rainbowlounge | The Villa Is Open

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roleplay: open

The Villa Is Open

Zephyr had a plan. "We are gonna make you the best electric milkshake that ever was!"

"Or will be!" Pip joined in, clapping her hands over her head as she danced along before him and Roa and generally got in the way of where they were trying to walk.

This gave Zephyr plenty of excuse to pause at the end of the hall and make himself a sweeping gesture. "In the historya... ah..." one that should have ended with him banging his hand on the wall.

Except for the part where the applicable wall had disappeared and not in the usual behold the busted drywall kind of way. It was just gone. Likewise, the hallway and the entirety of Sky Plaza.

Zephyr stood on some low, sweeping stone steps. That happened to be outside, while just a moment before been /inside/ and headed to the kitchen. "OK, what the hell?"

Roa took in the sudden sky all golden up the flanks of the villa before them and held her finger to her lips in curiosity. "I don't know, actually." Then, she attempted to walk down the way they had come. This got her over the steps and almost to the spray from the fountain in the drive before it became quite apparent merely turning around wasn't going to accomplish much besides dampening her shoes. Back up she went. "This *looks* like where they held the last Court of the Manor."

"You dunno?" his next sound was an odd one, not a moan and not a laugh, and awfully feline besides. "Yeah, that's not freakin me out or nothin. Dun you know everythin?"

"Zephyyyr. Same to you."

"You guys," interjected Pip, her bare toes rapping on the stone. "Think this's kinda the same thing happened to Seb."

"Hm?" Zephyr craned himself her way, and their hands tangled together, wires all a-flash.

"Mm!"

"Mnhn."

"Nnn~."

"Well, I like your theory so far," Roa nodded. Mostly, she wasn't being silly right back at their latest ridiculous display. Mostly. "Happened to Siebenkas...?"

"Yeah, he had this dream," the elder of the two evokers almost began to explain, digits working.

Whatever he meant to coax out of the recollections between them, Pip took over, swaying as she did. "He thinks was a dream, but is totally notta dream. I know. I touched him thinkin about it an it was all wrong fora dream. Still didn't make any sense, but not the same kinda way dreams do."

"Also, Seb never dreams he's nekkid. Fun fact."

("So useful, too," Roa remarked, quite to herself.)

"But, he walked outta his bathroom an alla a sudden, he was in this bar in Old New York an there were all these other people an he was almost kinda sorta mebbe flirtin with this mob boss lady over gin an tonic and then there was this real cute muddy guy. Seb didn't think he was so cute, but I did. He got way more distracted by the other lady evoked with her eyes and the booze was good an there were pretty blond polyamourous peeps bonkin in the restroom an... an... an..."

Her not so little description might have gone on another few hours, except that Zephyr reached around with his unoccupied hand and tickled her. The way they'd tangled up together, she must have known it was coming.

Which left Roa to conclude Pip wanted tickled more than she wanted to discuss any washroom adventures. "On one hand, that sounds very much like a dream to me. On the other, if there's some sort of precedent for people in our manor suddenly disobeying all known laws of physics. And you're not playing some sort of elaborate prank."

"Hey! I had my heart set on givin you your first electric milkshake an that's not somethin I'd go back on for any money." Next thing she did know with any certainty, Zephyr had play staggered over, clutching at his shirt, "'m so disappointed it /huuurts/."

"Well, you can make it up to me when the universe goes back to normal."

Grin for the time being, too.

"It is going to go back to normal?"

"Did last time. 's why we still gotta Seb an notta portal to someplace called Dan's," said Pip.

"Alright, so why don't we...?"

"Make the besta it?"

"Yes!" Roa swung from Zephyr's grasp. He only then reached for her, trying to find that place in her moments where the best meant [concrete] he could play after and with her. As it was, he missed her as she skipped the villa steps instead, swirling her skirt in her hands and calling back after: "We're going to get company, right?"

"Woul, that'd be nice, but if not," he shrugged. "We get blitzed an watch the stars come out." A quick little sigh and a pop of his shoulder after, he followed.

