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

[merryeccentricities]

"Excellent, it'll give me another point to measure against. You know you said you and Grantaire got turned around in the forest last winter? So did we, this afternoon. But in full sunlight--well, drizzle, but there was enough light-- and almost in sight of our starting point."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

That gets his attention more sharply.

They're both here, and he saw them yesterday as well, so it's not the same situation. All the same: "How so?"

(At the time, losing four months was disconcerting, disorienting, frustratingly inexplicable. But it caused no greater problems than that. There was nothing to interrupt, no friends to panic over their disappearance besides the phlegmatic Milliways veteran Gavroche. Now, the situation is different.)

[merryeccentricities]

Joly pulls one hand away from the kittens to draw general outlines in the air. "You know I've been starting to map the area? And that woman I told you about-- I think her name is Gredya? -- she was helping me, the other day, right after I'd sprained my leg. Took some of my marker-ties into the forest, to set them up for later. I mean, she seemed very sure about it.

"So we went there today to check them before the rain or snow covered things, and she'd done really well-- straight line, you could see them, 15 ties, ping ping ping." He draws a quick horizontal line in the air. "Not all at once, trees in the way and such. But a few at a time, and I had my measuring kit,they all lined up. And we checked each of them-" another straight line -- "and then we were back at the first one." He looks at Enjolras with some excitement. The forest is baffling, hurrah!

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"Yes, I met her."

This is said under Joly's words; he's listening.

And frowning, thoughtfully. "Strange."

Not bad, nor dangerous, and not out of keeping with the rest of this place, but -- strange. Like so much at Milliways.

[merryeccentricities]

"You met her!" Joly grins. "I was starting to wonder if she was some sort of phantom." He's not joking;Gredya's very stealthy and he's beginning to expect strangeness from Milliways patrons. "Did she speak with you much?"

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"Somewhat, yes."

He suspects that it was a great deal of speech from Gredya, based on her manner.

"Her society is quite primitive. There was a language barrier of some sort -- I don't know why the usual translation fails, but it seemed to me that it had -- at any rate, she said several times that she isn't human. We spoke of free access to information and the abuses of power in an unequal society. She seemed quite unused to discussions of philosophy, but interested in it. As well as your maps, and learning to read."

Who's surprised that Enjolras met a wary, grouchy werewolf and started talking social theory?

[merryeccentricities]

Not human after all? Well that...actually makes things a lot more understandable, in some ways.He nods. "If she's not used to discussions of philosophy, it may just be the difficulty of a new subject,and not the translator failing."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"Maybe," he agrees. "We didn't speak of languages."

Some of her sentences were pretty halting, and not just because of complex terms, but who knows.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Bossuet has been out in the hall, keeping an eye out for rats with lunch: he'd just as soon protect them and the food from kitten attacks. He comes in now with a densely-packed tray, but quietly, not wanting to interrupt any conversation that might have started up.

[merryeccentricities]

Joly smiles. "Did you hear? Enjolras has met my mysterious map-making assistant!"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I thought we agreed to try Coufeyrac on her first." He looks at them over his shoulder while he puts down the lunch tray. "Well? Enjolras, you seem unharmed, has Joly been exaggerating her terrors?"

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Based on that, there's likely some kind of innuendo in a previous conversation they're alluding to, but as per usual Enjolras elects to ignore that entirely. He shrugs.

"Awkward, certainly, and abrupt. But I think sincere. She's not accustomed to discussing philosophy and education, perhaps not to conversation at all. But interested. Her society sounds like it's only a step or two beyond a state of nature. She said they're free, in their way -- that is, without states or the machinery of tyranny, and firm upon maintaining that, but each man with only the rights and freedom his strength can ensure."

"According to her, she's not human. What a Wyr is she didn't explain, though."

[merryeccentricities]

Joly frowns for a moment. "I hope she isn't, if she says she's not. That she's one of Milliways' other peoples and not.. ah!" He pauses to untangle tiny claws from the dire traps of knitwear. "Well, I'll ask her if I see her again. If she talks to me; I've never managed to get her talking as much as is seems you did, Enjolras." He smiles a little wryly. "She certainly does seem sincere, though I've never been sure what she's being sincere about, when we've met."

[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.