Westley (dreadingit) wrote in payline, @ 2013-12-26 16:52:00 |
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Current location: | Mandalay Bay Foyer / Room 703 |
Entry tags: | jo harvelle (canon), westley / dread pirate roberts (canon) |
Checking In.
Who: Westley & OTA
When: December 26, after ‘Arrival’
Where: Mandalay Bay Resort Hotel.
Rating: U - Everyone
Warnings: None.
Summary: The ‘simple’ task of finding one’s room...
Status: Closed / Complete. (Done 31/12.)
Slightly dazed by his first encounter with a ‘native’, plus with technological marvels unknown to him such as windows of glass dancing with moving images around him, Westley halted in the middle of reception area of the hotel and took a moment to get his bearings. Everything appeared to be lit, and there was not a candle in sight. The effect to Westley was both literally and figuratively stunning. The area was quiet, with plainly uniformed people scurrying to and fro paying him no heed. Across one wall of the palatially decorated room was a counter, like a royal desk, but thirty feet long, or longer. A young woman wearing a similar uniform to the others but adorned with crossed keys on the lapels appeared to be avoiding regarding him at all costs. Westley practiced his light cough once more, adopted a charming if determined expression and walked towards her.
No reaction at all. Interesting.
"Well," began Westley, not unsurprised that a military uniformed official in a palace was ignoring him; "hello, I think I have some form of invitation to be here."
Silence.
"Yeees," he toned, tilting his chin back and smiling, "thank you for your assistance."
He looked along the counter left and right. The words ‘Out-of-Hours Check-in’ greeted him, above one of these brightly lit stained-glass windows he was seeing so many of. This one was steady, and had a similar picture to the small plaque he carried. He fished for the plaque from his pouch while walking toward the window hoping the word ‘check’ would help in some way.
‘Scan your keycard here’, the window suggested. Westley took the plaque and stared at it intently. It had a corner trimmed off it, and a small triangle printed on one of the shorter sides that he had noticed previously. After ten or fifteen seconds more careful scrutiny he exclaimed out loud “What the hell am I looking for?!” and returned his gaze to the window. He dropped his hands onto the countertop in exaggerated frustration and the keycard was swept across the scanner in the process. The screen flashed ‘Room 703’ and presented Westley with a plan of the hotel’s ground and seventh floors, with animated markers illustrating a route. Westley stared at it, captivated. What a fantastic combination of the magically bizarre and completely everyday! If there was one thing Westley knew how to read, it was a map. He plotted his course, and set sail across the soft floorcoverings of the reception area, heading for the ‘elevators’, whatever they were.
Standing in front of these ‘elevators’, all confidence was briefly dashed. It was a… pantry. With no food. Or shelves. A large cupboard of uselessness. He scratched his head and stood defiantly in front of it. The doors of the next cupboard were closed. As he watched, the doors in front of him closed, sliding like two portcullis fallen over, then the adjacent doors opened and two staff spilled out and scurried past him. Two men… in a cupboard… together... for an indeterminate amount of time. Westley and Roberts together couldn’t figure this, and his personalities conversed in his head for another minute before the doors in front opened once again. An attractive blonde woman reminiscent of his mother exited, nodded and smiled briefly in acknowledgement before walking away. Westley was too stunned to do anything at first (where could she have come from?) but the doors remained open invitingly. And that wonderful smell… he walked into the ‘elevator’. Wait. Would an elevator elevate? He stood inside the small room, breathing deeply of the intoxicating perfume of the woman who had just left. He was about to exit to follow her when the doors closed.
Things happening by themselves seemed to be a theme here, but he was not prepared for the sudden wave of motion buckling his sealegs. He moved his arms out and took a steadying stance as the wave subsided, replaced by the hum of machinery, and the gentle pinging of the lift. He noticed the control panel and the lit glyph above him. That registered quickly, changing through sequential linear representations of what he quickly and correctly assumed were numbers. The wave returned, and the motion stopped with the number reading ‘12’. The doors opened and Westley reached for his sword instinctively. No-one visible. He ducked his head out to see a pair of figures entering the next elevator and disappearing. Madness. He exited and looked up and down the decorated corridor. As the reception area, it was like no castle he’d ever been in. He wandered up the corridor a little. On the nearest door, the lit engraved glass plaque stated ‘1208’. He looked at the keycard still in his hand, narrowed his eyes and returned to the elevators. Both doors were closed. He looked between them at the call button, and after a moment’s internal debate, pressed his thumb firmly against it. It lit up and sounded a chime. This magic lighting and music business really was very impressive.
