(Untitled)

[ostro_goth]

Teja has done as Jadis had suggestedToday, he's taken his guitar and a 'sun screen' (which turned out to be a potion in a bottle) to the part of the lake where it is a sea, and the ship that ferries the dead sometimes makes berth

Comments

[fiery_ring]

Sunscreen? Carlotta has never heard of the stuff! But the tree rustles.

[ostro_goth]

Teja looks up, still playing.

[fiery_ring]

Carlotta swings upside down so that he can't see up her skirt (making ladders in both her stockings as she does so). Not that she really cares, but something in her brain tells her that she ought to.

"Hallo."

[ostro_goth]

"Carlotta!" Teja says. "You're in a tree!"

[fiery_ring]

"Your highness! You're under one!"

She adjusts her hands, then swings between the branches like an ape, before dropping with a double somersault and landing on her feet. Not, fortunately, on top of Teja.

[ostro_goth]

"I know -- I sat down here to play my guitar!" Teja says, again looking up to her where she is standing.

[fiery_ring]

"It was nice. I was already up there. A tree is a good place to think."

She sits down cross-legged on the ground in front of him, only then noticing the stockings. A scowl flickers across her features; that will cost her swimming time to repair.

[ostro_goth]

"This potion," Teja says, in explanation, as she would have seen him smear it on, "works to keep the skin from burning; mine is very pale. It is not magic, though, but science from the future."

[fiery_ring]

"Oh. But if you let it tan, then you don't burn anyway."

This is of course complete rubbish, as any twenty first century easily burned person will say. But as far as Carlotta's concerned, that's what skin does.

"Though I suppose I have darker skin than you normally."

[ostro_goth]

"You do," Teja says. "My skin has always been pale, and would stay that way, unless it reddens for a time."

Pause.

"It is good to be in a warm place, though."

[fiery_ring]

"But wasn't your homeland warm?"

[ostro_goth]

"It was," Teja says. "So the cold winter in this place was not to my liking, much."

[fiery_ring]

"But how come you didn't tan?"

[ostro_goth]

"My skin does not, easily; that is its nature," Teja says. "It will mostly just burn when exposed to the sun too much."

[fiery_ring]

Carlotta nods acceptingly.

"Most of the girls at school are tanned, though Sour Milk Prudence and Pam and Alison and Sadie spend too much time indoors. Most of the time." she adds, considering that with all the excitement, they've been out a bit more lately.

[ostro_goth]

"Men are different," Teja says, "and so, one would assume, are schoolgirls."