Har-bloody-har

[deaths_relation]

It was sitting on the table in the corner of the rec room. Innocuously, like it had been there all along.

Susan was pretty sure she would have noticed something like that when she came in, but the island is...well, you can never be really sure of something like that. More disturbing than it's sudden, if rather lacking in fanfare, appearance was the

Comments

[pokerplayereyes]

Ned stopped in the doorway, with his arms folded across his chest. Anyone familiar with one Samuel Vimes would have recognised the stance; it was a copper's stance, with a definate air of What's All This, Then?

Ned raised an eyebrow, and, despite himself, looked amused.

"Didn't think they were supposed to come in boxes."

[deaths_relation]

"Or with flesh." Susan realised that probably made very little sense. "Never mind."

[pokerplayereyes]

"It's not dirty, is it?" Ned walked into the room, dropping down into a crouch to examine the thing.

Back home, the only rats were crawlin' with fleas. Ned was, frankly, dubious.

[deaths_relation]

"If there was a dwarf in the room we would be looking at rat-on-a-stick, put it that way." Dwarfs knew their rats, and preferred the cleaner variety.

Which is not to say they wouldn't eat the other kind...

[pokerplayereyes]

"Ah-hah."

Ned tilted his head.

"What are you supposed to do with it?"

[deaths_relation]

"Feed it, I suppose. Be thankful that it's just a normal rat? I don't really know." Susan shrugged.

"I know there have been gifts showing up all over, have you been tortured, err, gifted yet?"

[pokerplayereyes]

"I got a game. In a box." Rogue had explained it to him, but he wasn't entirely sure that he'd followed. "Somethin' about armies."

[deaths_relation]

"A game? Not a bad gift. Considering the island's sense of humour." The bit about armies and how that applied to Ned didn't make a lot of sense, but men had been playing one version or another of a game about armies since time began practically so perhaps it was as simple as that.

[pokerplayereyes]

"I'd much rather have gotten a box of Scumble." Ned reached up and tapped the side of the tank. The rat watched him with interest. It reminded him of that kid who'd been hanging around the watch house. The one with the spoon.

[deaths_relation]

Susan watched Ned watching the rat. Or the rat watching Ned. Either/or.

"Would you like to hold it?"

[pokerplayereyes]

"Why?" said Ned, who couldn't, for the life of him, figure out why anyone would want to hold a rat.

"What're either of us gonna get out of it?"

[deaths_relation]

Susan pressed her lips together, stifling a grin.

"It's just a pet. You would be able to get a closer look at it if you hold it, but if you are happy to just peer at it through the cage be my guest."

[pokerplayereyes]

"It's a rat."

It's an obvious statement, but Ned still isn't sure why people would go around holding rats.

It doesn't seem entirely hygenic.

[deaths_relation]

"Yes it is." Susan isn't sure why Ned's was so reluctant. Although perhaps it had something to do with the fact he wasn't aquainted with the Death Of version.

[pokerplayereyes]

"People shouldn't go around holding rats." Coppers are often possessed of number of beliefs very strongly indeed. Obviously, one of Ned's lay in the area of rats and the holding of said rats.

[deaths_relation]

Whether she agreed with the spirit of his statement or not, Susan didn't consider herself to be people. Normal rules just didn't apply.

"Would I be committing a specific crime by doing so?"