Thank you, thank you.
"I just can't seem to picture it on myself... I am in no position financially to get a new dress either. But that is a story for another time," April replied, babbling slightly. The critical look on Lascelles’s face rather disconcerted her.
"I daresay that I do not like clams at any time, kind sir," Lin replied, and the gentleman looked delighted at her first attempt at speech.
Just then, Delyr was considering Sachiko’s comment on vampire humor. "Don't they?" he said, chuckling. "Humans never quite seem to understand it, but uhm..." He eyed Sachiki's cat ears. "I wonder if being half-cat at all changes yours. Humor, I mean," he added swiftly, as though he had meant something else altogether.
Lascelles smiled coolly. "Let us meet at Overcast's and Ackermann's tomorrow at noon, and I will be obliged to buy you one myself. Until then, Miss April." He bowed and exited, and Drawlight wasted no time in plopping down beside April.
Sachiko let out a cackle of mirth, startling the vampire. "Oh, yes,” she said, said ears twitching. "I am quite the trickster when the opportunity presents itself." She sensed he perhaps meant something else entirely than her humor.
"I should like to see that. Do you frequent any certain candy shops in London?"
With all the different people chattering around, it seemed almost impossible that someone else would want to enter in to the strangely populated inn. However, the front door swung open, and a tall, weedy sort of dude with a funny smirk on his face stepped inside.
Speaking over Drawlight’s constant babble of gossip, April waved to the newcomer. “Prok!” she said. “Welcome!”
Prok’s smirk turned to a sort of sneer. The door banged shut behind him.
"Yes, I do. Several, in fact. I happen to enjoy chocolate every once in a while." Sachiko, not so very curious as to who had entered the inn, took out a slip of paper from her bag and wrote an address upon it. She slid it across the table to Delyr.
"Well," Drawlight sighed, "your hair could use some dyeing and I cannot at all say I like your taste in dresses, but those shoes, my dear April, are exquisite."
Delyr picked the paper up almost to quickly for human eyes to follow, and a smile flitted across his pale face. "Yes," he murmured, "that’s just what I thought. What is your favorite chocolate, by the way?"
“Milk,” Prok said, coming to lean on the table. He smiled at Sachiko as if he knew the question had not been posed for his benefit, or to him at all. “Dark’s okay. Hollow preferred.”
Sachiko eyed Delyr closely, then smiled a particularly dangerous smile. "Creme filled. And yours, Delyr?" Prok snorted at what he seemed to perceive was a boring conversation, and moved to sit down at a table three down from Sachiko and Delyr’s own. He pulled out a laptop from, more or less, nowhere, and began to type.
Jonathan Strange, who until recently had been listening to the thistle-down-haired gentleman, strolled over to watch Prok on the computer. His eyes glittered with fascination. “What is that?” he asked, awed, and unfortunately, we will have to suppose he meant the computer.
April, astonished, had no idea what to do next. She stared at her shoes. "Why, thank you! I've always loved these shoes... I might choose a dress to go along with them while shopping with Lascelles to-morrow."
Prok shot Lin is a questioning glance, and mouthed something like, Who the heck is that freak? Lin missed it, still talking rather tentatively with the gentleman beside her.
Sachiko giggled quietly to herself at the look of confusion on Prokaryote's face.
"Lascelles!" whispered Drawlight. "Well, I should like to come along, if that's perfectly alright with you. Where are you going, precisely?" He whipped out a quill, ink, and a slip of parchment.
Prok, rather contradicting himself, snorted for the entire room’s benefit. “RPers. Ne-r-r-r-r-r-ds.”
"Not in the least," Lascelles said, poking his head back around the door. "And you, Mister Prokaryote, I may I say I do not care for." He disappeared again.
Sachiko giggled.
Delyr smiled, eyes still on Sachiko's candy-shop address. "I do like Maven's store."
Sachiko dipped her head in agreement. "Their chocolates are quite divine, I admit." She drained her drink.
Meanwhile, the man with the thistle-down hair is speaking with Lin, although she appears rather perturbed by all the strange words flying about the room. "Codfish, really? Do they come in Captain Hook size?" he inquired.
"But," Delyr says, wide eyes imploring, "surely you aren't leaving yet."
Jonathan Strange said something akin to, Odd little contraption, that, and went to lean against the bar, some feet away from Lin and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair.
Another girl came in, then, and by the expression on Mr. Drawlight’s face, he seemed worried that Lascelles’s comment about a houseful of madwomen would come true. However, she looked a respectable sort of lady, and so he returned to his chat with April.
“Ding-dong!” the new woman said aloud, and Prok turned, with a glint in his eye like he was preparing to say something rather scathing.
Lin sighed, looking away. "I believe that I must go," she said sharply, and stood up. She headed towards the door, and disappeared ‘round it before the gentleman could reply. He continued to speak of codfish.
