The Bear and Barnacle

He has a life here. He doesn't want to have to start over again.

But he needs time to think, so, not wanting to cope with the library, he invites himself over to avail himself of Spike's Internet and, with the focused patience of a plodding herdbeast or one who knows this shit is supposed to be user-friendly, starts looking up plane and train tickets. He'd desperately like some coffee to assist him with this matter, but the rich black drink becomes hot water as soon as he picks up the cup.

He remembers that Dora had expressed a wish to see Switzerland, though she couldn't remember why. He contemplates going to Czechoslovakia – a little of the soil of her own country might help Ivonka sleep and thus improve her temper. What might Morocco look like today, when one arrived as a traveller and not a soldier? What might Rome be in the twenty-first century instead of the sixteenth?

And always somewhere along the circuitous path he plans lies Venice. Not the first place to visit, or the last, but always there. The obvious solution to his problems, of course, is to destroy those who harm him through their nearest and dearest, but having a nearest and dearest himself complicates matters. So back to the beginning he'll go, and try to decide what to do from there.

Then there are phone calls to make, people to arrange things with, ensuring that he'll be able to access his funds in foreign banks (the customer-service girl seems to think he's an idiot for thinking otherwise), ensuring that a groggy Spike is willing to take over tending bar for a while, ensuring that Jack knows he'll bear the burden of amusing Val for a while.

He won't pack much. He'll carry his mobile phone and a suitcase with some clothes for each of them and, naturally, Teddy. And tomorrow or the next day they'll walk away from Margate, paradoxically freed because for different reasons, they will both want to come back.

Hello all! Due to various issues we're taking Iago and Dora on hiatus for a bit (until sometime after the New Year). Ivonka will be supplying events and topics (immediately to follow ... sorry), and if there are emergencies, Iago will probably answer his mobile the third or fourth time. Your modly ones' other characters will continue play.

1.) All dialogue in the following was cleared with the players of the characters in question.
2.) While Iago acknowledges the incident depicted, he still says that is SO not him. (PhotoShop Fu cannot accommodate for the later-years Kenneth Branagh Chubby Bunny effect. Observe):


( One of Those Nights at the Bear and Barnacle )

The captain of a great ship poling along the mighty, murky sea of the Venetian canals has found himself beached on Iago's doorstep. He is not quite sure yet how this cruel marooning occurred, but thinks perhaps the answers are to be found in the depths of his bottle of wine. Iago prudently relieves him of his command, and guides the small boat awkwardly into the thinned but still moving archipelago of lamplit revelers.

Emilia has cast off her cloak and mask and gone to bed, flushed with excitement and tired out from a long day of last-ditch revelry before Lenten sobriety sets in, so Iago now makes his determined way across a better swath of the city and brings in the the little craft near the Sagittarius inn where Othello lodges. There he pulls his simple black mask back into place and lies in wait until he sees his general.

( Minor adult content here. )

Iago has always had a knack for picking up the basics of languages, and the talent extends to a quick memory for lyrics. He has a vast repertoire of English drinking songs, which had most of his fellow officers convinced he'd been to England, one or two French sailors' shanties, and a collection of filthy ballads in his own language that he would put up against any habitue of the Venetian taverns one cared to point out.

This talent did not desert him when he arrived in Margate, prompting one of the waitresses at the bar where he worked before buying this place to make him several mix tapes, a few of which he now plays in the pub after hours to keep him company while he's cleaning the place. Modern music was a little bizarre to Iago at first, but now he loves it.

He's fond of one artist in particular, and he picks a favorite tune for karaoke night. There's not a particular reason he likes this song, he would genially insist if asked. It's not autobiographical, stating the philosophies of a life he used to live. No, not at all.

Iago's voice is good, an even low tenor, and he likes to sing, but this is the first time he's done it to a full pub instead of one empty but for himself, his family and his drinks and dishrags.

Over a month, some questioning of Victoire, and some very discreet questioning of Dora later, Iago is walking by a shop window and realizes what he's getting for Teddy Lupin in the gift exchange.

This perhaps useful and obscure enough that he won't already own it, probably.
This general but appropriate.
But the real prize is the third one.

Iago packages them neatly and drops them off at Teddy's door.

Back when Iago was a soldier, the career he'd chosen and worked at since his youth, he knew he was on the path to success. In the six years between his enlistment and earning his commission, his rise had been meteoric, his talents recognized and valued. And even after the promotion that turned out to be a complete dead end, he worked at his soldier’s duties with relish, seeing his actions accomplish results that were visible and tangible and well-rewarded.

There was no pleasure in being home for him, not then, when he was ever in the taverns or on the canals or in his general’s house. His life was on duty. To return to his house was to return to a wife he disliked and an endless time of waiting for the next time he would be called upon to leave. He always left before called for. Even in the rare moments when his presence was no help to his general’s business he saw to his general’s pleasure … and now, looking back, Iago sometimes half-envies himself that life, of success and achievement, recognition, status, a soldier’s career.

But now he knows how limited it was, how many joys he never knew.

He’s turned taverner now, and however little he thought of it when he worked for someone else, now there is a pleasure in the hundred little tasks. He’s his own master, sets his own hours. He works with time to talk to his patrons and to play with his daughter, and though this is a stepping stone to nothing, it has its own satisfaction.

And now he knows what a pleasure it is to leave work for home, a home of one’s choosing, a home his lover is creating around them with his own beloved hands. And again he has the pleasure of leaving that home in the morning with the person whose company he would rather know than any other’s.

Watching Xellos come into their room with a basket of laundry balanced on his hip for Iago to help fold. Bringing him small gifts of live herbs to grow in their windows. Taking him to bed tired from their day in the occupation they share. Rising again in the morning to their daughter leaping onto the bed.

It’s not a career as such, Iago often thinks. But the thought doesn’t bother him a bit, and he contrives to pass by the grill and give Xellos a kiss, to ruffle Dora’s hair where she’s perched at the bar with her crayons. Being a taverner with a spouse and a child is no career at all. And he wouldn’t give it up were he offered every other thing in the world.