088.

[hexuality]

Well, look at that—four years to the day, City. And really, it's been such a pleasure. Do I get a prize? I reckon it's deserved.

On another note, Christmas shopping for you lot is bloody difficult. You'd think a girl would learn by now.


[ooc; forward-dated to this morning. happy four year polyversary to my favourite ginger witch, here!]

Comments

[misterblackbird]

And I've not lost my mind either.

It's not a record of which I'm proud, I might add.

[hexuality]

No, but you can be proud of not going mad here.

[misterblackbird]

Then congratulations are likewise in order for you as well, as you certainly don't seem mad to me and you've been here quite long enough for it to take hold in you.

[hexuality]

I reckon madness sets in if you let it. I'd blame the ticking for it most of all, but I've always had company even when I was technically alone so I've been lucky that way.

[misterblackbird]

Perhaps that is how it happens. And, yes, I agree that if anything were to do it, it would be the ticking. You're fortunate not to have endured it overmuch.

[hexuality]

No, there were loads of people from my world when I first got here. Then I had a friend who had me move in with her when they left. And when she left, I had the pets.

[misterblackbird]

I suppose you really haven't been completely alone, then.

[hexuality]

No, not really. Cats, an owl, and two pygmy puffs make excellent company.

[misterblackbird]

With a menagerie like that, I should think so!

[hexuality]

Have you got any?

[misterblackbird]

I've the two cats, Cassandra and Noir--although Noir isn't a live cat, despite all appearances. He's clockwork. And Cassandra, I suppose, is something of a special case, as she fell from the sky one day when it was quite literally raining cats and dogs.

Of course, He-Who-Kills lives in the opera house too, but he's his own--his own man, I suppose. I'm not sure what else to call him--

[ooc: Strikes are deleted.]

[hexuality]

A clockwork cat?

[misterblackbird]

Yes, though he's not strictly clockwork. He runs power from sunlight rather than by my winding him, but he is mechanical.

[hexuality]

That's—wow, does he do anything? I mean, act like a proper cat?

[misterblackbird]

Of course he does. That's all he does, really, is act like a proper cat. Cassandra's quite an ordinary cat and I don't know if she can tell he isn't real. She certainly doesn't act as though she cares.

[hexuality]

How'd you come by him?

[misterblackbird]

It's something of a strange story--

The whole of the City had been turned to children, as sometimes happens during those maddening weekends that seem to strike once a month. And, as children do, we created our own friendships and hatreds. I befriended a boy named Dietrich--von Lohengrin, actually, though we only realised we were acquainted as adults when the curse was over. I was supplying opium to one of his associates at the time-- As it happens, as a boy, he was extremely intelligent and inclined to building mechanical or robotic creations. This cat was one such creature. He was building great numbers of these things as a pastime during that weekend, and giving them to the other children he met. I was one of those children and so he gave this mechanical cat to me. And that's how Noir came to me.

[hexuality]

That's brilliant. I was hardly useful as a kid during those curses; actually, I ruined a toaster by shoving jam into it and turning the thing on since, well, I didn't know any better. Making clockwork cats is far more interesting.

I don't suppose I could see him sometime?

[misterblackbird]

Isn't it, though? I know I'm not especially useful either when I'm enduring that same curse. But I know I was delighted--then as now--to be given such a remarkable cat.

Yes, of course. I'd be delighted.

[hexuality]

I just think it's incredible how things like that can happen without magic.

[misterblackbird]

I wonder what you might make of my world, then, where we haven't any magic at all.

[hexuality]

Half of my world doesn't have it, in a way.

[misterblackbird]

How does that work, then? Are the people without magic just left as the 'have-nots'?

[hexuality]

We call them Muggles and they don't know we exist. There's an International Statute of Secrecy about magic and our government enforces it so we just blend in when we're out in non-magical communities.

[misterblackbird]

There's something a bit unsettling about that arrangement, I think.