The cat gives no sign of getting up.

"Would you like to be rescued, or do I leave you there, my cat's happy slave?"

Edited 2014-06-15 14:45 (UTC)

Well. That looks like someone who just stepped out of a poem. Bossuet's eyebrows twist up. "You put me in a painful position, Monsieur. You pit national pride and political sentiment against the gallantry I have just been puffing up. 'A Frenchman,' you say, and then 'a slave,' and I cannot consider the juxtaposition a happy one."

He's not actually getting up or anything, though. He rubs the cat's chin. "Mind, your Gotland cat seems to like French attentions."

Teja gives a dry chuckle.

"France conquers with gallantry, it seems," he says. "Not a thing that I am much used to, from the Frenchmen I had most dealings with. But indeed, she as charmed as you are subjected. Myrrh has made a friend, let us say."

"If I ever turn royalist, I shall remember this moment for my personal heraldry. Blazon: the coq gaulois, rousant, below a cat sable, couchant." He clears his throat. "Have you had dealings with many Frenchmen, then? The one in question is Laigle de Meaux. Delighted to make your acquaintance, as well as your lovely cat's."

"I have had dealings with both Javert and Valjean," Teja says, "I know Gavroche well, and have spoken with Enjolras and Grantaire as well as Fantine, who is a Frenchwoman."

Pause.

"I am Teja, son of Tagila; I was the last king of the Ostrogoths in Italy and died in battle, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, in the year 552 of Christian reckoning. Here, I run the forge and serve in Security."

Edited 2014-06-15 22:28 (UTC)

Hmm. Some of those Bossuet hasn't yet met; the police agent Javert, he wants to see but not to meet. Ostrogoth kings he had never imagined meeting.

Carefully, and with a murmured apology to the cat, Bossuet begins to sit up. "That's a bit before my time. Laigle, by the way, is a corruption of Lesgle, which is a contraction of Lesgueules, the name of my dog-keeping ancestors--but I doubt they even had a name at all in your day. And I don't run anything here--except my mouth. And sometimes that just runs on its own."

See how totally not-at-all-intimidated he is about the whole Goth king thing? So totally not-at-all-intimidated. Really.

Edited 2014-06-15 23:00 (UTC)

The Goth king is actually wearing a leather forge apron, carrying a bucket, and has a cat from Gotland -- so, not intimidating at all!

"You can talk an impressive amount," Teja agrees.

"It's one of the few skills that has never failed me. Almost never. Once I had an inflammation of the throat--the larynx--and I barely knew who I was." With more apologies to the cat, who is a lovely creature, he gets to his feet. "How does a king come to run a forge?"