2022-04-07 - Brie and Butter Croissants are Breakfast Food

(TXT to Ariadne) Ravn : Survived the night? No Debbie in the living room asking where you keep the ice cream?

(TXT to Ravn) Ariadne : Thank god, no. I wouldn't have survived if that happened. Napped after taking some aspirin and then had to take Sam out. It was hard sleeping. Thank you for leaving the kettle and the instant coffee, lifesaver both.

(TXT to Ravn) Ariadne : I found a granola bar in my backpack, does that count as breakfast?

(TXT to Ariadne) Ravn : For gourmet coffee you'll have to come raid my stash courtesy of my aunt who would probably need psychiatric first aid at the thought of instant coffee, but it'll see you through the morning, right? Granola bars are absolutely breakfast, at least until you find something better. I have (please imagine me rummaging through kitchen which consists of two little shelves and a small fridge) a pack of factory made cinnamon rolls. I think you win on health.

(TXT to Ravn) Ariadne : I might kill for one of those cinnamon rolls. Screw physical health for one day, what about the health of my soul? Equally important.

(TXT to Ariadne) Ravn : Am I hearing an undertone of dear Ravn, if you happen to be going past somewhere that sells food...

(TXT to Ravn) Ariadne : You keep your receipt and show it to me and I will pay you back for any food you buy, bud.

(TXT to Ariadne) Ravn : Keep sneaking me black coffee behind Della's back and I'll consider us more than even.

(TXT to Ravn) Ariadne : Keep enabling your anti-American coffee addiction? You ask this of a barista? Please - child's play! Ow, it hurts to laugh. But really, show me that receipt, seriously, I will pay you back. Coffee was a pre-decided thing.

It's not a big deal to take the day's morning walk past the Patisserie, pick up a couple of crispy fresh croissants and a bit of brie, and then head down to the Broadleaf Apartments. It's been months since Ravn has actually run into Coach Kelly, but the man's recommended exercise regime actually works, and the Dane has no intention of slacking off on it. Walk, every day, for at least two hours, at a brisk pace. That's it. That's how you build up enough stamina that most of the time, you don't need the inhaler unless you want to do more than walking. Get those lungs accustomed to handling cold, fresh air.

He's still got a warm raglan on -- navy blue because they didn't sell those in black. It's a crisp April morning, and like any other coastal town, Gray Harbor is late to shed the shroud of night's chill. And because he walks, it takes him maybe twenty minutes, half an hour to get there.

More than enough time to at least get some semblance of sanity visible about the place. Ariadne even managed to get a sweater on Sam, who wears it with an aloof dignity; the thermostat hadn't been calibrated this morning and frankly, both he and his owner were cold when they woke up. A (careful due to stitches) hot shower and when Ravn arrives, it's to the muted sound of the tea-kettle burbling nearly done when the redhead opens the door.

"Bless you and your shoes which carried you," she all but mumbles, looking rumpled despite her efforts at washing hair and applying mascara. It apparently wasn't the best night's sleep. "Here, c'mon, I put the kettle on." A little tiredly-amused snort as she shuts the door after the Dane has entered. "That sounds so British of me. Put the kettle on," comes the fairly-accurate mimicry, at least to an American ear. Europeans would know otherwise, hear her mother's Hungarian notes in it. Samwise appears at the end of the hallway, a lanky sweater-wearing form with a plumed, slowly-wagging tail. Oh, the tall human, hello.

"I found the other folding chair, so you can sit at the table this time. The kitchen floor is cold," Araidne notes as she shuffles towards the locale in question. In a layering of thermal and sweatshirt, sweatpants and slippers, she's still moving with caution.

"Worst case scenario I'd find a box to sit on." Ravn holds up the bag -- smell them, smell the fresh croissants from the best bakery in town, and likely quite a stretch of the coast, too. "Hello, Samwise. I didn't get anything for you because I'm not sure what your mum thinks you're allowed to have, but if she doesn't mind, I'll share mine."

He always looks a bit rumpled. One might argue by now that it's probably intentional; a combination of a lifestyle developed to accommodate not always having a clothes iron or a shaving mirror at hand, and favouring a kind of lost poodle look. Go a generation or two back in time, and he'd have been the distraught professor with leather patches on the elbows of his crushed velvet blazer.

A sharp Danish ear picks up on hints of an accent; but the world is full of them, and while Ariadne's reminds him strangely of a few blokes he travelled through Europe with, he can't pin it down beyond 'somewhere probably Slavic or East European'. He should ask. He is probably going to, when a bit more time has passed, no need to come across like some crazy stalker or European snob.

Well, the last part is hard to avoid. No reason to make it worse, then.

Samwise swishes his tail again, but other than giving the crinkly bag a sniff towards it and soulful doe-eyed look, he doesn't seem overly-minded about his owner's rules.

"No croissants, he'll get gas. None. Please," Ariadne then adds with a huff of a laugh at herself and her somewhat bear-like mannerisms. "Do you want any coffee at all or have you already had yours?" comes the question as she makes her way to the counter and then pours kettle-water into a mug already filled with instant-coffee powder. "I did find my tea stash, so there's tea too if you want any. I have...more than I thought. One of things you realized when you move. Samwise has already eaten, ignore him."

Big brown eyes look between the humans. The sighthound's sweater is a plain tan color with teal banding on its hems and argyle stitching across its main bulk in the same color. Human food?

"No human food," Ravn apologises to the sighthound; he knows that expression well enough from his father's German Shepherds, all that amount of big, soulful brown eye in a canine face. "Your pack person says I'm not allowed, and given she controls the spice, I am not arguing."

He sidles after Ariadne into the apartment. "And if there ever comes a day I decline more coffee, please notify the Danish Embassy that I have become involved in a hostage situation, and they need to contact the American authorities to negotiate my ransom."