The doors to his right opened first. He entered the elevator and spun around quickly to examine the columns of buttons he had previously seen but not understood. He scanned for the one marked ‘7’, and pushed that. The doors closed and he was on the ocean once again, briefly, until the square ‘7’ above lit and he was presented with another corridor - identical, but different. How exciting. Stepping off, he saw a ‘702’ immediately and recalled the map from the screen. A step, a turn, and he eyeballed the ‘703’ not far away. Doors with handles he could cope with. This was more familiar, although the handle was an interesting shape… and didn’t appear to do anything. Locked. Fine. He tapped the keycard on his palm again before studying the escutcheon upon which the handle was mounted. It had a slot. Like a keyhole.
Westley opened the door fully once, twice and then three time before sticking his foot at the base of the door, and calling a warning. He stepped over the threshold carefully, looking behind the door. No-one there. He took three paces into the room and watched the door close itself while he gripped his rapier. Relaxing, he tested the handle from this side, opened the door and then watched it close itself once more. Crazed. Why was everything so spirited here? The room had a window through which from the door, he could only see sky - the horizon was obscured. The room itself was… huge. He picked an apple from the bowl of fruit (something he did recognise) and walked to the window. He blinked mid bite. Elevated indeed.
The Dread Pirate Roberts spent the next hour or so thoroughly exploring his room. A soft bed, more magic lighting on demand via ivory wall-mounted see-saws, seating of all shapes and sizes, a variety of odd and interesting furniture, including one cabinet full of a dazzling array of bottles of great interest, more of the strange and wonderful ‘television’ devices… Interestingly, Westley noted, the drawers and armoire had been stocked with clothing more suited to a lady. "So they don't get everything right in this most automatic of places," Westley exclaimed. He did not examine the clothing carefully, it seemed clean and pleasingly fragranced to him (like the woman on the ground floor) and thus he presumed that first, it was new, and second, all women here were pleasingly fragranced.
Best was yet to come: the most amazing room of ablutions. The flush toilet was not entirely new in concept to Westley; being a pirate and having sailed around five continents meant he’d seen his share of mechanical marvels. However, water available on demand through the metal levers in the bathroom was a simply awesome discovery… his confusion over the requirement for two such devices in each basin or bath was quoshed by the revelation that while both provided clean, powerful jets of water, one of which was soon too hot to touch, steaming like a geyser. Incredible!
Two pints of refreshing cold and nigh on a hundred gallons of pleasingly (almost scaldingly) hot water later, The Dread Pirate Roberts felt a lot less piratey and a lot more princely. His clothes were scattered around the floor, and a variety of interesting soaps and other cleaning products were sprinkled liberally into the bath so foam bubbled hilariously around. Some of them worked better than others, the thick minty smelling stuff was a mystery until Westley read the label on the tube. He still had no idea what ‘shampoo’ was, although it looked, felt and smelled better than it sounded. And so, there he lay, deep in thought, in this palatial and luxuriant prison of mystery.
Dream. Had to be a dream. It was inconceivable (he giggled) that it was reality. Purest fantasy brought on by a clonk on the head from rolling down a Guilder hillside on the wrong side of the Guilder Channel. Any second now, he’d wake up and have to deal with seven warriors on horseback and possibly a rather distraught woman. Or perhaps not. If she had gained any sense in the past few days, she would run like hell. Squinting at the floor, he sat upright with some effort and picked a hairbrush up and examined it. Slumping back into the bath, he thought it slightly strange that it would have long blonde hair trapped in it in this otherwise immaculately clean room. Hair like hers.
If he did make it back, he hoped he’d remember some of these fabulous ideas made real. He looked over the edge of the bathtub. Whoever this Johnnie Walker fellow was, Westley was going to have to congratulate him on some liquor well refined, the dear sir. He was sleepy now and wondered briefly if the rather lovely, if severe, ‘Reyna’ would know who Johnnie was in the present... or perhaps Ovid from the past, since being so sleepy, it wasn’t long before he slipped more conventionally into the arms of Morpheus.