Death's House and off to Ankh-Morpork- Friday Fandom time. Mostly.
When Susan woke up, she had no idea what time it was. While there was a clock on the nightstand, because there should be a clock there, it didn't actually work. Also, it was beginning to sink in that it didn't matter what time it was or how long she had slept. She was ignoring that, of course. That wasn't logical, and she couldn't have that when Susan was clinging to logic as hard as she could.
This room had to have been her mother's, she realized when she began poking around. She was in search of something to wear, but there was a lot of pink. There was also a dressing gown on the door, which may have been fine, save for the skeletal rabbit on the pocket. Susan decided to just wear her dress from yesterday.
SQUEAFF.
She looked to see the Death of Rats land on the dressing table, finally making it upright so he could remove the tiny scythe from his jaws.
"I think," Susan said, "that I would like to go home."
She followed the rat to the kitchen, where she again came face to face with Albert. Or rather, face to back, as he was hunched over the stove, cooking. If you could call it that. Susan would prefer to think of it as frying things till they became unrecognizable as food. "Morning," he said, not that it probably was morning. "You want fried bread with your sausages? There's porridge to follow."
Susan took one look at the stove and realized that no. No, she did not. "Haven't you got any muesli?" she asked.
"Is that some kind of sausage?"
"It's nuts and grains."
"Any fat in it?"
"I don't think so," said Susan.
"How're you supposed to fry it, then?"
"You don't fry it."
"You call that breakfast?"
"It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast," said Susan. "I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge-"
"Who says?"
"A boiled egg, then?"
"Hah, boiling's no good, it don't kill off all the germs."
"BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.
As Albert's spatula fell to the ground, Susan wondered where the voice had come from.
"Please?" she asked.
"You did the voice," said Albert.
"Don't bother about the egg," said Susan quickly. That voice thing had scared her. It had also made her jaw hurt. "I want to go home!"
"You are home," said Albert.
"This place? This isn't my home!"
"Yeah? What's the inscription on the big clock?"
"'Too Late,'" Susan replied immediately.
"Where are the beehives?"
"In the orchard."
"How many plates've we go?"
"Seven-" And then she caught herself, and shut her mouth.
"See? It's home to part of you."
Susan took a different tack. Maybe sweetness would work. "Look... Albert, maybe there is... someone... sort of... in charge of these things but I'm really no one special... I mean..."
"Yeah? How come the horse knows you?"
"Yes, but I really am just a normal girl-"
"Normal little girls didn't get a My Little Binky set on their third birthday!" snapped Albert. "Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset about that. He was trying."
"I mean I'm an ordinary kid!"
"Listen, ordinarily kids get a xylophone. They don't just ask their granddad to take his shirt off!"
"I mean I can't help it!" insisted Susan. "That's not my fault! It's not fair!"
"Really? Oh, why didn't you say?" said Albert sarcastically. "That cuts a lot of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the universe that it's not fair. I bet it'll say, oh all right then, sorry you've been troubled, you're let off."
"That's sarcasm!" snapped Susan. "You can't talk to me like that! You're just a servant!"
"That's right. And so are you. So I should get started, if I was you. The Rat'll help. He mainly does rats, but the principle's the same."
Susan stared at him with her jaw dropped.
"I'm going outside," she said finally.
And she did.
She might have still argued and denied everything... until she saw the tree.
*****
Binky stopped at a house in Ankh-Morpork, a large, pretentious sort of building. "I'm not happy about this," said Susan. "This can't possibly work. I'm human. I have to go to the toilet and things like that. I can't just walk into people's houses and kill them!"
SQUEAK.
"All right, not kill. But it's not good manners, however you look at it."
She noticed the sign on the door, reading Tradesmen to rear entrance.
"Do I count as-"
SQUEAK!
The Death of Rats further answered that by heading up the path and through the door.
"Hang on!" said Susan. "I can't-"
And then she looked at the door. She could. Of course she could. More memories crystallized in front of her eyes. After all, it was only wood. It'd rot in a few hundred years. By the measure of infinity, it hardly existed at all. On average, considered over the lifetime of the multiverse, most things didn't.
She stepped forward. The heavy oak door offered as much resistance as a shadow.
She somehow knew just where to find who she was looking for. Grieving relatives were gathered around the bed of a dying old man. At the foot of the bed, completely asleep, sat a very large ginger cat.
SQUEAK.
Susan looked at the hourglass she'd brought with her. The last few grains fell through to the bottom.
While the Death of Rats took the opportunity to kick the sleeping cat awake, Susan paid more attention to the family. One of the mourners looked at the man in the bed and said, "That's it. He's gone."
"I thought we were going to be here all day," said the woman next to him, standing. "Did you see that wretched old cat move? Animals can tell, you know. They've got this sixth sense."
