Black bodies, blood spilled, someone trying to do WHAT?!?
I don't think so.
I only play the rope game when it's consensual, thanks. Or at least bought and paid for. I slowly squeezed until I heard bones creak. I squeezed a little more and focused on the mouse girl in front of me.
OK, not literally a mouse girl, but mousy in some way. Funny thing is, she gets paired with this snake (mmm, 'sgood eatin') and she has this whippet kind of fighting fury around her. Pretty hostile, not sure what to do with us.
Yeah, "Us." Apparently I'm not the only one the hand of fate decided to dangle between worlds. So was this monochrome ninja (as opposed to the day-glo kind, of course) sitting next to me. Tall, something about it spoke feminine to me, but that didn't mean it didn't come from some girly-man shadow.
Mouse girl is named Mil. Captain Mil. I guessed the ship's name was "Run of the Mil(l)," but didn't say it aloud. I was busy being big and blustering, and didn't think my humour was going to be picked up. Some of 'em can be pretty bright and quick and then absolute molasses when it comes to a joke. Mil, huh? Probably a Millicent or a Camilla or maybe the mouse was that she was actually a man, and it's a Mel gone wrong. Or maybe it's a nickname for some rich kid. That kind of suited her image.
Odd. She went silent in "that" way. The way my mentor would at times when he was communicating into quiet. Mage? Probably. Maybe something more. I made the decision then to stay on the ship a little longer. No flashy, "Running to the store for some milk, be back in a millenia." I started carving "Mil was here," into the wood of the table out of sheer boredom.
Only to be told, "Don't do that."
Well, duh. That's why I did it. Except it seemed to be healing. Um.
I took a breath. Um, indeed.
So, OK, living table, living wood... I'd heard of this kind of stuff from a fellow Traveller, one who had this funny animate box with lots of legs. I didn't quite understand his accent, despite him telling us of the Liveships. Maybe this was a--well... hmmm. I pet the table.
It purred. Not on the aural resonance, but the mental.
OK. Be nice to the ship, Chantallacious.
Ship was called the Blowing Leaf or the Wind of Fate or Shoot the Breeze or something like that. Of course, I ran into a gang once that called themselves the Pale-Faced Black Silence. Had to kill 'em, of course. They gestured weapons as a form of conjuration. I had too much respect for the Order of Clowns to keep mimes alive.
So they seemed to waffle back and forth on whether or not we got the ol' protective custody or just protected. Apparently we'd beamed in during some sort of tough spot with some target practice being done on elves. I don't have anything actually against the pale-skinned, tree-hugging, star-gazing, mead-drinking, night-dancing, pointy-eared, bright-eyed, feather-footed, arrow-jointed, anorexic, moon-watching, flower-sniffing, giggling, meretricious, weak-chinned, delicate-browed, nature-happy, glamour-ridden, tip-toed, fairy-dusted, fragile-boned, pipe-playing, enigmatic, gem-craven, niminy-piminy, overwrought, haughty, ethereal, prattle-prone, paradisiacal, braggardly, strepitous, narcissistic ones, but it might be some kind of natural prejudice. For one thing, unless they were wee things indeed, they were usually taller than me, and could never be bothered to hang around as portable ladders.
Besides, the ninja kind of looked like one, and she was pretty cute. She called herself Callidora, but I was betting she was named after Kali Durga, the whirlwind of destruction. Where are people to take this kind of bet? Somewhere out in the Worlds there just had to be a sort of Potentials bookie. I'd probably find him in Graustark, though.
So, while we were waiting I gave her a bland sort of pick-up line. Hey, I still had some rope, and, well, just because I said no earlier didn't mean it hadn't planted a seed in my head. She rejected me. I fantasized not the act, but the look on Mil's face when she caught us in it, while keeping the table happy. Huh. At least it didn't start that funny thumping its leg on the floor.
We waited with some pointless banter. She had been, apparently, an acrobat, but never a mechanical woman.
We met, briefly, a fellow named Karr. I mentally made his last name "toum" or "toon," depending on if he turned out to be funny or not. He whipped up some eye of newt, and toe of frog, eool of bat, and tongue of dog, adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg, and jowlet's wing, (if I remember the ingredients correctly) for us. Yum. Heck, even gruel is fun food.
Apparently the ship liked us, so we were given a room to share. Kalidearie played with the propensities of the ship. I noted that at least having some privacy together would allow us to work on turning that "No," into a "Yes! YES! YESS!!!" given enough time and my natural charm.
But, alas, nothing interesting happened, and thus, I fell asleep.