RP:Rowen meets Valentin
Setting
Kelay Tavern
1st September 2011
The pros and cons of facial hair
Valentin and his shaggy mutton-chops tromp into the tavern, the man touching the rim of his bowler in silent greeting to any patrons bothering to glance in the burly butcher's direction.
Rowen looks rather disapprovingly at the fellow who just entered. "You know most people actually bother to shave before an audience with the supreme empress, sir."
Rowen ate an orange crayon.
Rowen ate a pink crayon.
Valentin scratches his cheek as he comes face to face once again with a talking rat. Apparently, the butcher hadn't been mistaken about either talking frog or talking rat. The world was going mad. "Most people obviously got no spines, mam'selle. Bunch o' cenril bankers too limp to grow some facial hair, innit." The butcher's shadow produces a shadow cat, holding it by the scruff of its shadowy neck, a mischievous smile cut across the silhouette of Valentin's shadow's head.
A discussion of Spines
Rowen looks from the non-cat holding butcher, to his shadow cat holding shadow, and back. "Er I think your shadow might be rebelling against your authority there sir. I wouldn't stand for it. Tell him if he doesn't obey you, you'll go sit in a dark room for hours and he'll waste away to nothing, that'll teach him."She nibbles at a bit more wax crayon."Most people might not have spines, but the echinda does, and the hedgehog, porcupine and some poisonous fish. Does the stone fish have spines? Or is it the spine fish that has stones?"
Rowen ate another pink crayon.
Valentin glances at his shadow. Considers. A leash forms, and the butcher's shadow holds onto the leashed cat - less gleeful than before. Bemused, Valentin responds to Rowen "And you'll not find a blimmin' hedgehog among them shaving, neither." A swift change of tack "In fact, I 'ereby accept your wisdom in declarin' facial hair mandatory for all people holdin' audience with yer Imperial ratness, or whatever y'are." The butcher points out, quite validly: "After all, mam'selle, you've got a fine coat o' facial hair too."
Of Statues and Crayons
Rowen the vain little rat beams at the butcher."Why thank you, only yesterday my dear friend Eric asked me to sit for him, that he could carve a statue of my supremely beautiful self from cheese, then enchant it so it will last forever, so a billion years from now the 'forever eighteen' vampires who hand around Kelay tavern will still be able to gaze on it and remember that a beauty such as I once existed. Do forgive me sir, have we met before? If so I am afraid I have forgotten, one gets introduced to so many people when one rules the entire universe. If I have forgotten your name, please do be so kind as to remind me, my loyal subject."
Valentin settles himself into a chair. "It was a brief meetin'. Valentin's m'name. As y'can no doubt tell, Empress Rat, I'm a butcher by trade."
Rowen sighs with relief "Oh, so that is why you are all covered in blood! Here way I thinking to myself the poor fellow has probably been tortured by one of them sadistic drow fellows, it would not be the first such incident of late." The rat indicates the large box of crayons. "Care to join me sir? The pink ones are particularly tasty."
Valentin looks at the crayons. "Part 'n parcel of the trade, innit, gettin' bloody. Workin' w'flesh all day long." He looks at the crayons again "I'll leave 'em to yerself, Empress Rat. Acquired taste, innit, and not one o'mine" He ponders, scratching at a muttonchop "Come t'think of it, some drow tosser did try to stitch me good 'n proper. Got meself the hell out of there, mam'selle, I can assure you."
On the drow
Rowen nods seriously "The dark elves are best avoided if one can, if if one cannot avoid them it is best to speak most respectfully to them, the powerful ones such as Tiphareth and Kuzial at least. Yesterday in this very tavern, the foolish vampire Tanya was disrespectful, to Kuzial. I feared I would soon be attending her funeral. Luckily she seemed to come to her senses a little, and rather hastily left his presence. If she had just remembered her manners in the first place, it would have saved her being in such danger."
Valentin nods "Duly noted, mam'selle. Got better things t'do with me time than t'go picking fights w'cranky dark elves. Gotta find a nice spot t'set up shop in Cenril once things're calmed down some." The head of the butcher's shadow cracks open with another malicious smirk, the cat and leash shrinking and shifting into the form of a cleaver, which the shadow proceeds to pat in a fashion most people would find less than reassuring. But who knows? Cat, cleaver, both being patted? Maybe Rowen would think it was a sharper kind of shadowy pet.
Fond thoughts of dear Mitsuko
Rowen watches the butcher stroking his 'pet cleaver' with a happy look on her little rat face. "That reminds me of my dear cat friend Mitsuko, he throws me up in his velvet paws and catches me, and jokes he's going to eat me." She smiles affectionately.
Valentin nods impassively "Sounds luvverly." The butcher hauls himself vertical, and tips his hat to the 'Empress' rat. "Well, can't dally. Got things t'be doing, innit. Au Revoir, Empress Rat." The butcher would then head towards the door out into Kelay, his shadow skulking in his wake.