Opened up a window and in flew Enza

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae had been so careful putting her towel and clothes out of reach when she had reached the Caribbean inlet, specifically so she wouldn't have to worry about them while she swam. Apparently she hadn't put them high enough. When she had waded back out of the water two hours later, all that was left of her towel was a few torn and singed cotton threads, and her clothes were nowhere to be seen. Not even her coat.

It was enough to make one wonder if 'demon bunny' could constitute an actual curse. May your teeth fall out, your crops rot, and demon bunnies nick all your stuff.

The weather was warm enough at the Caribbean inlet, but Rae was wet and weary, and while winter was technically on its way out of the pseudo-Scottish countryside, it was still plenty chilly, and the muddy ground was frigid under her bare feet.

Her teeth were chattering by the time she reached the bar room's back door - the key to her room had been in her coat pocket, anyway, so she figured she might as well go directly in. The Bar's offerings of a fluffy (whole, and unsinged!) towel and a thick bathrobe are much appreciated.

Comments

[capture_eternity]

There always seems to be some plague or another in the slums of the East End; you can be glad if it's not the cholera this time.

Dorian Gray, of course, doesn't mind. He has slept with consumptive women without any fear as he knows he will shake off everything and anything.

There is a nasty influenza about at this time of year, and more people coughing and sneezing than usual, but Dorian had still gone out to place some bets and meet a few people he needed to see. He always has plans and keeps busy.

He feels a bit under the weather when he gets home today, so he decides to go and look at the painting; confronting the ravages of time is the best way to shed them. But when he steps through the secret mirrored doors, it's not that plain, hidden chamber that he enters, but Milliways.

Wearing a silk kimono and carrying a large, dramatic candle-stick, Dorian Gray is standing in the middle of the bar, and sneezin.

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae wraps the thick, white bathroom around her and ties it shut. The warm robe has deep pockets and comes down to her knees, but she rather wishes it were longer; the bar room is plenty warm, but it still takes a little while to adjust after coming in from the cold.

She looks over at the sound of the sneezes, and offers a wry smile, her teeth still chattering slightly. "If not for the rather anticlimactic sneezes, Dorian, you'd look like you just stepped out of a gothic novel."

The warmth is already improving her mood, which just a few minutes ago was rather wretched.

[capture_eternity]

"And you look as if you'd just stepped out of your bath," Dorian says, smiling.

Then, he sneezes again.

"There's something going round in the East End that I may have caught the tail end of," he says. "We should have tea!"

[sunbaked_baker]

"I might as well have," Rae remarks, dry, as she offers him a tissue for his nose. "Demon rabbits stole my towel and clothes and coat while I was out swimming in the Caribbean inlet, where it's warm though the rest of the lake is still cold. So I was stuck, sopping wet, coming back through the chilly air and chillier mud."

"Between thieving rabbits, semi-Scottish chill, and whatever you've caught, tea - and some time in front of the fireplace, I think - sounds like a perfect plan," she agrees.

[capture_eternity]

Dorian puts his candlestick on a table near the fireplace, and indicates the chair beside it with a deep bow.

"Please do be seated," he says, "and I shall be long momentarily with tea and all that may be needed for it."

He walks towards the bar and talks to it, and some rats; after a while, he returns with a warm, soft paisley-patterned shawl (that may almost be called a plaid, for its size) and some socks, followed by rats bringing a proper tea tray, with a tea pot, milk, sugar, honey and lemon, as well as cucumber sandwiches and thin ginger cookies.

He offers the shawl to Rae. "They assure me this is made in the cold mountains in the north of India, out of the under-wool of especially lovely baby goats, and warms like nothing else in the world. The pattern is traditional, as well."

Then, he offers her a pair of warm socks as well.

"And to be once more anticlimactic to the gothic impression...."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I'm in danger of becoming spoiled, Dorian," she chuckles at him, wrapping the warm shawl around her and settling back into the chair. "Indian baby goats? Really?"

Even having only ever seen pictures of baby goats on the globenet, they sound adorable. That the shawl made from their wool is delightfully warm is practically a bonus. The rats bearing the tea tray and all of its accoutrements get a grateful glance and appreciative thanks from Sunshine, as they set the tray on the coffee-table before the two under-the-weather humans.

"Do you need some medicine?" Rae asks, leaning forward to offer him the box of tissues from the side table. "It sounds like you've really caught something."

[capture_eternity]

Dorian starts putting his own warm socks over his silken ones, then settles into the other chair and accepts a tissue.

"Disposable handkerchiefs!" he says, "very clever!"