The Death of Rats sniggered. SNH SNH SNH.
"Well, come on there, I know you're here somewhere," said the dead man, sitting up in bed.
Susan was familiar enough with the idea of ghosts, but this was different than she would have expected. The old man sitting up seemed somehow more real than the one laying prone in his bed. He looked solid, but a blue glow outlined him.
"One hundred and seven years, eh?" he cackled. "I expect I had you worried for a while there. Where are you?"
"Er, HERE," said Susan, stepping forward.
"Female, eh?" said the man. "Well, well, well." He slid off the bed to stand, but stopped as if he'd reached the end of a chain. In fact, a thin blue line of light attached him to his body.
The Death of Rats jumped up and down on the pillow, making urgent slashing movements with its scythe.
"Oh, sorry," said Susan. She was still getting used to carrying the scythe around. It didn't make her nervous, even though the blade was sharper than most people could probably comprehend, but rather she was very conscious of the fact that she had it.
She sliced, and the blue line snapped.
The mourners had stopped mourning, and were now milling about the room, sometimes walking right through Susan or the old man. The one who had declared the deceased... well, deceased, was feeling around under the bed.
"Look at 'em," said the old man. "Poor ole granddad, sob sob, sorely missed, we won't see his like again, where did the ole bugger leave his will? That's my youngest son, that is. Well, if you can call a card every Hogswatchnight a son. See his wife? Got a smile like a wave on a slop bucket. And she ain't the worst of 'em. Relatives? You can keep 'em. I only stayed alive out of mischief." He even followed some of them around to taunt them. "Not a chance! Heh heh! It's in the cat basket! I left all me money to the cat!"
The cat, meanwhile, was watching them anxiously.
"That was very... kind of you..." tried Susan.
"Hah! Mangy thing! Thirteen years of sleepin' and crappin' and waiting for the next meal to turn up? Never took half an hour's exercise in his big fat life. Up until they find the will, anyway. Then he's going to be the richest, fastest cat in the world..."
Slowly, the voice and the man both faded into nothing.
"What a dreadful old man," said Susan.
When she'd left the house- through the wall, naturally- she went straight to Binky. "Well, that wasn't too bad," she said. "I mean, no blood or anything. And he was very old and not very nice."
"That's all right then, is it?"
The raven landed on her shoulder.
"What're you doing here?" asked Susan.
"Rat Death here said I could have a lift. I've got an appointment."
SQUEAK.
"Are we a cab service?" Susan asked the rat coldly.
The rat shrugged and pushed another lifetimer into her hand.
*****
After reaping the old man, it had been off to the Hublands to usher a warrior named Volf Volfssonssonssonsson, which... had not left Susan with any more illusions about her new job than the first had. It didn't make sense to her. She thought it was stupid, frankly. If you were Death- Death- how could you just let nature take its course like that? When you didn't know whether or not Volf had been on the right side, or if any of the people he had killed had deserved it, how was she supposed to make any sense of it?
On the bright side, she was beginning to like being special.
Her third... person was to be found back in Ankh-Morpork at a tavern called the Mended Drum. There was a riot going on. That wasn';t terribly surprising in places like this. The band was performing, and the audience was unhappy with this. Things generally went flying towards the stage to try and get this point across.
On that stage was Imp y Celyn. He was looking something near to terrified, with a troll behind him, and a dwarf hiding behind him. He was really rather attractive, in a dark, curly-headed sort of way. He looked a little elvish.
And he only had a few seconds left.
Susan thought, I'm standing here with a scythe and an hourglass waiting for someone to die. He's not much older than me and I'm not supposed to do anything about it. That's silly.
She knew how it would happen, too. It would be a complete accident. A big, red-beareded man pulled an ax, intending to hit the troll. After all, it would just bounce off. It was just that it would bounce off and hit Imp.
The man doesn't even mean to kill him. It's so sloppy. That's not how things should go. Someone ought to do something about it.
SQUEAK!
"Shut up!" Susan told the rat.
Whaaauum.
All the movement in the tavern stopped as the chord bounced around the room. Echoes bounced back and forth, like an explosion. Then Imp picked up his instrument again, playing three more chords. The ax thrower lowered his ax.
It was music that went down to the feet by way of the pelvis without paying a call on Mr. Brain.
The troll paused, then picked up his hammers and began to beat out a rhythm on his stones. The dwarf took a deep breath, and began to again play his horn. Meanwhile the audience that had been rioting not more than ten seconds ago were drumming their fingers on tabletops and... the orangutan in the audience was just sitting there grinning.
Susan looked down at the hourglass. The top bulb was empty of sand, but something blue flickered in there.
She felt the Death of Rats scrabble up onto her shoulder and look at the glass.
SQUEAK.
Susan still wasn't good on Rat but she thought she knew "uh-oh" when she heard it.
