milliways_bar | (no subject)

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noriko ashida

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Noriko is dressed up--at least by her definition of dressed up--when she comes down from her room to the bar, stopping to detour into the kitchen for breakfast. She considers for a little while, and decides on scrambled eggs; something she's rarely in the mood for, but what the hell.

After a little while she'll be visible in the bar eating it over a tablet loaded with a fashion magazine, clicking her heels on the floor as she puts in earrings and a blue-jeweled nose screw. Eyeliner is somewhat harder for her to master in one swipe, but she's got time to kill.

Botherable.

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Athelstan glances over at her with a smile.

"Getting ready for something?"

(The nose screw is different, but he's been around Milliways long enough not to blink at fashion choices.)

"Nowhere in particular," she says, looking up and over at Athelstan. "Dress how you want to feel, right? I just wanted to look nice. I like these clothes. Silk feels good against the skin."

She shrugs bare shoulders, fingertips paused over a brocaded shirt in black with a yellow dragon winding around the shoulders and collar. "This is raw silk, but this," she taps the screen, "Is polished. Shiny."

"Silk?" he asks, interest visibly sharpening. "Real silk, from the East?"

"...Yes?" she says. "I wear silk or satin a lot, I like how it feels," Noriko replies. "It's not that expensive."

"It is in my time", Athelstan tells her. "A very rare luxury."

Nori blinks. "Well, don't get me wrong, but I kinda doubt you'd fill out my shirts the right way," she says. "You can get silk from here, you know."

"...I hadn't even thought of it." He looks to the Bar. "But at the prices of your time, or mine?"

"Don't know, but we can check," she says, setting the tablet down. "If it's your prices I can get it for you. If you'll tell me what kind you want, like a finished item or just cloth."

"Just cloth, I think", he says with a bright smile. "Then I can decide later what it should be."

"Well here's hoping you can sew," Noriko replies, standing up and brushing her trousers off so they'll lay over her shoes properly.

"You want to ask first, or shall I?"

"I can", Athelstan says with confidence and a touch of surprise at the idea he might not be able to. "I'll ask first."

"What?" she asks. "Where I come from, not many men can."

"Perhaps it's that I grew up in a community away from women", he says after a moment's thought. "Where if we didn't make and mend our clothes, no one would."

Edited 2015-06-17 23:21 (UTC)

That gets a pause for a second.

"How exactly did you grow up away from women? We do kind of have to birth everyone."

"I was sent to an island monastery as a boy", Athelstan says simply. "And my mother and sister died not long afterwards."

"Uh. Why?" asks Noriko.

"Why so young?"

"I was the youngest of six", he explains, "and times were hard. It was a matter of one or more being found a new place or all going hungry, and I had an interest in learning... it was the best solution all around. Our lord was kind enough to make the arrangements."

"So the rhythm method, not a thing back then. Good to know," she says. "Clearly you're okay with moving around."

"I've learned to adapt." Or always been able to. "And new things interest me."

"Like your friend with the mohawk. I assume he was a new thing once."

"He was like no one I'd ever met", Athelstan says honestly. "And he brought me to a new life."

"Yeah, but did you like it?"

"Before very long, I did." He nods. "It was freedom. I'd never had freedom before, and the strange thing is, I found it as a slave."

'That part would have been the breaking point for me. But hey, if you were cool with it."

Athelstan shrugs.

"It was live with it or die. And at least I landed with a master who treated me like a person."

"But you were still a slave. Which is the sticking point."

"In name, yes." He nods. "But I was born a serf, and I would have died a servant of God and my abbot, if things had turned out as I expected."

"And you at least agreed to be that," she says.

He makes a so-so gesture.

"And now I'm truly free, bound by no vow or status, I agree to stay."

"What makes you stay? After that why wouldn't you leave?"

"I'm treated with respect, and I have a good place in the household. If I went back to England, if I could, they'd shut me away again."

"Are you still a servant, though? Still doing someone else's shit?"

"...yes, and one way or another I always would be." He doesn't understand. "I'm too old to be apprenticed."

"Why would you always be? Why couldn't you be your own man, do your own things and not have to work for anyone? With is one thing, but everything else... I don't understand why anybody would stay for that."

"Because to work in a skilled craft in England, one must complete an apprenticeship and be accepted into the guild... or else always be a wanderer."

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