The Bear and Barnacle

He is only circumstantially a soldier but he is well trained and the first thing he does when he realizes he is not in his own bed is reach for his sword. Yet he does not draw. He only gives his surroundings an intent, searching look.

He is alone on a sandy strip beside a sea. This in itself would not be strange for in the past he and his brother have travelled together south to the Bay of Beleriand, but it is most strange because he would not have slept there in the open. Stranger still because the last he knew he was in Minas Tirith in his bed, losing himself in a book. The strangest of all for the unfamiliarity of the bright town that lies before him past the shadowy sand.

After his surroundings he thinks to examine himself. His grey-green wool cloak is spotted with fine beach sand. To his left he sees a travelling pack of the type he carries on his saddle and when he draws it close and opens it he finds it contains his own clothing, precisely folded, and a thick book. It is the book he was reading but if he were to bring a book on a journey to lands unknown he thinks he would choose a less fragile and more relevant work than this poetic Elvish history.

Again he looks up and around and tries to reconcile what he sees with any detail of the maps he has memorized in his studies. Is it just after dusk or just before dawn? He cannot tell and the stars are all wrong for the season. Is it not still winter?

He decides to wait for one hour for some memory to return or failing that for some inquisitive local who will direct a 16yearold boy who is very clearly lost. One hour and then he will go into this strange, bright, populous city, much though the idea makes him nervous and try to ascertain where he is and how he came there.

Hello to the world. Faramir and I are glad to have arrived or at any rate I am glad and he is confused. I have placed some basic info on his journal if anyone wants to see it and I am eager to play.

 
Used to walking everywhere no matter how long it takes, drawn into solitude by the grating of not-belonging in his gut, he arrives. He's seen it in the shiny, colored leaflets scattered about town, been there in the day more than once, and though he's more a creature of farmland, or even desert, he craves the relief of cool-aired silence and a place to just exist for a few moments.

( He slips through the closed, darkened shop. )

Rodolphus had worked up quite an appetite, playing with one of his toys, so after disposing of the evidence, he ambled over to the pub. Order given, with instructions to bring the food as quickly as possible, Rodolphus reached for the first of his beers. His hand brushed the fork of the place setting as he did and...




There was no 'poof', no sparkle or flash of light. Just a half-meter long skull sitting on his plate. Rodolphus' eyes widened in surprised delight. "Where did you come from?" he murmured, caressing one of the tusks.

Minerva's memory has yet to fail her, but she's been prepared for it to do so since about eighteen. The habit of keeping extensive, diaristic notes on her research and activities came from her mother, an apothecary renowned for the efficacy of her precisely-prepared remedies. In compact black books Minerva logs her research activities, notes down interesting page numbers from the books she's using, jots questions for later consideration. She also tends to mark things like visits, and interesting weather patterns, and her time of the month back when it mattered, and any interesting newspaper headlines.

Lately the books have been all about Zelgadis Grayweir. There are notes of other things, mind -- "Explosion in Severus' lab, am assured was to be expected," and "Unnaturally hot," and "Rain of fish -- for God's sake," and "Am being haunted by the ghost of Ginny Weasley, with passenger. Am assured of current sanity, but not of its continuance."

( But rarely do three days pass ... )

"I don't think I can handle this."

"I don't think you have much choice, darling."

Lucius was on his second cup of tea, and about to reach for something stronger. When he'd woken up this morning, there she'd been, standing at the edge of the bed, watching him with a soft smile. He reached for her hungrily, desperately, only to have his hands go through her. She walked toward the window, and in the morning sunlight she was translucent, almost transparent.

"You don't look like a normal ghost. Please don't be dead." he had said, pleadingly, as if begging could change anything.

"I don't think I am...I think I'm more like a memory."

She looked like Narcissa, talked like Narcissa. It was sweet torture, to be able to be sitting in the kitchen, conversing with his own dear wife, but not touch her, know she wasn't really there. She went from loving and kind to hurt and reminding him of his failures and her pain. The emotions running through Lucius were threatening to break him apart.

It was hell, but he would take it.

