a little young for that

[alicornucopia]

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

Comments

[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."

[alicornucopia]

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."

[jellyinthemix]

"Meaning...?"

[alicornucopia]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo snorts. "It'd be some weird dragons who hid like that."

[jellyinthemix]

He shrugs. "I can't comment on the motives of this hypothetical dragon."

[alicornucopia]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

"Actual what now."

[jellyinthemix]

"Hell dimensions," he repeats. "What part of that do you need explained?"

[alicornucopia]

"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."

[alicornucopia]

"I'm pretty thoroughly convinced not to emigrate, now," says the dragon dryly.

[jellyinthemix]

"I'm not surprised."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, that and the fact that most of my magic won't work offworld. Kind of extremely annoying."

[jellyinthemix]

"Yes, that does seem to vary."

[alicornucopia]

"I'd imagine. Although maybe just being a firebreathing dragon would give me a leg up where you're from if I'm ever, improbably, stuck there by mistake, it'd kind of put a damper on my education."

[jellyinthemix]

"And I wouldn't recommend learning our magic instead. It has its benefits, but also its hazards."

[alicornucopia]

"Well, so has our sort, is yours worse?" inquires Kaylo.

[jellyinthemix]

"Possibility of addiction, possibility of exposure to miscellaneous corrupting influences, possibility of coming to the attention of various gods or godlike beings who may or may not be friendly..."

[alicornucopia]

"Does it kill you if you get a big spell wrong or try one too big for you? That's basically the worst thing that can happen with the kind I'm learning."

[jellyinthemix]

"It can kill you, but not usually under those exact conditions, I don't think. Reading the wrong book or using the wrong magical artifact is a likelier cause."