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There is a red-eyed teenage boy - or so it would seem - positively interrogating the bar.
"Redreed wine?"
Aren't you a little young for that?
"I don't actually want any right now, but you know what it is?"
Of course.
"That... is interesting." He taps his fingers on the bar. "All right - I do, actually, want a chocolate iced planet."
And he gets a little square pastry, frosting on the top, and turns on his barstool to watch the comings and goings.
~~~
with Giles
with Lazarus
jellyinthemix
"...In what way is that a planet?" asks a passing human, peering down at the pastry.
"...Be...cause it is square, and has stuff on top," says the red-eyed boy. "Unlike the planet, obviously, it is made of - actually, come to think of it, did this come into existence as a complete object or was it in fact made of flour and sugar and whatever else goes in iced planets?" He directs this question at the bar.
That hardly makes a difference to its material composition now, does it?
"I wouldn't imagine so, but," he bites the corner of his edible, "if this is conjured food it is the very best conjured food of all time."
That hardly makes a difference to its material composition now, does it?
"I wouldn't imagine so, but," he bites the corner of his edible, "if this is conjured food it is the very best conjured food of all time."
jellyinthemix
"The planets I'm familiar with are spherical," he says. "But I suppose that's what I get for making assumptions at Milliways."
"Sounds challenging to stand on. Which way is down?" inquires Kaylo around his bite of iced planet.
jellyinthemix
"Towards the centre. They're very large spheres."
He sits down at the bar. She provides him with a mug of tea, unasked.
He sits down at the bar. She provides him with a mug of tea, unasked.
"Still sounds weird," says Kaylo. "Bar, can I get a nice white wine - no redreed necessary? I'll take your recommendation on it." He finishes his iced planet quickly and then starts sipping from the supplied glass, rather faster than might typically be advised.
"You have a bunch of planets?" inquires Kaylo. "And they're all spheres? How large is large, are they larger than - you have no idea how big my moon is, do you."
jellyinthemix
"I certainly don't," he agrees. "But I would guess much, much larger. Large enough that surface-dwelling civilizations developed with the assumption that it was, in fact, flat."
"It boggles the mind that you wouldn't be able to tell. All it'd take would be ten minutes of altitude. Can't anybody fly where you're from?"
jellyinthemix
"Of species native to the planet, no, not without a vehicle of some kind. Although, having flown, I can say that it did not look especially rounder than usual from the air."
The red-eyed boy scrutinizes the entirely natural-looking color of the human's eyes. Then he says, "I think I had the wrong upper bound on how far this thing -" He waves at the entirety of Milliways - "was reaching for patrons."
"Meaning, I walk into what's supposed to be my seminar on astronomy - funnily enough - and find this place, and it looks like a bar. It has tables and chairs and an inn upstairs and serves beverages, it isn't full of things for which I can discern no purpose. So I was figuring even if it's paying visits to multiple worlds, it's probably picking similar worlds, but I guess not all worlds that have tables and chairs have equally normal things like square planets and dragons."
jellyinthemix
"I wouldn't actually be confident in saying we don't have dragons in my world," he says, "but I've never personally met one there. I think mine might be closer to the local average than yours, if only because I've been coming here for a while and you're the first I've heard of square planets."
"A square planet," corrects Kaylo idly. "Unless you're counting the pastry kind. Why wouldn't you know if you had dragons?"
jellyinthemix
"Oh, someone's always discovering that a species previously assumed to be legendary has existed all along."
Kaylo snorts. "It'd be some weird dragons who hid like that."
"Well, I don't know, maybe your world is terrible and if I went there I would promptly go into hiding, too," shrugs Kaylo. "Is your world terrible? Would something uncivilized happen to me if I went there?" He gestures at his eyes, as though this is meaningful in some way.
jellyinthemix
"Very possibly," he says. "It's more than usually hazardous, as worlds go, I think. Discounting actual hell dimensions."
"Actual what now."
jellyinthemix
"Hell dimensions," he repeats. "What part of that do you need explained?"
"See, where I'm from, if somebody starts talking about any manner of hell, you can write them off as a member of one of several annoying religions, but in this context, given that you have not handed me any tracts advising me to convert to Salvationism, the word 'actual' followed by 'hell' is alarming me."
jellyinthemix
"Hell dimensions are alarming," he says dryly. "They're our most frequent source of potentially world-destroying events."