milliways_bar | (no subject)

And perhaps it doesn't...

Goldilocks hasn't been waiting around hopefully. She has her own life, albeit a slightly dull one. The fact that she's at the bar now is a mere coincidence. She even looks quite surprised to see the green-eyed woman back again.

"Oh. Hello again."

It's around this point that she realizes that she never did get a name last night. Or much else for that matter...

Luck takes a sip of her own drink, pushing a bottle that'd waited in front of her toward the other woman.

She hadn't been waiting for Goldy, but she'd known she would come.

Goldy smiles and raises the bottle in thanks.

"You're too kind," she adds before taking a swig.

"I guess you do come here often after all."

"Oh, I'm always around, cupcake. Just not always where I can be seen."

"I sort of figured. But I prefer seeing you."

She laughs, delighted.

"I suspect you're firmly in the minority, dear."

"Aw. Now you're just being modest," Goldy coos. "Unless there's something you're not telling me."

And, of course she knows there is.

"There are an impossible amount of things I'm not telling you. You'd never believe the things I've seen."

"Whether I believe is not really the issue. I've seen my fair share of absurdities and marvels as well. Comes from spending an age in what many would regard as a fantasy world, and then living in a mundane one for several ages more."

She picks at the corner of the label on her bottle.

"Try me."

"The world rests on four elephants rests on the turtle swims through space. In the centre is the hub of the wheel of the earth, and that's where we live. Playing with mortals."

Goldy doesn't balk or even blink at the information.

"The wheel of the earth. As in The Disc?"

"Oh, you've met a pawn?"

She lifts an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth matching it.

She's deliberately cruel, testing her reaction.

"Pawns. Heh. I like that."

"Yes. The first person I talked to when I dropped in here actually. One Mistress Eska Smith. An uptight witch training to be a wizard, at—" she squints, trying to remember, "The Unseen University, I believe."

"She was nice enough but I'm afraid I though she was an S&M fetishist with a weird Hallow'een fixation at first. Black hat and robe and all that Mistress stuff."

"I haven't seen her since," she says with a little chuckle.

"Shame. Wizards always make for good games."

Her smile is a little wider - she finds herself liking this creature increasingly.

Games...

Goldy tilts her head and closes one eye—weighing the lady once more.

"Oh, I don't know. There are plenty of other play things here."

She swallows some more beer and licks her lips with a little more languor than is strictly necessary.

"To be fair, I wasn't aware of the turtle or the elephants. Interesting, and, yes, a little odd. Nothing I can't handle though."

She traces her finger lightly along the line of Goldy's jaw.

"Volunteering?"

Goldy reaches up and takes her finger as it completes its sweep. She doesn't do anything with it. She just holds it there with a wanton little smile.

"If you like. I'm game for anything."

She chuckles quietly and stretches her other fingers, tracing her nails over the sensitive skin of Goldy's palm.

"Don't make promises you can't keep. You have no idea who you're dealing with."

"That makes it all the more exciting," Goldy murmurs.

"But feel free to set my mind at ease. I know you're a Goddess from the Discworld, and an attractive one at that. Though, I suppose you have full control over your form."

She tenses at the pleasant sensations and returns the caress with her own nails, eventually lacing their fingers together.

"Hm. What else? What do you have dominion over?"

"...Set your mind at ease? Whyever would I want to do a thing like that?"

There's an edge to her voice that wasn't there, before.

"Because you like me," she offers non-commitally.

"You amuse me."

For the moment is neither explicitly stated nor really needed. It's all in the tone.

Goldy untangles her fingers from those of the goddess and helps herself to some more beer.

"Glad to be of service," she says blankly.

Luck laughs quietly, her smile far less cruel than usual. Her voice is almost gentle.

"Never expect too much. Certainly never trust to your good fortune. Never trust in anything outside of a moment."

And in this moment, delicate fingers reach out again and wrap around Goldy's wrist.

