The Bear and Barnacle

Gaav stares at his sister with his arms folded over his chest and radiates Not Amused. Dolphin moves a pawn in a direction that pawns are not generally allowed to move, she seems to be playing both sides, or possibly more as there seem to be three queens and four colors. "Well?" he says flatly.

Dolphin looks up and does a pretty good impression of an excited little girl seeing her favorite uncle, though the bouncing this results in inside her top is less little-girlish and pushes the chessboard carelessly aside so the pieces topple. "Brother! You look different. Did you cut your hair?"

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It's a very pretty day; fluffy clouds and birdies chirping death threats at each other and woodland animals scampering about and all that. Unfortunately, Xel has just gotten back from the physical therapist (having sworn up and down to allow no needles whatsoever), and is therefore in no mood to appreciate it.

Oh, her slack-jawed complete failure to even understand the shape of the muscles around his leg was entertaining. He didn't try to explain; telling someone that your leg was broken when you were three and magically healed by someone too green to understand that it needed to be set properly first, that your medium-soft tissues had grown into place around a knobbled, shelf-like structure of bone-scarring as a result, and that you'd just re-broken it and whittled away said structure without leaving a scar and the muscles were now going to have to adjust to a tibia that is suddenly the correct shape--well, it would just take too much explaining. And there would be follow-up questions. So he'd just smiled at her and said Ahahaha, well, it's complicated, but this is how things are, you can see the problem, ne?

So, yes, the reaction had been amusing, but the following hour. Just. Well. The break had been painful, a delicious tide of crimson, but...

The thing is, Xel wasn't born a masochist, but Zelas-sama knew how to remedy that before he'd been mazoku even a few years, and now he has both the mazoku and the normal human reactions to pain. And that hour. And. And. He'd decided to keep trying to take evening shifts at the pub. Meaning spending hours in public and putting on at least two shows at once before getting any alone time with his person. Or chickening out, which is no shame for a Guildsman but would mean spending the entire day completely alone. Which might be even worse.

So the mood he was in, carving banister posts someone had ordered into giraffe heads to focus himself before heading over to the B&B, when the doorbell rang, was really a little bit indescribable. Especially since the birch-wood is warded to keep the uninvited out. Taking all that into consideration, it's probably understandable that he somehow failed to put the carving knife down.

When he comes into the pub again for the first time in (Lady Bright, it must be) months, his smile is not a sociable one, but the serene little closed-eyed Metallium smile that isn't worried about how to fulfill any unexpected orders to kill (or worse, incapacitate) any given person. The pink glasses are not in evidence (they're in a pocket), and neither is the frilly apron with the chickie on it.

There's a minor ruffle in the kitchen when one of the new staff demands to know who he is and where the Dragon-Lady's gone. Only a few moments of being silently and blandly smiled at sees the man re-assigning himself to dishwashing duty, though, and Xellos spends the rest of the evening on the hibachi displays of knifework and blending across from the bar that the pub hasn't seen in a good, long time, during weeks of sandwiches and pastries and pub food, his face in a pleasant mask. He shouldn't be angry with Ivonka-san for letting the place forget what it ought to be, but by the third time one of the waiters asks him what today's specials are, the third time he says (snarls, by this point, however frozen in polite tones), whatever they ask for, he is.

Every so often, he pulls Iago away from the bar, click-clicking away on his new cast into secluded corners, and just folds himself into his arms, breathing him in with their fingers laced until he's steady enough to face all the eyes again, sliding his fingertips for reassurance into the pocket of Iago's apron, just big enough to snugly contain one little hiding cat, just in case. To keep from doing that every five minutes or so, he spends a lot of time with his weight all on his newly re-broken leg, occasionally bouncing gently on it. Sometimes he turns the night before, the night of breaking it, over meditatively in his mind as his hands fly (and, if the truth be known, his ethereal tendrils, because two hands alone, however fast, really can't whip together multiple dishes at once), and sometimes he just laps gently at the sweet, sustaining pain of it.

He walks into this town as he's walked into a thousand thousand towns, cities, kingdoms and battlefields at a measured saunter, long strides eating up the ground below him. There's a broadsword the size of a sapling resting casually on the shoulder of a yellow trench coat that glares like a caution sign with grudge. He surveys the misty evening, the rows of houses with televisions flickering through windows and the now empty beach. He doesn't look impressed.

He keeps walking, the strolling sightseers parting before him like pedestrians ducking an ugly exchange of words on a sidewalk.

Nearly nine feet tall with a flame-red ponytail to his knees and a face like a jagged cliff, he should be stopping traffic. But only a few people glance at him more than once. People know him, not consciously, but for those who fight or soldier, he's a familiar presence. Even though he's just walked into Margate, he was already there. Chaos Dragon Gaav is everywhere. All that changes is if he lets you know it or not.

