Waitress on Duty!

[witchoftwominds]

Your server is: Agnes goes up on the specials board. Yup, it's that time again. Everyone's favorite witch* is taking orders again.

Bother away! You know you wanna ask the fat girl why she's wearing a pointy hat, right?

* Well, everyone important, anyway, where important is defined as 'considers Agnes their favorite witch'.

Comments

[beenthenumbers]

A slender, pale-haired man walks over to Agnes, carefully, as if he's not certain of the floor under his feet. "Ah, if you're not a hallucination, could you possibly tell me where I am and what happened to my quarters?"

[witchoftwominds]

"First time to Milliways, I take it?" she says with a friendly smile. "Have a seat, and I'll try to explain. You want something to drink? Your first one's free."

[beenthenumbers]

Ben looks behind him, sees a chair, and sits down on it, just as carefully as he'd been walking. "God. What do you have to drink?"

[witchoftwominds]

"Anything and everything. You tell me how long you want to taste it in the morning, and I'll find you something appropriate that'll hit it within ten minutes."

[beenthenumbers]

Ben laughs, incredulously, and scrubs his eyes with the back of a fist. "Shit. I've gotta be effin' hallucinating. Vodka and orange juice, real vodka, real orange juice, no synth stuff?" he requests, tentatively.

[witchoftwominds]

"You got it, hon." She heads over to the Bar and makes sure she uses the top shelf stuff. First drinks are important.

She brings it over and sets it on a napkin.

"Have a sip of that, and then we'll talk about whether you're hallucinating."

[beenthenumbers]

Ben takes a sip. "Class stuff," he declares it, takes another sip, and then says, cheerfully, "All right, I'm listening. Where am I, who are you, and why am I not in my quarters?"

[witchoftwominds]

"Milliways, Agnes, and, well... Milliways." She sighs. "There's no easy way to say this. This is the Bar at the End of the Universe. It's a place where different worlds cross. Some people call it magic, some people call it science, but nobody really knows how it works. All we know is that for some reason, it pulls people in from all places and times. Sometimes it holds people here, but it usually lets them go eventually."

[beenthenumbers]

"...the Bar at the End of the Universe," Ben repeats. "You have got to be effin' kidding me."

After a moment he realizes he's been rude by demanding Agnes's name but not giving his own. "I don't mean to say you're lying. Say that I'm just really not convinced I'm not crazy. I'm Ben, by the way." He gives her his most charming smile.

[witchoftwominds]

Another Ben, she notes.

"I know how you feel. I've been stuck here for over a year. When I first got here, I couldn't believe it either. I'm just a junior witch from a small kingdom. I wasn't prepared for anything like this."

[beenthenumbers]

"Witch? Kingdom? Am I in some kind of Shakespeare play?" Ben asks, taking a slightly larger sip of his drink.

[witchoftwominds]

"I don't know who that is, but it's not a play. You're in Milliways," she repeats. "If you can see the door, you can leave whenever you want. If not, you're Bound here like I am, and you'll have to wait until the bar chooses to let you go."

[beenthenumbers]

Ben looks over. "Yeah, I see a door," he replies. "Shakespeare's this ancient blue-sky Earther," he adds. "Wrote a play with witches in it, and a bunch with kings."

[witchoftwominds]

"Huh. I see that every day. Why would anyone want to watch a play about that?"

[beenthenumbers]

Ben shrugs. "They're not too popular now, but we don't have either witches or kings now, and I guess for some reason they were real popular when there were both." He nods to his glass, changing the subject. "That can't be cheap. Who pays for the free drinks?"

[witchoftwominds]

Agnes cocks her head in confusion.

"Nobody. They're free."

Isn't that what free means?