Christmas Eve Happy Hour

[nita_callahan]

The holidays are a time for family -- nuclear, extended, and otherwise -- and Nita's been doing more than her fair share of holiday travel as a result. Thank the Powers for her subsidized gating privileges at the Crossings. This year, Milliways is her penultimate stop; she'll head back to Earth to spend the 25th with her dad and the Rodriguezes.

When she leans on the counter, she asks Bar wryly, "So, what dark powers are threatening us this year, huh?"

A napkin appears. "... Kidnapped Santa?" Another napkin. "Pox? ... Monsters, too, huh. ... Wow. But is that it? Really? ... No, I didn't mean it like that, it sounds bad. It's just, you know. Comparatively speaking. ... Well, I'm glad everyone's okay. ... Sure, yeah, if you need the break, but I don't know anything about alcohol. ... If you say so." She laughs softly and pats the counter. "Have a good nap."

Happy Hour Specials
Anything I don't have to look up the recipe for

First drink free if you helped save Christmas
First drink half off if you don't celebrate Christmas

"So, uh, what can I get you?"

Comments

[freedom_is_grey]

A woman -- slim, fine-boned, pointy-eared, white-haired, brown-eyed and with a dark grey tattoo over her right eye -- settles herself at the bar, an enormous brown mabari hound leaning against her knee.

"All right," she says, laying her hands on top of the bar. "I have to ask. What is this Christmas thing that keeps coming up?"

[works_in_space]

"Does it count if I don't believe in Christmas and haven't been to a Christmas party in thirty years?" He wonders just why Christmas needed saving, but people do get carried away in some eras.

[nita_callahan]

Nita grins.

"It's an Earth winter holiday. Technically it marks the birth of one religion's messiah, but the actual way it's celebrated kind of borrows from a couple different mid-winter traditions. It's pretty secular where and when I'm from."

[freedom_is_grey]

Ysalwen looks a little startled.

"This religion celebrates its messiah's birth? Huh."

Weird.

"What kind of festivities go with it? Feats and gift-giving, some kind of topsy-turvy wildness? I ask because that's what Satinalia is like -- and that's the winter holiday I know."

[nita_callahan]

Although Nita definitely met and fangirled an earlier incarnation of the good captain some years ago, she's old enough and jaded enough by now to have a little more control over her reactions.

(Which does not mean she doesn't have a little internal holy shit squee!! moment.)

"Sounds like not celebrating to me. What'll it be?"

[works_in_space]

On Jim's part, he just barely knows the face as someone he met at some point.

"Saurian brandy on the rocks. Seems like I can handle that." When you're off duty more or less permanently, a drink now and then isn't bad.

[nita_callahan]

"His death, too, but that's in the spring."

She nods, leaning on the counter. "Yeah, feasts, gifts, singing. We put up evergreen trees and decorate them -- I don't think that one has anything to do with the dominant religious part. Where are you from?"

[freedom_is_grey]

"Thedas, and more specifically Ferelden. It doesn't seem to be a place many people I've talked to have heard of already."

Ysalwen's smile is a little crooked.

"Andraste's death gets celebrated at the end of summer. I could do without the elaborate re-enactments."

[nita_callahan]

Nita winces. "Is it too much to hope the re-enactments mostly involve long boring speeches and a minimum of actual death?"

[freedom_is_grey]

"Unless nobles get very far into their cups and run free through the alienages, mostly it's public bonfires and a lot of very fancy plays."

Thankfully.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Boring, preachy, fancy plays."

[nita_callahan]

"Saurian brandy. I can do that. Just -- let me find it, hang on."

Don't mess this one up, Nita, it's only Captain Kirk you're pouring for.

"I've never done this before," she explains sheepishly, peering at the bottle behind the bar. "Bar kind of springs it on people."

[works_in_space]

"Neither have I. I guess that it's true that ship's doctors and not captains are the bartenders." Who was it that said this? Not Bones. Doctor Boyce, maybe. Jim hasn't thought about Boyce in years.

[nita_callahan]

"Boring and fancy isn't so bad. Trust me, it could be worse."

Nita knows from elaborate re-enactments.

"Regardless, sounds like your first drink's half-off. Want anything?"

[redintheledger]

"How do you save Christmas?"

There is one very confused Red Army corporal staring at the board, frowning as she takes off her trenchcoat and hat. Under the heavy material, she's revealed as a teenage girl who is far, far too thin.

On the plus side, she doesn't smell that bad today. Huzzah to retaking town that still had running water.

[nita_callahan]

"Well, that works," she says with a laugh. "I'm a lot closer to a doctor than a captain. Oh, here we go."

Bottle, glass, ice, and--

"Saurian brandy, on the rocks." She slides the glass across to him.

[freedom_is_grey]

"Oh, everything can always be worse."

She laughs a little. Quietly.

"Do you have any juice? I'm -- not too particular about the kind, I don't think."

[nita_callahan]

Nita shrugs. "Depends on which Christmas special you're watching?"

[works_in_space]

"Thanks." He takes a sip. It's pretty well aged. And as green as ever.

"What line of work are you in when you aren't tending bar?"

[redintheledger]

"Um. We don't have Christmas."

Pause.

"Special what?"

[nita_callahan]

"I know we have orange juice. How's that?" She leans over to grin down at the dog, and adds in the Speech, "And anything for you?

[nita_callahan]

"Wizardry," cheerfully. "Mostly off-planet work in the last few years."

[works_in_space]

"Wizardry. I see." All these years in the Bar, and Jim is still convinced that magic is just a word for science misunderstood. And besides, wizards tend to stay in one place in all the stories. So, it must be science. "What planets?"

[freedom_is_grey]

"That would be lovely."

Liranan leaps up to put his paws on Ysalwen's thighs, so he can better see Nita.

Water! Water, and a deer bone!

"Water for Liranan, I think. And maybe a haunch of deer meat? He's been patient with my library explorations."

[nita_callahan]

"Uh, TV specials -- like, made-for-TV Christmas movies. Most of them are kind of treacly." She looks the other girl up and down, trying to gauge time and place -- it looks like Earth clothing, maybe mid-20th century, but she's not sure.

[redintheledger]

She glances up from her hat, and her face lights up.

"You can see movies on a television? I read that the Americans showed some televisions at the World Fair back in '39 and obviously here, but I didn't know they were going to get that popular."

Her hat is in the process of the flaps being tied up again, which is lending it a distinctively Russian appearance.