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Dialogue and a few bits taken from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett. Meant to have this up earlier, but there was drinking.]
This room had to have been her mother's, she realized when she began poking around. She was in search of something to wear, but there was a lot of pink. There was also a dressing gown on the door, which may have been fine, save for the skeletal rabbit on the pocket. Susan decided to just wear her dress from yesterday.
SQUEAFF.
She looked to see the Death of Rats land on the dressing table, finally making it upright so he could remove the tiny scythe from his jaws.
"I think," Susan said, "that I would like to go home."
She followed the rat to the kitchen, where she again came face to face with Albert. Or rather, face to back, as he was hunched over the stove, cooking. If you could call it that. Susan would prefer to think of it as frying things till they became unrecognizable as food. "Morning," he said, not that it probably was morning. "You want fried bread with your sausages? There's porridge to follow."
Susan took one look at the stove and realized that no. No, she did not. "Haven't you got any muesli?" she asked.
"Is that some kind of sausage?"
"It's nuts and grains."
"Any fat in it?"
"I don't think so," said Susan.
"How're you supposed to fry it, then?"
"You don't fry it."
"You call that breakfast?"
"It doesn't have to be fried to be breakfast," said Susan. "I mean, you mentioned porridge, and you don't fry porridge-"
"Who says?"
"A boiled egg, then?"
"Hah, boiling's no good, it don't kill off all the germs."
"BOIL ME AN EGG, ALBERT.
As Albert's spatula fell to the ground, Susan wondered where the voice had come from.
"Please?" she asked.
"You did the voice," said Albert.
"Don't bother about the egg," said Susan quickly. That voice thing had scared her. It had also made her jaw hurt. "I want to go home!"
"You are home," said Albert.
"This place? This isn't my home!"
"Yeah? What's the inscription on the big clock?"
"'Too Late,'" Susan replied immediately.
"Where are the beehives?"
"In the orchard."
"How many plates've we go?"
"Seven-" And then she caught herself, and shut her mouth.
"See? It's home to part of you."
Susan took a different tack. Maybe sweetness would work. "Look... Albert, maybe there is... someone... sort of... in charge of these things but I'm really no one special... I mean..."
"Yeah? How come the horse knows you?"
"Yes, but I really am just a normal girl-"
"Normal little girls didn't get a My Little Binky set on their third birthday!" snapped Albert. "Your dad took it away. The Master was very upset about that. He was trying."
"I mean I'm an ordinary kid!"
"Listen, ordinarily kids get a xylophone. They don't just ask their granddad to take his shirt off!"
"I mean I can't help it!" insisted Susan. "That's not my fault! It's not fair!"
"Really? Oh, why didn't you say?" said Albert sarcastically. "That cuts a lot of thin ice, that does. I should just go out now, if I was you, and tell the universe that it's not fair. I bet it'll say, oh all right then, sorry you've been troubled, you're let off."
"That's sarcasm!" snapped Susan. "You can't talk to me like that! You're just a servant!"
"That's right. And so are you. So I should get started, if I was you. The Rat'll help. He mainly does rats, but the principle's the same."
Susan stared at him with her jaw dropped.
"I'm going outside," she said finally.
And she did.
She might have still argued and denied everything... until she saw the tree.
*****
Binky stopped at a house in Ankh-Morpork, a large, pretentious sort of building. "I'm not happy about this," said Susan. "This can't possibly work. I'm human. I have to go to the toilet and things like that. I can't just walk into people's houses and kill them!"
SQUEAK.
"All right, not kill. But it's not good manners, however you look at it."
She noticed the sign on the door, reading Tradesmen to rear entrance.
"Do I count as-"
SQUEAK!
The Death of Rats further answered that by heading up the path and through the door.
"Hang on!" said Susan. "I can't-"
And then she looked at the door. She could. Of course she could. More memories crystallized in front of her eyes. After all, it was only wood. It'd rot in a few hundred years. By the measure of infinity, it hardly existed at all. On average, considered over the lifetime of the multiverse, most things didn't.
She stepped forward. The heavy oak door offered as much resistance as a shadow.
She somehow knew just where to find who she was looking for. Grieving relatives were gathered around the bed of a dying old man. At the foot of the bed, completely asleep, sat a very large ginger cat.
SQUEAK.
Susan looked at the hourglass she'd brought with her. The last few grains fell through to the bottom.
While the Death of Rats took the opportunity to kick the sleeping cat awake, Susan paid more attention to the family. One of the mourners looked at the man in the bed and said, "That's it. He's gone."
"I thought we were going to be here all day," said the woman next to him, standing. "Did you see that wretched old cat move? Animals can tell, you know. They've got this sixth sense."
The Death of Rats sniggered. SNH SNH SNH.
"Well, come on there, I know you're here somewhere," said the dead man, sitting up in bed.
