milliways_bar | (no subject)

A familiar voice sounds from the rafters.

"What world is that game from?"

"Garyn, may the Force of others be with you!" Chirrut calls back cheerfully as he gathers up the balls again. "I don't know, I found the tables and some instructions the other day. Of course, most times when I don't know where something came from, it's that planet they named after dirt... so probably that one."

"Usually a safe bet," Garyn says.

He drops down carefully to get a closer look at the table.

"They have chess, I know. Same as my world. I think that's the stranger thing. That some things are similar."

"Maybe there's only so many games." Chirrut suggests, "So your are bound to have a few repeats."

"I wouldn't expect every rule to be the same," Garyn says. "It's a complicated game."

He peers more closely at the table.

"I suppose the object of this game is to get the balls into the holes."

"Using the sticks, yes. There were other rules, but I stopped reading after that." Chirrut admits, unbothered by the idea he might be doing it wrong. "It seemed like an interesting enough challenge."

"I imagine the other rules have something to do with the colors and markings on the balls," Garyn says. "So they wouldn't be much good to you anyway."

"No." Chirrut hasn't had use for color all his life, and didn't gain an appreciation for it the very short time he had to find out what they were like for himself. "Then it is better this way."

"I suspect it is," Garyn says.

"How goes it for you in Milliways? Anything happen apart from finding this table?"

"I've started harvesting my tea plants - now I have all the Sapir I could ever want." Chirrut all but crows, deeply pleased by this new development.

"Or your friends, I'll wager," Garyn says.

"A lot of room out back for planting. I'd guess you could lay down a plot that's as big as one man could ever harvest."

"Oh, these plants are a bit too temperamental to try in the weather out there - I pamper them a bit, in their own room. Might as well, Bar can provide rooms in whatever size and shape we need." Perhaps, perhaps he could try growing them outside but... why? His little (or not so little, now) sunroom is very pleasant.

"I'm not a gardener myself," Garyn says, "so I wouldn't know about raising plants indoors. What I use in potions, I gather from the wild."

"Turns out to be much easier if you grow it yourself. It's been a shocking revelation." He laughs.

Edited 2019-07-26 06:20 (UTC)

"Is it?" Garyn says. "Perhaps I'm in the wrong profession."

Sinthia spends a little while watching Chirrut play with the pool instruments, silent and still while he racks the balls up again. Her skirt, neatly pressed, swishes gently against her legs as she steps forward.

"Don't you usually need two people for that game?" she asks, standing around the corner from him.

"There is another stick, over there, if you wanted to make it two players." Chirrut notes, as he lines up his shot. He never read far enough to learn about cue balls, and it wouldn't have mattered much if he had - one feels very much like the other, in the end. So he's shooting the balls directly into their pockets.

Still with an uncanny aim, despite the non-compliance with the rules.

"Though you would have to tell me what other rules I should be playing by, so we are playing the same game."

"I don't know how to play, I only know of the game," Sinthia replies lightly, watching him aim and the balls skitter into the pockets time after time. But, though she doesn't explain out loud, all the gleaning she's done indicates there should be two people.

But she does lift one of the pool balls up to float as if by its own volition over the felt surface and deposit itself gently into her hands. "I wonder why they're so heavy. The balls." It's strangely both much more solid and lighter than she thought it would be.

Chirrut pauses, frowning, because... wait, what? He waves a hand through the space the ball she'd moved had been, confirming that it was gone, then shrugs to himself. It would be highly inconvenient to go crazy now, so it's just as well that he got that one right, no matter how weird it is.

"The weight of the universe." He notes, sagely, having no idea and a great ability to generate important-sounding terms on the fly. "I am Chirrut Imwe - may the Force of others be with you."

"You're not crazy," she says lightly, if dryly in response to his comment. Scientifically speaking without gravity, the universe weighs nothing; still, she doesn't say that, and instead watches his hand wave through the space. "I have the ball. I wanted to look at it."

Ah, telepathy, making non-sequiturs vastly less unintelligible since (in her case) 1941.

"My name is Sinthia Schmidt," she answers back, putting the ball back on the table and rolling it to its former spot. She has quite nice fine control over small objects like the pool balls. "What kind of force do you mean?"

Chirrut catches the ball and rolls it up onto his fingers in one smooth motion. It gives something for his hands to do while he talks, since hitting the balls makes all sorts of racket.

"The Force that binds and guides us, made of all living things... and the one that evidently forgot to tell you that snooping inside someone else's head is rude, mmm?" It's a rebuke, but a gentle one. He likes kids, and there usually aren't many around here.

Edited 2019-07-19 05:11 (UTC)

"Hm."

She watches his hands manipulate the ball, brows lowering gently as he brings up the telepathy. On one hand, this is what she does. On the other...

"I apologize if you don't like it." It's not the most sincere apology, nor the most graceful, but it's an attempt. If he'd caught her earlier in her stay, he might not have gotten that much. "It's encouraged for me to do it at home," Sinthia decides eventually in attempt at honesty, speaking slowly. She's not up to explaining why it isn't considered rude (by anyone that matters for very long) but the apology at all is an effort.

"There are so many things encouraged." Chirrut sighs, then shrugs to himself, over-large and somehow not awkward for it. "But that is not here... partially there, I'm sure, but not here."

"I don't stop being what I am because I come here," she says lightly. "But if you don't want me to do it, I won't." Or she'll attempt not doing it.

Probably, she just won't tell him she's doing it.

"Do you like those colors? Black and red?"

Chirrut gasps, his hands patting down his robes.

"What? They told me it was blue and purple!" He declares, but there's a wry grin that follows it, because no, he will never fail to joke about his own blindness. He just thinks it's hilarious, the focus put on sight.

Sinthia eyes him suspiciously.

"They're not," she says, and even if he can't see her face there's far and away enough in her voice to tell her uncertainty about this subject. She's never met anyone blind before, nor really anyone comfortable with a sense of humor around her. Sinthia tends to make it difficult for most people to joke.

Chirrut has laughed in the presence of much tougher customers than her - he can take it.

"Well then. Thank the Force I'm blind, or I'd have to endure it."

For the first time in a very, very long time, Sinthia almost cracks a smile. It's less because she finds his blind joke funny--she still doesn't know what to make of that--but he seems no less able to make light of things around her.

That is, even here, exceedingly uncommon.

"Where are you from, Chirrut Imwe?"

"I come from NiJedha, a holy city high upon a mesa above a desert moon." Chirrut recounts fondly, love for his home no less strong for time away and its destruction.

Edited 2019-07-26 05:11 (UTC)

"You must not be from earth, then," she says. "What planet does your moon orbit?" Sinthia asks, curious now.

"The planet named after dirt? No. The moon of Jedha orbits the gas planet of NaJedha." Chirrut explains, then gives a crooked little smile.

"Our namers weren't very creative either, it turns out."

"It seems like a decent name. Most of the habitable areas on the planet are covered in it," Sinthia replies. "I wouldn't think naming the thing you live on would be overly important unless viewing it from an outside perspective."