"Controls the spice," comes the amused mutter and glance over in Ravn's direction. Delicate snort added. "And yes, I will call the Embassy immediately and complain at the top of my American lungs that somehow, somebody brainwashed you against liking coffee." That being said, she shuffles to one of the cabinets and fetches out what appears to be a clean coffee mug. It was hand-cleaned, mind you, in one of those (life or death, hah-hah) situations where one just needs a few mugs stashed away to continue on with normal life-living.

Instant-coffee is added and then water. Given Ariadne hadn't licked the spoon she's stirring drinks with, she uses it to blend up the second mug. "So. I think I smell...croissants? But there's something in there." Her eyes fall to Samwise, whose black nose hasn't stopped twitching. "Sam says there's something else in there other than pastries...?" Cue curious brow lift.

"Nothing much. Pack of fresh butter and a small brie. I figured that if you don't each weird French cheese butter is good on croissants too, and where I'm from, brie is a normal breakfast cheese." Ravn places the bag on the kitchen table and plonks himself down. Gloved hands curl around the offered mug.

"So, given the fact that you are still injured, today we either find someone to help you fix that, or you get to boss me around. I can unpack boxes. I can put things on shelves. I can even hammer a nail in a wall for a picture or put those shelves up. Fear me with a screwdriver, and it doesn't have to be one made from orange juice and vodka." He's probably not the number one handyman in town, but you don't own and maintain a boat without ever putting hands on a few tools here and there (or paying someone else to, but so far, the Dane does seem to take the hands-on approach).

"Ooh, brie. No, not weird at all." Ariadne makes her way gingerly back towards the card table and then sits in the other folding chair with a soft grunt. Ow. "My mother got me used to things like that young," she explains as she eyes the bag and its now-revealed contents. A soft snort breaks into giggles at the Dane's quip about screwdrivers of both types; it brings her to smush her palm from her mouth and across her cheek as if that might remove some of the tired clinging to her yet.

"I'm okay," she firstly tells Ravn, meeting and holding his eyes as she says it. It aids in the honesty of her point: she is okay, if no more than this. "I could help getting things up that require reaching, yeah. Shower curtain, pictures, things in the high kitchen cabinets. I can't really stretch out the skin along my ribs yet." A flat look at Ravn. "It's stupid and frustrating."

"I can definitely do those. And believe me -- I know how it feels. I've been shot. The worst part is not the injury -- it's how long it takes until you can do the normal things and nothing feels weird or strained or super-sensitive." Ravn lays out the admittedly simple breakfast; croissants, butter, brie. His glance is sympathetic; sure, healing is a thing, and one that saved his life when that bullet went through his lung, but it still took entirely too much time before he no longer felt inconvenienced by the injury.

He glances back at the apartment. "You realise that if you were to ask -- I'm pretty sure half of this town would be here in twenty minutes to help. You're one of us. Probably have most of Oak Avenue lining up in a matter of minutes."

Breakfast is laid out and with a comfortable confident, Ariadne gathers up the necessaries for her own take on it. She'd at least thought to bring over silverware, even if it's a mishmash of it. There's a knife for spreading and she does after tearing her croissant haphazardly in half. Her brows knit at Ravn across the way.

"Yeah, I know," she replies. "It's just...I want to do this myself at first if I can. I don't know my limitations yet and I need to learn them. If something really debilitating comes up, I'll buzz around." A nod. "But you got shot? Veil shot you?" Finishing in spreading the brie-butter combination across the pastry, she then offers out the butter knife towards him. Samwise has curled up atop the barista's feet, the better to incidentally warm them; he just wants to be touching his person and slow-blinks as he listens, ears twitching.

"No. And that's another thing I try to remember to remind people of when necessary: You don't need the Veil for bad things to happen. I got taken out in a mall shoot-out with police because a mob sniper saw two guys in black and figured that the short Mexican couldn't be the Chief of Police." Ravn butters his half-croissant carefully. "Humans are perfectly capable of both fucking up and being assholes, without supernatural nudging."

Then he lights up in more of a smile. "I get the independent thing. I really do. But don't overdo it. That's my gig -- thinking I can go it all solo. Don't be an idiot just because I am. At least I'm an idiot with a sense of irony and a screwdriver. We'll get shelves and shower curtains up. I'll even promise to not tell anyone I helped if you in turn will promise to actually ask for help when you need it."

"Christ on a cracker." Literally paused in biting into her croissant, Ariadne murfles this into the breakfast pastry before continuing to chew carefully, listening as Ravn explains what happened. A nod: yes, indeed, humans need no Veil help to be awful. It makes her stomach clench to think of how that all apparently went down. How a miscommunication or misidentification nearly meant the loss of her friend seated across the table. It means she can't muster up anything more than a partial smile for him; it is amusing, how he funs at his own habits, it is.

Swallowing, she sips at her coffee first. "Oh dear, anything but me taking your gig," she smirks drily. "I promise to ask for help, Ravn, and if anyone asks about who helped me, you're getting outed. You helpful person, you." A teasing tsk of tongue at him. "Shoo, eat some of that pastry while I try and remember which stupid box is which for those asshole things requiring an actual elongation of spine, heaven fucking forbid." Grouse grouse grouse.

"Elongation of spine sounds like a torture method. You vill talk, Doktor Jones, or you vill get ze spine elongator." Ravn's mock German accent is pretty spot on; probably because he actually speaks a passable German (you don't live in the border country without picking up the language of the other side, that's where the cheap booze comes from, hello, he's been a teenager, and also, German is kind of obligatory in school).

He bites into the croissant; say what you want about French pastries, Patisserie Vydal knows how to make them. "I don't know who actually saved my life that day." It's almost an afterthought. "But somebody kept me from bleeding out. That way, the magic way. And I know that I was lying on the floor in a room where the local mobster boys were hunkering down, along with Gray Harbor police, while getting shot at by out-of-towners. I know the cops who where there. None of them are healers. So people do bad things. And sometimes, supposedly bad people do good things."

It's almost egregious, the accent, and Ariadne's quick to catch the pop culture reference within it as well. She doesn't get her hand up before she laughs. A little crumb or two goes flying and she laughs behind it now, shoulders shaking. "Ugh, I hate you for making me laugh," claims she from behind her mouth and past her cheekful of croissant. Ow. Ow. But it's funny. Ow.

