test drive/Milliways_bar

[like_quicksilver]

Gyda was still convinced that Milliways Hall was a home for gods. How else could that explain the observation window, or the doors that seemed to go everywhere, or the fire with the fish swimming in it.

She chose a table by the observation window, asking the bar for something for breakfast. Before her appeared a mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of what looked like yellow wheels in milk. A small taste proved it tasting like wheat almost: not bad really. She liked the crunchy taste with the milk.

"Lady Bar, what is this?" The bar provided a napkin with words that she tried to recall. 'Cer..eal..and..milk.." Oh, well, she knew what milk was of course, but atleast her reading was getting better.

She went to her cereal, taking another bite. The hot chocolate added a strange sweetness that made her glad the..cereal..had a plain taste.

Comments

[athelstanthescribe]

"What do you have here, Gyda?" Athelstan asks, appearing at her shoulder.

[like_quicksilver]

"Something called cereal." She picked up the note. "Atleast, I think that's what it reads. I recognize the word Milk."

She still had a time believing that so many people here could read and it made her feel a little proud that Athelstan had taught her before. No one else in the village could read and if it hadn't been for the plague, maybe she could've also smuggled a book on a raid-the ones with the pretty gold and jeweled covers.

"I asked Lady Bar for something for breakfast and she gave me this and hot chocolate."

[athelstanthescribe]

"A very fine breakfast", he says with a smile. "How do you like chocolate?"

[like_quicksilver]

"It's fine for mornings when it's not cold, or this place that's so warm." Cold mornings though, she would've preferred porridge.

"It's very good. I don't think I could drink it as much as you claim." The last part came as a tease, from her finding out that Athelstan had a large sweet tooth.

[athelstanthescribe]

Athelstan laughs, giving her a loving squeeze.

"Perhaps not. They say it's terribly bad for your teeth."

[like_quicksilver]

She smiled, but looked at him with a quirked eyebrow. "Then why don't your teeth look bad?"

That he had a hidden sweet tooth was obvious, but if he said sugar was bad for teeth, then clearly he knew a way so it wasn't bad.

[athelstanthescribe]

"I clean them. Mistress Bar, could we have that little book you gave me...?"

[like_quicksilver]

She took another sip of chocolate, frowning a little when she found it a little too cool for her taste. Now she saw why people preferred it warm.

Seeing Bar produce objects never failed to fascinate her, but the book did give her an amused grin. "Everything is in a book in this place. Do they have books on the Gods?"

She once asked him to teach her to spell some of their names. The library they had, surely some stories were about the gods. Reading wasn't nearly as interesting as hearing the stories being told, but it would've been nice to learn.

[athelstanthescribe]

"They do!" he says earnestly. "All kinds of books."

[like_quicksilver]

She focused her attention on the book, glad that there were pictures to explain. She could read some of the words and a few sentences, but the pictures were a great help.

"So you're cleaning your teeth with a sort of soap?" That's what it looked like, though Gyda couldn't think it tasted all that well.

[athelstanthescribe]

"A sort of soap", he echoes, "but made not to taste like soap. It can taste like fruit, or peppermint, or nothing at all."

[gods_that_haunt_me]

Floki comes up behind Gyda, towering over her, and bends down like a crooked stalk to peer at the contents of her bowl. Delicately plucking up a wheel-shaped thing (still dry, not soaked in milk) between his thumb and fingertip, he holds it up to the light.

"What manner of confection is this?"

He pops it into his mouth. It's crunchy. His eyebrows shoot up.

"Huh!"

[like_quicksilver]

The shadow was a good indicator of someone behind her, and Gyda turned just in time to see Floki reach into her breakfast to pull out a piece. To a modern child, the cereal would be recognizable as 'cheerios', but to someone like Gyda, she just knew what Bar called it.

"Floki!" He was just lucky he was fast and sneaky enough to take a piece first or she would've smacked his hand with her spoon. How would he have felt if someone tried to take off his bowl? "Lady Bar calls it 'cereal and milk'. I asked for something for breakfast and she gave me this and hot chocolate."

Actually, warm chocolate would be a better name for it at this point.

[gods_that_haunt_me]

Manners? What are manners?

"This is breakfast? It seems to me to be a superior alternative to gruel. I think, perhaps, that I will join you."

He lopes off to the Bar to fetch a bowl of cereal and milk for himself. But instead of getting hot chocolate, he gets a cup of coffee. Uttering a note of curiosity when he takes a whiff of it, he brings his breakfast back to Gyda's table and folds his lanky frame into the seat opposite her.

"I do not believe we received the same drink. This smells far, far more bitter than your sweet chocolate."

[like_quicksilver]

"It's darker too." Hers was light brown whereas his drink was dark brown, almost black. She didn't know of caffeine, or its effects: she especially didn't know that Floki on a caffeine and sugar buzz would be a very bad thing.

"You could add sugar to it." She pushed the glass sugar container over to him. "They use this instead of honey, and more of it. They have tooth brushes and a paste you use twice a day, so your teeth don't rot from honey or sugar."

Even back home, those who had a lot of honey with their food also had bad teeth later on. Now it seemed, they had a way of stopping it.

"Cereal is good, but I think I would prefer something warmer when it gets colder."

[gods_that_haunt_me]

Floki picks up the container of sugar and shakes it a bit, watching the white granules shift like sand.

"Brushes for teeth? What will they think of next?"

He tips the container into his mug-- and a lot more sugar than he expects quickly pours out of the spout. He stops himself with a surprised yelp, and then with a snicker, he pours a little bit into the palm of his hand and licks it.

"Ooh!"

Delicious!

And he adds some to the cereal, too. Because why not?

"How about warm milk with cereal? That should do the trick."

[like_quicksilver]

"Water that you don't need to heat up over a fire because it's already hot." She answered with a smile. The room provided her looked almost like her room in kattegat, but with a few changes like running water and electricity.

She took another bite, trying to imagine what the cereal would taste like with warm milk. "I'll ask the next time it gets cold in the morning."