Ye Olde Everybody EP on a Sunday

[ostro_goth]

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...]]

Comments

[margolotta]

"And the Überwaldean ones are known for their long-winded arguments, and the long titles of their treatises made up of very long compound nouns."

[jonathanparagon]

Jonathan laughs. "Do other people read their treatises?"

[margolotta]

"That depends on whether you count other philosophers as people," Margolotta says. "Well, I do, sometimes. I want to know the state of the discourse."

[jonathanparagon]

"Sounds like it'd be hard going getting through the words, though. Does it ever tell you anything useful?"

[margolotta]

"Yes, new long compound nouns," Margolotta says.

[jonathanparagon]

Jonathan laughs out loud.

"But can you use them in a sentence?"

[margolotta]

"If I'm very bold," she says, smiling.

[jonathanparagon]

"I would challenge you", he says lightly, "but I don't know what these words are."

[margolotta]

"They're in Überwaldean, so you're not likely to understand them," Margolotta says. "The easy ones start with terms like 'Existenzberechtigung', 'Weltanschauung', or 'Deutungshoheit'. Those are some short, simple and more generally accepted examples."

[jonathanparagon]

"...that sounds a lot like a language of my world, called German", Jonathan tells her, "But I don't speak it well. I got 'existence' out of that first word..."

[margolotta]

"It's one of those dreaded compounds nouns, meaning that it's a reason somebody or something should have the right to exist, or should be kept around for," Margolotta says.

[jonathanparagon]

"Oh." He makes a face. "I can guess what sort of philosophy that comes from."

[margolotta]

"It can be used flippantly, or ironically," Margolotta says, "but if one seriously thinks anybody needs a good reason to be allowed to exist, that is exactly the kind of thinking that brought us into that stalemate in the first place."

[jonathanparagon]

"Because the vampires and werewolves and so on - really anyone who could that way - would make the other people justify themselves or die?"

[margolotta]

"The trolls thought so about the dwarfs, and the other way around," Margolotta says. "The vampires about the werewolves. And so on, in great detail and ad nauseam, down to different halves of the same bloody village. Then, bits of all of them went to Ankh-Morpork and continued the ancient enmities in bar fights. It was time for people to snap out of it already!"

The exasperation with that former state of things is still clear in her voice.

[jonathanparagon]

Jonathan laughs quietly, but it's at the situation, not at her.

"So somebody had to step up and make them do it."

[margolotta]

"Yes," she says. "And when one starts saying 'somebody ought to' a lot, it's time to do it oneself."

[jonathanparagon]

"How loud did you have to shout before they listened to you?"

[margolotta]

"Not very loud," Margolotta says. "I just had to wait for the right lull in the general shouting."

[jonathanparagon]

"Politics. Don't you just love it."

[margolotta]

"Yes," she says. "I actually, unironically, do."

[jonathanparagon]

"Well, good!" He grins. "Since it sounds like you've made a career out of it."

[margolotta]

"It works, doesn't it?"

[jonathanparagon]

"Sure seems to. I was never as good at it myself."

[margolotta]

"It's great to make things work and see results."