He sneezes into it, politely turned away, then tucks it into his dressing gown pocket, and starts to pour tea.

"I hardly ever catch anything," he says. "I'm a very hardy specimen, even if I look like an utter wilting wimp. How do you take your tea?"

He offers honey; honey and lemon seem like a good idea when you're sick?

"And what's more, the baby goats are only ever gently fleeced so they can live to produce more wool another day. I don't know how old they get before their wool is too coarse for the finest quality."

[sunbaked_baker]

"With honey, please," she replies. "I hardly ever get sick, either. Never since I was six years old, back home, but once or twice here, with Milliways weirdness."

That hardly counts, though. Those were just Milliways being weird.

"I should hope no one is roughly fleecing baby goats," Rae remarks, wry. "Though goat-care is out of the realm of my experience. Generally the only fleecing I'm familiar with is the humdrum variety practiced by the government on the populace and that some businesses do to their customers."

[capture_eternity]

Dorian adds honey to her tea, and stirs while smiling at her.

"Yes, I know those two varieties first-hand as well," he says. "Especially the government variety. Those tax men are terribly nosy and make you pay for the oddest things."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Especially things you don't particularly care to see get funded," Rae remarks, accepting the cup of tea with a wry smile. "We aren't exactly given a checklist of projects our taxes will fund, with ticky-boxes so we can choose where our money will go."

"But that is a vague, impersonal fleecing that just about everyone experiences. Businesses charging exorbitant rates for their goods or services always feel a bit more... targeted."

[capture_eternity]

"Yes," Dorian agrees, pushing over her cup (a nice one, on a pretty saucer!) before dosing his own with honey and lemon. "When you realise some shop-owner or tradesman has done it, you feel silly for holding still instead of whacking him one with your little horns, so to speak."

He coughs, takes another tissue, and politely turns away while very quietly blowing his nose. A gentleman doesn't honk in the presence of a lady!

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae inhales the fragrant steam, smiling the moment after the first, perfect sip. "It behooves one to butt heads with those who'd fleece you, if you can spot it before it happens."

[capture_eternity]

"And then caper away from a bad deal," Dorian adds, sipping his own tea.

Pause.

"I'm frightfully sorry, but what does one do with those paper handkerchiefs when they're done? One can hardly hand them to the laundress."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Generally, they're thrown away," Rae says, sipping her tea and cradling the cup in her hands.

"Finding that you'd left one in your pocket when your laundry is done is generally frustrating - the thin paper breaks down so easily in the wash, and then all your clothes have little bitty bits of paper all over them."

[capture_eternity]

"I'll have to throw them away here, or my housekeeper will be astonished," Dorian says. "I can't casually fill my bins with inventions from the future. That would be overdoing it a little."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Only a little?" Rae grins. "What would constitute overdoing it a lot?"

[capture_eternity]

"Bringing a stereo home and playing 20th century stage musicals loudly at all hours," Dorian says, grinning.

He sips his tea again.

"I already feel better. It must be your company."

[sunbaked_baker]

"No amount of money great enough to make her overlook her astonishment, for the sake of music from the future?" Rae chuckles, amused by the image. Leaning forward, she claims one of the cucumber sandwiches for her own. "Though the stereo would likely have to be something battery-operated - I'm not sure the electrical set-up in your time would be compatible with late-twentieth century tech."

"I'm glad you're feeling better," she adds, smiling. "Maybe with the help of good tea, a lovely fire in the fireplace, and fuzzy socks, you can shake off whatever it is."

[capture_eternity]

"Laughing always helps," Dorian says. "It makes me feel less sorry for myself."

He ponders.

"I do have a phonograph, but that's a far cry from the equipment they have here."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I wonder if the Bar would be able to get your phonograph versions of future music," Rae suggests, smirking a little before she takes a bite of her sandwich.

It would just be a more extreme version of collecting vinyl records in the twenty-first century.

[capture_eternity]

"That is something I might try!" Dorian says. "Then I could just take the essentials home with me, in case my door goes away and I feel the urgent need for 'Phantom of the Opera' or 'Sound of Music'."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Sometimes one does feel the need for something to sing along with, as dramatically as possible, without being judged," Rae laughs, grinning at him. "I've never been too terribly familiar with stage musicals, myself; I've heard some of the songs, but rarely ever seen the plays they go with."

"That might have to change - 'Phantom of the Opera' sounds like it might be right up my alley."

Rae's genre doesn't generally make it into well-known plays, in her world.