The idea of Ravn lying on the floor freely-bleeding is not funny, however, and quickly slays her amusement. She grimaces again and quietly agrees, "Yeah, no kidding. I'm very glad someone was there. I don't know that I can see someone affiliated with the mob doing something necessarily 'good', but...maybe it's a thing of the lesser of two evils and I guess if it's a turf war...you'd want the locals winning because of their home-root ties." She still looks very uncomfortable considering the idea and focuses her attention on the breakfast pastry, looking down at it while she chews through another bite.

"You want the side winning that does the least damage to the community. Bot are bad but one's worse than the other." Ravn nods and smiles lightly. Point to him in the game that everybody ever plays with someone who has stitches on their body: Make them laugh. Does this hurt? Only when I laugh.

He curls long, gloved fingers around the cup of instant coffee. "I guess I am used to seeing -- shades of grey. I almost envy you -- to see it that simple. I don't think I've ever not had some kind of mob presence in my life. Back home, my family was not directly involved -- but they're always there, on the periphery, people with connections to certain organisations, whether they're Italian or Russian or Romanian. You go to the country club, someone there is on the take, someone there can slip you a number to a discreet cocaine dealer. It's always there."

The Dane looks into his coffee cup. "On the streets, well, no surprise, the mob is there. Gangs are there. And now I work for a community centre where a lot of people are involved with something or other because that's what happens when people are poor and fucked up -- somebody makes them an offer that they can't afford to take the moral high ground about. So to me -- I guess it's a game of pick the lesser evil. I've got a kind of unspoken arrangement, at least so far. The local gang doesn't recruit at HOPE. The cops don't ask a lot of questions. But that's the kind of man I am -- someone who walks into grey areas, someone who negotiates. Someone who keeps bad company."

"Yeah." Quiet agreement with the winning side. Least damage indeed. Ariadne considers her pastry while she lingers longer in the downcast moue, chewing slowly, and eventually does glance up at Ravn again. Envy her? What's there to envy. Between her brows, the shallow divot of concern remains, alternating intensity greater and lesser as she listens, looking through the Dane's face.

"Well. I gotta up my notoriously-questionable game if that's the company you keep," she notes wryly. "I feel like I'm slacking now. Though don't envy me except for my stubborn stance about not getting shot. Not on my to-do list anytime soon. If it means staying on the periphery of this...uncomfortable mob nonsense? Then it does. I'm just a law-abiding barista." Shrug, another bite of croissant.

Ravn watches the barista for a few moments, silent.

Then he shakes his head. "I should tell you not to. Because you are a law-abiding barista. But it doesn't work like that in Gray Harbor, and the truth is? I should be telling all those people back on Oak Avenue, too. Irving, her lodgers, Brennon's lodger. Because no one else does, and they end up finding out the hard way. There is no black and white. When the manure hits the fan, and you realise that the bloke next to you with the Beretta is a mob hit man? You're going to just be glad that he's got a Beretta, and he's pointing it at the monsters."

Eyes the colour of blue steel look up and fix on Ariadne. "There's nothing I want more out of life than to live quietly somewhere, meet a girl who will put up with my issues, and never attract any attention at all, whether from the law or from the Veil. Nothing I want more than to make friends, be part of a community. But it doesn't work that way for me. I chose to be where the manure lands, and well, there's a lot of manure."

"Well, that's you," Ariadne notes, " -- and your decisions. If I'm going to stay on the periphery, then I am, and for as long as fucking possible. I can help where I am, even if it's just gathering information because people love to talk to their baristas. Now. Am I going to hate a mob hitman who manages to defend me against some monster, human or not? No. I'm going to be grateful because the guy probably saved my life. Do I have to like what he does? No. I don't. But I'm not going to treat him with anything less than basic respect when he's not involved in mob-doings. I'm perfectly aware of how grey life-morals can be."

She sips her coffee and looks down into it. "And you'll find that quiet one day, Ravn. I have this feeling about it. Just might take you a while." A glance up at him again and small smile.

"You've got a lot of confidence in me for some bloke you just met. I must make a very convincing padre." Ravn reaches for his croissant again, though he doesn't quite manage to actually do anything with it.

"I'm going over there one of these days," he says after another moment. "There is somebody on the other side that I need to see. Need to try to make my peace with. About -- three or four months ago, I was in the mindscape, with someone else. I was my cat self -- and they were a wolf of fire. They bit my collar off. I didn't know what it meant but everything in there means something. Now I know -- it means they unleashed the power I did not think I have. So here I am, bursting with power I do not know how to control or use. And every day I feel like I am being pulled over there, that I need to go sort things out."

He looks down. "I'm talking in circles because I enjoy your company and I'd like to be friends. But I'm terrified of the consequences. And terrified of getting others caught in the blast area."

Barista shrug, the motion straightening out part of the hood to her sweatshirt. "You might," she says to his self-assessment about being a padre, still smiling quietly. Holding his grey-blue eyes isn't difficult, not for someone constantly needing to it on a daily basis for her work. She sips at her coffee again before finishing the last bite of her croissant. It had been big enough to satisfy, especially with the savory smear of butter and brie across it. Now comes the contented sloth of emptying the coffee mug. By the way she leans onto the table, fingers interlaced about the mug, she's more comfortable than when she woke up. Progress!

Ravn's sudden break of gaze has her tilting her head slightly, her faint smile taking on a knowing note. "And I think that's why we're good friends, bud. Because you understand what trouble you might bring to peoples' front steps and you're not afraid to put it out there so they're prepared in case it does show up. It takes courage and a heart to do this. Other people might try to hide it. You don't. I respect that immensely. But 'like to be friends'?" Now there's a sliver of teeth. "I got news for you, my Danish dude, and that's how that 'maybe boat' has long-left the dock about friendship. You're one of my peeps now, just like Una and some of the others around here. If it means consequences?" Shrug. "I said I knew when to ask for help. I expect you to do the same. Remember that even though I can't...open Veil doors or throw fire or make plants go ballistic, I can still pull a pin on a grenade. Thinking out of the box, right?"