As he walks in even strides, he tastes the astral flavors of the city: the revolting joy of families on vacation, the more satisfying bitterness of the regular inhabitants who's town has been invaded, a pleasant rolling anger from a fighting couple. These tastes grow stronger as he makes his way through the town, mixing with resentment, hunger, drunkeness and friendship. It's the oddity of many species in one place that draws him toward the pub. Not to mention a few astral signatures that are familiar.

Dora wakes slowly- as usual, though the light is streaming around the edges of her curtains. The Minister's perch is empty and she hears nothing outside her room. Everyone must still be asleep. She's about to slide out of bed and make her sleepy way to the bathroom when she sees it. The large, rangy wolf curled on the end of her bed. She starts, eyes going wide. It's not Navarre- the colouring's all wrong. This one is grey and brown. Her hand curls into Teddy's back, closing on her wand, just as the wolf's eyes open- a familiar shade of gold that makes her heart turn warm. She reaches out for him, but her hand passes through him. His head inclines at this then he lowers it in a sage nod. Her expression flickers, hair along with it, and she breathes out a single name, "Moony". They stare at one another for a moment but when his tail picks up a quiet rhythm against her bed Dora giggles and the tension dissolves.

"I'm going to the loo! But you have to stay here! And when I come back we can play," she announces as her feet hit the floor. The wolf gives a soft yap of assent and Dora slips out the door.

Val has been four for rather more than half a year when he decides enough is enough. Each year he ages is one year closer to adulthood ... or as close as he ever got, anyway. Two hundred is maybe not quite adult for a dragon.

First he quells lurking fears by having Jack measure his height and wingspan to ensure that he actually is growing. Lacking any real idea of when he was born the first time beyond "when it was warm," he chooses Midsummer Day to serve as his birthday. In the incredibly convoluted calendar of this locale that falls on the twenty-first of June.

What he didn't expect was Dora's resistance to the idea.

"I'm going to grow up," he said at last, stubbornly, to she who had been five over two birthdays now. "If you want to stay older then you have to grow up too." He added generously: "I'll share my birthday with you this year." At last she agreed.

So a compromise cake was baked, lemon with pink icing on one side and chocolate on the other. The pink side has six blue candles and the chocolate side has five. The whole vast, sticky confection, grimly but perfectly iced by Ivonka, sits proudly in the center of the bar at the Pub.

Val thinks this is an incredibly bizarre way to mark the turning of age, but he's not about to argue with tradition ... or cake.

Although he hits every bench in town (inside and out, and not a single one outside the borders), he doesn't hit every chair. That's a more random spattering. None belonging to anyone he's ever called family; don't draw attention there, and besides, eurgh. So there's just, here and there (and there, and there, and there) a chair that, when sat on, begins to silently rumble and purr pleasantly against its occupant. The shadowing spell will eventually wear off the little stones worked into their legs, but not, he thinks, for a good, long time. Not if the little snatches of astral body (mere grains, replenished every meal, less than is burned off with laughter) they take from their occupants in payment and to fuel their movement keep being renewed with sitting.

So: the innocent pleasure dispersed, the cleansing, pleasing deaths to follow, those without even a trace of his astral scent. This should give the little hell-brat a headache at the very least, drive him to distraction, in the best case, and out. Gadfly was always his role; he can't really hurt the prince of hell, but he can, maybe, annoy him enough to leave him alone.

It's dark when he finishes. He's heard about some winter deity-saint who touches every house in the world (of one faith, anyway) in a night, and spares a moment for admiration. But it's interrupted when he sees a certain store still open. Some temptations aren't worth resisting. With a candle in his pocket, smelling of autumn and spice, and two seals in the form of a fox and a smiley-face, he wends home. After all, he hasn't hit home either, knowing how well that would be received, and that's just not fair.

Dora finally finishes up carving her pumpkin then giggles at a stray bit of pumpkin goo that's clinging to the surface.

"Eww, Teddy has a bogey," she giggles then she wipes it off with the arm of her shirt which is already heavily stained with orange bits and blobs.

She snatches the box of matches when Jack's attention is on Val and she easily strikes a match and lights her candle. Ignoring Jack's belated protests about how he should be doing that, she blows out the match and drops the candle into her pumpkin.

When it shows off the design with a warm orange glow, she grins then hollers, "IAGO! XELLOS! I'm DONE! COME SEEEEEE!"

The blue and gold macaw sitting on the back of her chair startles at the sudden yelling and flicks some pumpkin guts from one of his wings at the back of Dora's head.

