milliways_bar | (no subject)

Off to one side, in a place where there really shouldn't be shadows, a very small man (boy, perhaps?) sits toying with a cup of tea which was hot an hour or two ago, and now really, really isn't.

Witch Baby spots a kid in the corner - even younger than Ed, looks like, at least from over here. She looks at him through the camera lens, but it's too dark without using her flash. The only thing she can tells is that he looks bored. Incidentally, so's she.

"Hey," she says, taking a seat across from him.

He looks up at her, and he isn't a kid. He's short enough, and thin enough (being approximately 5'2", around 120/130lbs), but he's got lines in his face from age and pain. A guess of twenty five or so wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

He's older than that, but he looks twenty five.

"Greetings, Lady. Can I be of assistance?"

And his voice is bitter dark chocolate swirled into just-barely cooling caramel.

Whoa. Definitely not a kid.

"Um," she says, not feeling remotely like a lady. "Not really. You looked kinda bored, and I am too, and plus I couldn't really see you from the bar 'cause it's really dark over here. Which is weird, because I don't think it's usually that dark over here." Much with the rambling. Must be all that sugar in the OJ.

He laughs, softly, and waves a hand.

The light flows back when the shadows leave,

"Bored? Ama'idan, I am sorry that you felt that way. Perhaps I may entertain you. My name is Arithon s'Ffalenn, Master of Shadows."

Which, if nothing else, explains the darkness.

Goddesses, spaceship mechanics, masters of shadows--

Witch Baby is starting, for the first time in her life, to feel very normal.

"I'm Witch Baby," she says. "And, er, you don't have to entertain me. I don't want to be a pain or anything."

Milliways: Where only the normal is abnormal.

He quirks a smile at her, warm and comforting,

"It is my pleasure. Better, I think, than staring at my tea while it attempts to decide if it is going to freeze, yes?"

She grins back. ""Don't tell me even the tea here can make decisions," she says, and the question isn't serious.

Well, maybe it is. But just a little.

"Where are you from?" she asks.

"I would not put it past the tea here."

He says wryly, setting the cup down with a soft click,

"I was born upon the world Dascen Elur, the kingdom of Karthan. Exiled through the World Gate to the world of Mearth. From there I made my way with my half-brother to the world of Athera. In theory, Rathain is my country, but in practice I arrived from the sea; as I am rather unwelcome in that world."

She's starting to get used to people who aren't from Earth. Really. Doesn't throw her at all. Neither does that huge jumble of names.

"I'm from Los Angeles. Er, on Earth. There's a couple other people at Milliways from there."

She's also starting to get used to asking questions that she'd normally think were kind of rude. "So, why'd you get exiled?" Though she still winces every time she does it. Maybe not all that used to that, either.

She's doing better than most. People tend to stare at him when he lists multiple worlds.

"I know Earths. I have visted three, and currently live on one of them in the House of Arch."

There is a faint laugh,

"From Dascen Elur? For the crime of being s'Ffalenn. Intra-kingdom feud lasting seven generations or so."

"Sorry," she says. "That's lousy." Understatement what?

"What's the Master of Shadows thing about? 'Cause, you know, it kinda sounds like the name of one of those creepy metal bands my band used to play with, sometimes, and not so much like an actual title for a person."

"Metal...bands?"

Brief confusion, then he shrugs it off. He extends a hand, and the local shadows peel away from the things casting them and coil into his hand like a bevy of loving mice. Even her shadow slips from her body; she feels nothing, but the shadow is gone.

"They are mine. I am the Master of Shadows; an elemental master with control over all forms of darkness. Not evil. Darkness."

"Oh. Sorry. The not from Earth thing. Um, it's a bunch of people that play music? And it's not music I like, really. It's just kinda loud and a lot of screaming."

The shadow trick impresses her - she feels kinda like Peter Pan, with the missing shadow, but she doesn't say anything since he probably wouldn't catch the reference. "So does that apply to other stuff, too? I mean - could you make it be night, or anything? Or is it just shadows?"

He lets the shadows return to their homes, quirking a faint smile,

"The sun can be blotted out just as easily, yes. Darkness, shadow, Bindings, and illusions are mine from my Mastery. As well, I have studied Sorcery, and have rather more things which I can do with that."

"The blotting out the sun thing might get you exiled where I'm from, too," Witch Baby says, joking. "Nobody would be able to get a tan." Of course, she's as pale as chalk, but you know. Most people are like that.

"Sorcery - like witch stuff? My mom's a witch - not like you, I mean, she can't make the sun go out or anything. But that's how I got my weird name."

"Perhaps?"

He says after a moment,

"I am not certain what witches do. It seems to differ on each world. The Koriani are called witches, and what I do is nothing like what they do."

And he tilts his head, waiting to hear what she means by weird name. Considering that his means "one who forges fate", he sees nothing wrong with it.

