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At a table in Milliways there is a young man with a single pomegranate and a knife; he's skilled at skiving the calyx end off, digging the end of his birds-beak knife into the pale pith and scoring lines down each of the ridged sections.

When he pops it open a few of the arils burst in his hands, staining his fingers with the juice. As he eats, the thinnest slice of skin from the fruit is getting shaved off in a long peel, suitable for rolling up into a red rose.

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Here is another confirmed lover of pomegranates.

"One can see the millennia of practice," Hannibal says, coming up quietly with a little smile.

"One can see the influence of a few days of boredom," he replies, craning his head back with a smile at Hannibal. There's a faint trace of a bruise across his collarbones, but it doesn't seem to bother him.

They never do. "Hello, Hannibal."

"Hello, Ganymede," Hannibal says. "Why are you bored, though? Would you like me to cook for you?"

"I always like you cooking for me," he says. "I'm entitled to get bored after a certain number of years, aren't I?"

"You are," Hannibal says. "According to most stories, it's the biggest drawback of immortality. But my cooking will hopeful help to alleviate the boredom for a while."

"I'm certain it will," he says, quietly glad that the real reason he's bored is yet to be discovered. It's a conversation he's not really looking forward to having any time soon, much less here.

"You do put on quite a show, I'll grant you that. And if I may bring anything for you to cook, let me know."

"Let's make it a challenge," Hannibal says. "You bring the things you want me to cook, I improvise a dish from them."

"And how do you know I'll bring you things easily improvised with?" he asks. "You know how I love to make things hard on people."

The ease with which he mentions that may actually hide the amusement he gets from the notion.

"I fully expect you to make things hard on me," Hannibal says, "or it wouldn't be a challenge, would it? And that, in turn, wouldn't be sufficient distraction to alleviate your boredom."

He chuckles at that. "Well, we shall see what I bring you, then. Would you like some of what I have?"

He offers up a palmful of ruby-red arils with a smile.

Hannibal takes them, almost daintily. "Thank you," he says. "There will be pomegranates in whatever I make. I think."

"You think?" he asks. "What would stop you?"

He pops one of the juicy capsules between his teeth, staining the center of his lips dark red.

"Nothing," Hannibal says. "Unless you ask me not to."

"Would I do that?" he asks, only a little sarcastically.

"If you want to," Hannibal says. "Your rules."

"Oh, I wouldn't be that mean," he says. "Come sit with me, and I'll share."

Hannibal smiles, and sits down.

"So, what happened to get you so bored?"

"I didn't realize that being the more experienced partner in bed took that much work," he chuckles. "Virgins."

"I could have told you that," Hannibal says. "You usually prefer non-virgins, I suppose?"

"Not so much prefer as usually end up with," he replies. "It's not that I minded, really. Just that it was different."

"Did you simply end up with a virgin, or did they come to you for defloratory purposes?" Hannibal asks. "The latter would probably cause even more work."

"Something of both," he says. "Would it make a difference?"

"Yes, as the latter version would expect you to do much of the work from the start," Hannibal says, "while the former would be more along the lines of 'Oops, I accidentally don't yet know how this works'."

"In that case," he says, "Most definitely the latter."

"That does sound a bit strenuous," Hannibal says. "Especially if they not only needed the act explained, but being talked through every step of the way, like a spooked horse. I probably would have done it for the mere challenge, but it still sounds like something that deserves a special breakfast after, for the effort."

"There wasn't much explaining," he says. "He wasn't blind, just a virgin. It was...interesting more than outright bad. Just tiring."

"I'll cook you something really good to speed your full recovery," Hannibal promises.

"I'm sure you'd cook me something really good either way," he chuckles. "But I appreciate the thought, Hannibal."

"So immortality doesn't give you limitless stamina after all," Hannibal muses.

"No, no, I have an entirely normal refractory period," he laughs. "I thought you'd have remembered that much."

"But who knows how often you could perform, and refract, until there is no more recovery for a while?" Hannibal says, smirking. "I don't think I quite reached your limit."

"That's a nice colour."

Eric is leaning against a wall, looking relaxed. On the surface at least.
Arms folded. Legs very long and encased in black jeans.

"It's blood-red, you would like it," he says, looking away from the knifework to Eric.

"Did you ever have pomegranates when you were alive?"

He shakes his head.
"No. I never travelled far enough south," he says, lightly. "I like the scent though."

"It was supposed to be the fruit of the dead when I was a boy," he says, splitting the fruit open to expose segments that look full of blood-red pebbles, all in clusters. "And to have sprung from the blood of Adonis."

He merely smiles, picking up the crownlike calyx end to twirl between his fingers.

"My Maker used to talk about that," Eric says, a little less lightly. "And about the small gardens the women planted? In Spring?"

Gardens of Adonis.

"Only quickly-growing plants," he agrees, but less happily as he tries to remember the festivals from that long ago. "And at the end of eight days they would throw them into the sea, to mourn his death and celebrate his rebirth. I remember seeing it."

Beat. "Your maker was Athenian?"

"No, he was from Gaul, but he was sold to a Roman who was fond of all things Greek. And Egyptian."

He shrugs a little.

"We all celebrated spring back then. It was probably the most familiar thing when he came there."

"Gaul?" he asks. "And how did he come across you?"

"We were in Anglia. Raiding. And we'd underestimated the number of able bodied men in the village. He saw us fight. Saw me fight. And in the night he overtook my men and asked me if I wanted to be Death's companion."

He casts a glance at Ganymede.

"I'd taken a wound to the gut. They were just - keeping me company. Till it was over."

He looks at his hands.

"I think his master had held some kind of office in Londinium. But he had been lots of places on the continent as well."

"Clearly you said yes. Were you afraid?"

"No. I was dying. I asked him what was in it for me and he said life. That was what I wanted."
He states it calmly enough, but there is an undercurrent there.

It was the single most important moment in his life. And then making Pam. And the wolves.

Edited 2014-11-24 05:42 (UTC)

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