"Uh." He lapses into silence for a moment. "Shit, I failed chemistry, I'm not sure I have a clue. Something something elemental decay something something?" Raoul flashes her a grin. "Nah, I don't want to cause any hassle. I'll get used to it. Hook me up with a drink and don't card me and we're good." ((eta: WHY AM I SO BAD AT REMEMBERING SUB ACCOUNTS #rip))
Riya sighs as she fixes up the drink. "People say things like that and I worry. But you said you're from Aussieland so I'm guessing it's just the legal age difference and I won't have to glare at you."
"Honestly, even if I wasn't, this is an interdimensional bar, for christ's sake - it's not like the fuzz can bust in and arrest you." His grin widens, the paradigm of innocence. So what if he moved to Arizona a year or two ago? No one needed to know that. . .
"Forgot to mention, you guys don't need to worry about paying. It'd be a pain figuring out currencies and stuff anyway. The Bar deals in stories, secrets, and information as far as I can tell. The kind of things that get told by a bunch of people from different worlds talking over drinks. If you haven't paid up yet you will by the time you leave, so don't worry about it."
"Hmm." Berit frowns. "Is it magic?" She experimentally sips her coffee, and her face goes blank, as if she is trying very hard to keep an expression off of it. "This is.. interesting... You said people put milk in it? May I try that?"
"Sure thing." Riya adds a splash of milk and stirs it in before handing it back. "There's actual cream as well, if you prefer that next time."
Riaa wobbled her hand. "Sort of? There's still a lot that isn't known about it. Radioactivity causes your body to mis-remember the way it's supposed to be, if it isn't used properly. And in stories that generally means you sprout wings or get to see through walls or whatever. In reality it usually just means you get difficult diseases. But that's only when it's not used properly, like I said. When you know what you're doing it can be very useful."
"Thank you." Berit tastes the coffee again, more slowly this time. "Oh, this is better." It is. A little. She mulls over Riaa's explanation as she stealthily returns to drinking her beer. "What do you mean by your body remembering?"
Raoul takes a haphazard gulp of his drink (vodka, on the rocks, god bless) and wipes his mouth carelessly with the back of his hand. "That's. . . super neat, how sentient is this place? Like, can I talk to it?" He glances down at the bar and puts his drink down a little more gently than he normally would. He keeps an ear open to the side as Riaa explains. Damn, this is how it should've been taught - Raoul could actually comprehend this.
Mina grins as she accepts the coffee. "Hy like dis place! Und een mine experience, coffee iz best eyereesh vit lots ov sugar."
"Ah, well -" Riaa frowned, thinking for a moment. "Well, inside every single part of every single person, there is a sort of coded message. And that coded message is a series of instructions, and when you are born those instructions are what determines how you will be. How tall you will be, what color your hair will be, that sort of thing. And when you have a child, half of your instructions will combine with half of your partner's instructions and those will determine which traits your child might have." Riaa paused for a moment. "Now, your body doesn't stay the same forever - it's constantly changing and growing very slightly, and when those new parts grow they do so according to their copies of the instructions. In a healthy person, those instructions would be the same for every single part of your body. But when your body gets exposed to radioactivity, when new parts of your body grow, they get copies of the instructions that have errors in them. Because of those errors, they then act incorrectly - they might grow more than they are supposed to, or be unable to grow at all, or something along those lines. Does that make sense?"
"You can say if you don't like it, or you want to change it more. I'm thinking of making myself a cup, if you want I can give you a sip so you know what it's like done super-sweet." Riya gives a patient smile. She's always liked watching people try new things, and has been exasperatedly grateful that Remi is one of those kids more inclined to try things he maybe shouldn't rather than refuse to do anything outside his comfort zone. Problem is, she's not sure he has one. "It has a sense of humor and it's own set of rules- the staff are near godlike when we have to be no matter how strong troublemakers would be in their own world, I can make literally any drink even if I've never heard of it or you made it up on the spot, there's always room for more patrons, the shelves are always stocked and the food is always fresh- but it doesn't really talk. It... communicates sometimes. When I first came in the bar was empty, dunno what happened to the last tender, and when I went behind the counter there was a feeling of 'yeah, this is ok.' I bet if it didn't want me snooping around I'd have gotten spooked instead. Sometimes it disapproves of my design decisions- It let me put up Saturn Devouring His Son-" She points to one of the Goya paintings on the wall, "but not Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel. My band poster stayed up, but half the time when I put up Remi's artwork I find it neatly stacked behind the rum."
"Possibly. I'd have to think on it." Berit waves away Riya's offer - "I'm alright, thank you" - and listens interestedly to her explanation of the bar, ears perked up. She can't help but think of Cole, moving things around invisibly and making people forget he spoke to them.
"Fair enough. If you still want something warm there's tea and hot rum and the like, if there's something you're more used to and you want to chase the cold out." Remi peeks over the bar, realizes he can't reach Riaa without climbing, and runs around instead to show her his sketchbook. "Look! I drew a person with beetle legs." There is, in fact, the beetle equivalent of a drider on the page. In addition to the alternate lower body they have wings, complete with wing-cases, down the back. ("They wouldn't be beetles without them!") There's also a naga on the page with seven heads.
"I'll drink to that, too," Katters says, and finishes her coffee. "Twice the stimulants, and some depressant to keep you on your toes. That's how it should be." "Interesting," Katters says. She needs something to replace her empty mug, and decides to have a little fun with it. She taps a claw on the bar, thoughtfully, then says, "Give me a burning thriller."
The door opens, and a small blonde woman in bright armor looks around curiously as she steps inside. Taking in the surroundings, it seems for a moment almost that her presence... shrinks? An astute observer might think she looks less bright than she did a moment ago. Regardless, she closes the door behind her and walks up to the bar, eyes scanning the decorations and the menu - she raises an eyebrow at that. "Everything, hm? Do you have Emallian wines, then?"
"Just remember: if it hurts and burns it's your own fault." Riya laughs and starts mixing the drink, trying to pay attention to what's going in it this time. Should be interesting; as far as she knows this one doesn't exist on her world... if it even does in Katters's.
"Of course we do. Preference on vintage or should I take whatever's in front?" She gets out a wine glass while she's talking.
Katters grins toothily. "Wouldn't be any fun if there wasn't a little danger involved," she says. "So long as the bar doesn't try to poison me."
"Only if you order something poisonous." She's a little less enthusiastic, as she doesn't recognize what she just poured in, but it becomes clear as the next instruction in her head guiding her hand is to light a match. A jet of flame goes up for a second, burning blue, then shrinks down to a faint spot in the middle like a candle. "Blow it out before you drink, but don't wait too long or it'll burn through."