[capture_eternity]

"It's about this terrifying spectre that lives underneath the Paris opera and picks that one young soprano to turn into a star, but she's in love with that one young man..." Dorian says. "And a chandelier falls. I've watched it on a disk here, too. All very dramatic."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Ooh," Rae says, approving. "I'll snag a copy sometime and watch it."

She will likely also snag Autor to watch it with her. That is, once the lingering, awkward prickliness between them is smoothed over. Somehow.

"I've... well, I've always had something of a weakness for ostentatiously dramatic storytelling. There's something delightfully ridiculous in it."

[capture_eternity]

"Delightfully ridiculous just about describes it," Dorian says. "I love it for it -- and the way I can sing along with it with maximum drama."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I look forward to being blown away by the drama," Rae laughs. "Have you ever read Count of Monte Cristo? Ye gods, such ridiculous drama."

And she loves the book for it.

[capture_eternity]

"Yes!" Dorian says. "It is! He makes himself unhappy on purpose with such relentless energy!"

[sunbaked_baker]

"He works so hard at it," Rae grins. "The whole thing is an excessively dramatic, Rube-Goldberg device of revenge. By the middle of my first read-through, as a kid, I was convinced that the book showed a version of Europa that only had about eighteen, maybe twenty people, total. If someone was mentioned as existing, or there were rumors about them, they'd show up without fail. Or be some already-known character in disguise, of course."

[capture_eternity]

"Everybody else was an extra!" Dorian says. "Or maybe an almost life-sized cardboard cut-out."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Part of the scenery to be chewed upon," Rae agrees, pouring herself a top-up of tea, and offering to do the same for Dorian. "Dramatically."

[capture_eternity]

Dorian holds out his cup. "Thank you!" he says. "It's amazing they didn't make a stage musical out of it, too."

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae smiles as she pours for him. "I'm just trying to figure out what kind of lyrics the musical version would have to its songs. 'Oops, I poisoned the wrong kid, o woe, o woe.'"

"Followed by the touching, sad ballad of the Count, singing 'I've murdered people, ruined lives, committed stock market fraud, driven some people to suicide, ruined the lives of some others who were mostly blameless, caused a young man to have to leave the only home he's known to travel overseas to escape his father's shame which I made public... but I gave the poison to this rather wretched woman who accidentally poisoned her likewise wretched son instead of her relatively innocent step-daughter, so clearly I've gone too far.'"

[capture_eternity]

Dorian laughs and almost spills his tea.

"I made such complicated plans nobody else even realised what happened," Dorian adds, striking a silly operatic pose while still seated.

[sunbaked_baker]

"And now that my entirely too-complicated revenge plans are ended I must go marry my teenaged slave, or ward, or semi adopted daughter, or whatever she really is to me, it's unclear which, because the guy who has caused so much mayhem and grief as to be literally compared to being a vampire totally deserves a happy ending," Rae sings back, between giggling fits.

[capture_eternity]

"And no way am I taking back my former girlfriend for whose sake I started all this," Dorian improvises, putting down his teacup down, just in case.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Nope! Her husband having committed suicide, her fortune gone, her name ruined, her son overseas trying to work off his father's shame through mortal peril, she's left to....." Rae pauses.

"She's left to live out an unjust punishment... and secretly plot her own elaborate revenge," she concludes with a smug smile.

[capture_eternity]

"Suequel fodder!" Dorian declares, cheerfully. "I wonder why nobody ever wrote that!"

He offers the plate of ginger biscuits to Rae. "Here, take one -- ginger is good for colds, I think. Or rather, against them."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Ginger is lovely at any time," Rae smiles, taking one of the ginger cookies. "I should make my triple-ginger gingerbread sometimes soon. You might like it, and it might have enough ginger to make a difference in your cold, or whatever you've caught. It's served with a little gravy-boat of icing."

[capture_eternity]

"I think my cold is already beating a hasty retreat as it apparently can't bear this much amusement," Dorian says. "It thrives on misery, coming from the East End."

He wipes his nose with another tissue, then refills both their teacups.

"So, let's plot this revenge of Mercedes' just for the sake of it?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Oh, someone must! If a stage writer or composer won't, we will have to bravely step in to help things along," Sunshine laughs, wrapping her hands around her warm, newly-refilled cup. "We can fix it."

Cozy and comfortable before the fire, with tea, cucumber sandwiches and ginger biscuits, the newly-minted fanfic authors happily call back and forth, discussing the necessary plot elements for a satisfyingly dramatic, convoluted resolution to the clearly unfinished tale of woe and revenge.