Team Kittens and Domesticity

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

The kittens are adorable. Of course they are adorable; a kitten always is. They don't seem especially wormy or flea-bitten either, to Laigle's eye, but he's leaving questions of veterinary care up to Joly. It seems like a natural division of labor. (Not that he's comparing Joly's medical skills to those of a veterinary surgeon, a horse-doctor. But Joly at least knows what questions to ask.)

So Lesgle is engaged in adoring a kitten as it taps and pounces at loose threads on his waistcoat, while Joly immerses himself in a reading of their new volume on cat care, when a thought strikes him. Hmm. "Say, Joly. Has Enjolras seen our new room? Has he seen the cherubim?" Obviously he hasn't seen the kittens.

Surprising Enjolras is an entertainment in and of itself. Mild, to be sure, but nonetheless--an entertainment.

Comments

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

There. Lesgle pulls over one of the room's hideous small tables and spreads out lunch. Sandwiches, cheese, a bottle of wine, a salad, napkins and utensils and everything you'd want.

"If she went to the trouble of putting up your markers, I dare say she'll find you again. And you'll have to ask her how the markers behaved at the time. --Another fine meal from our Bar."

((Hey now! Gredya has said at least 185 words to Joly. I just counted. She's downright chatty with him! He just needs to slow down a little so she can get a few more words in.))

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras has no particular reason to doubt Gredya's self-assessment. Not, at any rate, after so many months at Milliways. He provided the qualification merely out of a habitual care for the provenance of information: he saw no evidence that would have led him to guess Gredya was anything but a peculiar and very poor woman, except for her word otherwise.

He rises to help Lesgle with the food. (Joly is presumably occupied with making sure the kittens don't get underfoot, which looks suspiciously like cooing over them.)

"She said," he says, thoughtfully, "that she knows of another place like Milliways. I don't know the details. Except that someone tried to claim that place, and to use it for some selfish end. Unsuccessfully, I gather. It was that that led us to freedom of information and the abuses of power."

Joly, with his maps and his studies and his bright intelligence for matters strange and scientific, should know about that detail, he thinks.