(Untitled)

[creator_raven]

There is a tall, skinny man sprawled in a corner booth

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[pig_transcends]

A pink pig materializes on the opposite bench. "Mind if I join you?" he says, slightly after the fact.

[creator_raven]

Raven tilts his head.

He tilts his head almost comically far.

Then he grins.

"It is not a thing I often mind, no."

[pig_transcends]

"I didn't think so, but it's always polite to ask," laughs Chao. "How are whim and necessity treating you these days, Raven?"

[creator_raven]

Raven laughs, too, nose wrinkling.

"Well enough, I am thinking. It is quieter here than some places, yes?"

Raven has very strange standards, it would appear.

[pig_transcends]

"Than the Crossings on a busy day, or the center of a star, or a million factories on a thousand worlds," the Pig agrees. "I like it here, if only because I don't get so many wizards asking about the meaning of life. That just gets old."

[creator_raven]

Raven makes a face.

"Also likely it is not so useful an answer. So."

Questions are better.

[pig_transcends]

"That's what I keep trying to tell them," sighs Chao. "Actually, I tell them to look the word up in their dictionaries. Would you like some more cookies? There's a kind of cookie with frosting they make at a small bakery in Saint Paul that I rather like."

[creator_raven]

"Is it so?"

Raven's grin is a little crooked.

"I do not think it is a thing I will mind, yes?"

Chao, it must be said, is very entertaining company.

[pig_transcends]

Chao waves a hoof at a passing waitrat and describes the cookies in the Speech. Fairly soon the rat returns with a pile of chocolate cookies topped with flowers and faces in brightly-colored sugar frosting. "You don't happen to know who started telling people to ask me, do you? I'm sure it was at least one of the Powers, and I have my suspicions, but no proof yet."

[creator_raven]

Raven tilts his head, considering.

"Possibly Peach, yes?"

He is trying not to laugh.

"Some of them are not so good with humor, I think."

He has, it should be noted, already inhaled two cookies.

[pig_transcends]

"Peach was definitely on my short list. She'll hear from me next time I run into her."

Chao puts his snout directly on the plate and takes a cookie with his mouth. What, you want table manners from a pig?

"Have you got proof?" he asks between bites.

[creator_raven]

Raven laughs, head tilted back.

"That, I think, is not so much a thing I bother with, yes?"

[pig_transcends]

"Never mind, I shouldn't have expected innocent-until-proven-guilty from you." Chao shakes crumbs off his snout. "So tell me a story, Raven. I know you've got good ones."