"I don't really know. I mean I think my mom does some freaky stuff, potions, maybe love potions and - I don't know. I don't know her very well. Or I mean at all really."

She looks at her feet. "Which is why my name's sort of - I don't know. Because my mother really isn't a good person and that's still all my dad's family sees, that I'm the witch baby. I know they don't really. But it feels that way."

"I do not do potions."

He says after a moment,

"My host, Tom Riddle, Lord Ostium, is attempting to teach me. It gives me headaches. I use the prime vibration, Ath, and it makes things happen as I will them."

And then he frowns, at her last statement,

"That is far too bad of them. You did not choose your mother, and demeaning you because of her is cruel."

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"Some I was born with, some I learned. My grandfather ran the school of sorcery on Dascen Elur."

A faint laugh, and a sigh,

"Potions are not a thing learned upon my world. They are of another world, and the magic of that world makes my head ache dreadfully. Setting you apart is not fair. There is no reason for it."

"I bet sorcery school was a lot more exciting than the school I went to," she says. And smirks. "Not that I really went all that much. And life's not fair, right? I mean, getting exiled 'cause of your family isn't fair, either. That's really a lot less fair even than my family thinking I'm crazy."

He's quiet for a moment, then offers,

"In his defense, my mother was the other king's wife."

And he laughs, softly,

"I have nothing to compare it to. I learned."

"You didn't choose your mother, either," she points out. "So that isn't really much of a defense."

"So what do you get when you graduate from sorcery school? I mean do you have a magic degree?"

Graduate and degree make no sense to him. After a time he says,

"I am a sorcerer. There are not terribly many of us, perhaps seventeen on two worlds."

She nods. She's still getting the hang of talking to people who, you know, aren't from Earth. "What do sorcerers do after they leave school? I mean, you're here, obviously, but the rest of them?"

"Take care of things. The planet, the people. Increase the store of human knowledge. Heal and help and mend, create and care for."

He says with a faint sigh,

"I do not heal, I do not know those magics, but I am able to Bind demons; that is what I was born for."

"Bind them?" She wonders if that's like being Bound here. She's not really thrilled about the Binding, generally.

"Yes."

He says quietly,

"Bind them."

It is, and it isn't. When Arithon Binds something, it is Bound forever. No lessons learned, no other magics, nothing but his desire can unBind it. Demons are not something you mess about with, after all.

"Are there a lot of demons in your world?" The demons Witch Baby knows are mostly human ones. Sometimes they're humans with magic - but nothing more than that.

"Yes."

He's not going to explain about theire meaning demon, spirit, and dead. It gets confusing,

"And the most prevalent kind of them invades a body and twists it into something else."

She swallows. Body-snatching seems to be going around lately, even in her mostly-unmagical world. "Like Illyria? Do you know her?"

"I have met her."

He says carefully,

"And somewhat like that, yes. However generally the theire from my world are not so strong."

"That's probably a good thing," she says. Witch Baby actually sort of liked Illyria, but she thinks it's probably only because they met in Milliways.

She raises an eyebrow. "So, when you guys met, did you tell her what your job is?"

"Yes."

He says quietly,

"But there is no business in the bar."

"Oh. Right." Pesky rules. "That's sort of a cool thing about here, though. I mean otherwise if you weren't here you'd--" she snaps with her left hand-- "Bind her, like that, and she'd go...away. Where would she go, anyway?"

"Into whatever I Bound her to."

Is the quiet response. He keeps threatening Archie with a wall.

"Mind, I am not terribly quick to judge. It is not my way. If she were not violent, or intending to harm others, I would not do so to her."

If he's ever Bound anything into a mannequin or a doll, he *really* shouldn't mention it.

"So when you Bind the demons, the people whose bodies they took - do they get better? I mean - are they okay, afterward?"

A long pause,

"I can not fix that which is destroyed."

Which translates to the fact that the Fellowship has one person who does nothing but kill the result of what happens with theire invade beings.

Luckily, the greatest concentration of such things is in a place where humans just don't go.

"Oh," she says quietly. "I'm sorry." She thinks it must be pretty hard to deal with - to be able to get rid of demons but not help the people they hurt.

"As am I."

He says after a time. And there is so much pain, these days, that he has to run a hand across his face,

"Ama'idan, Lady. I need to join my Chiavalden. She will be worried about me."

"Okay," Witch Baby says with a weak smile. "Have a good night. It was nice to meet you."

She stands up to go, then turns around and quickly snaps a picture of him - she couldn't get one before, when he was all shadowy. She puts the camera back and gives a small wave goodbye.

He has no clue what just happened. A blink, a bow, and he offers her a return smile,

"It was an event to meet you, as well."

And then he walks to the painting that leads to the House of Arch, and through it.