stepsideways | Networked

Hey so, tomorrow is sort of my birthday.

Actually, it would all on the equivalent of the 29th, but that's not happening here, now is it? I'm going to be twenty-three ish.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone would like to join me for dinner. It'll be at the White Rabbit. I'll have everything all set up.

There will be cake and ice cream... as well as other stuff.

So, yeah.

[Actiony things]

At the White Rabbit, Alec has gotten a private room and spent the time setting it up in proper fashion. The table spread is fantastic, at least in his opinion. There's fish and lamb dishes, cooked vegetables in sauces, salads, bread rolls, butter, honey and cheese. He's gotten several bottles of wine, ale and some other random drinks that seemed interesting at the time and there's a huge platter of honey cookies and candies.

It looks all very yummy.

On a table near the entrance are a bunch of 'fairy trifles' as he would call them. Little things that don't really do anything but are kind of neat. Rather like those dipping head things that keep on dipping forever. They're party favors that he's scrounged up.

While waiting hopefully for people he's sitting in a chair and slowly making his way through a book on griffin riders.

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[ Watson is seriously impressed when she comes in. The food smells delicious and there's a lot of it. She makes her way over to say hi. ]

You really went all out, wow. Happy almost-birthday.

[Alec bounces up from his chair and smiles.]

Hey! Glad you could make it.

And yeah... I guess. It's a bit of a thing where I'm from. The really formal dinner, I mean. It wouldn't be right if I didn't go all out. Though we generally don't have cake or ice cream.

Mostly because we don't have ice cream...

No ice cream? How do you survive? [ This seems to be a rhetorical question, however. She smiles back. ] I didn't really know if I should get you anything, since you seem to have everything in that shop of yours. So I brought myself.

"It's hard to miss what you don't know exists." They never developed ice cream on his world. "And yourself is just fine and welcomed."

"That's a point, I guess," she answers. "What are you reading?" She leans down with interest to look at the cover of his book.

"Oh, it's a book about the history of griffin riders on this one world I found." He shows her the book.

It has notes scribbled in the margins in a non-English - not Earth- alphabet and the look of someone who uses a pencil to keep track of where they are on the page.

"Are you notating it, or was that the last reader?" What an interesting script. Sometimes she wished she had taken some kind of foreign language. Then maybe she'd recognize it. It certainly didn't look like a Romance language, if nothing else.

"I am. It helps me keep things straight." Alec has trouble reading.

It certainly wasn't any Romance language. It was an entirely alien language, which people sometimes forget Alec is.

Jane is certainly one of those people. He looks human enough that she forgets that he's not really.

"Looks fun," she says. "So... you don't mind if I go check out the food, do you? I came from work and I'm famished."

"Knock yourself out! It's there to be eaten," he says. "I was going to have soup, but decided against it... but the lamb is good as is the fish."

"My vote is lamb," she says, picking up a plate and starting to poke through the food. "I had too many fish Fridays growing up. Never got a taste for it."

There's a quick frown as Alec runs over his knowledge of religions. "Catholic?" he hazards.

She smiles. "Yep. You must have spent a lot of time on Earth, you seem pretty familiar."

"I have. Or around a lot of time around people from Earth." He gives her a friendly grin. "You guys get around like roaches."

"Hey," she says, but she grins back. She can tell he doesn't mean it. "We like to call it our natural persistence."

"There are humans on my world even... but as far as I know they're not from Earth," His ~~mun~~ people's history is a bit hazy on that subject.

[Misery doesn't really like parties, but Ruby's tendency to throw them all the time has given her a certain immunity. She feels obligated to show, if only because it bums her out when she has an anniversary to celebrate and no one does any celebrating. (It might have something to do with the fact that she really doesn't like surprise parties and, therefore, frequently forgets to mention important celebration-worthy events.)

But she enters, raincloud and all, a wrapped package in hand. The party favors get a suspicious once-over; everything else looks safe enough. For now.]

Hey. [She offers him the present and, with her usual (lack) of enthusiasm, adds:] Happy birthday.

It's nice of her to show up! And Alec would be more than happy to throw her a party.

"Hi Misery! I'm glad you could make it." And he says that with his general full of enthusiasm. "Sit down and get something to eat."

No, he doesn't need to bother with the party thing. Especially not if it's a surprise party. Surprises are awful. Bad things happen with surprises.

"Okay," she replies tonelessly. "I hope you'll have a good party without any food poisoning. Food poisoning is a serious problem."

"Would you like something to eat?" he asks, choosing to ignore the whole food poisoning thing. "Everything is all natural."

She looks the table over. Is that cake she sees? "Did you make it yourself?"

"I'm afraid not. I've never learned how to bake. It wasn't a skill I needed before."

He grew up rich and privileged and from there went on to having other people cook for him.

"It's honey cake."

"That could be a good thing or a bad thing." Not that he never learned to bake--that's no concern of hers--but that someone else baked it. Are the bakers in Burby reputable?

Whatever. She helps herself to a slice and forces a smile that looks more like a grimace (somewhere in the background, a couple of glasses shatter). "Thanks. I've never been invited to a party that wasn't one of Ruby's parties before."

That is really a fascinating phenomenon. Alec briefly wonders what would happen if she actually became genuinely happy. There was probably some fan fic out there where it happened, but then would that be her or her out of character? Hum. Well, nothing to be done about it now.

"Everything could be a good or a bad thing," he says instead. "And you're welcome. I like people and I don't have my family around to celebrate with so...'

She can be genuinely happy! Uh, sometimes. Smiling kind of hurts, especially when it results in windows and mirrors breaking. But no, there are brief periods of not-quite-as-miserable where she might smile ever so slightly.

Alec's first response is too philosophical for Misery, who sees the world in shades of bad. She bypasses it and responds with, "Do you usually have birthdays with your family?"

"Yeah. I have a twin sister, but she was born on the day before leap-day. Ten minutes before midnight. I was ten minutes after midnight."

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