A brief pause and she adds, more soberly, "Just...do me a favor and promise me you'll be careful over there, okay, bud? Just that little favor." Holding up thumb and forefinger, she pinches a tiny space between them.

"I'll be careful. I promise." Ravn can't resist a small smile; it does feel good that somebody cares.

Then he looks back up. "But if that boat did indeed sail, as you say, then you need to understand that I'm great for an acquaintance and awful for a friend. I have ghosts, and some of them are not at all figurative. You remember when we were at the karaoke bar, and the fire sprinklers blew?"

"The fire sprinklers at the bar? I doooo..."

The drawl is then interrupted by the finger-pinching hand suddenly uplifting the single finger -- please hold your thought while I think aloud.

"Monroe was being a flirt, yes, so... Your ex," Ariadne guesses, golden-hazel eyes almost raptor-like in their focus on the man across the table. "Skeletons on the lawn and baggage. How she managed to find you even over here."

"Close. The sprinklers was me. I reacted before I managed to think." Ravn nods; the Dane looks a tad sheepish -- he did, after all, accidentally end what was a very good time for most people involved. "But it was what Monroe did that -- made it happen, yes. See, with Kailey I know she's just joking. She's got a happy relationship with two people and a kid -- she's not looking to complicate matters further. I don't think Monroe is looking either -- he just wants to fuck with me because as we've noted before, I'm good for jerking around. And that too is fine, except skeletons on the lawn."

Ravn nods. "She doesn't know. And most likely? Nothing happens. Most likely she's dead -- properly dead. But nothing in this town is so dead that the Veil can't bring it back. And if that happens, and she misunderstands? Then Monroe might have gotten ripped apart right there, and it would have been my fault. That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I don't let anyone close to me who seem interested in me that way unless it's very obviously a joke."

"Hmm." Ariadne lofts brows. So Ravn was the cause of the sprinklers. She doesn't frown, however, seeing him look chagrined; she smiles to herself because, frankly, it's funny as hell in retrospect. Raining men. Sudden fire sprinklers. Irony abounding. Kailey...right, memory clicks, the color-haired woman. Another nod, yes, skeletons on the lawn. Samwise sighs and rolls onto his side, still keeping his ribcage splayed across his owner's slipper-wearing feet. You're going nowhere, sucker.

Brows knit. "So...I'm going to point out something and you can tell me if I'm being assumptive. Frankly, Ravn? It would not have been your fault." Ariadne shakes her head, not losing eye contact with him. "Nope. You can guilt-trip yourself all you want about this, but it is not something you decided would happen because you're not like that. It would have been your ex and her decision alone. Now. Here's hoping she's dead as a goddamn bent doornail and you can leave this behind with time. I understand," she gently emphasizes, " -- how you'd be twitchy. You've explained before. It's sick and twisted and how you're reacting isn't irrational. But here's the thing too: why do you have to keep suffering while she's gone? Good and gone? Because of a maybe? It's a maybe."

"That's what I need to go over there to find out. Whether she's actually there." Ravn looks into his coffee cup. "And that's the whole point. It's not fair. It's not about fair. It's not about whose fault it is, or whether she has any right. It's about this shit happens. It's happened before. I need to make sure it doesn't happen again, because if somebody gets killed or maimed, it's not going to make any difference for them whether I stand there and say, 'it's not my fault, it's not my decision'. They'll still be hurt."

"Yes, they will still be hurt, and it would have been beyond your control because on this side? You don't control the ghost of your ex." Ariadne doesn't seem to be reneging on her stance. Her tone remains gentle nonetheless. "Just like I can't control whether or not Debbie shows up and startles the shit out of me because Sam might do some I See Dead People stare over in that corner of the living room. I can only accept it and do what I can to change things. In my case? Little unless I want somebody to sage the place."

A tilt of her head, her eyes remaining on Ravn. "Now. I get going over there. Sure. Go see if she's there and bring Itzhak. Lay her to rest for good-good if she is there. No more maybe."

"Well, you can get somebody to sage the place. We are next to the Quinault Reservation and frankly, it might not be a bad idea at all." Ravn offers a lopsided smile; evil spirits getting booted is a good thing in any culture or tradition. Debbie may not be an evil spirit as such but nor is she a genuine presence. A memory, fading, which can be helped to fade faster.

"I'm not sure bringing Rosencrantz is the way to go, though. That suggests I am going there to fight. My first task is finding out whether she's there at all. Recon, if you will. Maybe asking some questions. Pretty certain I can be more -- well, discreet, on my own. But it's also part of why I wanted back on the marina -- Oak Avenue has shit enough going on with the faerie circle and the nightmares that it doesn't need the risk of angry ghosts on top of everything else. Most of those people, Brennon and Holt excepted, don't have any experience fighting these things at all."

"It makes sense. Not only moving to the boat, but also recon on your own. Snipers are generally a single unit, though...hell, a good sniper also has a spotter, I'll note this, unless it's absolutely necessary the sniper needs to go deep. Deep black ops territory...or so I've heard," shrugs Ariadne. "I have no idea. I've gleaned all that from reading and watching movies."

She shifts her feet and Samwise groan-stretches, complaining before he relaxes again. "My bad, dude," she softly tells the sighthound, smiling down at him. "I don't know that the place needs to be saged yet, but you bring up another good point and connection. I'll ask around the café and see if anyone has any ideas. The last person I knew back in Seattle who didn't flinch at sageing a place said she was Wiccan. I believed her...and it seemed to work when she did it. She made side money doing it for folks."

"Just don't suggest white sage unless you're recruiting someone indigenous. It's a protected species now and the indigenous people are kind of not too excited about the New Age crowd burning it like sparklers." Ravn nods and then adds, a tad wryly, "You learn a lot, working with Vicky Barrett. One of Irving's lodgers is Quinault. And opinionated, but she might appreciate you asking."