Pip watched the space in the sky where the clouds should have been. The end of her nose twitched. "We're so gettin company. Can smell it, almost. Somethin's zactly not right out there." Laughing then, she blew past them both and straight through the doors.

Stuff you actually need to know available in this direction:
http://rainbowlounge.dreamwidth.org/18653.html

Have fun!

ETA: This post has not been up thirty-six hours and we officially have more than 500 comments. SO I SUPPOSE THIS ISN'T FUN AT ALL AMMIRITE? XD

ETA II: I am really, really touched that everyone wants to take care of the deceased fellow in the pool. I'm sure he appreciates it (he didn't even have a name in the story where he first appeared ;_;). But, alas, there was only one of him and he's currently being handled. He may be installed in a bedroom shortly, and should that happen, I will give him his own thread for poking purposes.

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Gina, reading 'doctor' in every line of the lovely young woman, went meekly along. "If there's anything that will do that," she replied. "I haven't found anything yet. She's been... very active, the last month or so."

"Oh, my." The woman was dressed similar to those in the bar, who'd come from the future, and if they hadn't found anything to stop the baby kicking too hard by then...

"Well, there's some very nice fresh fruit, which would do you good regardless. Maybe some meat. Would you like something to drink?" she offered.

She sat down and nearly sank into the couch, which was far more cushy than the one she'd been sitting on with Zach. "Water, maybe?" she said. "Or, wait, maybe if they have lemon tea?"

Water? One had to be careful with that, especially if it wasn't sweet and fresh. "I'll get you some lemon tea, then," she said.

And then, remembering her manners, she bowed in greeting. "My name is Setsuko. May I ask what you are called?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Gina said, automatically. "Where are my manners. I'm Gina." She tried a little half-bow of her own, utterly failed because she was a) sitting and b) very pregnant, and held out a hand to shake instead.

Setsuko stared at the hand for a moment, and then tentatively clasped it in greeting, accompanied with what was hopefully her politest smile (smiling seemed necessary in the West, for some reason).

"I'll be back with some fruit and 'lemon' tea," she said.

At the table, she picked out more of the sliced pears and a few sliced greenish-white peaches. The 'lemon' tea was cold--cold!--and served in a tall glass cylinder that sparkled in the light.

"Here," she told Gina upon returning. "I trust this will be satisfactory?"

Lemonade worked. Gina gave a little interior shrug and took it. "Thank you very much," she said, sincerely. "I didn't mean to put you to any trouble, and I am grateful. I take it you're a doctor?"

Setsuko nodded. "I'd like to be," she said. "I was sick when I was small, and a few years ago a friend of mine was wounded and there wasn't anything I could do about it. The doctor was able to heal her, though, and afterward I thought it would be useful if I knew how to heal someone like he did. So I'm learning, right now, and the work isn't always easy, but I know much more than I did then."

She turned to Gina, who looked much better now with that drink. "What do you do?"

"You sound well on the way to it," Gina said, after a sip or two of lemonade. "My obstetrician uses that exact same tone of voice on me. Anyway, nothing worth doing is easy, I don't think."

She had another few sips of lemonade, then answered the other question. "I'm an editor with Lilac Press. They're a small publishing house in New York. Getting bigger every day, though."

"I suppose not," Setsuko replied. "It's fulfilling, in a way. What is an obstetrician?"

She listened intently to Gina as the other woman described her work. "An editor? Publishing? So you put out...stories? Books?"

"An obstetrician is a doctor that works specifically with pregnant women," she said. "As for my job, we work with fiction... or at least I do, there's a nonfiction division but I don't work there. I find good stories, and work with the author to make them better, then I send them on to typesetting and marketing, and they sell the book. It's a nice business, and I'm glad to be in it."

"Oh, like a midwife," Setsuko replied. They were essential when dealing with pregnant women. She hadn't had much experience herself. "I suppose I should look more into that field too."

"So there's a market for stories and books?" she asked. "Where I'm from, very few could read stories, I think. Most of them are told."