On one of the benches overlooking the beach, black-clad arm fallen and long, white fingers brushing the sand, a man lies comatose. Gaunt, framed by nearly eighteenth-century clothes and sea-salted black hair, his face would look twenties-young (and his style the gothic of an over-meticulous modern histrionic) if it weren’t so haggardly drawn, the shadows under the eyes so deep and dark. It’s a striking incongruity, although, when he first appeared, he looked a seventy with little strange about it. The forbidding, heavy-clothed, over-buttoned outfit hangs on him rather, although it isn’t cut for a heavy man.

He has a nearly foot-long piece of pale wood holstered to one thigh--smoothly carved, well-worn, and just slightly rosy, with a few remaining flecks of walnut-stain lingering in its few deep groves--and a collection of intriguing little textured vials to the other. A few men with more respect for value and their own curiosity than dignity or possession have, since his unceremonious appearance on the bench, tried to handle or even make off with one or the other. All ran away quickly in pain and astonishment, clutching hideously blistered hands. One tried gloves, to no avail, and one paused to land a retributive backhanded blow.

The only relief of blackness on him are the odd and varied stains on his bony hands, and the spectacularly attractive mess of blood, bruised swelling, and bone-white cravat at his throat. He looks like a vampire victim, were the vampire diseased and the body stirred to a froth of outraged rejection. From the twin wounds, rather large to have been from a human mouth, emerge a slow, exhausted trickle of almost clear fluid. His skin is cold, his heart beats, perhaps, once a minute, and his breath, while regular and continuous, is so slowly even as to be invisible too all but the most interested observer. Peeking from under the cravat is the edge of a note, its handwriting crabbed, annoyed, and painstakingly legible.

( To_you_who_have_chosen_to_concern_yourself )

And, upside down at the bottom of the paper, in a quite different hand, less irritated than morose,

“Riddle
Though in theory I’m always behind you,
Your shadow, to prop and remind you,
And you may, as you roam,
Wish to make me your home,
Do not dwell on me much: I may blind you.”

And, folded into a hidden pocket, just showing since the departure of the disgruntled tough, is a sheet of heavy paper, so full of linen fiber as to feel nearly cloth, much and madly scribbled on.

---

“Leave me alone,” he says. “Sod off, I’m dead,” he says. “Reports of my demise have been grievously understated,” he says. “Of course I’m sure, stop wittering,” he snaps. Unreliable bratstard. Wait till he realizes he started waking up on his birthday =.=

“I abhor idleness,” Holmes says, barely looking up from the microscope on the table in his basement laboratory. There is a sharp smell of carbolic acid and a Bunsen burner purrs quietly with a blue flame. “I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? And now, if you’ll excuse me.” He turns back to his analyzing.

Victoire has come to a Decision. This is not unusual as Victoire is a decisive sort, but this one she has made will be for the Good of Margate. (She, like her father and most of the decent Slytherins, had a tendency to think in capitals.) She, like so many, was trapped here in this town- facing a sea so unlike the one she grew up with. No cliffs, no distant view of Wales on clear days. And nothing to keep her entertained and occupied as Teddy was too easily distracted by the mystery surrounding the town to permit endless days of shagging. She could only pout so long before she needed something else to do.

And Margate was sorely lacking in a store of an adult nature from which she could purchase items to distract Teddy from his Ravenclaw nature.

The Decision was only natural and logical, and of course, Right. She would open a store for the lovers in the town- she had seen enough of those: the men who ran the pub, the American and that blue man, and she was beginning to wonder about the two Victorians. Suffice it to say, this town needed a reputable source for articles of romance and hedonism. And Victoire needed an occupation.

Now she only needs a shop with an attached flat... and a good amount of start up capital. And an investor who could see the benefit (socially and financially) for such venture. Victoire had just the person in mind.

( But first she had to tell Teddy )

Victoire finishes packing the small basket with the last apple as well as a hunk of fresh goat cheese and bread, placing them atop the cold chicken. After a moment of thought, she opens a cupboard and takes out a small bottle of wine and puts that in as well.

Tall and slightly shaggy-haired, Teddy lingers by the open doorway, face tipped to the sun and breeze with a beach blanket draped across his arm as he waits. He glances back at his girlfriend with a raised brow at the wine. "Isn't that your dad's?"

( More than Bill's wine is about to go missing. )

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.