milliways_bar | Ye Olde Everybody EP on a Sunday

The door opens, and Ragnar Lothbrok wanders in from a place that looks like a camp-site in hilly country, with cooking fires, and people laugh. Not all of these voices are male. Ragnar looks a bit astonished -- he closes the door with an odd gesture, as if letting go of a branch. Then, he quickly walks to the back of the room and vanishes into a door there; after a few minutes, he comes out again and walks towards the bar to order a horn cup of good spring water. What, did you think Vikings live on mead alone?

Dorian Gray comes wandering in from his house; as the door closes, there's a brief glance of a huge room with marble floors, the walls covered in portraits from all eras of art history, even some that ought not to exist yet. He's reading as he walks, his nose deep in 'The Count of Monte Cristo', chuckling as he walks. He only notices that he's in Milliways when he almost hits a pillar; then, he smiles, slouches on a sofa by the fireplace and orders coffee. He keeps reading.

Father Pearse Harman comes downstairs after the Sunday service, in order to eat a proper Sunday dinner (despite this being Lent -- Sundays are traditionally non-fast-days) of a very British kind -- it features a roast leg of chicken, Yorkshire pudding, two kinds of vegetables, and gravy. There will even be pudding afterwards, 'pudding' being a generic word for 'dessert', and this particular pudding being apple crumble with custard. For once, the priest seems to actually have an appetite.

Madame Thénardier has actually been to mass as well, simply to try and look like a good solid bourgeoise who does what she's supposed to; she is actually wearing a lace scarf in her usual generous cleavage. But now, having made the effort, she gets a basket of chicken wings from the bar, orders a new book that seems to delight her, and retires to her usual nook behind the fireplace to read and eat. She occasionally wipes her hand on her apron, but the new book nevertheless soon acquires greasy smudges.

Katrina Crane comes in from the back, bringing with her two baskets full of assorted seed packages that are all open, and possibly mislabelled, as well as her copy of Culpeper's and one or two other herbal books. She sits at a table, orders tea, and then proceeds to identify, consolidate, re-label and generally sort all the seeds for the herb garden.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter enters from the kitchen, carrying what looks like a breakfast tray -- coffee and fresh juice, mushroom and eggs on toast, an elegant salad with fruit, and a plate of crisply fried black pudding garnished with radishes. It may be a bit late for breakfast, but Dr. Lecter is known for the unorthodoxy of his meals, after all; so he wears the face of a man who expects no comments.

Teja enters from the back door as well, carrying a laughing toddler and followed by four cats who very casually slink in before the door happens to close. They secure a table near the stairs, and some waitrats bring over a high chair, which the toddler (almost two years old now) is put into. A plate of fruit for the child soon follows, and tuna for the cats. Two places are set at the table, Teja is served a clay cup of well-watered red wine, and then, he leans back, content like a man who has done his work.

Lady Margolotta enters from a drawing room the sombre and elegant lines of which are disturbed by posters, scattered papers, floofy poufs, empty mugs of cocoa, and an iconograph on a tripod. Apparently, some meeting of the Überwald League of Temperance just ended. Margolotta is carrying a tattered pamphlet that, however, says TRAIN SCHEDULE on the first page. She notices immediately that there is light coming from the windows, and finds herself a table in the darkest corner of the bar, as far away from the windows as possible.

[[OOC: Everybody is here for your tagging pleasure! Say in your comment whom you want for your charrie, or they might get just anybody...]]

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"Abrasive," Hannibal counters. "Causing irritation; being rough and coarse in manner or disposition. That's what you are today."

"Clearly it's not bothering you that much yet, as you haven't left," she says. "If you anticipate making me feel bad, that's not gonna go so well."

"I am hoping that you'll mend your ways momentarily," Hannibal says.

"There's nothing wrong with my ways," she says, blunt as ever. "You've tolerated them perfectly well up to this point as has literally everybody else in my life. You can deal with them now. I'm not your toy to manipulate and play with until you get tired of me."

"Well, you're in an unusually bad mood today to use that sort of large words," Hannibal says.

"No, I'm not that either. I'm just tired of you pushing things on me with this idea that I'm not supposed to object. It's annoying, and you need to not do it."

"I wasn't pushing things on you, I was simply offering food, as I've often done without any hitch," Hannibal says.

"And today there is a hitch," she says firmly. "Why are you not understanding that?"

"But why?" Hannibal asks. "What's so different about today."

"It doesn't matter why. All that matters is that you accept it. To do any less is to treat me as less than yourself and that is exceedingly annoying."

"You're making this into a huge thing," Hannibal says. "Instead of just breakfast. Which you of course don't have to have if you don't want to."

"I'm not making this into anything, you're just being an ass."

"No, you're being randomly bristly," Hannibal says. "On the other hand, you are hardly more than a teenager, so I should give you some latitude."

"And now you're insulting my age, you're not doing yourself any favors," she says shortly. "Are you literally incapable of not being a pain in the ass?"

"Are you literally incapable today of not taking anything I say as an active offense to your self-image?" Hannibal counters.

"Today, yes," she says. "Especially when you frame it as an insult."

"I am doing no such thing!" Hannibal says. "Whatever is the matter with you?"

"That is what I mean. Nothing's wrong with me, you keep saying something there is."

"But why, Noriko?" Hannibal says, actually rolling his eyes. "Why this, why now?"

"Because, as I have said at least twice now, you are being insulting. You assume the fault lies entirely with me when it doesn't. You need to stop that," she says.

"I don't care if it annoys you to be wrong, or god forbid be held to the same standard as everyone else in this place."

"But what brought this on?"

"Daily changes in hormones, who knows? It doesn't matter."

"It does," Hannibal says, "because if whatever set you off this time has anything to do with me, I can avoid it in the future."

"Yes, oddly, it does have to do with you. Quit telling me the problem is with me when it isn't."

"What have I done that's different from any other time we talked?"

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