The new girl blushed, turning imploringly to April, who seemed quite exhausted by Mr. Drawlight’s unending babble. April said to the blushing woman – whose name turned out to be Hannah – that they were weird in a different way to everyone, and wouldn’t she sit down.
"I'm afraid I will have to be taking my leave quite shortly," Sachiko said dourly, retrieving a brush from her satchel and pulling it through her short brown hair. "A rather unsympathetic fellow, Dante is. He makes you appear absolutely wonderful."
Just as Prok was opening his mouth to unleash some subtle remark in Hannah’s direction, Sundry bounded downstairs and hit him over the head with a black bear. Someone cheered.
The gentleman with the thistle-down hair grew tired of talking of codfish to himself, and came over to assist Sundry in tying Prok to the chair. When the weedy kid was gagged and bound, they threw his computer out the door. The same someone – who was discovered to be none other than Jonathan Strange – cheered again and invited Sundry and the gentleman down to Soho-square for tea. The three left in high spirits, and a somewhat quieter inn filled with somewhat quieter conversation.
Oh! April thought, only half-listening to Drawlight. I think I am shopping with two to-morrow. I wonder how that happened... She was still thinking about her imaginary world she had been lost in for so long. She now realized she’d be busy in the company of two men, both shopping with her for a new dress.
Hannah threw a small wad of paper at Prok’s head to get his attention, but he was still out cold, and anyways, she missed.
"It's getting rather crowded in here," Delyr commented, for a few unnamed people had entered the inn and were talking loudly at the bar.
"I think I ought to go now," said April, sad to leave Hannah’s company but not at all to leave Drawlight’s. "Goodbye!" She swept out the front door, Drawlight waved mournfully at her receding back, shouting goodbyes ‘until tomorrow.’
Prok stirred slightly.
Hannah looked around for another black bear.
"Yes, crowded for sure,” Sachiko said, glancing worriedly at Prok’s fluttering eyelids. A huge sigh of relief went around as Hannah found a black bear and hit Prok over the head with it.
"Yes," says Delyr, eyeing the unconscious fellow. "I wonder if you all aren't right about him. He seems almost vampiric, in a way."
She sent a dark look towards the loud men at the bar. "Honestly, we were having such a grand old time."
“Ah, well,” the vampire sighed, “’tis the way of teenage boys to be so. Like little vampires – you let ‘em get anywhere near your throat, and they’ll bite it.”
Sachiko nodded absently to herself. "Yes, yes. I do believe you’re right." She smiled slightly, perhaps the image in her head of Prok biting someone.
Jonathan Strange, with a dark look at the out-cold weedy kid, turned for the door. He paused a moment, and went over to pat Hannah's hand sympathetically. "Do let me know if he gets out of hand, dear."
*
"Perhaps we will meet in a dark alleyway someday," Delyr chuckled, back at the table with Sachiko. "That, I would like."
Hannah blushed again. “Cute,” she murmured as the door shut behind him, “a mysterious Jonathan Strange!”
"Yes," sniffed Drawlight as he scooted up beside Hannah, "he does seem to have taken a fancy to you."
"Yeah," Sachiko agrees. "I believe it would be a fitting end for him." She checked her bag one last time, as though to hide her half-joking smile. “But he isn’t all bad. I mean… yeah.”
Sachiko threw a look at Drawlight. "Be careful, my dear," she said to Hannah. "He seems to be quite the dandy."
"I heard something about a Dante fellow as I came in. If I may be so impertinent, who is he?" Delyr asked, and his voice had a tint of something like jealousy for a moment.
Hannah laughed and waved her hand about nonchalantly. "Oh, dandy schmandy!"
Sachiko smiled her dangerous smile again. "He is a rather close friend of mine. Very close indeed. In fact, I'm not entirely sure he would be pleased to know you had taken such an interest in me."
Drawlight looked at Sachiki with nothing if not a sort of contrived pity. "So, Miss Hannah, what is this I hear about you and a, ah"--here he sniffed disdainfully--"Mister Prokaryote?"
"Very close, eh?" Delyr murmured, and again his eyes are led to her throat. "How close?" He appears to have forgotten impertinence.
Sachiko's ears flattened against her head rather threateningly, and she muttered a quiet something under her breath along the lines of "Impertinent simpleton."
Hannah raised her eyebrows and let her jaw fall open slightly. "Well, if you would be so kind to enlighten me as to what you've heard, perhaps we could pursue this foreign topic further."
Sachiko put out one of her sharp fingernails. "Quite close, I'm afraid." Her shoulder bag slipped, and a small vial fell out and to the floor. "Oh my, how clumsy. Could you be troubled to fetch that for me?"
"I have heard," said Drawlight quietly, "that he is a cad."
When Sachiki looked back from rearranging her satchel, Delyr had the vial in his hand, although she knew she never saw him move.
