milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Well, all right then. This place is pretty cool. Ursula has read the pamphlet, bought some art supplies at the bar, eaten some ice cream sundaes with an English girl, and taken a brief and unplanned nap in front of the fireplace. So now it's time to poke her head out the door and see the grounds.

You can catch her out and about--checking out the gardens, the stables, the woods. She's hard to miss, with her huge straw hat and backpack.

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Liz is out on the grounds today, looking distinctly less tidy than usual. But it's a look that may seem familiar to Ursula: squatting on the ground, her skirt hiked up past her knees, a sketchbook awkwardly balanced against her own arm as she leans in close to try and get a better look at a tiny little spring trickling its way out between some stones near the edge of the woods.

That's a familiar look, all right. Ursula whistles a tune as she comes up, as much to keep from startling her fellow-artist as anything else. (Hey, she's been startled herself and fallen on her butt in similar circumstances. It's one thing to get your clothes muddy, but dropping your sketchbook in a stream is a real pain.)

Liz appreciates the warning! She looks up and discreetly, instinctively flips the page over.

"Hello there."

"Hello! Don't worry, I'm not here to snoop. Or pilfer artistic inspiration." It's too cold for sketching--at least, when you're dressed for the middle of summer.

"Oh, you can pilfer away," Liz says, straightening up and trying to smooth her skirt back down. And her shirt. And her hair. "--Lord, I'm a mess, sorry. What's the saying? 'There is nothing new under the sun'? Someone's drawn this before, I'm sure, and will again."

"Mm, yeah, but they also say something about how you never step in the same river twice, right? So doesn't that cancel it out?"

Hee. She doesn't have to worry about smoothing things down. "Anyway, I'm lazy. I did my sketching inside where it's warm."

"So you're an artist?" She can't quite bring herself to say too. It sounds so presumptuous, and she already feels a bit ridiculous, standing here all cold and disheveled with mud-spattered stockings.

"I'm a painter, mostly. How about you?"

Yeah, it feels a little presumptuous. But sometimes you have to be brave about what you want to be.

"I work for a magazine," Liz says. Which is also accurate! More accurate, in her view, since it's the thing she gets paid for.

She wipes her hand off on her skirt before offering it to shake. "Elizabeth Imbrie."

"Oh! Hey, that's good!" You get paid for that! "I haven't found a job like that. --Hi. I'm Ursula." Shake! "I just got here a couple of hours ago. It's pretty amazing, isn't it?"

"A couple hours? I'm impressed," she says. "I don't think I made it outside for a few days at least."

"Oh, I was falling asleep inside," Ursula says cheerfully. "Not much chance of that out here. Hang on a second, okay?"

She plunks down the enormous backpack and rummages around until she finds her sweater, and pulls it on over her head--a fairly epic struggle really. "--So do you come here a lot?"

"Oh... d'you need...?" Nope, she seems to have it under control.

"Oh, ever one in a while. I mean, I don't get much say in the matter, really. The door opens, and here I am. I can't say I mind it, though."

"So it comes and goes? That's good to know. The door I came through was supposed to be the art-supply shop in town. Pretty sure I'd miss it if I couldn't get back there ever again. --How deep do those woods go?"

"Now that I don't know," Liz says, looking off towards the trees. "I've never gone much farther than this. People here say they just-- keep going."

"And you haven't tried to go deeper?" Ursula takes an involuntary step towards the trees, but--hey, it's probably not the time for that right now, and she stops with a laugh. "Well--okay, maybe that's a project for another day. It's just--it looks like a real forest, you know? After staring at that window and the fire for so long, it's funny to see something that looks so--real."

"Oh, it's real alright," Liz says. "Real leaves, real water..." She brushes ineffectually at her skirt once more. "...real mud. Real food, real liquor."

"...Real mud, yeah." She makes a sympathetic face. "Do you want to go back in and clean up? You can tell me how you got a job at a magazine..."

"Oh, I mean-- you said you were wanting to get outside, I certainly don't want to keep you from it."

"Welllll...my heart says yes, but my feet say no." She wiggles her toes, left very visible by flimsy sandals, and going a little blue in the chill. "You could talk me into going back to that fireplace."

Edited 2016-03-15 00:34 (UTC)

She laughs at the sight--not unkindly. "That looks like an adventure!"

"Yeah, I went on the assault course." Auxin laughs. "It's quite fun."

"The what course? Is that some kind of army thing?"

"I'm not sure, I just found it over there." Auxin says. "I don't think they have an army here."

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