milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Wash is in his booth, blueberries at one elbow and coffee at the other. In front of him are a slowly shifting digital map of one sector of his galaxy -- a couple of planets are scattered across it, along with markers for fuel points and major trading ports -- and a notebook scratched full of equations. His forehead's creased a little in concentration as he leans over them.

Two fuel points within reasonable distance of Illyria: one four hours before, if they burn carefully enough, the other six hours out the other side. No telling yet exactly how much havoc the shields'll play with the engine and their reserves, but....

Absently, he nibbles a blueberry and jots down a few more numbers.

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Wash smiles, tentatively, though his eyes are still pretty wide. He's seen weirder things in the 'verse than talking lions, true, but probably not a whole lot.

"Uh, yeah, I think I might be, unless Cuthbert knows anybody else living on a ship. Um." He starts to set down the pen, reconsiders, tucks it behind his ear, and offers a hand. "Wash, middle of nowhere, 2518. Pilot of Serenity."

Chur eyes the hand and then sighs and allows her hand to be grasped in return. It... feels pretty much like a cat's paw, only she has an opposable thumb.

"Chur, currently halfway to Urtur, some time after 2400 human time or the 11th year of the New Peace. Mapmaker, Sleepwalker, and supercargo on The Pride of Chanur," she replies, and purses her lips into a delighted smile.

Definitely weird. But Wash gives the hand (paw?) a firm shake anyway, the smile growing.

"Pride of Chanur, what kind of ship's that?"

The hani flicks an ear and reclaims her hand, rubbing a little at the center of it. "We used to be a merchanter, but..." Another earflick. "The captain's gotten herself named mekt-hakkikt, and President of the Amphictony of Anuurn, not to mention Personage of the Compact... for some reason people think we won't trade straight anymore." A third earflick, and then Chur sneezes a laugh.

All of that earns a polite blink.

"See, it's funny," he says with the same politeness, scratching his ear. "I know those were supposed to be words, and yet I didn't understand any of it."

Chur sneezes a laugh. "Anuurn's my homeworld, so, President of the Amphictony means... ruler of all hani, though really, the han does more ruling than ker Pyanfar. Compact means the cluster of star systems in our part of the galaxy, and Personage is the... authority in whose name interspecies laws are made. Mekt-hakkikt..." She sighs, and then shakes her head. "If the other two didn't make sense, mekt-hakkikt wouldn't. Do you at least know of merchant ships?"

A half-snorted chuckle. "Yeah, that part I managed to get."

Chur shakes her head. "Well. If you know of Earth - Anuurn orbits Ahr, and Ahr is about six weeks away from Earth's sun. Well. Six weeks if you're in the Pride. Probably twice that in a... hnnn. Unmodified merchanter." And then she smiles her most innocent smile - which may or may not come across as innocent, given her felinoid face - and asks, "Mind if I sit?"

"Oh, no, I don't mind at all." Mostly because she kind of looks like she could bite his head off if he said no. He clears his work out of the opposite side of the booth and gestures toward it. "Make yourself comfortable.

"Earth's still around in your time?"

Chur nods. "Overpopulated and at war with pretty much every other human planet, but yes, it's still there. I've been to a station orbiting Mars, got a lovely view of the Earthrise."

He smiles, a little wistfully. "Friend from here took me and the rest of the crew to New York City about a month ago," he says. "First time anybody from our time's set foot on the place in four hundred years."

Chur's eyes narrow in curiosity. "Earth - in your time - lasted only long enough to send out colonists," she says. It's not really a question. "Well, my human friend, Tully, was from Earth. It's definitely still around, not just the stations."

Wash nods. "Earth-That-Was," he says, and picks at the blueberries. "You hear lots of stories about it when you're a kid -- kind of hard to tell what's real and what isn't."

And a sudden grin. "I first walked in here and thought everybody was just making it up when they told me where they were from. It was absolutely fēng kuáng de."

Chur flicks an ear, and then lays both back against her head, briefly. "It was absolutely what?" she asks, confused. "Normally the Bar translates, but I guess it didn't..."

"Fēng kuáng de," he explains. "Crazy. That was the other thing that got to me: everybody can speak both Mandarin Chinese and English in my 'verse, and nobody can here. I've tried to teach a couple people so I can be lazy and not have to translate it, but that idea always crashes and burns like a very bright crashing thing."

Chur sneezes a laugh. "I can't speak any human languages, though I can say the cardinal numbers, and 'stop', 'good', 'no', and.... yeah, I think that's it. It sounds to me like everyone's speaking the pidgin, and I know no one is, because humans can't really speak it."

She concentrates on speaking the pidgin, and not on just speaking, in hopes that the bar won't translate it. "THERE'S TOO MANY ROUGH NOISES, AND CONSONANTS ARE DIFFERENT," she says - and as the bar complies and doesn't translate it, she sounds rather like a cougar growling to itself.

Wash jumps a little.

"Please don't eat me," he says before he can stop himself.

Chur sneezes a laugh - and then another one, and then another one, and her nose is starting to run from laughing so hard, but she can't help it. Finally she gets control of herself. "Sorry," she squeaks. "I forget what the pidgin sounds like to humans." She wipes her nose, apologetically.

Helpfully, Wash grabs a few napkins out of the dispenser and hands them to Chur.

"Like you're growling in a 'hey, that man in the bright shirt looks like he'd make a good lunch' kind of way? Yeah."

He's smiling now, though. Maybe a bit nervously, but it's a smile.

Chur wipes her hand on a napkin. "Thanks," she says, and looks like she's about to start laughing again, but controls the urge. "Hani don't eat living prey, and we don't eat meat-eaters. Kif, now - if a kif comes in, and she's from before the New Peace, before Sikkukuk's death, she'll probably see a human as... an exotic animal. And kif love the status of eating exotic animals."

She decides not to mention, yet, that kif can't stomach eating food that's already dead.

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