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Shell Bell finds Milliways once when she is eighteen. She has been there for two days now, setting up her sign ten minutes out of every waking hour, wiping down tables for her quarters in the staff area, eating buttery potatoes (she has been told that this is a complete nutrient package, for humans). Her wand is holding a bun of hair in place on the back of her head. Her shells are stashed safely in her room; she's budgeting carefully and she'll pay her tab when she leaves.
No one's talked to her due to the sign yet. They don't always. She sets it up anyway, like clockwork, so everyone gets the chance.
she_sells_seashells
she_sells_seashells
"He can summon it?" splutters Bell. "I - I'd half live here if I could and it went and left me alone the entire year I was ten, I have sacks of shells by every door in town so I can stay here for weeks rationing them when it shows up and everyone I know thinks I'm some form of touched in the head because I pitch a fit if they move the bags and when it finally starves me out I have six months minimum to get along without, the only reason I haven't been flogged yet for poaching abalones is because my dad used to be a Peacekeeper, and you get it twice a month and he can summon it a third of the time. Kraken."
(The last word in that tirade is, in District Four, a curse word.)
(The last word in that tirade is, in District Four, a curse word.)
sicaria
"We only found the place after Tony's victory," she adds.
"Would it be a trust-establishing gesture if I put you on our tab?"
"Would it be a trust-establishing gesture if I put you on our tab?"
she_sells_seashells
Bella blinks.
On their tab. On a rich, victor's tab.
"It would help," she says, because she's needy but she's not reckless.
On their tab. On a rich, victor's tab.
"It would help," she says, because she's needy but she's not reckless.
she_sells_seashells
"What would do that?" Bell asks. "...I mean, I wouldn't actually put it past myself to live here for half a year. I love my parents but I don't miss them, not really. I just don't know if they'd have enough to eat if I weren't around."
sicaria
"That, then, would depend on how much time your half year spanned for us. If our timelines are closely linked, and you live on the Bar's idea of unexceptional meals, I don't anticipate a problem. If you live here at six months to my two weeks, or make frequent extravagant purchases, there may be trouble eventually."
she_sells_seashells
"I usually get potatoes. With butter on them they're nutritionally complete, and at least they aren't clams," says Shell Bell. "And they're cheap. But that's when I'm trying to stretch one bag of clamshells as long as I can. And rationing my others to buy nonperishables to bring home and 'find on the beach, it must have fallen off a cruise ship, Mom' at... key moments."
she_sells_seashells
Bell looks nostalgic. "First time I came here I was six and didn't know shells could be money. I asked the bar for 'food I could afford'. I have dreams about what she gave me sometimes."
sicaria
"Evidence suggests that the bar enjoys providing people with food they will find both pleasant and nourishing."
she_sells_seashells
"She managed it." Bell sighs. "If your dad invented a third of the tech District Three has your family probably captured some of the proceeds, right? I never pay attention during the backstory spots during the Games, but. I suppose I sound like a hick."
sicaria
"In a manner of speaking. I was born Tony's identical twin," she explains. "That did not suit me. The kind of relatively subtle modification necessary to correct the dissonance is an unremarkable thing to achieve, in the Capitol. Our father had a friend from the Capitol who arranged the appropriate access, for a fee, of course. An increasingly exorbitant one. When he was finished with us, I was as you see me and the family fortune was largely his. We no longer consider him a friend."
she_sells_seashells
"Oh," says Shell Bell. "Well. They did a very good job. I'm sorry your ex-friend is terrible."
sicaria
"They did indeed do a very good job," she agrees. "I am probably the only girl outside the Capitol who can truthfully say her breasts were designed by an artist."
she_sells_seashells
"Speaking of outside the Capitol. I've never seen anyone else from Panem here, and I do my very best to talk to everyone," says Shell Bell. "Even scary people who want to spend the entire conversation talking about how if we weren't in Milliways they'd like to drink my spinal fluid. Have you seen anyone else, besides Tony and me?"
she_sells_seashells
"Yeah. I was nine. Creepy, ugly kraken, that guy. He didn't actually get any spinal fluid. Or any other fluid."
sicaria
"Why spinal fluid," Sherlock muses. "Personal preference, or dietary requirement? Around here it can be difficult to tell."
she_sells_seashells
"I think he was a human. Although plenty of folks just pass for it and aren't. I haven't had any luck getting superpowered aliens to come home with me. At least not yet."
she_sells_seashells
"A few. A surprising percentage of them speak English. A couple of the ones who didn't were telepathic, that was interesting."