Miniver Cheevy (miniver) wrote in utr_logs, @ 2008-04-20 18:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | miniver cheevy, sneaky |
Who: Miniver Cheevy and Sneaky the Shadow (with mostly-sleeping Tinman)
What: Chattin' in the shadowshop place.
When: Last night.
Warnings: Nada!
It's not all THAT late when Miniver comes a-callin' to the home of the Shadow-man. He's got his hair all madly done by Brenda Annn and Toki, and the reason for his coming apparent -- his previously shy and elusive companion is curled up asleep in his arms. Miniver is pleased with this sudden change of heart and felt inspired to go discuss it with the person he knew Tinman was least likely to hide from again.
He reaches the door, and knocks.
It was only a moment before the three bolts and one padlock were thrown and Sneaky opened the door, smiling, "Hello hello, was just getting some cleaning up and some restocking done, good to see you." The door was bolted back up again just as soon as Miniver and Tinman were inside.
The shop was just as scattered as ever, and whatever restocking Sneaky had been doing was nigh invisible.
Miniver slips in, grinning at Sneaky. "Hey, man. What's up? Okay, check this out." He shrugs his shoulders a bit to hold up the still-sleeping Tinman. "Lookit that. He came right over to me today and curled up on me and fell asleep. Ain't that something?"
Sneaky beamed, waving Miniver further into the shop, between the shelves and into the back room, "Good that he's getting more comfortable. You're going on the adventure for the Cove with the littlemother and the pirates, yes?"
"Yeah. Toki and Bren did my hair like this last night to keep it from getting caught in the rigging. Ain't it great?" Miniver follows Sneaky further into the shop, distractedly admiring the shelves' contents. "So uh... I was sort of wondering... any idea why he'd suddenly get all friendly like this? There's nothing wrong with him or anything, is there? Cats sometimes get friendly when they're sick..." He worries about his strange little invisible-to-most-people buddy.
Sneaky shrugged, propping the stockroom door open with a lawn gnome pushing a wheelbarrow full of super bounce balls, "No, I shouldn't think so." He shook his head then, clearing off more space on the worktable, setting out the tea service, he generally had tea ready anyway, and it was better with company, "You'd know if he were ill, you'd feel..." He tilted his head, making a soft, almost churring sound as he tried to think of the right word, "Everything."
Miniver strokes the sleeping Shadow's boney head, grinning as Tinman makes a quiet clicking noise and latches onto his fingers loosely with one of his stonecrab-claws. "Is that different than feeling-everything like when my brain swings the wrong way and knocks me out of sanity for a couple days?"
He nodded as he poured the tea, "Quite a bit like that, yes." He scritched Tinman's head as well, chuckling, "That's what he's there for, to leech off the excess. He wouldn't feed if he were sick, and you'd be able to tell the difference."
"Okay. So he's alright, then? Just... random change of heart? No offence but... d'you guys do that a lot?" He's trying very hard to understand them. Miniver's the sort of person who will do his best to care for something that becomes hs responsibility to care for, whether he invited it or not.
Sneaky shrugged, dragging a chair out from somewhere, dusting it off and offering it to Miniver, flopping down on a crate himself, sipping his tea, "Could be. Might just be that he knows you can see him now, and it would be silly to keep playing hide and seek."
Miniver sits, and gently eases Tinman from his arms to his lap so he can drink his tea. "This is good, thanks... hey, I hope I didn't interrupt anything, did I?" He remembers his manners a little late -- but better that then never?
Sneaky laughed then, shaking his head, "Not at all, was just restocking, re-arranging, nothing terribly important all said." He shrugged, "Nothing that can't wait at least."
"Oh. Okay." The poet gives an easy smile. "So I was thinkin'... if stuff in my past changes, can he feel that?"
His brow creased slightly at that, scratching the back of his neck. There was that almost-churring sound as he thought it over, "Possible. Some of the Herd is attuned to the threads of time."
"Ah. Well. That could be it, then. See, I've been living in time-pretzels for a good 15 years or more. There are parts of my past that haven't happened yet, if that makes sense. Every so often, I can tell when something changes. But then a lot of the time, I can't -- I only know about it when I flip back through an old notebook and find something written in there different than how I remember it, that kinda deal."
His brows both arched at that, headtilting, "That's... quite interesting, actually. I wasn't aware that humans could do that without the whole works imploding and folding in on itself."
"To be honest, I've never heard of it happening to anyone but me and the Dethklok guys. We've known for a long time there's something different about them. Dunno what, just... something different. And it's not like it ever changes anyone ELSE in a way that's strange. The present just kinda always still fits with whatever the past becomes. I dunno if it changes or if it always just fit with all the possibilities there were until one of them picked itself, but it always works."
He nodded at that. It made sense to him at least, but he was one of the older ones, he'd watched time in flux before, "Perhaps it works because there's more than one of you caught in the shifting."
