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Finnah's just arrived at work to open the store for the morning shift; she has her apron on but hasn't put her hair up yet. She lets in the customer who always takes half an angle to determine that he wants four buttercreams, again, and then nips into the back to tend to her hair and check the overnight progress of the rock candy.
This isn't the back.
But that -
No, he's too tall to be Mial, if this is a Mial prank it's a stupidly elaborate one.
"Okay, I give up," she says, "what the hell?"
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unmarred
"I fear the effect of me on children, not the effect of children on me."
unmarred
"I'm not very good at talking to people without inadvertently horrifying them. I don't care to test myself on people who are likely to be harder to understand and easier to upset."
middlingalong
"What about a little Miles, since you're the expert on Mileses?" wonders Ivan. "If he'd been here alone."
unmarred
"...I am slightly less overwhelmingly reluctant to interact with a child Miles. But I'd still rather flee, all else being equal."
middlingalong
"Now there was an obnoxious child," says Ivan.
"I thought Mial was cute when he was little, but we have a thirty-one year age gap..."
"I thought Mial was cute when he was little, but we have a thirty-one year age gap..."
unmarred
"Which one are you calling obnoxious? The one you grew up with, or the one who was in here earlier? Or both?"
middlingalong
"Both, although I noticed it less when I was also a small child," says Ivan.
middlingalong
"I noticed, but I didn't attribute it to obnoxious childhood," corrects Ivan. "At the time."
Finnah goes up to the bar and asks for a book of candy recipes Elcenia doesn't have with which she may make a billion aaberik when she has her own store. She gets a fat volume in a language nobody in the bar has seen before and flops down into her chair again to read it.
unmarred
"At least you didn't know me as a small child," muses Mark. "Now there was a little fucker you didn't want to get on the wrong side of. You know they shipped me off Jackson's Whole early because I was such a troublemaker? I think they were afraid one of my escape attempts would succeed."
unmarred
"Who knows? I didn't really start getting the details of my heritage until I was already on Earth. I caught enough references beforehand that I probably could've pieced it together eventually, but it would've taken a while and I might not have cared unless I expected a warm welcome I could exploit."
middlingalong
"Exploitable," snorts Ivan. "That's one way to describe Aunt Cordelia's sentiments."
unmarred
"By my five-year-old definition they certainly would've been. On the other hand, since every other clone I knew was made for the brain-transplant business, I might not have wanted to risk contact with my progenitor."
middlingalong
"That whole thing," says Aurin, "is very gross."
"Yes, yes it is," says Ivan.
"At home the only people who seem particularly motivated by their potential lifespans want to bite me."
"...That's kind of gross."
"Eh, it doesn't hurt or anything."
"Yes, yes it is," says Ivan.
"At home the only people who seem particularly motivated by their potential lifespans want to bite me."
"...That's kind of gross."
"Eh, it doesn't hurt or anything."
middlingalong
"Vampires," says Aurin. "They wind up with the lifespans of whoever they bite, averaged out, so they're very fond of dragons, we're delicious."