icy_veins | Inbox

[Eridanus hadn't been expecting such quick correspondence, but really, he should know better.]

Greetings, Dr. McGucket.

It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
I am Eridanus Sungazer—no formal title that is relevant to a school. I will be in charge of calculus in the math department, though I will also be teaching philosophy, and poetry.

I concur, we should certainly compose lesson plans if we are to enlighten eager minds to critical thinking. What time and day works best for you?
My schedule is wide open.

Sincerely,
Lord-Magister Sungazer

[Between the 'Greetings' and the 'Lord-Magister' it's like one of the characters from Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons just stepped out of the core book and punched him in the mouth. Thank goodness he's used to this kind of thing by now.]

Weekends are my free days, but my workshop can run fine without me there if it comes down to it. I'm free after 6pm Monday to Wednesday and any time before 7pm on Thursday and Friday. Odd hours, I know, but it pays to accommodate for folks who can't be out during the day.

If you don't mind a little walk outside the city proper I have what I like to think is a comfortable living room. We could do dinner?

[That's how you get on someone's good side, right? That's southern hospitality 101. Invite them to your house, feed them. Great start to a relationship.]

[There's a pause where Eridanus actually asks himself: does he want to subject himself to whatever this man considers food? If it's just human meat, then that would fine. He could eat it raw... like tartare! But if it isn't...]

Dinner sounds lovely.
The weekend would be best for both of our schedules. How does Saturday at 6pm sound?

[He pauses in his thought.]

Do you have preference for red, or white wine?

[Always good to be a gracious guest!]

Red. On the drier side if you're really looking to butter me up.

I'll pencil you into the calendar for Saturday at six!

[He means that literally, too, if he didn't keep a planner he'd never actually be able to keep his own schedule straight. He's gone through so many notebooks in four years.]

Also I ought to mention by 'dinner' I don't just mean 'someone's arm on a plate'. You're not a vampire, are you? Should I avoid garlic or anything like that?

[Eridanus can appreciate a man who likes red wine.]

Good, I also prefer a dry red.

As it turns out, I am on the opposite end of the spectrum: troll. I would break my own back before I avoiding garlic.

I look forward to trying your cooking. Saturday at 6, it is.
_________

[After receiving the address, and with their time set, it's only a matter of waiting for the date. Manageable enough, with work for the Devil's Nest keeping him plenty busy throughout the week.

When the day finally comes, Eridanus approaches the event with a somewhat open mind, or at least he tries to. He knew that the McGucket residence was outside of the city, and that there was a bus stop close by, but there was no warning of the long dirt pathway to the house itself. As Eridanus gazes up the path, his brow furrows.

He was already irritable enough, what with what he could only imagine would be another set of eyes—like Peace's—and the short beginnings of a tail.

There's a moment where he contemplates just turning around and leaving, but he'd already bought the wine. Fuck. It's with a heavy sigh that Eridanus unbuttons his suit jacket, and carefully folds it over his arm; then he tucks the bottle of red under his arm, along with it.

It takes him a few minutes, but he somehow manages to climb up the path, and only has a thin layer of dust on his leather shoes to show for it (though, he would still argue that's too much). As he climbs up onto the porch, he exhales away his exhaustion. Next time, Fiddleford would be coming to the apartment.

Knock, knock!]

[The man that answers the door could not look more different. For starters his shoes aren't dusty since he's not wearing any. His brightly-colored snake tail stretches down the main hallway behind him because in his own house he cares a little less about taking up a minimal amount of space. Who's going to step on him, his husband?

His beard is maintained but clearly graying, as is the hair tied back into a bun and fastened with what unfortunately appears to be a scrunchie. At least it's a simple black color, the same as the open blazer he's wearing, which is fantastic because it means nothing is competing with his shirt. This is a friendly meeting and all but this is his turf and he can afford at least a small power move. There's nothing more powerful than a shirt that loud.]

Hey there! Glad you made it out here alright.

[He considers holding out a hand to shake but notices the jacket and wine tucked up where they are and thinks better of it. Nobody likes having to juggle things. They'll have time for that when they're in and settled.]

Come on in. Coats go on the hanger to the right if you want somewhere to put it.

[He slithers back a little to free up the doorway. There's a hell of a smell coming from down the hall, something meaty and spicy.]

[Eridanus is surprised that, when the door opens, he's come face to face with man close to him in height. It's the first thing he notices, as he's typically not around many who even come close, besides Traejan. He manages to keep himself from gawking, but there's a curiosity to his gaze. As desensitized to monsters as he is now, this is the first snake he's seen.]

Pardon my intrusion. [His words lilt with a decadence anyone familiar with fantasy elves could recognize, and he ducks through the doorway. Verdant eyes dart about the home as he closes the door behind himself. This was also his first time in a home that differed in architecture from his homeland, considering he lived in an apartment.]

Whatever you are cooking smells divine. [The words actually come before he even notices them, and he thins his lips around opalescent tusks, quietly chastising himself over it. Never mind that he has resigned himself to not eating "commoner" food, Eridanus quietly hangs up his suit jacket before following Fiddleford further into the house.

