[ back on paquin ]

[weplayparts]

It doesn't take much coordinating for their paths to cross again - mostly, Saffron thinks, because she's never actually seen him outside of the bar. She quickly makes a mental note to broach that subject when his defenses are lowered

Comments

[scots_wolf]

Urquhart follows her through, looking around, then quietly closing the door behind him.

With that, he will depend on her to open it again. Unless -- well, there were always other options.

[weplayparts]

She rolls over onto her stomach, her feet dangling in the air while she watches him.

"What do you think?"

[scots_wolf]

"You have a lovely view," Urquhart says, standing by the divan and looking at her.

"What's the world like when it's not just being decorative?"

[weplayparts]

"There are some interesting things to do during the day, but the real excitement happens at night," she confesses.

The carnivals alone are a place most people wouldn't want to be caught in unless they were fully on their guard.

[scots_wolf]

"That's often the way of any real excitement," Urquhart says. "It only starts when people have sent their children to bed."

Which is better -- Urquhart doesn't deal well with children at all.

[weplayparts]

Saffron wrinkles her nose at the mention of children.

"Anyone who tried to raise a good kid here would be in for a surprise," she adds. It's called the gypsy planet for a reason.

[scots_wolf]

"People raise their children in the most unexpected places," Urquhart says.

He's always careful.

[weplayparts]

"Don't I know it," she manages, with a quiet sigh.

But that's all the information she's willing to provide. She pushes herself up and away from the divan to stand near him.

"Are you hungry? Thirsty? I'm sure I can fix us something."

[scots_wolf]

"Anything locally grown or brewed?" Urquhart asks.

He's on a strange world for the first time. He won't ask for familiar wine.

[weplayparts]

"Most of it's from other worlds, especially the wine."

She disappears to choose from among her selection, picking a good vintage and popping the cork.

Some of the wine bottles she's earned as a form of payment, either willingly taken or otherwise. The fruit is something she's traded for, since that's also occasionally difficult to come by.

[scots_wolf]

Urquhart leans in the doorway, watching her from a few steps away.

"Quite the collection," he says. "How many worlds are there, around here?"

[weplayparts]

"Too many for me to name in one sitting," she murmurs, carrying the bottle in one hand as she secures a pair of glasses with another.

"We're nestled right in the middle of the border planets - meaning we're just close enough to do business with people in the Core but far enough away from Alliance eyes in case that business turns ugly."

[scots_wolf]

"Do you have a map?" Urquhart asks.

This sounds interestingly complicated.

Core. Alliance. Politics.

[weplayparts]

"That I do."

For the moment, both bottle and glasses are abandoned. She moves toward a screen on one of the kitchen's walls, and after a few buttons are pressed, a map appears, colorful and in-depth.

"We're just about there," she murmurs, pointing to a brownish moon on the map.

[scots_wolf]

"That in the center -- is that another sun?" Urquhart asks.

It looks like a sun.

The earth should be in the center. That was how the most advanced minds of Urquhart's time imagined the universe: the earth in the center, the moon and sun and planets moving around it, each on its own sphere, and the fixed stars in the outermost sphere.

Only Nicolas Cusanus, two centuries after Urquhart's time, would suggest that the universe might be endless.

Saffron's map is a bit of a shock, in that way. Urquhart stands and takes it all in, and feels the contents of his mind shift.

Solar system, somebody had said.

Now he knows why. It's a solar system. Around the sun.

[weplayparts]

He seems a little surprised.

Returning to the wine, a glass of her own in one hand, she watches him study the map with that confused expression on his face.

"Everything alright?" she murmurs.