milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

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?))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"

"I have ever worked metals and practised smith-craft, even while I was alive," Teja says. "It was not all the time that we were at war; and I preferred to make my own weapons and armour, to be sure that they would not fail me."

Pause.

"I was king only for the last three months of my life, after the dreadful defeat in the battle of Busta Gallorum, where my dear friend and predecessor Totila died."

"So it's a man who runs a forge becoming a king. Hm. And here you found another forge? What do you make?"

"I was ever a fighter, and a leader of men; I was simply the last left over, to finish things," Teja says. "And yes, had we spent our lives in peace, unbetrayed and safe in our lands, I would have held the garrison of Tarentum, done my duty, and spent most time in my forge, making blades and armour, jewellery and all else that may be made out of metal. Vessels, toys, parts for machines -- as I do here now. I make any thing that is needed, up to the parts for inventions from the future that I cannot understand, as well as those I have learned to understand in the years I have been here. I have a very exhilarating machine called a motor-cycle, and can do all work upon it, also."

The little black cat, Myrrh, in the meanwhile is pawing at Lesgle's knee, asking to be picked up. After all, he is still her conquered prey! He has to!

Edited 2014-06-16 14:26 (UTC)

"A better reason to be king than any I've heard. Our king at the moment has the qualifications of having had a king for a grandfather, and having run away from his country and his people when they declared that they would have no more kings. You see, I have my biases."

Lègle de Meaux: political activist, helpless cat victim. While he's speaking, he bends down to pet the cat, and then to scoop her up. "--A motor-cycle? That isn't the thing that makes coffee, is it? That thing has me amazed."

The cat rolls up on Lesgle's arm, one clawed paw on his sleeve to make amply clear that she still is victorious!

"I know about the revolutions in your country, having been treated to the interesting opinions of Enjolras and Grantaire," Teja says. "An a motor-cycle is a great metal steed, with two wheels behind each other, that goes very fast with a great roar, like a motorised, mechanical horse. The thing that makes coffee -- yes, I know of those. Yrael and Doctor Lecter had opinions upon those, when they visited my house in Tuscany, in the future."

...All right, he has to laugh now. "Well, if you've heard both Enjolras and Grantaire, there's little I can improve upon. I hold my tongue. On that subject at least. --But this motor-cycle. I haven't seen that yet. It sounds like a variety of velocipede? A draysienne? A wheel in front and in back, you sit astride? But mated with a steam-engine? A coffee machine at least won't break your neck--how fast does this motor cycle go?"

Actually, it sounds thrilling.

"Yes, it is just like that," Teja says. "Not a steam engine, either -- a combustion engine that moves even faster, which was invented after your time. And motorcycles go very fast -- I think mine can go over 200 kilometres per hour, if I push it to its limit."

"Two hundred...?"

He looks down at the cat as if she can confirm. "How do you see things in time to get out of the way?"

"I rarely go that fast," Teja says. "On a country road, even 80 is quite nice, and one may swerve or brake in time to avoid dangers."