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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"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."

Alain doesn't look particularly bothered by the notion.

"They'll be what they'll be," he repeats, easily. "True, or turned slant, or dust in the wind. The world moves on."

This is, one might think, something he's thought about before.

"The world moves on," he repeats thoughtfully. Then he laughs.

"Apt."

A small smile.

"It's what we say in my world," he explains. "It suits."

Puck smiles with sharp teeth.

"What of this place, though?"

It seems to be quite outside of time.

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