He's still holding that bottle of wine, not yet having a chance to gift it to his host,] so, Doctor. I hope your week has treated you well, you mentioned you have a workshop?

[There's a lot of things about Fiddleford that people don't expect if they first meet him over text. Text really does not get across the full experience of Fiddleford McGucket.]

Oh, sure. McGucket Labs over in the business district of Bavan. We started out doin' small appliance repair but now that there's more hands on deck we're branchin' out to programmin' and things like that. Can't compete with Liewen so we might as well piggyback on their tech for profit, right?

[Technically he could totally compete with Liewen, but it seems unwise to try. They're too entrenched and the monster population depends on them too heavily. Making a different brand of computer would require setting up an entire second network considering the current one is 1. magical and 2. proprietary. One little lab just doesn't have the infrastructure for that, especially when every other month there's some disaster that necessitates extensive repairs. That really eats into the budget.]

Here, go ahead and put that wine down in the dining room-- right to the left there. I'm not goin' to make you carry it around all night. We have about, oh, five or so minutes left on the chili.

[Sure enough there's an open archway to the left that leads into a dining room. There's a long wooden table in it but only chairs arranged along one side and at the ends. Fiddleford is his own chair, after all, and there's a lot of him. No point to moving them out of the way every time they have company. It's already set with two places, but perhaps a lot less silverware than Eridanus might be accustomed to. In the center is what looks like an old water pitcher that has been filled with sprigs of rosemary. Fiddleford has always been a little more inclined to nest than Marco and that means the house has taken on a lot of his decorative sensibilities, and a lot of those happen to be Quaint.

Right now, of course, he's needed in the kitchen. It's visible from the dining room through yet another archway and has a similar feeling of being at once more modern than a lot of Ryslig and yet not strictly modern. The cabinets are all a rich wood, there's a brass pot rack hanging from the ceiling, it's a whole look.]

[The home, from the inside, is more than what Eridanus had expected. In reality, the architecture is something he is entirely unfamiliar with. It's reminiscent of the farmhouses that could be found in the forests that surround the human capital, though since it has been roughly five centuries since the last time he had set foot in the kingdom's of man, who knows how much even that architecture has changed. His observant gaze falls away from the many pictures and small trinkets that decorate the home, and instead settles on the half man-half snake before him. There is a moment where Eridanus wonders if the tail meant that Fiddleford is technically half naked.]

I have never met a man of science so well experienced that wasn't goblin or gnomish. [He admits, and his gaze follows Fiddleford's through the doorway to their left.

As instructed, he quietly steps into the designated dinning room, and sets the bottle of wine on the table. He wasn't sure exactly what they would be having for dinner, though if the scent now is anything to go by, he was happy he picked a nice dry red. Once more, his verdant gaze took in his surroundings, noticing the curious situation of chairs, and the quaint decoration of the room. Despite the size, there was certainly one way to describe this place: homey.

He then follows after Fiddleford, stepping into the kitchen where the heavy scent of meat and spice hits his nose. He would have been lying if he said his mouth didn't water slightly, and it had been so long since he'd had a properly seasoned meal. As he steps behind Fiddleford at the stove, he peeks curiously over his shoulder, like a child eager to see what was being made.]

I have never had chili before, what is in it? [He asks, taking a heavy whiff of the savory steam that plumes out from under the metal lid as it's lifted.]

[The pants problem was one that used to bother Fiddleford a lot too, at the beginning. There was never really a good solution to it. Oversized clothing might have draped down far enough to make up the difference, but he's not a child wearing his big brother's hand-me-downs anymore. Skirts crossed his mind, but he's just too firmly entrenched in 'man from the seventies' to be comfortable in one. Ultimately nobody can tell where his junk is unless he directs them to it, so he's resigned himself to just pretending it's a non-issue. He barely even thinks about it anymore. Most people are wholly distracted by his awful shirts anyway.]

Oh, a little of everythin'. Beef -- no human it this time. [He could be convinced in future, but then it gets into the logistics of butchering up a whole person and where would he put the leftovers and y'know, it'd just be a whole thing. The way he eats usually cuts out that kind of prepwork. He doesn't have a freezer equipped for that kind of meat storage yet.] Onion, garlic, green peppers, tomatoes, a whole mess of beans. Spices, but I'm not tellin' you exactly which, that's a family secret.

[The secret is it's basically all of them, a lot. And moonshine, but that should have cooked away by now.]

I had a run-in with gnomes once. Awful little critters. Real sharp teeth.

[Eridanus' lip curls into a wincing snarl as a particularly spicy plume of steam fogs his glasses and itches the back of his throat. Taking a cautious step backwards, he pulls his glasses from his face and rubs the smooth back of his opal hand against his eye.]

I'm eager to try it. I've yet to have anything appropriately spiced since arriving in Ryslig, and my palate is dying for flavor. [After all, he wasn't really a cook, and Rosefica did not have access to the typical spices they would use in their homeland's cuisine.

Once the tears at the corners of his eyes were wiped away, Eridanus replaced his glasses. The bit about the gnomes was... odd.] I have never known their kind to be particularly malicious. At most, their cheery attitudes were annoying.

