Coffee and Shopping

[spindown]

Who: Rosalind and any soul who is unlucky enough to run into her.
Where: Sand Dollars and the Sundries Shop
What: Harassing her roommate, shopping, having coffee.
When: June, before the camping excursion.
Warnings: Science nonsense and rudeness, probably quantum shenanigans and blood.



Locked to Phil

Rosalind woke up on this boat in a room that both is and is not her own, without her partner that both was and was not herself. The sequence of events that lead her here were harrowing but, in the face of a strange cruise liner and stranger occupants, she finds she actually misses them. She caught glimpse of her roommate when she first arrived, a strange fellow that she hadn't given more than a passing glance as he lie in bed, largely because he was not Robert and that was her greatest concern. Now, having finished muster and being freed from the bonds of whatever force compelled her to attend, she returns to find that she is, somehow, roomed with a non-biblical angel.

She considers the winged fellow as one might consider a particularly curious looking grandfather clock. She knows all the parts involved and, whether she approves of the aesthetic or function, it will continue existing just to spite her. Still, there's no call to be rude, and if she's to be stuck with a roommate it tracks that she should, perhaps, know his name.

"What are you called?" she asks primly, by way of greeting, and crosses the room to examine the bed and the various technological amenities.



Open - Sand Dollars

This ship may lack proper library facilities, be run largely on magic, and be staffed by ghosts, but at least it has coffee. It would have truly been intolerable without some ready source of caffeine and, frankly, she couldn't abide tea. So she sits in the little cafe, Sand Dollars it's called, and reads a terrible, trashy fiction novel about time travel while sipping a very strong, very hot cappuccino. She has a small plate before her filled with madeleines and, every few minutes, makes a derisive hum as she turns the page of her book.



Open - Sundries

The sundries store has a number of useful and useless items, but lacks quite a lot of the amenities she is accustomed to. Or, at least, the versions of those amenities she is accustomed to. It appears to have the lot of them in some more modern format, but they are not things she recognizes immediately. So, with a great deal of frustration, Rosalind spends quite a long time sorting through the items on sale at the shop. She turns over the packaging, reads the labels, reads the chemical composition information (one of the few modern touches she wholly approves of) and then moves down the line.

If you've never seen a Gibson girl reading various convenience store groceries like they're a fascinating novel, now you have.

Comments

Wildcard!

[ossie_oswald]

Oswald's leaving his house in the morning, lost in his own musings about his daily plans such that he forgets to check for all his belongings on the path down from the cottage to the gates. So he's standing in the doorway, half-in and half-out, doing his usual pat-down of his pockets. Was his lighter in his breast pocket? No, no lump there, where did he put the ruddy thing...

Behind Oswald, to anyone looking over his shoulder, there is a beautiful English country garden and a pleasant thatched-roof cottage where the inside of his cabin should be. The pleasant spring breeze occasionally ruffles his hair. It would be unfortunate if someone were to notice.

[spindown]

Mornings have become something rather routine for Rosalind. She likes routine. So much of her life is devoted to the study of the unpredictable that predictability is dearly a cherished asset. So, she leaves her room at the same time she does every morning, walks down the hall toward the lift, and thinks on her order at the coffee shop.

This morning, however, there is a variable.

A nominally attractive gentleman standing with one foot outside of his cabin door, checking back for something he's forgotten. She would write him off but, unfortunately, she is very well versed in the study of strange variables. She knows something is afoot well before she walks within range of his door--there is an incorrect light source and a vague updraft stirring his well coiffed hair.

Neither of these things exist on the Serena Eternia.

When she finally comes up alongside, she can see past his shoulder at the charming garden and the little stone path leading back in the sunshine. There are trees about. She stops, glowering already, and gives the back of his head a nasty sort of look.

"Hm," she starts. "Opening tears in reality at this time of morning, are we now?"

[ossie_oswald]

There is a moment of panic as he remembers where he is- which is to say, not coming out of one of the doors in his London apartment where he usually accessed the cottage from. Further was the panic of being drawn and bloody quartered by Winter for being careless with the use of overt magic. But 'keep the people lost to every outsider' didn't really apply when everyone was lost. So after a temporary ruffling of his feathers, he eased into a brilliant smile.

