Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Apropos of Absolutely Nothing

So my main role-playing hub these days decided to create an "anything goes" section for a few days, where we could post - according to the rules of the subforum - anything we damn well pleased. I pondered for a time what I wanted to write, when this scene leapt fully-formed from my brow and refused to get out of my way until it had been written. The setting belongs to my partner-in-crime, Eredis, and is roughly equivalent to modern day alternate history. Similarly, re-imaginings of characters once bound to a single setting reappear.

There is no point to this scene, no reason for its existence beyond the fact that it obstructed me until I let it free. I decided to share it because one line in it makes me giggle.

-----

. . . . . Instead of looking out at the lonely expanse of polished wood that passed for a dance floor, Rosoe buried her face in her folded arms on the table next to a half-full glass of very expensive martini and groaned.
. . . . . Sitka! Hey, sitka! Look!”
. . . . . She quite pointedly did not look until his yelling became insistent enough to be more annoying than the erratic thumping beat of the song. Out on the dance floor, entirely without benefit of a crowd to conceal him – at all – was the minor Nordic landmass known as Ôzurr Bergmann. Two long, blond braids of beard swayed across a chest only barely contained in the XXL t-shirt he wore as he flailed his arms in perfect disharmony with the music. Years of chasing her up mountains and across sand wastes and down barely navigable rivers had returned his fighting form, but he was still built like a moose's love-child with a bear. As the lead singer (if one could call the erratic spoken form 'rapping' such) passed once more through the chorus of being sexy and he knew it and was not afraid to show it, Oozy – what she affectionately called the northern lug – wiggled his hips suggestively towards her. The lyrics continued to instruct such and she put her head down again.
. . . . . Behind the bar, a Moroccan barmaid polished a glass and giggled.
. . . . . “You see, sitka, Zoë knows what she sees!”
. . . . . Rosoe counted to ten before she raised her head, the thick tumble of dreadlocks falling back as she squinted her black eyes at the giant wheeling and wiggling alone on the dance floor. Mindful of his fragile ego, she called out over the music, “A bleached bear trying to catch honey-bees with his pinga?”
. . . . . Oozy didn't deflate in the slightest. “You think I am built strong like bear?” His voice held a note of preening.
. . . . . As the song blessedly transitioned to something just as thumpy but less embarrassing, Rosoe picked up her martini and stood up. Hips swaying, she walked over to the north-man and patted his chest soothingly. “Yes, mwen renmen,” she murmured, rising onto the tips of her toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. Oozy's pale cheeks turned beet red, and he didn't even flinch from the spark of static jumping from her lips. “You are strong like bear.”
. . . . . Leaving him to dance alone once more, she walked over to the bar and leaned forward over it, well-aware of the distraction her leather-clad derriere provided. “Zoë!” The barmaid – some little chica between fifteen and twenty-two, it was quite hard to tell – smiled her bright, sunny smile at Rosoe.
. . . . . “What are you needing, boss?” Her English still needed work, but Rosoe wouldn't be the one teaching her; Rosoe already had a terrible patois of English, old French, Haitian, and gutter Spanish. Thanks to Ôzurr, she was adding inexplicable moments of Russian and Norwegian to it.
. . . . . Nevertheless, she had to try. “It's just 'what do you need, boss.' And for you to remove that song from the playlist.”
. . . . . “But Mister Azure loves it!”
. . . . . Rosoe didn't bother correcting the nickname. “It is a terrible excuse for him to terrorize people. You want people coming in here for drinks, yes?”
. . . . . Zoë looked closer to fifteen than anything as she looked down and mumbled something vaguely affirmative while she dried a glass with a bar-rag.
. . . . . “No one will come in when word gets out that a white devil beats others with golden chains here.” So she was exaggerating. Morocco was not truly so insular; in fact, they were quite used to tourists and no one expected much from a run-down watering hole in a back alley. She just wanted an excuse to keep Ôzurr from humming that damned song in the middle of the night.