milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Eponine has been around. Busy, ceaselessly so lately, but around.

She has a cocky strut as she emerges from the portrait portal to the House of Arch. Laden with books crammed with bits of yellow and blue note paper tucked up under her chin, holding a large blue platter in her hand and dressed casually - but with her ubiquitous mob cap in place. She looks up and raises an eyebrow at her surroundings.

"Not the plan, but I'll work with it," she declares.

Eponine has become, over the past few months, just the thing she wished to become when she was playfully taunting Marius on the streets of Paris all those months ago - a student. A student delayed, who has graduated from picture books to chap books to young adult novels. According to her tutors she's near around to where a girl her age ought to be, brainwise.

She'll always be a bit too skinny, a bit too unparticular about her food. A bit too haunted. But normal, still, on some level.

Gavroche won't give up on her, of course. Together, they have broadened her knowledge. She knows how many cups are in a pint. She knows the date and place where Marie Antoinette was beheaded. She's added two and two and subtracted the whole.

And, even though it's not a necessary quality in a young girl her age anymore, she's begun to learn how to cook.

Therefore - placing her platter, heaping with brownies that seem to at least be passably edible onto the table - She approaches the notice board with one of the markers from her books and takes up a pen, and soon tacked right in the middle there is the following bit of doggerel:

Answer the girl in the red cap this riddle
and a treat you shall have:

A farmer has twelve cows and four chickens. How many didn't?

A silly riddle - one she'd learned from the first of the chap books that Gav bought her - but one that leaves her proud. It's written in a fine hand, one a lady would be proud of, and spelled out carefully. She sits down at her table with a cup of wine, and waits for a clever curious someone to unburden her. Or even a familiar face.

Progress. It happens slowly, but it happens for us all.

[OOC: I just got back from seeing the latest touring company of Les Mis and guess who got loud. Open forever, catch her at the board or catch her at her table. Also I totally need a link into the crackchat discord so anyone who has one can you dm me?]

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Sonya made a point of not entirely appearing in uniform once she found a door into Milliways. Not entirely of course, but her shirt untucked, her hair pulled into a more relaxed ponytail, and switching from boots to more relaxed keds-just enough to remind herself she wasn't at the academy anymore and didn't need to stick to a professional image.

There's also a stack of books with her, she can't entirely escape that part of schooling either, however much she likes to use this place as a break.

The bulletin board gets her attention though, and question (riddle?) even more so. "How many..what?"

How many didn't what?..Didn't make it to the butcher, didn't get to the other side?

"How many didn't?" Eponine calls cheerfully from her table. "It's a pretty important question," she adds as an afterthought.

(It's really not)

She turned toward the girl, fully addressing her this time. "How many what? How many did the farmer butcher..sell?" She eyes the brownies on the table and considers the rest of the notice "This is a joke riddle, isn't it?"

Hell, she could easily woof down a plate of brownies herself if she wished. She saw no reason why another person would make an unsolvable riddle just to tease people with them while having them all to herself.

"It's not a joke," Eponine promises. "It's more like a pun." But she nudges the brownies closer. "You can have a couple, if you want.

Gavroche swings by, eyeing her sign with a grin.

"Look at you and your fine writing."

She grins and lifts her shoulders. "Wouldn't have had nearly as much practice without you."

"That's what I'm here for", he agrees cheerfully. "How are you?"

"Right as rain," she said. "And well-pleased. tho it makes it sound like I've got a swelled-up head, don't it?"

"Not a bit of it", he counters. "You should be well pleased."

"Aww." She pinches his cheek. "And what've you been up to when I haven't been around?"

"Underside stuff." He shrugs. "Slowly, slowly, convincing them they should make one unified place."

"I always thought they were one big unified place," she admitted. Being new to the whole situation has likely skewed Eponine's belief system.

"In a way. But there's all sorts of factions."

"Tell me something about 'em." She doesn't know much about the social politics yet - she's been more insular than she's ever been in her life, trying to learn how to really become part of this world.

"Well, there's the Ratspeakers, and the Sewer Folk you've seen at open air markets, and the People of the Mushroom, and the Courts and the Black Friars... Every fief apart in its own way."

"Do they all have a bunch of different languages?" clear communication's something she values.

"They all can speak English, except the Sewer Folk who don't talk at all. The Ratspeakers understand Rat, but I don't know if any of them can speak it back."

"You've made me want to learn rat. Just for the heck of it. My brain's all stuffed up as it is already with Latin and Spanish and English and French."

Gavroche grins. "You could try! I know some of the rats would teach you."

"How do we ask them? I don't want them to have to do it for free." She believes in equality and liberation, and unpaid labor feels gauche when she and Gav have so much now.

"They can understand when people talk to them, and I can translate for you what they say back."

"All right," she says. "Then once I learn it I can do it on my own!"

"Sure!" he agrees cheerfully. "Anyone can learn the Speech to talk to things."

"Unless they don't have an ear for it!" She thinks that's fair to point out.

"Well, if they have trouble with languages, it might be harder for them. But they still could."

She nodded her head. "As long as it's not too much for 'em."

“They could always take it slow. And not expect to learn the whole language. No one ever does.”

She nods thoughtfully. "We'll be doing it together, so I guess they'll be all right telling one of us if they're getting pushed too hard."

Gavroche nods. "They're usually not shy about telling people that, if it's too much for them."

"Now you've got me curious - how do they fight?"

She's imagining them at their most warlike - and it is an admittedly fun mental image.

“The rats here, I’ve never seen them fight. The rats Below... among themselves, with teeth, but that hardly ever happens. If they’re fighting something bigger, the same but in a swarm.”

"Not so different from the rats we used to deal with in the gutters, then?" He's sheltered her from that part of the Below.

"Not at all different, really. Just Below, they've got people who can understand them."

"Do you have to be born Below to understand?" she asks. "Or can you pick the talk up if you're aboveground?"

"You have to be part of Below", he says after a moment's thought. "Not necessarily born there."

She sort of wants to learn now. "Well, if you can learn, I suppose I can."

"Course you can", he says cheerfully. "I'll help."

"Really?!" She's visibly delighted.

“Why not? All it’ll take is time and we’ve got plenty of that.”

"We definitely do!" she beams.

(And wrap, I think?)

[OOC: Wraps! See ya in bearplot :D]

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