"Yeah, kind of." Gina rubbed her belly, pleased that the baby was settling down now. "I think there's a little more to it; they do a lot of prenatal stuff. Or at least they did to me."

Setsuko had asked about books too, and that at least Gina could discourse on happily and at length. "Oh, yes, there's a market. Actually, now there's the biggest market in history. There's near universal literacy, books are pretty cheap, and of course e-books are expanding the market even more."

Setsuko murmured affirmatively. Doctors that could do a little more than midwives before the baby came? That was interesting. "What more do they do?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"History!" she exclaimed. "Why, that's one of my favorite things to read about. But a near universal literacy rate, that's remarkable! Is it because of those...'e-books'?"

"Um." Gina thought back over her treatment. "Well, mine oversaw the in-vitro treatments, and then once they took, she made sure that I was doing okay, checked up on the progress of the pregnancy, gave me prenatal vitamins and the like. Sent me for sonograms." She smiled dreamily, tracing a hand over her belly. "That's something... it's a way that they can show you your baby, while it's still inside you. It's how I know she's a girl."

"No, e-books are a different development." How to explain this... "E-books are a kind of book that... that isn't printed on paper. The literacy rate climbed much earlier than that, I don't know why."

Setsuko didn't quite know what "in-vitro" was, but the sonogram was fascinating, to say the least. "You can see your baby grow? What does she look like? What is it like, seeing her?" She covered her mouth--that was surely too many questions to ask in one sitting.

But then Gina's explanation of e-books was impossible to resist. "Not printed on paper? What are they printed on, then? Stone? Wood? No, that can't be right...but paper is the lightest thing to read, isn't it?"

"Actually." Gina held up a finger and dug through her purse. She came up a minute later with a folded piece of black paper. "Here, I actually just got back from getting copies of this for my parents." She unfolded it and handed it over. "This is my last sonogram, from about a week ago."

"E-books are... there's a kind of technology that lets you read things on a screen, something small and light." She pulled out her phone and handed that over too. "Something like that, but they're usually bigger. E-books are made specially for that kind of medium."

Setsuko unfolded the black paper and examined it. What she originally considered to be white and gray splotches eventually resolved itself into an image of a baby, although blurred and murky. "That's fascinating," she said, because it truly was, even if it didn't live up to her expectations.

The little rectangular object Gina handed over confused her, though. "You can read books on this?" she asked. "But how?"

"Yes." Gina took it back and smiled foolishly at it before folding it up and putting it back in her purse. "I cried, the first time we saw her. Ivy did too, though she'll never admit it."

"Oh, sorry, is it off?" She took the phone back, turned it on, made a face when it told her reception and wireless were out, and handed it back. "There, you can see it displays things now. An e-book is made to display on this screen, or one like it."

"Your Ivy reminds me of a friend of mine," Setsuko said wryly. Iseult always covered up her sadness or emotions with jokes--it took time before she'd actually show them to others.

When Gina handed the little box back to her, Setsuko was struck speechless for a long while. "What sort of device is this? How do you turn pages on something so small? Where are they, even?" She inspected it, looking for some sort of latch that hid pages or paper.

"It's a smart phone," Gina said. "It's a phone that has a little computer inside it, so it can do more than just make phone calls. Er... do you know what a computer is?" Or a phone?

Setsuko shook her head. "I'm afraid not," she said. "Although it does sound like it can do a lot. You can...call other people with this? Can you talk to them?

"Yes," Gina said. "When it has reception. You dial their phone number, and that connects to their phone, and you can talk to them." She bit her lip for a moment. "A computer is... it's a complicated kind of calculating machine, but it can do a lot more than that."

And she had no idea where to go from there. How did one explain the internet, for starters?

"So you can talk to someone, even though they're not in the same room? You can hear their voices? Or do you still have to send letters?"

This 'phone' was getting curiouser and curiouser. If they'd had such devices in Dalriada, the war would have been won by now, surely.

Gina nodded. "It's meant to talk to people across great distances, so you can hear their voices. You can also send very short messages; that's called a text. But most people use phones to hear others' voices." Or at least, that was why she did it.

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