The folklorist sips his coffee. "If that falls through? I suppose we can go the way of your ancestors. You said Hungary, mm? Slavic tradition has the hanging and burning of garlic and the planting of houseleeks, to ward off evil influences. It's not as bad as it sounds like because modern vampire movies get it wrong: It's not garlic as in stuff that goes on pizza, it's garlic flowers. I've always figured that somewhere, there's a league of vampires feeling remarkably proud of themselves for managing to twist that around in pop culture."

"Right, I will not suggest white sage." But one of Una's lodgers? Ariadne thinks for a split second: right, Jules. She makes a mental note to touch base with the other woman about white sage in particular, the better to learn about what it looks like and when to not ask for it -- which sounds like never ask for it. Shall confirm.

But Ravn slowly earns himself one of those gleefully-cheeky little grins. It's very nearly set to court the Prince of Foxes. "You do know that ve of the darkest and most vampiric corners are very proud of thees particular leetle treeck?" It's easy as hell for her to slip into Hollywood's aggrandized accent. "So many theenk now that eet ees the bulbs vhen yes, eet ees the flowers you burn. Eet ees so nice to have a slice of pizza after dining on an unsuspecting Tvilight fan. Thank god ve can also drink vine." Theatrically eyebrowing from the barista who then begins laughing hard enough to make her ribs twinge. Ow. It's funny. Ow. Somewhere, her mother is glaring at her. Ow. It's more funny. Ow.

"Also," she continues through her laughter, " -- ow! Do you what the cruelest prank would be to pull on a traditional vampire? Writing something like 'fuckweasel' on their forehead in permanent magical ink. Because they can't see their reflection." Now she's close to dissolving into hiccups.

The Bela Lugosi routine ears Ariadne a slow smile, a laugh, and a groan -- simultaneously. Vampires are a touchy subject for folklorists, prone to many an argument about what constitutes folklore (the Bram Stoker purists and the Anne Rice new generation tend to end up fighting, and then joining forces with the Joss Whedon fanboys in order to give atomic wedgies to the Stephenie Meyer crowd. Meanwhile, actual Slavic folklore sits alone in a corner, crying).

"That would be a prank," he agrees, laughing. "Poor guy would never know. For a cruel prank, tattoo on the Apostolic Creed. Reciting that thing supposedly forces away evil influences, literally force the bloke out of his own head."

And then, because when does Ravn not take a chance to lecture? "If you ever do meet a vampire in Dreams or on the Other Side, though? Try it all. Every trick you've read, from old records to the last Hollywood flick. Find out which set of rules it works from. There will almost always be one, because most of the things we encounter are given form by our minds, and those are our stories."

It's one billion percent worth it to hear the groan, Ariadne admits to herself while she cackles.

Also, nobody let either of them anywhere near a prank.

Getting a grip on herself, Ariadne wipes under an eye and blows a sigh before laughing one last time. "Right, try all of the things. Anything white phosphorous should work for all of them. UV light too. Some sort of religious creed, they're all major trends of belief involving the suckers." Snicker. Eee-hee. Suckers. "But honestly? If I ran into a vampire in a Dream or on the Other Side? I'd be terrified at heart. Just...the breadth of what could be possible as a manifestation." She shakes her head and brings her mug to her mouth. "Makes me nervous thinking about it."

"Don't be." Ravn shakes his head; this is a topic of discussion far less disturbing to him, and for reasons that are part of the topic: "A vampire is a creature created by our stories -- a Veil construct that comes with a set of instructions and rules it has to follow. It can be a bitch to figure out which set -- but it's there. Vampires are, for lack of a better term, tamed -- we've written rules for them, and how we interact with them. They're monsters and they're dangerous, but if you do this they have to die or flee, and if you do that, you can bind them, and so on. The monsters that have rules are far less dangerous than the ones that don't. If I could bind Benedikte or banish her reciting the Apostolic Creed or brandish a cross in her face, I'd carry a Bible and a crucifix, and worry considerably less about what might or might not happen to people I like."

"Respectfully, I follow your logic, but you're not taking into account the fact that despite being created by humanity, the critters were created to be an honest-to-god horror." Cue barista eyebrow and twist of mouth. "Think a vampire in a Dream -- keeping in light of how awful Dreams tend to be -- is going to give you all the time in the world to hold up a finger and say, oh, righto, give me a mo, just need to Google how to ash you? No. It's going to come at you with a snarl or a smirk and heaven forbid you don't dodge or avoid eye contact."

Still, the corner of one side of Ariadne's lips twitch up. "Except the sparkly ones. They just give you pining, lustful looks and breath heavily at you. Ever been to Forks?" she asks the folklorist ever-so-innocently.

"My dearest provider of the sacred spice, as a folklorist I'd rather gnaw my own leg off at the knee than go to Forks and ask anyone there about vampires. I might possibly go in another decade or two and ask them how the so-called modern vampire wave affected their community." Ravn laughs softly.

Then he nods his agreement. "And you're right. That's another facet -- just because we've domesticated these legends does not mean we've pulled all their teeth. The whole point of human story telling is to force chaos into clearly defined boxes. But stuff a vampire into a box, he's still an unnatural monster that wants to murder you. He may represent the fear of tuberculosis and undernourishment wiping out entire families as in the original Slav myths, or he may represent the repressed sexuality of the Victorian woman, but either way, he's still going to try to kill you. So you are quite right -- knowing that he has to follow a play book makes him less dangerous than a monster who doesn't have to, but he's still dangerous. Don't get cocky, kid."

Because obscure pop culture references are a thing.

"Well...yeah. You don't want to get cocky in front of a vamp. It's just asking to get killed at that point," Ariadne agrees after taking another long sip of coffee. "And really, Forks is a charming little place if you never take into account sparkly vampires and bad prom dinners at that one little Italian restaurant claiming to have been filmed in the movies and really, the city looks like Humptulips and the author of Twilight struck out badly not taking that town's name into account in the stories."

Shrug. Smirk.

