milliways_bar | (no subject)

Gredya is examining the outside of Milliways as well as the inside--and enjoying the outside considerably more. She'll have to come here in her other form. But for now, she's learning her way around the stables, the outbuildings, the gardens.

She watches the woman, trying to judge whether she owns the place. "Do you grow these?"

"No," Katrina says. "I wish I did, but I don't come here often, or for long."

This woman comes and goes, then.

Gredya steps into the garden. "Someone keeps them. Horses, chickens." She has to grin a bit. Chickens are silly.

"Yes," Katrina says. "And cats. Somebody keeps cats here, too."

"Oh, cats. They are pets too? Someone calls them names?" Fine, fine, she won't eat anyone's cats, either. For now.

Places with gardens and chickens and horses always have cats. This is familiar. Gredya looks around the garden: most things here smell familiar too. "Who keeps them?"

"Different people keep the horses," Katrina says, "I don't know about the chicken, and the cats are with the smith, who does indeed call them names."

That's at least two more staying here regularly, the smith and at least one other, who keeps horses. Probably more people than that. It's a big place, even if it isn't a town.

Gredya runs her fingers thoughtfully through the fronds of a fennel plant. "You have garden somewhere else?"

"I used to," she says. "I'm not in a place where I could have a garden, or even seasons, ordinarily."

"The air is wrong there? The weather?" She smells the fennel on her fingers and then licks them clean, absently. She'll be reeking of herbs after this.

"I'm usually trapped in some sort of purgatory, as the prisoner of a demon," Katrina says.

As one does.

Well that's just strange. Gredya stares. "You are free here."

"Yes," she says. "But I can't stay here too long, or he might notice. And I am still needed where I am."

She nods slowly. "Family?"

"My husband can reach me there, in his dreams," she nods. "He fights the demon, over 200 years in the future."

That's not making it any less strange. "...Can you go to his dream?"

"Yes," Katrina says. "So I can help him with knowledge as he needs it."

"You fight demon together? In dreams. And he is...in two hundred years."

Well. That sounds pretty rough. Gredya shrugs. "Everyone with problems."

"I suspect that people without problems don't come here," Katrina says. "What are yours?"

She waves a hand in a very human gesture: it's a long story. "Always something. But not demons. Not dreams." That's pretty out there in the department of problems. Gredya can respect that. "You do magic?"

"Yes."

Gredya nods. "With these?" She gestures: the herbs.

"These, I use for healing," she says. "Mostly. My magic works differently -- with incantations, sigils, or blood."

Nod nod. Magic with words and blood, that's understandable. But not of personal interest to Gredya. "I know some plants. Good to eat if you are sick. I don't know all these."

"I don't know all these, either," Katrina says. "Some of them are from other worlds, I think."

"Yes." She pushes her hair back. Wyr medicine is extremely limited, since most injuries heal in the transformation. But. "This one I know, good for stomach. This one too. This one is poison. This one keeps off fleas." That's the fennel. "Centaurs eat this. This one is good for stomach. This one is poison."

She's not usually this talkative but she's had a morning of feeling exhaustingly ignorant.