Goldy is still a picture of calm. "I wasn't expecting anything, and I know well enough that fortune has a peculiar habit of favoring those who don't depend on it. I was merely asking on the off-chance. Impetuous as it may have been of me, it never hurts to ask."

She reaches across to the hand that holds her and draws the back of her fingernails lightly along the underside of the Lady's forearm.

"Or not normally, at least."

"And one could never call me that."

Her face is solemn, now, but her voice still holds laughter as she leans, perhaps, a little closer.

"I rarely consider any ethereal normal, per se. But, why especially in your case?" she ventures.

She draws her hand away, closes it into a fist, opens it again to reveal two red cubes on her palm.

"Play for it."

Eyebrow.

"A game. How convenient," she states flatly. "With all due respect, against a deity, somehow I don't fancy my chances. But it would be dreadfully impolite to assume the worst. And probably more foolish to decline."

So resolved, she takes up the dice and inspects them suspiciously on the flat of her own palm.

"Okay. What are we playing, or what am I shooting for?"

"The moon?"

She ghosts her fingers over the dice, carefully not touching Goldy's hand.

"Doubles. If you roll one first, the truth you want. If mine is the double, I shall take what I will."

She scrutinizes the dice for a few moments more, then nods her head in solemn agreement.

"Doubles it is. That doesn't sound too bad." Almost win-win, unless I'm dreadfully mistaken.

She closes her fingers and cups the gaming pieces between both palms, giving a little shake, pausing and blowing into the space through her thumbs—not for any real reason. She's never been blessed with great fortune, nor does she consider herself particularly ill-fated, so, she just plays the odds. Without further ado she lightly casts them out onto the bar top, where they bounce and roll with that comforting resonance of hard

material on lacquered wood, and finally come to rest...

On a seven, and a three. And the dots shift for a moment, blur as the dice and the Universe realises that's impossible, that can't be, and the dice add up to nine, this time.

Green eyes are hard to read.

Goldy looks at the altered result impassively.

"Shame. A decent point to come out with though." If they were playing craps.

She lifts her beer and smiles softly at the goddess. "Okay, gorgeous. Show me what you can do."

She takes the dice, which flicker and change and for a moment, too fast to be sure, the dice are gone and a snake twines itself around her wrist. Then that, too, has gone and the dice are rolled and a two, snake eyes staring up from the table.

She smiles, and leans forward, and touches her tongue - deliberately, delicately - to the very centre of Goldy's lower lip.

Then that, too, has gone. As has she.

Initial wonderment and slight amusement fade into a frustrated eye roll. She tastes that tiny spot on her lip then erases the sensory memory with the last of her beer.

Goldilocks is not a pawn, or a mere play thing, for anyone.

Perhaps she'll have better luck next time...

Tim peers at the woman. She looks so familiar, so..close.

"Hello there."

She examines him, unsettlingly green eyes sweeping over him head to toe.

"Good evening."

He watches her eyes, curiously.

"I don't think I've seen you here before."

"I don't think you can have been looking right, dear."

"It's a possibility. Theres been thousands of people through here."

He offers a hand.

"I'm Tim."

She takes it.

"I suspect you have an idea what I am, but I'd advise you not to put a name to it. It does so annoy." And the way she smiles, and the flash of teeth suggests that it's not something you'd want to do.

"I am the Lady."

And he smells cigars, lingering smoke, mixing with a haze of alcohol..He doesn't need to hear the sound fo dice falling to get the picture.

"Ah. The Lady. Of course."

"Of course. And you're - " she tilts her head to one side. " - interesting."

"I'm...complicated."

and yes, he poses mysteriously when he says it. then he crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue.

"You're a child."

She speaks with the authority of one who has lived forever. And never grown.

"That too."

A faint shrug.

"I find the more powerful one becomes, the more one needs a sense of humor. Especially if one was mortal to begin with. I'm the incarnation of magic for my world."