"Better the sparkly ones though than anything else...like Stoker's original crew. Or the ones in the Dresden Files." Sam stretches again and makes her glance down. False alarm, he's back to napping again. It's a hard life.

"Terry Pratchett did." Ravn smiles and manages to actually take a bite of his croissant. "Humptulips is in his and Steven Briggs' The Long Earth series. Trust a bloke like Pratchett to not miss a name like that and make something of it."

He pauses and then admits, "I've actually not read Dresden. From what I've seen it's based more on a modern take on Celtic faerie though -- the whole summer and winter courts, and so on. It's interesting as fantasy goes, but from my perch as a folklorist, it's too much of an adaptation for a specific fiction. Just like the bloody Twilight stuff. It doesn't get into my field until it becomes so widely accepted that other works of fiction adopt the rules because that's just how it is. Ironically, when that does happen, it usually is done wrong. Stoker's vampires would have one massive advantage today: We assume vampires cannot face sunlight. Dracula faced sunlight just fine, he just didn't have any of his supernatural powers in daylight. But he'd still be perfectly capable of walking over and taking you out with a Glock forty-five."

"And the leader of the vamps in the Dresden Files could do the same, walk in the daytime," Ariadne notes, " -- along with flatten you mentally with the equivalence of an avalanche of psychic attack. Stoker's Drac couldn't do that. But...doesn't stop a bullet, yeah, and I bet that if Stoker's Drac lived on into this age? He'd sure as hell be familiar with handguns and how to use them. A terrifying thought and, again, makes my point that they're the last things -- well, one of the last things I want to come across in a Dream."

Don't think she missed how the folklorist takes a chunk out of his croissant. Under the premise of not startling him, like one might accidentally set a deer to flight, she doesn't look at the pastry to acknowledge it. Instead, she merely keeps grinning. "You'd have a field day with the Iron Druid series too then, if that's what you think of Dresden."

Ravn returns that grin. "I'm not speaking as a literature critic. These may be the greatest reads in the field. All I'm saying is, they're as of yet outside my field of work because they are adaptations for a specific fiction -- they're not culturally accepted standards. Also? That is Dracula's most horrifying power. Not shape shifting or controlling rats or flying. He adapts. Lonely castle in the Carpathians? Trade it in for a life in throbbing metropolis London, endless food supply, luxurious living standards. How? By mastering modern technology at the time -- he goes to sea, he inserts himself in London as a wealthy and eccentric aristocrat from abroad. It's the equivalent of ditching the Old World and inserting himself into Wall Street today so don't tell me he wouldn't know exactly how to use the internet and find all the mob connections a supervillain could possibly need."

Fingergun in Ravn's direction.

"Precisely. He'd fit in just fine and that's the worst part. I can still see him struggling a little bit with the Internet and needing to understand why everyone's squealing about cat memes and not bat memes." A ridiculous-enough idea to make the barista laugh across the brim of her coffee mug again. "Let's just keep our fingers crossed against any sort of vampiric presences in any Dream we go into. Too much human imagination working against us there in the end."

A beat. "Though I suppose you could just set the vampire on fire because nothing really withstands fire."

"Well, actually," says Ravn and with exactly that inflection. "Vampires don't like fire, because fire is a purifier and vampires are per definition impure beings. Whiiiiich leads us to the monsters that do like fire because their function is to punish and purify. Which leads us to a world of demons, efreet, and other exciting things that exist with the single purpose of making you suffer, and because they are part of a Divine Plan, they don't even need a reason. Dracula at least wants to eat you, or move you out of his way. Devils and demons torture you because they can."

He sips his coffee. "So clearly, the ultimate power move here is to rule Hell and inflict your minions on everyone else."

"Given hell hath no fury, I'm clearly on the wrong path," laughs the redhead across the table. "What am I doing merely serving up black coffee. I need to pull a Lucifer and see about ruling hell for a while before taking a vacation for as long as I feel so inclined. Give me a few hundred years, I'll change my mind and show up at the coffee shop again with new blends guaranteed to warm you to your soul."

Her voice can't quite go basso, but it contains enough theatrical malice.

A hand-wave then. "Nah, I'll stick with making coffee," she demurs. "And making sure to bring up sparkly vampires in any context I can when you're around. I saw you not-groan earlier."

"Aw. I liked the idea of going to Hell only to find you waiting there with a fresh pot." Ravn snickers. "I'd even pretend to cheer you on while you run your own piano bar and crush helplessly on some police officer for four seasons."

He chuckles. "I'm not going to pretend I'm a fan of the Twilight series. But my dislike is actually not work-related. As a folklorist, the series is irrelevant because it has not added anything to the vampire myth that wasn't there already. Victorian writers turned vampires sexy, Anne Rice updated them to the modern broody and homoerotic version, and Meyer -- did nothing as far as folklorists are concerned. Literature critics have plenty to say about her take on the myth, and heaven knows it's questionable as fuck from a gender politics perspective. For me, though, what little I've seen and read of it was just -- dull."

He hitches a shoulder. "I think I may possibly not be the target audience. Being stalked by a brooding, emotionally unstable pretty boy is not my dream of a happy ending."

"You're a good friend," laughs Ariadne of being cheered on. She's pleased he caught the reference and it shows in the twinkle of her eyes. Tilting her head slightly, she then nods as he explains the 'why' of disliking the fabled sparkly series so much.

Her snort isn't all amusement. "Yeeeeah, that stereotype hero isn't my cup of tea either." A lift of her mug containing coffee regardless. "Maybe it was when I was young, but...I'm wiser than that now. Lessons learned," she singsongs to herself on a sigh. A fingernail tick-ticks off the ceramic mug. "It's interesting to take a step back though, as a reader and not a folklorist, and contemplate what you just said. How there's been little to no influence on the genre as a whole despite the popularity of the series. I do like me some Anne Rice and the movies didn't turn out half-bad. Okay, maybe Queen of the Damned was a little over-the-top, but it's Lestat and that guy has enough peacock in him that it's a shame he wasn't wearing a damn plume on his person all the time."

