The Bar at the End of the Universe

The Bar has been remarkably sane to Therem these past weeks. It had been refreshing. And then... this. All of a sudden, no amount of tugging will free his feet from the floor.

It's very odd. But only mildly worrying. As long as there continue to be rats and patrons, Therem is relatively certain there will be someone who can help eventually. Even if his feet must be cut from the floor. He will worry later about the possibility of spending the rest of his days with wooden soles.

In the meantime, the small, dark-faced androgyne stands where he is in front of the observation window, looking up in puzzlement at the plant hanging above his head -- too high to reach for someone under five feet tall, alas!

Tonight in the bar, there are a couple of small androgynous people in sarongs with a book. It's a charming scene, really -- father (or mother? It's hard to tell by looking) and child (adult child, granted, and son or daughter is anyone's guess), using a colorful book acquired from Bar to identify the different animals running around, doing their best to pronounce their names.

"Dog," says Sorve, the younger, with certainty. They've gotten good at that one. He looks around and points, and Therem flips through the book.

"Rion," he declares. "Like a big cat."

"Rion. Cat." Sorve repeats them diligently, and together they recite he ones they've already learned. "Rabbit. Raccoon. Ferret. Bear. Worf. Skwerr." (Neither of them can quite manage a fair pronounciation of squirrel.) "Mouse. Owr. Chirp-monk..."

And then, rather suddenly, there is one of those non-sounds that accompanies a sudden magical shift. Therem, nonplussed, scoops up his transformed child in one arm and flips through the book.

"Otter," he reads thoughtfully.

Sorve pours himself out of his father's arms and onto the table. He walks in an experimental circle, seeming to ty to catch his own tail. Therem smiles. "What is it like?"

Sorve stops, tumbling over himself, then sits up on his back paws and tilts his head thoughtfully. He moves his mouth in squeaks and cheeps for a few moments before working out how to speak.

"Furry," answers the young lord, pawing at his own belly and twisting to look over his shoulders to his back and tail. "Do you suppose these changes are random?"

Therem shakes his head. "Some wizardry gone wrong, I expect. There is no harm done?" He eyes his otter-child with concern.

"None," Sorve assures him. "Everything seems much larger, though. And smells are more vivid."

The two continue in this manner, discussing with surprising detail the experience of Sorve's change.

So. Come join them!

[OOM: Fields of White - Jack Frost meets Estraven in kemmer. Millitimed to about 3 or 4 days ago. Warning for zee secks.]

There is a small, dark person near the observation window -- loose, plain shirt and pants, thick black hair down to the shoulders, dark eyes fixated on the exploding universe outside. He (or possibly she, it's difficult to tell) isn't pacing, but everything about the way he (she?) sits restlessly on the edge of the seat ignoring the food says she (or maybe he) wants to.

Restless. Uncertain. Estraven does not like uncertainty, but has learned to live with a measure of it. Even more than uncertainty, though, Estraven dislikes stagnation, and since his door has not appeared, there seems to be no other choice.

Estraven has always been a person of action. It may have doomed him, admittedly, but he has no regrets. Here, now, what is there to do but sit and watch the world end over and over?

It is not his way. Not his way at all. It seems far too easy. He feels like a trapped pesthry. Or like a king. He cannot decide which is worse.

Come give him... or is it her? ...something to do, before she... or he... starts rearranging furniture.

Ah, so. It is Estraven, in the bar, with beer.

This bar, he finds, has very excellent beer. Not like Orgoreyn. No. Not like anything, really. At least, not like anything from his planet.

This is Miller time, baby.

Well, it's good beer.

Esxtraven, in his quietly weasely way, is observing the bar from a stool at the far end of the bar. He's trying to look unassuming, which he could do easily where he's from, but is a little more difficult when now he's the one a head or so shorter than most people around and rather conspicuously lacking in anything that would conclusively identify him as having a gender. Because he doesn't. Have a gender, that is.

But he is in the bar.

Which means he should be talked to.

Yes.

[A hearth-tale from East Karhide.]

After a night spent in a blessedly climate-controlled room, the small, dark person (traitor named for a traitor, yet what is treason?) is back in the bar. This stranger has acquired with the ease of a regular here a mug of hot ale (despite the uncomfortable heat of the bar itself) and, having discovered that Bar will seemingly recreate any dish from his homeland, a plate of pesthry meat and breadapple, which may vaguely resemble game-meat and odd-colored potato, but has a certain smell of its own.

Thus situated with meal and drink, the dark stranger sits in a booth and observes, shadowed otter's-eyes unreadable. Dressed now in loose pants and a light but too-large shirt, it is still impossible to tell whether the small stranger with dark hair flowing shoulder-length is male or female; yet there is an air of nobility about him, his precise and graceful movements, the way he sits straight and watches the surroundings, both wholly a part of them, and entirely seperate.