Practice EP

[inanhour]

The boy -- man? who walks into Milliways is mostly stable on his feet, but doesn't look very well.

His brow furrows, and he unconsciously reaches up to touch it. It is not damp with fever-sweat, at least.

"... There were not so few steps between my bed and an inn." Unless he forgot them?

Maybe he forgot them.

Comments

[inanhour]

"I know it not," Sebastian admits.

He has made a quick dab of his face with the handkerchief -- quick enough to hopefully pretend it didn't happen -- and returns it to the table.

He finally eats his roll.

[astrangebell]

Arabella leaves the handkerchief there, just in case.

"Oh, I would not expect you to! I think most Englishmen hardly know where it is, much less know anything about it."

She looks at him for a moment, then says, "I don't doubt you are weary, sir. And this place is surely odd." She knows she'd be far less sanguine if she hadn't come from a place much, much odder. "If you wish to be left to your own thoughts, I hope you won't hesitate to say so."

[inanhour]

"My thoughts are not amiable companions," he says, and smiles at her. "I do not think I can be rid of them, but I would like to hear of your Shropshire --or of this place, lest I find myself in danger of wandering with curiosity."

There are doors.

"If it is not a burden on your time?"

[astrangebell]

"There is all the the time in the world here, you may know that first," Arabella says. She draws her chair in a little closer, not because she needs to necessarily, but to let him see she's perfectly content to settle in to stay as long as he likes. "When you return to Illyria, you will find no time has passed at all. Though no one has said so, it is my guess that-- well, you have heard fairy tales, haven't you? Where men and women wander away into fairy lands and return and find that a hundred years have passed at home? It is my belief this place is something like that, only... well, the reverse, I suppose."