"It's not a tear. It's very obviously a door. You'd be amazed the kind of places you can get to when you knock politely."

[spindown]

Having semantics argued at her by a man holding open a portal to another dimension is hardly her ideal morning. She gives him a flat look and says, drolly:

"I would not, but only because I've existed in the vast majority of them all at once," Rosalind informs him. But, of course, she's being terribly rude and if there is one thing she cannot abide it is impropriety. Without proper manners, everything descends into religious cults and chaos. She's seen it.

"Impressive dimensional gateway, I should love to know how you managed that," she says and extends a hand to shake. "Good morning to you. I am Rosalind Lutece, Doctor of Quantum Mechanics, Columbia, currently of Cabin 137."

[ossie_oswald]

Ah, egotism. Everyone thus far had been polite enough and genial enough that Oswald had briefly forgotten about the existence of people who would lord things over you, be it intelligence or importance or whatever way they felt superior. It puts a damper on things right away. But she at least seemed to remember her manners after scolding him, and he accepted the handshake.

"Oswald Wuthridge, courtier of her majesty Queen Holle's Spring Court of London, England. Currently of, er, this cabin, I suppose."

Two can play at title-comparison, Rosalind.

"And, just as I said, I simply knocked."

[spindown]

Of course. She has yet to introduce herself with her proper earned honors and be respected for them. It's always either 'doctor, what sort of doctor' or 'this woman is challenging me'. At least this man adopted the latter and gave her information in return. She hasn't the faintest who Queen Holle is, but she knows London, England well enough. She nods respectfully and the handshake is, if nothing else, extremely by the book.

"You...knocked?" Rosalind asks, voice lifting as she goes slightly aghast. One of her brows arches with the extreme force of her skepticism. She supposes that, ultimately, she had done the same with the alternate, adjacent realities around her own, knocking on the walls...but this is a bit literal, isn't it?

"No contraption or skills, just knocking?"

[ossie_oswald]

Oswald shuts the door behind him. Opens it, to reveal the regular cabin. Closes it again. Knocks. Opens the door again. English countryside cottage with a hedgerow and a garden of wildflowers out the front. Shuts the door again.

"Just as I said, I knocked."

The game models don't make a face extreme enough for this reaction.

[spindown]

Rosalind is torn, fundamentally and metaphorically but, (apparently) not literally.

First, he's been perfectly candid about how this works. He's shown her, to her face, at her behest, precisely how he does this. That is, overall, commendable.

Unfortunately: second, this is complete and total hogwash.

She stares, watches him open and shut the door, and her offense and affront mount with each movement. It's like watching a magician if you bred rabbits and did haberdashery on the side. Everything in her is screaming that this is just flim-flammery but she cannot, on her life, figure out the mechanism by which he is tricking her.

She has literally, not once, not ever, been more offended than she is right now.

Tragically, he is also being perfectly polite, so she has no call to go off on a rant or start screaming at him. There is no world in which she does this which, oddly enough, is made extremely clear by the total lack of variants or deviations spawning in her wake. Not once has a ghostly form of her diverged from the timeline. In all possible universes where this interaction occurs, she is in alignment with herself.

This is bullshit. (Pardon her French.)

She gapes and stares and looks at him and, in a very tight-lipped, stiff fashion:

"As you said," she agrees. Begrudgingly. So begrudgingly. "And that's an entire sub-dimension, is it? With gravity and weather and such? Hm?"

Does her voice go higher pitched with strain as she speaks? Ludicrous. Of course it doesn't.

[ossie_oswald]

If Oswald were a Summer courtier, he could feast on the sheer amount of rage radiating off her for months. As it stands, her fury is useless to him. Not his glamour of preference.

He pays absolutely no heed to the frustration and disbelief coming from her, and answers nonchalantly.

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about sub-dimensions. It's just a little section of the Hedge I own. Really, anything to do with how it works would be the domain of my man, he's the magical brains of this operation, I just live here. Do you intend on questioning me further? Because I myself would prefer this conversation over tea."