Miniver raises a brow, and shrugs. "I dunno quite what that means. I guess there might be. Like how there's two Pickleses here. Like... I've gotten messages from my younger self before. I once met myself as a child in a bar. I was like nine years old, and I was sleeping, so I don't remember it at all, but I left a book there with that kid-me, and I do remember having that book now, and I don't remember where I got it from. But human memory is a fluid thing -- it happens a lot that someone will remember one thing while someone else remembers another, or little things like I mighta thought I remembered getting that book from my dad's shelf because I knew it wouldn't make any sense to tell folks I ran to hide in a bar and fell asleep and had it when I woke up... so you forget what you know won't ever matter, right? Or you don't remember important things until you really need to. Maybe that's everyone living in loops."
He nodded slowly, thinking that over, finally shrugging, "This is possible as well, history does repeat itself often enough that it might as well be a continual loop. For all you people seem to learn from your past."
That really wasn't as contemptious as it sounded, it was more confused than anything.
Miniver laughs at the comment, though. Because he KNOWS history and he knows perfectly well it's a rare man who's willing to learn from it in any kind of constructive way. "Hey, man, I dunno. That's as far as my wondering went. I'm just glad this little guy decided to come out and be friendly finally. Ain't so worried about running him off by accident now."
He chuckled then, shaking his head, "Shouldn't worry about that, not unless you suddenly start feeling everything again, that's when you should worry that he's gone missing."
"Well... that kinda happens to me pretty regularly. I saw him near the last time it did, though. I figure he's what's keeping it from being any worse than it is." He pets the little Shadow in his lap. "I think he's what's keepin' me from getting knocked around by things I suddenly remember but didn't before. I wondered last night why Toki decided to ask me outta nowhere whether I hated him. Then I started remembering things... real vague things, not even really in order -- but I remember one time Toki and Pickles..." He pauses, thinking. "Well, I don't remember what happened, but that was when I found out my dad had died. There's more to it that's dim and sorta shifty in my mind... like things I know but can't tell right because it's like a million moments condensed into a single impression, or something."
There was another slow nod, as if he were thinking this over as well. He was, really, and trying to piece things together as best he could from what he'd seen, "You may be just a bit out of sync with everything else. Some people are. Littlemother is, on occasion, but she usually catches herself up again fairly well."
"Could be that too," Miniver agrees -- this all being stipulation, one reason is as good as another to him. "Yeah, so, anyway... how've you been doing here?"
"Hnn, well, I did finally get used to not being able to travel as I could. Not unaided anyway." A nod towards the pup in Miniver's lap, "He's been a help with that on occasion, as has the littlemother's keeper, and the one who stays with the Pirates."
Miniver perks up a bit. "Tinman's helped you travel? You see him when he's not with me? Does he talk?"
He nodded, "Mm, the same as we all do." A pause, "Ah, the native language is mostly emotional tags, some images. Like mental pictographs."
"So like... music, with pictures. Okay." He pets over Tinman's folded dead-leaf wings. "What does he talk about? Is he happy?"
He nodded, "It's very much like music." He was smiling again, head tilting once more, "Have you been there? Where we call home?"
"I don't think so." He plays with the Shadow's little claws while he sleeps. "If I have, I didn't know it. Why?"
He nodded, "You should." A shrug, "You might like it there." And it would explain how the Shadows talked a little better.
Miniver chuckles. "Next time I see someone offering low rates for the business class flight there, I might just hop a ride and take a weekend off," he jokes. "But really... is this little one happy? Did he tell you? Or can you tell from him? Does he like... need anything?"
He laughed then, shaking his head, "He is, and he doesn't. You'd know if he did." He shrugged, "And you might just try asking, if the little one doesn't understand, the littlemother will."
"Okay." Miniver feels less anxious having Sneaky's assurance that Tinman's doing okay. He keeps stroking the leafy-wings fondly while sipping his tea. "It's like having a kid to look after or something, you know? Only I never had any kids to look after. Wouldn't have a clue what to do with 'em if I did. But I'm told even this little one here is probably smarter than most humans on the planet. How old is he, anyway?"
He shook his head at that, sipping his tea once more, "At least as old as you are, probably more." He shrugged, "We don't track time the same way you do. He's still young, though not an infant."
"Does he have parents? Or am I like his parents too? Does he drink tea like you? And are these questions getting really annoying?" He grins apologetically to Sneaky. "I didn't mean to come out here and interrogate you." Squeaky, if he is the insightful type, may get the impression that Miniver tends to get rather nervous around people he doesn't know well. Like Squeaky.
There was another laugh then, shaking his head, "You'll never learn anything if you don't ask questions." It made sense to him anyway. There was another shrug, "We all hatch at some point, from the Palintel, it's... a gate, an incubator, something of both really, and I don't think he would enjoy tea much, he doesn't need human-face foods."
"Okay." The old poet grins down at his little friend. "But I can feed him by singing, can't I? Give him good songs..."
He nodded, "Probably he's feeding right now, absorbing the calm." A shrug, "The singing certainly doesn't hurt though."
