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It's with a small sigh of relief that Anna leaves the house. She loves her mother, really she does, but she can get so overprotective sometimes.
...This is not the front yard of her childhood home. Nor any kind of outdoors. Instead, it seems to be some kind of bar, although one with no television displaying a sport over the bar. Nor a bartender. And is that window over there displaying exploding stars? Ooookay. Giant high-def television playing exploding stars rather than sports. Or, more likely, some kind of prank by one of her mother's siblings.
"Uncle James? Aunt Ariel?" she calls. "Come on, I've had a rough day. Now is really not the time."
Silence.
Well, it's a bar. Maybe she's meant to go up to the bar.
She goes up to the bar. There don't seem to be any bottles behind it.
Probably not James or Ariel, then. They'd make a bar that looked more like an actual bar, if they were doing something like this.
"...Hello?" she calls again.
Hello. Welcome to Milliways. Can I interest you in a beverage? First is free.
"...Hi, Milliways. Is this some kind of weird attempt to cheer me up?"
I'm Bar. The larger establishment is Milliways. I cannot speculate on the motives behind the placement of the door, unfortunately.
"So you're saying you're an actual person and not something one of my mom's siblings is doing to mess with me."
Yes.
"Huh."
She considers this.
"Well, either you're telling the truth or I have no reason not to play along, I suppose. What did you mean by the placement of the door?"
She considers this.
"Well, either you're telling the truth or I have no reason not to play along, I suppose. What did you mean by the placement of the door?"
The door you came in through appears in various places throughout various worlds at various times. If you go out and let it close, it will no longer lead here, but instead wherever you originally would have gone had Milliways not intercepted you.
"...Various worlds? Do you mean different planets or different dimensions?"
Technically, reads the next napkin, both.
"So...how does that even work? I think things mostly pretend to be corporeal in Hell, I could see a doorlike thing existing there, but how on earth would you access Heaven? No pun intended. And I don't think there's currently sapient life on other planets..."
If there is no door there will be no Milliways. And many dimensions have multiple inhabited planets.
"How many dimensions do you think there are?"
I don't know. Many millions at least.
"...I. Am familiar with three. Or with the existence of three, anyway, I've never been to Hell. This...does not seem like the kind of prank my mother's siblings would play on me. I wonder why..." she trails off, shaking her head. "You said something about a drink?"
jovahs_heiress
One free drink, your choice of anything reasonably described thereas or my recommendation.
The door opens again.
The door opens again.
"Let's have a recommendation, I can get most things I could think of at home."
She turns at the sound of the door opening.
She turns at the sound of the door opening.
jovahs_heiress
A drink appears. It is pale blue and has ice in it.
"...Hello?" says someone with wings.
"...Hello?" says someone with wings.
"Um. Hi. This place claims to be a magic bar that can access dimensions other than Heaven, Earth and Hell, which I didn't know existed yesterday. Or five minutes ago, for that matter."
"Heaven is where you go when you die. Hell is where you go when you die if you are very, very wicked. Earth is just the place where people live. Or they are where I'm from, anyway. If this place is as far reaching as it claims you could be from somewhere else entirely.
...Although I certainly hope you have a Heaven, by some other name."
...Although I certainly hope you have a Heaven, by some other name."
jovahs_heiress
"Well, it's said that Jovah looks after the dead, but the name of the place is unspecified. The place I am from is called Samaria."
"My world had a place named Samaria in it, a long time ago. And Jovah sounds like some of the ways people pronounce God's name."
jovahs_heiress
"That's interesting, but this entire business is very strange and I hesitate to draw any conclusions. Why do you have so many napkins?"
"Apparently the bar is a person and...you know, I have no idea if they even have a gender, they communicate by appearing napkins with words written on them." She holds out the napkins.
jovahs_heiress
I'm female, says a new napkin.
The winged person approaches and reads that. "How curious."
The winged person approaches and reads that. "How curious."