The walls are decked in harvest leaves, mellow-bright gourds on the tables, nuts and dried fruits scattered in glass bowls. One table is loaded with mead, cider, wines, and sake, fruit and loam-tinged, another cozily cluttered with cups, dry tea and strainers, and an enormous, bubbling carafe of water. He steps out for a moment, leaving the others setting out plates of frosted gingerbread and pfeffernuesse, glowing-ripe fruit and cheese, pulling tables into a loose circle.

The largest tree in the area is an oak, and at this moment, a glorious vibrance. No Flagon tree-forest, spreading forever and smelling of holiness and spiced sap, but it will do. What he hangs on it, a cluster of dark berries and bright red on a small wreath of supple birch branches wrapped, for the first time, with coppery-bronze ribbons along with the gold, has no precise meaning, wasn't crafted for the look, and his prayer, as he secures it on a branch and rests his hand on it, is no paean or plea.

He opens his heart to the year, and to the gold.

And then, at an easy pace, he moves back to the restaurant, and hangs the sign up on the door.

POETRY EXCHANGE
Tell your favorite
Ad-lib your own
Play off each other
Be absurd
No holds barred

FWUMP

ought to be the approximate sound made by a small body (say, four-or-five-years-sized) falling from a fair height and faceplanting semiconsciously into the soil.

In this case, it's more like

CRASH
*squeal*
crackle
snap!
thud

because there is a large rose trellis in the way.

He's still for a moment after he hits the ground, shocked -- not so much by the impact as by the presence of any ground to hit -- then he begins thrashing wildly. The winged boy claws his way half-upright. Golden eyes glimmer out at the world from behind a veil of dark feathers, a tangle of briars.

Not quite aware of what has happened, only knowing that what was supposed to be destroyed is still there, still obstinately existent, the last Ancient Dragon has arrived in Margate.

He stays tremblingly quiet for a few long seconds, staring through the ruined shrubbery at the grey and drizzling sky, then continues to fight the thorns caught in his black-feathered wings.

cont'd from here
cross-posted to journal

Xellos phases back to the restaurant, where he bombs through customers in a blind fury of pleasant smiles and graceful quips on his way to the cellar, grabbing several sandwiches, a pie, and two velvet bags full of pebbles (many semiprecious) on his way.

He spellcasts and chews his way through the lot, and when there are only crumbs and a pile of round-edged, polished-looking stones incised with runes and arrays left, he rests his forehead on his laced fingers and groans quietly to himself, "Why do I let him get to me?"

And considers finding more food.

It was a cloudy day, but pleasant. Cool for August and made cooler still by the steady breeze ruffling flags and tugging at hats. Weathervanes were spinning wildly all through the morning until, rather suddenly, they all pointed to the east.

The wind was shifting and folks that knew how to watch the sky would be able to tell that something, someone was coming. This was something that had happened before when the wind turned to the east.

Soon enough, a tiny dot appeared in the sky. It passed through clouds and over villages and towns before finally starting to drop down right by the seashore. Eventually, and perhaps a little sooner for those with sharp eyes, it became clear as to just what the dot was.

It was a woman holding an umbrella that was being carried along on the east wind. In her hand was a carpet bag and on her head was a smart, sharp sort of hat. On her feet were comfortably and well-shined shoes that soon touched the gritty sand of the Margate beach.

Mary Poppins had been on this beach before, as she'd been almost everywhere, but it was a long, long time ago. This time the wind had found her place for her; she hadn't planned to come here. But then it wouldn't do to lose your head at just anything.

She closed up her umbrella as she looked around at the water lapping at the shore and the wooden building just down the way. Once she had her bearings, maybe that's where she would go. Hopefully, things wouldn't be too crowded- tourists can be so trying.

"Right," she said to no one in particular as she opened her compact to check her appearance in the mirror and nodded to what she saw there. "Off you go then."

Then she closed it with a snap and took off down the beach.

Pardon our dust, gentle sirs and good ladies, new friends and old, but we assure you that the sounds of your voices are more welcome than your boot-prints.

To begin with, let each of you order up his drink and meal! Tonight, the chef takes requests, and your fancy is limited only by what we find in our pantry. However, all who have recipes must bring them to him, and so we shall set our menu when the time comes.

Come, then, have a seat! Here by the bar I shall keep you amused with talk and good drink, and there by the fire the room is warm, and at every table you shall find good company, and should you choose a place by the half-height walls of the kitchen you may speak with Xellos as he cooks. Come, your order?

For this very simple first topic, everyone can comment to this post with their food and drink choice. Thread-crashing is highly encouraged as otherwise there's not much in the way of interesting conversation to be had. Although Iago can and has discoursed at extreme length on polenta, but whether or not that qualifies for interesting depends on the listener's profession.

Welcome to the Bear and Barnacle!

Oh, and he means it about the recipes.