You should see me on a bad day.

[adorablespike]

Adora Belle did not much like the Compound. There were too many people that weren't golems or even from the same planet as her. But, occasionally, she found it necessary to visit the structure. Clean clothes and running water were too much to pass up

Comments

[forged_hero]

Moist was treading carefully. He'd recognized all three signatures following his name on that damned flier on the billboard - oh yes, he had - and now he was attempting, with marginal success, to be horrified.

He was an honest citizen! He was perfectly content! The bordem wasn't getting to him at all!

....especially in light of the arrival of a certain smokestack of a woman that was currently waving her heels like a cat might do its tail.

"You didn't get that off the bookshelf, I hope," Moist said, trying to get a look at the title while also trying desperatly to appear that he was not doing so.

[adorablespike]

Right then, Adora Belle could have really done with a cigarette. And not just to jam into Moist von Lipwig's eye - something to keep her mouth occupied, so she wouldn't say all the things she was dying to say to him.

She shut the book with a snap and looked up in almost the same movement, narrowing her eyes.

"Where else would I get it from?" She scowled, glanced at the volume, looked up again. "Do you think I need anger management?" There was a faintly accusing tone to her voice. But then again, there always was.

[forged_hero]

Moist blinked audibly, giving her a calm, neutral smile, spreading his hands in a 'What? Me? sort of gesture.

He gave a quick glance over his shoulder at the shelves before dropping down opposite her, jostling his leg up and down.

Conceivably, there have been worse questions asked of a man. "Shall we accept the large wooden horse outside?" "How do you feel about spandex?" Even, perhaps, "Does this bustle make my arse look big?"

The answer is never, ever yes.

"Er..." said Moist. "They have Gnus here, you know. Plenty of them. You might enjoy a few lessons, is all I'm saying."

And, as with most men, his sense of self-preservation was about three steps behind the speed of his tongue.

[adorablespike]

Adora Belle just looked at him. It wasn't a nice look, but so many of her looks weren't. This one said, I don't have the time of day for you, so why are you interrupting my morning? But she didn't say it, because he was Moist von Lipwig and she was...well...her.

Maybe, despite all that she knew about him, she still had some Hope, the greatest of all treasures. Or maybe not.

"What do you want, Mr Lipwig?" she asked, with a passable attempt at politeness.

[forged_hero]

Passable, yes, but also certainly fumble-able. Moist caught the wide pass at a dive, with just the tips of his finger.

"I would like a hobby, Miss Dearheart. Or at the very least a bit of economy."

Hope, in his experience, is what gets people into trouble. The hope that the stone is real, that the prayers mean something, that if the gods don't listen then Luck surely will. Somewhere, sometime, the hopeless traveler really is a prince and sometimes, just sometimes, someone will sell you a fortune for one-hundredth its price. Maybe in the morning the world will be an entirely different place than it seems.

Hope is a very dangerous thing. Moist only gave her a very slight smile.

"What do you want, Miss Dearheart?"

[adorablespike]

She didn't even hesitate.

"Cigarettes. Or a way home. Preferably both, but you can't have everything, can you?" It was a rhetorical question. She already knew the answer.

[forged_hero]

"Afraid not," Moist commented, spreading his hands in apparent apology. "Sometimes you can't even have anything, I'm afraid. Luck's here, you know. But she still seems to enjoy destroying all the fun for people."

He shuffled himself around in the seat, sinking lower, getting comfortable. Nonchalant.

"How are you settling in?" The question comes out softer than he means to.

[adorablespike]

"I quite liked her, actually." Adora Belle took a long sip of her coffee before she answered his question, setting her mug aside carefully on a side table.

"As well as can be expected." She rested her hands in her lap, on top of the anger management book, as if for comfort. Then she spoke again.

"Not as well as you, of course." There was sudden venom in her voice. "How's Duo?" She wielded the question like a whip.

[forged_hero]

"You would," Moist muttered to himself, plucking at the knee of his trousers like a child caught out past curfew. Women, since he's gotten to Tabula Rasa, have been more interested in his pain than his wiles and charm*. It's something he's still growing accustom to.

Consider the attempt at nonchalance aborted**. He cleared his throat. 'For the most part, he's no longer living in fear. Mostly.'

"He's well," he said, and then immediately forged past it, saying, "There's talk of starting a Post, you know. With stamps. And letters. They might give me- it its own building."

*and he is not even married.
**and the book a failure.

[adorablespike]

Noting the change of subject but not commenting on it just yet, Adora Belle Dearheart gave a thin smile. It seemed strange without a cigarette in the middle of it.

"I still have some, you know. Penny stamps. First run. Even I was caught up in it, can you believe that?" She shook her head. "I don't think you'll have quite as many customers this time, though." And I'm still out of a job. Damn golems.

[forged_hero]

"I was caught up in it," Moist said, arching an eyebrow, his eyes focused on something that was not precisely there. "It was rather it's own entity, you realize. I only nudged it along."

"Maybe not, maybe not. But people will still want to believe in it, anyway. It's part of human nature. It'll be a....touchstone. Back to reality."

[adorablespike]

"Reality? Here?" Adora Belle arched an eyebrow right back at him. "Have you looked around lately?"

He'd been here a long time. She could tell. He was starting to settle in.

[forged_hero]

He smiled to himself, shrugging slightly. He gave her a completly unconcerned grin.

"I honestly try not to, lest one find an unexpected lizard beast. As for reality....well. Sometimes it's just nice to pretend, isn't it?"

[adorablespike]

"No," Adora Belle answered at once. "It isn't. Because then you start believing things that aren't true, and that...never leads to anything nice."

She thought of John and his towers. He hadn't pretended, but he had dreamed, and then he'd ended up dead in a field.

"It's better to leave things the way they are. I used to believe that things could change - you taught me that, as a matter of fact - but they never change for long." She looked at him steadily for a moment before rising to her feet and crossing to the bookshelf, where she replaced the anger management book amongst its fellows with a deliberate clunk.

[forged_hero]

"Things go on changing in face of the odds," Moist said quietly, after a very long and awkward moment of silence. He laced his fingers together over his stomach, eyes looking down at his nails. "People are idiots, that's the one thing that remains the same. Everything else changes. This place at least is proof of that."

[adorablespike]

"Mm. Perhaps."

She surveyed the selection of spines in front of her and smiled when her eyes fell on one in particular. She plucked the book from the shelf and turned, handing it to Moist.

"This one might interest you."

It was strange, really. She was sure How To Become a Professional Con Artist hadn't been on the shelf before.