"I have heard," Sachiko said sharply, glaring at Drawlight, "that he can be of much better temperament then other individuals I know of."
"Here it is," Delyr said quietly, and yet he failed to offer it to her. Sachiko looked back from Drawlight, and her eyes narrowed slightly.
Drawlight turned sharply to look at Delyr and Sachiko. "Individuals?"
"Ahm, thank you," Sachiko said sweetly, though she made no move to take it from him. "You see, I never go anywhere without my holy water. It's rather important."
"Ah," said Hannah, looking at both speakers, first Drawlight, then Sachiko. "My apologies, but I can form no sort of opinion. Now, let us speak of happier subjects!"
Sachiko nodded and rattled her glass as if to see if it held any more liquid.
Seeming to find this a good idea, Drawlight began to chatter about someone's mother's great-uncle's granddaughter's cat being eaten by someone. He laughed cheerily at the thought, for having once himself thrown a cat out a window, he felt a sort of connection with the perpetrator.
Hannah smiled and knocked a yet-again stirring Prok over the head with a polar bear.
Delyr eyed the holy water with a mixture of cool contempt and fiery anger, but the expression disappeared quickly. "My, my."
Sachiko's ears twitched with annoyance, and the glass in her hand seemed on the verge of splintering into shards.
"I adore cats," said Hannah, getting up and pacing about the room.
Sachiko smiles in a strained fashion. "Quite admirable, Hannah, dear."
Drawlight conveniently stuck his leg out as Hannah paced past him, tripping her directly over onto the floor. "That dress," he said scornfully, "should not be legal."
"Yes," Sachiko reached out and plucked the vial from Delyr's pale hand.
Drawlight smiled, and helped Hannah to her feet. "I apologize, but I fancied I saw a spider on the floor and I did not wish to see it smashed beneath your pretty slippers."
The loud men had finally stumbled back out the door, and Hannah continued her ardent glaring at Drawlight; however, he had hold of her hand, and so she couldn’t move away without being quite rude about it.
Meanwhile, Hannah had been distracted and forgot to hit Prok over the head again with various bears, and so the weedy kid began to stir.
Delyr stood suddenly, and ran up the stairs crying out, “Mr. Walton! Mr. Walton, the cynic is waking!”
Sachiko stared, eyes wide, and rising slowly, backed a few steps away from the chair to which Prok was bound. Drawlight dropped Hannah’s hand, ignoring her obvious sigh of relief, and dashed towards the door screaming, “Lascelles, dear Lascelles, come quickly! Mr. Strange, quickly, quickly!”
Hannah sat back down in the corner booth to watch the proceedings with interest, and as Delyr and Drawlight both came back into the room (the former followed by the portly and cheery Mr. Walton, the latter by the dark Mr. Lascelles, Jonathan Strange, Sundry, and a rapidly blinking Mr. Norrell), Prok opened his eyes.
“Dude,” he said. “Roleplaying? Really?”
Sachiko only had one chance to yell, “Goodbye, Delyr!” before all the gentleman from lands unknown disappeared with a great, horrified shout.
Hannah blinked. “What the…?”
The weedy kid sneered. “Imagination, hah! Glad I never had one,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true, and went outside to fix his computer.
Sachiko sighed, staring wistfully at the very space the vampire had occupied but moments before. “’S weird, though – it was so real.” She and Hannah followed Prok out the inn’s front door, and neither saw the gentleman with the thistle-down hair tiptoe down the stairs, lean down, and snatch up Mr. Norrell’s dropped snuffbox.
“Pitiful little man,” he sniffed. “Always forgetting something.” The gentleman chuckled, and sneaked out the back door.
*
THE
*
END
*
Special thanks to Susanna Clarke (for creating such hilarious and ingenious characters as Mr. Lascelles, Mr. Drawlight, Mr. Norrell, Mr. Strange, and the gentleman with the thistle-down hair). These are your dudes and I’m only humbly borrowing them. Thanks to Lin910 for participating, as well as Sachiko for being giggle-worthy and quick-witted (-snuggle!-), peanutgallery007 (April!) for being patient with Mr. Lascelles and Mr. Drawlight, Hannah for much the same, and Mr. Van Reid for the use of his fantastic and wholly lovely characters, Mr. Tobias Walton, and Sundry Moss. Teague, I opted towards you being on the opposite end of Sachiki’s phone ‘cause of how very confusing your and Chiki’s short conversation was.
Also to Prok, for being unconscious.
*
To anyone who hasn't read the first part of A Man In Silk Pajamas, this was born from a strange sort of a RP the above users and I started on the chat. As such it is only slightly fixed up, and a rather amusing disjointed rambling of various writer's styles. It belongs as much to me as Hannah, Sachiko, peanutgallery007/April, Lin910, and someone else I'm forgetting. Just...try to enjoy it? =D
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