application for Duncan Shriek, from Jeff VanderMeer's novels of Ambergris.

[duncan_shriek]

In the Sorting Room, a rug lay upon the floor, and under the rug, something began to thump and shift

Comments

[ugly_old_hat]

The hat perched jauntily on Duncan's head as a house elf entered, bearing a large slice of cheese and mushroom pizza on a plate.

"Pizza?" the hat inquired politely. "It's all right if you eat in front of me. Bringing happiness to all of my little minions at Hogwarts warms the very cockles of my heart."

[duncan_shriek]

Actually, Duncan had no qualms about eating mushrooms. They made for excellent sustenance.

"So many mushrooms for so many purposes," he observed as he helped himself to the oddly messy slice of foodstuff. "Er, is there a kind of utensil for this kind of flatbread?" The cheese was sliding off.

[ugly_old_hat]

"Oh, yes, mushrooms are quite versatile," the hat said, adopting a knowledgeable air. At Duncan's request for eating utinsels, the house elves thoughtfully provided him a small plastic-wrapped package containing a napkin and a spork.

"So..." drawled the hat presently, "Can mushrooms be used in biological warfare?"

[duncan_shriek]

Duncan's beard appeared to be absorbing a stray clot of pizza sauce. His beard was, perhaps, not entirely human hair, nor entirely inert.

"Biological warfare, certainly, much to my city's detriment. Drugs as well, to keep the population docile, or to inflame them into riots if the gray caps find that useful, as at the Festival of the Freshwater Squid. There're few things some fungus or other can't do. I understand I'm supposed to bribe you."

He'd fumbled with the plastic package as he spoke, and finally managed to rip a hole in the end with one jagged fingernail. The napkin thereby extracted he used not on his face but on his hands. His care was pointless, given the grimy state of his coat, but he seemed to want no tomato sauce in the inward pockets of said coat, and it was from one of those pockets that he extracted a packet of mushrooms for the Hat.

"Would this do? If hats don't partake of hallucinogens, I imagine it'd fetch a good price from people who do."

[ugly_old_hat]

The hat permitted itself an evil laugh as it used ancient hat magic to make the mushrooms disappear... somewhere. "I'm sure these will be very useful. And obviously you're quite clever to have decided to bribe me without prompting, so I think I know where to place you!"