"Alright." Miniver keeps stroking his little Shadow while he finishes his tea. "...I've run out of questions," he says finally. "Guess I was really just glad he came out to see me finally..."
He smiled at that, laughing softly once more, stretching over to scritch the back of the pup's neck, because he could, really, "Probably just startled him at first, knowing you could see him all of a sudden where he'd been invisible before, just had to get used to it."
At the touch that is not Miniver's, Tinman raises his head and blinks a little more awake and broadcasts the Shadow-language equivalent of a cheerful, if sleepy, hello to Sneaky. Miniver sits perfectly still when he wakes, afraid to startle him -- but there's no real chance of that happening. Tinman is completely at home here, and after greeting Sneaky, he shifts to give Miniver's hand a friendly nibble, then curls back up to sleep more.
"Eee!" comments the poet, eloquetly.
Sneaky couldn't help but laugh at that as well, shaking his head, "And there you have it." Because it made perfect sense to him anyway.
Miniver is absolutely delighted. His eyes look almost a bit teary. "Aww, that's great. That's just so great. Like.... wow." He wants to hug the little Shadow, but doesn't want to wake him up, so settles for easing his fingers into one of the crabclaws, and beaming as it closes around them.
Sneaky just smiled more broadly at that, shaking his head, "I can see why the littlemother likes you." A shrug, "You're like one of the pups."
Miniver doesn't take his eyes off Tinman. "Whatd'you mean?"
He shrugged, "Out of place. Which may be because of the tangle in the timeline. I believe that the same thing has happened to her before coming to this place."
Miniver glances up, his cheeks red. "Oh... um... oh. Heh. Well... Hey, man, y'know, it's kind of an honor, that your kin-types are okay with me."
He just smiled at that, nodding once, "don't feel obligated to invite us for holiday dinners or anything." There was amusement in his tone.
"Somehow, I feel like you'd show up invited or not if you felt like it." His tone is fond, though, and welcoming. "Any home of mine is open to anyone who wants to drop by, any time. And the homes I call my own that ain't technically, y'know, mine? I'd speak for you there too."
He just laughed then, shaking his head, "See? You are like one of the pups. Next thing they know they'll wake up with you hovering over the headboard asking for pancakes."
Miniver is red as a cherry.
THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED. NEVER. REALLY. WHAT. HE CAN HIRE AN ALIBI IF NEED BE.
Sneaky just cackled at that, shaking his head once more and finally setting down his teacup, "What did I say?" Rlly is amusement. Ferserious.
"Youuuu... said... you were just going to get the biscuits from the cupboard?" the greedy little beggar guesses cheekily.
Another laugh, shaking his head and rooting around in a drawer, coming up with a tin, "Chocolate and ginger."
Miniver squeaks happily and, with all the manners of a man who's spent many a year having to fight with roadies over food rations, nabs a fw to nibble with his tea. "You're a saint, Sneaky," he says gratefully.
He shrugged, "It's what I do. Don't know about saintdom, but it's kind of in the job description to keep you lot stable." A nod, smile tilting as he nibbled a cookie himself, "Nothing stabilizes better than chocolate."
"Mmhmm," Miniver purrs. "Wait, does it? I thought that only worked for girls."
He shrugged, "Works on everyone, it's the... things, with the stuff that's in it. Especially the dark kind." Clearly he had no idea.
Miniver laughs. "Oh. Right. 'Course. Makes perfect sense." Damn good cookies, though. "So then... d'you have like... a human mortal whatever you guard?"
He shook his head, "No, not anyone in particular. I did watch the littlemother for a while, but she has others to keep her stable. Even if they are just little ones."
"So... who d'you feed on, then? Just anyone who happens along?"
He nodded, "That's usually how it works for all of us, anywhere were emotions and energies are running high, there will be quite a few of us, just keeping watch to make sure things don't get out of hand."
Miniver leans back in the chair. "What's it like?" he asks. "What you do, when you do that?"
His brow creased, churring softly again as he thought, finally shaking his head, "It's the same as when you eat a sandwich, I suppose, though it would be like eating a sandwich through osmosis."
"So like something that fills you up in ways tha ain't just hunger." Miniver knows that feeling INTIMATELY. "That's what I figured." He yawns a bit. "Hey, man... you've been real patient with me. I'm grateful. But I think I better be takin' this little guy home now."
Another nod, unfolding from his seat on the crate, "You know you're welcome to come back by any time. Feel free to stop in if you get tired of all the adventure."
"I will, Sneaky. Thank you." He shifts Tinman back into his arms and stands up. "Really, thank you. I uh... guess I'll see you around. I can, y'know, show myself out and stuff."
Another nod as he followed, "Have to throw the bolts, there's a few of them, not really sure why." They'd come with the door, that was all he knew. Besides that, there were cookies in Miniver's pockets now, where there hadn't been before.
Miniver turns to give Sneaky a last, long grin. "Night, then, dude." And he heads off to his car, and back towards home.
The former Shadow chuckled again, shaking his head as he locked up once more and went back to restocking.