milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Alain's staked out the usual corner of the usual couch. Tea, for a change, and french fries. He's starting a new book, obtained by the usual method of asking the bar for something interesting. It's in English, this time: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by a man named L. Frank Baum.

So far, the little girl has just been swept up by a great wind, and dropped in a country full of slow mutants, killing an evil witch thereby.

Alain is still figuring out whether he likes this story.

Tucked into the book as a bookmark is a note the bar produced with his food.

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"You aren't going to judge it by its cover?"

Alain does not know this proverb.

Also, the cover is plain brown fabric.

He looks mildly puzzled. "...Hadn't planned to."

"Probably for the best," he agrees with a shrug, being himself none too impressed by the cover.

"I've seen you now and again, good sir, but I don't think we've met. I feel most remiss."

A quick smile.

"Alain Johns."

He offers a hand.

Puck takes it, this time managing to release it in a more or less timely manner.

"Enchanted, Alain Johns. Call me Robin, if you like."

Interesting phrasing.

"Robin it is."

"I must say, I'm not one for putting any great stock in literature," he says thoughtfully, eyeing the book.

A curious glance.

"Do you say so?"

"Usually it's wrong, you see," he explains helpfully.

Consideringly, "I'd not say wrong. If it's not meant as history, then it's a tale, and that has its own truth. Even if the facts are wrong."

"But all the great myths began as history," he replies. "They became stories when none could bother any longer to get them right."

"Mayhap."

"Or perhaps when those telling it found another meaning that was truer for them. It's important to keep the history, aye, but not only that."

It's been a while since Alain had a discussion like this. He's enjoying it.

Puck doesn't often meet a mortal who'll engage him in debate. It's ... a change.

"There are things aside from the dry facts, true enough, to inspire and nourish the spirit ... but all the same, I shouldn't like to be a god or a creature from tales of old." A smile. "To be forgotten or maligned ... not the happiest of fates, wouldn't you say?"

Alain shrugs, with a small smile.

"There are worse fates, I'd say." Alain's known all his life that he was one of the sidekicks, though he wouldn't phrase it that way. And the center of most of his world

(blood and thunder tales of pretend)

has become past tense.

"Better too, of course."

"That there are," he says with a smooth shrug. "Perhaps it doesn't do to complain."

"No point unless it changes things, I've found."

A gesture with one hand, the equivalent of a shrug.

"Nay, but -- to be forgotten is galling, mayhap, but is it worse than having the stories misrepresent you?"

"But the tales we were speaking of, past history into story and myth... It's as much about the teller and the listener, by then. Only half about the events as they happened."

"I couldn't say which is worse, never having been forgotten.

"But then, it almost is, isn't it, when the original actors become divorced from the tale? When it's naught but clever devices to please speaker and audience?"

For Robin, this discussion clearly isn't quite such idle speculation as it is for Alain.

Interesting.

Thoughtfully, "Maybe."

"It depends on what of the truth is kept, I suppose."

"And there's the rub," he retorts with a grin. "Hardly ever the truth that matters most."

Alain shrugs, with a quick answering smile.

"Aye, true enough, sometimes."

"Though again it's a question of who it matters to."

A tilt of his head.

"Whose truth matters to you, then, Alain?"

A steady look.

"The truth of my fathers, and my friends, and what I saw in life."

"And yours?"

He looks straight back, eyes blue and bright and filled with mirth.

"The truth of the ones who'll pass into legend."

"Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years," he says, with a crooked smile. It has the air of a quote, or a saying.

"Legends will be what they'll be, whatever we who live them might think of it.

"And a lifetime lived with honor and care will crumble into dust," he replies, his own smile much the same, if perhaps a little sharper.

A shrug, smooth and careless.

"It is, perchance, something to think on."