[If punting them were not looked down upon, he would have done so to every gnome that crossed his path.] So are you working on any new or interesting programs, then?

[For a long moment Fiddleford considers launching into the 'everyone here is from different worlds so things are going to work differently depending on who you talk to' talk, but thinks better of it. It's not hard to pick up on naturally after a while, and he likes talking about his business more when it comes down to it.]

Well, neither of them are technically public knowledge yet, but we have some things in the pipeline. We have a virtual pet game we're workin' on version 3.0 of, and Larry -- I don't know if you've met, Larry Laffer? -- he's headin' up somethin' totally new. Now that the laptops have much better display capabilities makin' desktop games just makes sense.

The desktop version of the pets're free, by the by, if you want to try 'em out.

[Eridanus already doesn't strike him as the kind of guy who'd be particularly interested in a cute little blob of pixels wandering around his screen, but you never know.]

[Eridanus doesn't even know what a video game is Fiddleford, and honestly he is not so concerned with this lack of knowledge that he even graces it with inquisition. Instead, a tight, polite smile makes its residence on his visage, and he nods in quiet feigned understanding.]

I see, it sounds as if you have your hands full making Ryslig a more fun place.

[And there isn't even sarcasm in that! Eridanus is impressed that, with everything bad going on in this place, there are some who care enough to create wholesome experiences. Especially for the children.]

I have met Larry, capricious man that one. He had the audacity to insinuate that I want to sleep with my wife's best friend. I loathe that man. He's been a wart in my life the second he's come into it. [As he speaks his ears pin back, his runty tail flicking back and forth in irritation. He also doesn't mention that after his wife's death, he did sleep with him once. Though it was purely out of grief.] Absolutely absurd. The man has no likeable qualities.

[Fiddleford is very much of the opinion that people deserve good things here. Being able to survive is important, and probably the first thing anybody ought to address. But just surviving isn't enough. He remembers what it was like when he felt almost obligated to be miserable because he thought that proved he was still human. Now with a little more perspective he feels like that's bullshit. People, human or not, deserve nice things. Like chili! There's a reason he still cooks and eats normal food even though he really doesn't have to.

At such a succinct takedown of his new project manager, Fiddleford snorts.]

Aw, now, I wouldn't go that far. You've just never seen his code. It's like watchin' a man remake the Mona Lisa in variables. You tell him you want somethin', turn him loose, and a couple hours later he's got it done.

[Which is kind of the life story with Larry Laffer, not that Fiddleford would know that.]

He's a little blue for my tastes sometimes but the work ethic makes up for it. And speakin' of work-- [He gives the chili one last stir and, apparently satisfied, shifts back a little.] I think we're ready to go here. Everythin' else is all set out on the table already but you'll probably want to make your bowl here first, this pot ain't movin'.

[He made a lot. You can't not make a lot of chili. That's now how chili works.]

[Behind the thin-brimmed glasses that sit low on Eridanus' aquiline nose, his bridge wrinkles with distaste. While they had only had one conversation, it was enough for him to know that he would have to be incredibly inebriated in order to enjoy Larry's company. Unfortunately, even Fiddleford's attempts to rein in that displeasure falls on deaf ears, though not entirely in part for Eridanus' stubbornness. It's mostly because he barely understands the jargon that has just streamed past Fiddleford's lips, with words like 'code' and 'variable' holding vastly different meanings in the troll-elf's repertoire.]

I will have to take your word for it. [He concedes as he steps away from Fiddleford's shoulder to see which cabinet the bowls and spoons are pulled from. There's an idle curiosity to his verdant gaze, though it seems it's knowledge for knowledge's sake as the places for things within this home are etched into his memory.]

At least he has work ethic, I'm sure that's difficult to find in your employees here. [Everyone seems to have their own agenda, at least from his own observation. Though even the prelude to this meeting was on the basis of them being future coworkers. Eridanus wonders for a moment, just how well a monster school will work?

Quietly, and by Fiddleford's direction, Eridanus spoons out a generous amount of chili into his bowl. The scent is divine, urging hunger pangs through his gut as just the spice alone is enough to coax his mouth to water. He was typically not so enthusiastic to eat, yet for some odd reason, he can't help but feel giddy to try a bite. How lucky is he then, that a spot falls onto his thumb, and he's all too eager to stick it in his mouth for a taste. The chili is cleaned off, and the rich spicy taste entices his mouth to water further. With an excited wagging of his runty tail, Eridanus tries his best to hide his anticipation.]

Shall we bring glasses for the wine, too?

Inbox

<archmage> WHAT AN ENDEARING BOY!!

<teslacoils>

<archmage>

<teslacoils>

<archmage>

<teslacoils>

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

when will Eridanus play Minecraft, killing me instantly

Play: Minecraft Eating Soundbit

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, ERIDANUS SUNGAZER. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 099.23.886.00 * Archmage has joined 099.23.886.00 <Archmage> Hello, this is Eridanus Sungazer. <Archmage> In the event I am currently unavailable, please leave a message. <Archmage>** I will answer back, promptly. If I feel you are worth the trouble.