milliways_bar | (no subject)

She obeys, powerless to resist the appeal of a new drink.

"I could really use one at the moment."

So Asar-Suti conjures her a mug of klah, the coffee-like drink he learned from Robinton of Pern, the other day. Thicker, spicier, warmer and softer than coffee, with notes of vanilla or caramel, and sweetened well. But just as energising.

"It's alled klah," he explains to Aeryn.

She takes a sip and smiles.

"I don't think much of the name, but the product is quite good."

It left a kind of warmth tingling through the body.

"Yes, it is," Asar-Suti agrees. "I learned about it from a very nice older gentleman named Robinton; he is a harper," he says.

"Never met him." She said bluntly.

"But he has good taste in drinks." She ran a hand through her hair.

"Even if it isn't alcoholic."

"It's to make you sane, not to make you silly," Asar-Suti says, with a grin. "Robinton is rather new here; he is Bound, but not dead."

"Dead?"

Evidently Aeryn hadn't heard about the dead people in Milliways.

"Oh yes; there's quite a lot of people here who are dead and Bound," Asar-Suti says.

"How can you be dead and still walking around?"

She hadn't seen any corpses.

"A very few of them are ghosts; but most of them are simply alive again, for the purposes of this place. I first came here following a dead follower of mine, actually. Erm. That sounds absurd. It was, really."

"That doesn't sound as absurd as you might think."

After all, she went to Valldon looking for Crichton, despite the obvious fact that he was dead.

"Thanks," Asar-Suti says, smiling. "To follow a follower is a bit - you know, off. I suppose. But then, I wanted him back."

"Did it work?"

She asked, taking another drink of the Klah.

"No - everything but," Asar-Suti says, shuddering.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She looked indifferent, but she just generally looked like that.

Asar-Suti shrugs.

"Old history, on the scale of things in Milliways," he says.

"I see. You seem upset about it."

She was looking at his eyes rather than the shrug.

"Aeryn, I am immortal - half a year is the blink of an eye to me. On the other hand, I am a person, and in that half-year or a bit more since I had to give up on Lochiel, very many things happened to me, the best of them a certain pretty kitchen faun named Gil," Asar-Suti says. "So, on the one hand, I am over that defeat; and on the other, I will never quite be."

"I'm sorry, I'm not very good at understanding emotions."

Especially not those of a God.

"And your own - do you understand those?" Asar-Suti asks.

"Even less than I understand yours."

That would explain why she kept fighting with Atton. It would also explain why she'd assaulted two people in the past week. In her defence, they had deserved it.

"Not a very good situation," Asar-Suti says. "I hope you don't get into pain or trouble over that."

"There's already been a lot of pain. Most of it for me, though not all. Also, some drunken mistakes."

She frowned and then changed her mind and smiled. There had also been some drunken things that hadn't been a mistake, as it turned out.

"There always are - that's human life. Even for gods, believe me," Asar-Suti grins.

"I should believe you, but I'm not that trusting." She joked, a half-smile on her lips.