I started out in search of ordinary things

[alan_shore]

Seems it’s moving day-they’d never settled on a precise date, but today Alan returns from the office to a hotel room marginally more bare and impersonal than the one he left that morning. Denny’s arranged everything, transforming (in typical Denny fashion) hours of back-wrenching labor into a vanishing act: now you see it, now you don’t. The place

Comments

Because I am a troll...

[architect_mine]

Arie is in the agora, looking for something (someone, if a rodent can be considered such) and not particularly wanting to be there, better uses of one's time and all that. He feels the slight change in the air before he senses the presence of a new person in his immediate area. Hoping against hope that they are a regular and not a new and confused (and therefore, typically, full of questions)being stumbling into Xanadu, he turns around at the statement.

Dryly, "Ja. It happens."

THE BEST KIND OF TROLL

[alan_shore]

"Not to me," Alan says, mostly to himself. He slips the phone back into his pocket and surveys his immediate surroundings, taking care not to allow his eyes to stray too far from the stranger.

"I'm outside my service area."

It's not particularly funny (and, in any case, Alan's sins are manifold but they don't extend to laughing at his own jokes), but he lets out a short, shuddering laugh.

[architect_mine]

"You should get a better provider." The fae's cell phone still happens to work in the agora, in most of Xanadu actually, but far be it from Adriaan to explain just how and why or who his carrier might be. "Or be less dependent on technology."

Right.

And this one is new, God. His place is to be helpful, of use but this doesn't mean the Örl always delights in serving his purpose. He can, at times, be quite churlish about it. "You are in Xanadu. It is a place where all the other places meet. A realm of crossroads. This, specifically is the agora. You may ask questions here. People may answer. The carnival is that way," he points one direction and then the other, "Stigmata, the bar, is this way."

A moment's silence as he sizes up the man and then, "I suggest you go this way to the bar." This is helpful, right?

[alan_shore]

"Yes, I've learned a valuable lesson. It'll be strictly tin cans and string from now on."

Xanadu. His first thought isn't of Coleridge--though at some point the poem clip-clops through his head--but Charles Foster Kane, the camera's slow climb up that fence topped with a wrought-iron K.

"Where does it end? Xanadu." His inflection as he says the name is a mite sardonic. "Where are you from?"

Don't think he's forgotten the bar.

[dugdowndeep]

"The cell service is terrible, I know," complains a young man who sounds far too poncy and over-privileged for his dusty soldier's apparel. He's seated backwards on a nearby wrought iron chair, chin balanced on his arms with a boneless air of 'If I have to move anymore today I'll die.' (...This is perhaps an exaggeration.) "They have phones that cross universes, though, so I'm assuming that's supposed to make up for it."

[alan_shore]

The news of universe-spanning telecommunications devices meets with a blank stare. Alan's in shock, possibly, or maybe it's just that he's exhausted his reserves of incredulity.

"How," he says, with something like admiration, "are you so relaxed?"

[dugdowndeep]

"Tranquilizers."

No.

"Time and repetition have probably helped too," he adds more seriously, exhaling heavily and rubbing a hand back through his hair in attempt to stir his neurons back into action. "Overwhelming as all this may seem at first, you do get desensitized to it eventually."

[alan_shore]

"You sharing?"

That's a joke, a ninety-percent-humorous remark.

"The...city, if that's what it is, has been explained to me, but not the means of ingress. Is it always so sudden, or..." Or can it be controlled (and therefore avoided).

[ouroborosdance]

Hasibe is in the midst of escaping her minders at home for a good few hours - she's not sure about the passage of time back in London just yet, but it seems to be significantly slowed down compared to here in Xanadu, which means it's much easier to take a break. She is accompanied by a large Ovcharka shepherd dog, who weighs in excess of 200 pounds and stands next to her like a very fuzzy bodyguard, taking in the stranger cautiously.

His owner is less cautious and much more outgoing. She leans forward in her chair (the table juxtaposed by it has tea on top), tilting her head to the side just slightly.

"You okay?"

[alan_shore]

"Am I making a spectacle of myself?" Alan asks the young woman with a dog (well, what he hopes is a dog) the approximate size of a sofa stationed beside her.

He sounds amused, but something about his bearing--a slump in the shoulders, an aimlessness to his walk, the way he grips his briefcase--suggests a certain amount of unease. (And not on account of the dog.)

[ouroborosdance]

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Huan, her dog, sits down, which is a sign he's not going to do anything annoying (Ovcharka are not like your good old friendly golden retrievers for a lot of reasons), and Hasi smiles reassuringly at Alan.

"It's just you looked a little...startled. That's not uncommon out here until people get used to the place." The occasional bizarre sight like sky whales doesn't help that one bit, mind. Maybe they're in hiding today, or maybe they're just waiting. Patiently.

[alan_shore]

"And when can I expect that to happen?" Ordinarily--a word that most certainly does not apply here--Alan has little patience for reassurances (he'll always choose to hear the bad news before the good); today they grate. "How long'd it take him?" He nods in the direction of the dog.

A matter of minutes, most likely.