"My impression of that whole series goes something like Anne Rice had two things working for her. First off, she was an erotica writer. She knows how to write a description of something fairly mundane in a way that makes you wonder if you put on a pair of pants a size too small somehow. Good, passionate writing is a pleasure. And second, she was the first to truly explore the monster point of view. There's been sympathetic vampires in writing and movies before, but she got deep inside their heads without making them tragic and apologetic -- they're very human, but they're also unrepentant predators. That makes them interesting as a thought experiment. Deeply woe-ridden depressed sparkly boy is not interesting for long -- because all he does is wallow in self pity. That's probably the reason the series shifted from the perspective of Louis du Pointe du Lac to Lestat de Lioncourt after literally the first novel. Louis is dull and whiny."

And Ravn, of course, is one to remember long, French names because of course he is.

The opinion on the mopey-est of vampires sets Ariadne to snickering again.

"Oh my god, isn't he though? Like...god, I love Louis' humanity. I fucking love it, how Rice was like, nope, you get to keep all your moral scruples, have fun being an arch-predator and knowing exactly what you're doing every time you crack a fresh one. Eating poodles. Blughguhguh. Lestat was still right and wrong there," she says, shaking her head. "But yeah, he definitely starts to grind on the patience after a while because you're like, bro. I get it. But that's the selfish part of me talking because let's be honest: Rice does know how to write those descriptions and cheers for it. She also knows how to write a sympathetic character that I really appreciate." A lift of mug in salute.

"She did." Ravn nods and lifts his mug in salute to a writer who was once great. "Then she fired her editor and that's when I stopped reading. After Tale of the Body Thief it all became too preachy. She found God and boy, did she ever need the rest of us to find Him, too."

He smiles a little. "But yeah -- I remember reading Interview as a teenager and identifying so hard. Rich boy who can't seem to find his place in society in spite of having been dealt a great hand from the beginning of play? Nothing but bad conscience about his privilege, and wanting most of all to just be left the hell alone? Looks great in black and feels terrifically sorry for himself? Don't mind if I do."

Ariadne can't help the half-smirk, enough to flash teeth at one side of her mouth.

"Oh man...gunning for a new nickname there, bud," she informs her friend across the table. Pointe du Lac. It may become a Thing. "That's cool though, that you found a point of familiarity -- in the sense that it was supportive to you, not implying that you're a vampire because, clearly, you're not." A droll addendum. "I do remember dropping the series around or just before Tale of the Body Thief though, yeah, because it did get preachy and there's no faster way to find yourself talking to an Ariadne-shaped hole in space than if you try to preach to me. Proverbial you."

She eyes her mug. Almost empty. "I should revisit those books, it's been long enough."

"Yeah. Sometimes, maybe it's better to keep that editor on so that somebody will tell you when something is a bad idea. But I guess that's easy to say when you're not the actual writer, immersed in this mental universe. Heaven knows I tried hard enough -- I went through that whole phase with black hair and kohl eyes and listening to Black Veil Brides and My Chemical Romance." Ravn chuckles. "Fortunately only for about six months. Then it dawned on me that I was literally a hell of a lot more street than those guys, and it wasn't actually making me feel particularly great."

He ponders. "Movie night? I don't have a TV on the Vagabond but I'd be willing to do the take-out run if you want to host a Vampire marathon here sometime. It's more fun to watch those things with someone who doesn't take offence at me pointing out every abused folklore trope along the way. Hell, I'll even refrain from lecturing on the whole anti-semitic angle."

A nod from the barista. They'd all had those points in life, pretending to be someone they weren't in an effort to suss out who they really are. She wonders briefly about wearing kohl that heavy before Ravn suggests what sounds like a great idea to her.

"I'm certainly interested in the tropes they abuse, if only so I can appreciate the difference of artistic interpretation in return. I like seeing how different people interpret things. Humanity is so...creative across such a broad spectrum. It's amazing to contemplate. But yeah, movie night. I can only think of Interview and Queen of the Damned as the two movies based off the books..." She gives Ravn a searching look. "Am I missing a movie somehow? It's been a few years since I've watched either. College was either too busy or too distracting with other movies my peeps wanted to watch instead. I vote Chinese food, by the way, as far as take-out goes. I need to see how they do the General Tsao's chicken. I am a total snob, I admit it, after growing up down the street from a family-owned business going on forty-odd years of success."

Ravn shakes his head. "That's the two -- but there's plenty of other movies that rip off the series. We can find a dozen if we want to. Hell, get me started on Blade the Daywalker where the whole plot key is that Blade can walk in daylight. Which the original Slavic vampires also could, but it looked great on film in Nosferatu to have the undead monster succumb to daylight and that's why vampires can't walk in daylight."

He smiles a little at that last comment. "I am fine with Chinese food although you'll have to educate me. I have had it plenty times but I have no idea what's called what. It's the kind of food that fellow students bring in and you just eat what they put in front of you." Pause. "I'm actually pretty clueless about most food."

"Oh. Well, I mean, I'm no walking, talking encyclopedia about Chinese food and I kind of pigeon-hole myself once I find stuff I like, but if you want to pick the restaurant, I'll look at the menu and choose a few things?" The offer comes up an up-turned palm. "I can tell you we're at least getting General Tsao's chicken, some beef and broccoli, pork-fried rice, crab rangoon if they have it -- and we're on a freakin' bay and-or within a few hours of Seattle, I will be vastly disappointed if they don't have it or it's bad -- and..." Ariadne taps the table with a fingernail, looking at Ravn again consideringly. "Some chicken egg foo young. Maybe some miso soup. Hell, it's a party," she then laughs.

"I'm good with just the Rice stuff for now," the redhead adds. "I can't sit still for a marathon of movies, even if my leg's being a right fucker. I have to move after a while or I'll lose my mind."

