2019-05-27 - A Grizzly Scene

Vyv was hungry. Generally, this would not be an issue, but with the flat freshly rented and the furniture still mainly en route, leaving him in temporary lodgings, he didn't currently have a kitchen. Not short of opening the shop, in any case, and that felt like it might be overkill. It was, it should be noted, 2am. Even in a proper city, that rather narrowed down the choices. Somewhere like Gray Harbor...

The bell on the Grizzly Den's door chimed as he stepped through. He stopped two steps inside, the door itself falling closed behind him as he studied the nearest bear, with its — her? — cat-eye glasses and bouffant wig. Then the next, with its rainbow propeller-beanie. They seemed to eye each other's ties. Vyv was quite sure he came out ahead on that one, given that not only did the bear's appear to have a pattern of Christmas lights, but it was also quite clearly polyester at best.

So, he noted, were the clientele, though that was surely to be expected in a small-town diner in the middle of the night. A very drunk couple who didn't appear old enough to be; a man who quite definitely did, and either had taken advantage of this or was merely exhausted, but either way had fallen asleep in his pancakes and was soaking up the syrup with his hair. A young woman who looked awake enough that her cup of coffee was probably her twelfth, nursed as she typed away on a small laptop, oblivious to the rest of the room.

The waitress seemed likewise oblivious to the rest of the room, seated on one stool with her feet up on another, only really identifiable as the waitress via the apron around her waist and the pad peeking out of its pocket in much the way she definitely wasn't from behind her dark sunglasses, which looked as though they might have been borrowed from one of the bears. The pocket also contained some sort of music player, he could surmise, based on the fact that a cord led up from it to the earphones firmly ensconced in each ear.

And the reason for that was clear enough. Vyv's gaze tracked upward to the speakers, which were vomiting forth what sounded as though telephone hold muzak had got very drunk one night and gone home for a ménage with some turntables and a set of bagpipes, the product of which liaison was also very drunk and currently assaulting his ears.

"Nnnno," he said to the ceiling, or possibly just the world at large. "I don't think so."

The bell chimed again.

He wasn't that hungry.