Susan was familiar enough with the idea of ghosts, but this was different than she would have expected. The old man sitting up seemed somehow more real than the one laying prone in his bed. He looked solid, but a blue glow outlined him.
"One hundred and seven years, eh?" he cackled. "I expect I had you worried for a while there. Where are you?"
"Er, HERE," said Susan, stepping forward.
"Female, eh?" said the man. "Well, well, well." He slid off the bed to stand, but stopped as if he'd reached the end of a chain. In fact, a thin blue line of light attached him to his body.
The Death of Rats jumped up and down on the pillow, making urgent slashing movements with its scythe.
"Oh, sorry," said Susan. She was still getting used to carrying the scythe around. It didn't make her nervous, even though the blade was sharper than most people could probably comprehend, but rather she was very conscious of the fact that she had it.
She sliced, and the blue line snapped.
The mourners had stopped mourning, and were now milling about the room, sometimes walking right through Susan or the old man. The one who had declared the deceased... well, deceased, was feeling around under the bed.
"Look at 'em," said the old man. "Poor ole granddad, sob sob, sorely missed, we won't see his like again, where did the ole bugger leave his will? That's my youngest son, that is. Well, if you can call a card every Hogswatchnight a son. See his wife? Got a smile like a wave on a slop bucket. And she ain't the worst of 'em. Relatives? You can keep 'em. I only stayed alive out of mischief." He even followed some of them around to taunt them. "Not a chance! Heh heh! It's in the cat basket! I left all me money to the cat!"
The cat, meanwhile, was watching them anxiously.
"That was very... kind of you..." tried Susan.
"Hah! Mangy thing! Thirteen years of sleepin' and crappin' and waiting for the next meal to turn up? Never took half an hour's exercise in his big fat life. Up until they find the will, anyway. Then he's going to be the richest, fastest cat in the world..."
Slowly, the voice and the man both faded into nothing.
"What a dreadful old man," said Susan.
When she'd left the house- through the wall, naturally- she went straight to Binky. "Well, that wasn't too bad," she said. "I mean, no blood or anything. And he was very old and not very nice."
"That's all right then, is it?"
The raven landed on her shoulder.
"What're you doing here?" asked Susan.
"Rat Death here said I could have a lift. I've got an appointment."
SQUEAK.
"Are we a cab service?" Susan asked the rat coldly.
The rat shrugged and pushed another lifetimer into her hand.
*****
After reaping the old man, it had been off to the Hublands to usher a warrior named Volf Volfssonssonssonsson, which... had not left Susan with any more illusions about her new job than the first had. It didn't make sense to her. She thought it was stupid, frankly. If you were Death- Death- how could you just let nature take its course like that? When you didn't know whether or not Volf had been on the right side, or if any of the people he had killed had deserved it, how was she supposed to make any sense of it?
On the bright side, she was beginning to like being special.
Her third... person was to be found back in Ankh-Morpork at a tavern called the Mended Drum. There was a riot going on. That wasn';t terribly surprising in places like this. The band was performing, and the audience was unhappy with this. Things generally went flying towards the stage to try and get this point across.
On that stage was Imp y Celyn. He was looking something near to terrified, with a troll behind him, and a dwarf hiding behind him. He was really rather attractive, in a dark, curly-headed sort of way. He looked a little elvish.
And he only had a few seconds left.
Susan thought, I'm standing here with a scythe and an hourglass waiting for someone to die. He's not much older than me and I'm not supposed to do anything about it. That's silly.
She knew how it would happen, too. It would be a complete accident. A big, red-beareded man pulled an ax, intending to hit the troll. After all, it would just bounce off. It was just that it would bounce off and hit Imp.
The man doesn't even mean to kill him. It's so sloppy. That's not how things should go. Someone ought to do something about it.
SQUEAK!
"Shut up!" Susan told the rat.
Whaaauum.
All the movement in the tavern stopped as the chord bounced around the room. Echoes bounced back and forth, like an explosion. Then Imp picked up his instrument again, playing three more chords. The ax thrower lowered his ax.
It was music that went down to the feet by way of the pelvis without paying a call on Mr. Brain.
The troll paused, then picked up his hammers and began to beat out a rhythm on his stones. The dwarf took a deep breath, and began to again play his horn. Meanwhile the audience that had been rioting not more than ten seconds ago were drumming their fingers on tabletops and... the orangutan in the audience was just sitting there grinning.
Susan looked down at the hourglass. The top bulb was empty of sand, but something blue flickered in there.
She felt the Death of Rats scrabble up onto her shoulder and look at the glass.
SQUEAK.
Susan still wasn't good on Rat but she thought she knew "uh-oh" when she heard it.
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Dialogue and a few bits taken from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett. Meant to have this up earlier, but there was drinking.]