"Sounds like maybe some of that food and some of those movies one night, and then more of that food and those movies another night, and hell, I think we just started a habit of regular movie nights." Ravn nods and ponders. "I know there's a crab shack somewhere on the marina because Hyacinth wanted to go there. I don't know where -- it's some kind of hole in the wall business that you apparently only know if you find it by accident or have heard of it by word of mouth. We could go looking sometime."

He pauses and then looks sheepish in that way that the Dane excels at: The one where he's said one thing and then realises it could be heard as something else, and while he's probably the only person ever who actually would hear it as something else, he still feels obliged to clarify. "I mean, we could go, like, a couple of folks. invite a couple of others, maybe, make it an expedition."

Ariadne's smile is knowing. She's beginning to recognize that expression when it fleets across Ravn's face.

"I'm down with a crab shack expedition. I might be into marine biology, but delicious crab legs? Twist my arm. Hand me a shell-cracker and a bib. Either that, or show me to the nearest bowl of crab-and-clam chowder. This state is famous for wicked-good seafood clam chowder, the cream-based kind. I'm not so big on the red-base chowder. That's more...more of a gumbo in my head, I dunno," she explains with a one-shouldered shrug. "And regular movie nights sound good to me too. I'm generally on my feet for about six to eight hours, depending on what Della needs out of us barista-folk for coverage, so putting up my feet with a box of Chinese food and some potentially-awfully-hilarious vampire movies sounds amazing to me."

Ravn nods his agreement (and his relief at not having to explain his discomfort further -- he's not even sure where to start explaining it all to himself). "I prefer the cream. I'm a bland tongued Scandinavian -- once things get hot and spicy, expect me to lie in a corner using my last few, precious breaths to swear about jalapenos being a coordinated attempt at creating an extinction level event."

He looks back up. "I don't have that level of excuse. Most of my work is sedentary -- but I do walk a lot. And I suppose I'm a light enough eater that I can afford to lie about like a loaf now and then, too."

Jalapenos as an extinction level event. That has Ariadne grinning broadly again, flashing that front tooth just a little crooked yet.

"You're perfectly allowed to loaf around here, my good sir. It's not like I'd mind. Mi couch, su couch." Yes, butcher that Spanish catch-phrase, butcher it. "I mean, you've got long enough legs that you're doomed to have them hanging over the edge of any piece of furniture I own unless you curl up into a ball, but hey, whatever works. We'll go easy on the spices, whatever we order for Chinese food. General Tsao's chicken does have some heat, but nothing nuclear in the least. The chicken egg foo young can, but it can be ordered more mild as liked. I'm not out to make you romance a glass of water or milk."

Ravn laughs. "I tend to find that most places aren't dicks about it if you aren't. Tell it like it is -- thin blooded Scandinavian with zero tolerance, and they'll go easy on you. Try to macho it up? They'll add an extra dose of thermonuclear waste just for shit and giggles."

He leans back on his chair a little and takes another bite of croissant. "I might take you up on that, though. Hang around like a lonely cat. I do like people. And I do like people who like picking fiction and movies apart. I'm a nerd and proud. It's easy to forget taking time out to just live in this town. Always so much going on, so many questions to hunt for answers to. Not always quite enough just... being human. Living. Scratching your arse, loafing about, just living. I play with Rosencrantz when time allows, but most of my social life does come down on some level to 'this happened, what are we doing about it'."

"Thermonuclear waste." The echo is followed by a titter. "Pfft."

Finishing her mug of coffee, Ariadne then sighs and leans back in her chair, holding her mug with one hand out of habit as it rests on the table. Another bite of croissant! Success! A little smile twitches across her lips. "You do have to live, yes, and not just...react. It's...not exactly a battlefield out there. Not really...not all of the time...and some things can be left to sit. Ideas to marinate. A better idea of how to deal with something might cross a mind relaxed than a mind frazzled, since the subconscious has time to consider it subtly with little to wrench up the process. If anything, you can lounge around and keep Sam company if I have to go deal with work. He seems to like you and he's an...adequately good judge of character."

The sleeping sighthound is eyed. "Not perfect, but hey, who's perfect? If he were perfect, it'd creep me out."

"So a bit like Kitty Pryde but reversed. When she likes somebody, you know to avoid them." Ravn smirks.

It's not exactly true, either. Kitty Pryde's criteria for liking people are even simpler: Do they have opposable thumbs, are they willing to open cans of tuna, and otherwise leave her alone? Yes? Good, you're accepted. The only person Ravn has ever seen the black cat actively like is Gina Castro, the owner of the Black Bear Diner. Half the town thinks she's a Veil monster herself, and the other half is kind of quietly convinced she's a cat in human shape.

Then the folklorist nods. "Did you know there's a psychiatric diagnosis called Passive-Aggressive Disorder? It means you get pissed off when bad things happen to you, but you don't do anything to stop them or change them -- you just suffer, and seethe. It's one of my considerable list of diagnoses, that's how I know. To be fair, so is schizophrenia because of the hallucations, and by that logic, a substantial percentage of Gray Harbor's population are schizoid." He pauses and then adds, "I do feel that one is kind of apt, though. I am someone who is far better at reacting than at acting. I take my sweet time sorting out what to do about things, if anything at all. The best choice is probably a middle ground -- don't take everything life throws at you, but don't crusade around the clock, either."

Ariadne agrees easily, "Like a reversed Kitty Pryde then." She twitches her toes in her slippers against Sam's ribcage and he awakens for another stretch, looking up at her out of dozy curiosity. What, mom, what? Oh, ear smooshies, okay; the barista leans down and indeed smooshes up a triangle-flop ear until he groans quietly in appreciation. Whatever baby-talking she does briefly is in Hungarian and lilting, absolutely identifiable as sweet-nothings by its tone.

"The middle road saves sanity. No reason to burn out early just because you can," she replies as she sits up in the chair again, having mollified her little foot-warming monster. "Just have to take it one day at a time sometimes."

"That's probably one of the best ways to do it," Ravn agrees, watching the sighthound thoughtfully. "Accept that it's not all great, and then get on with life. Like you said -- we're at war here, and we certainly are, but we can do better than sit in the trenches and cower, waiting for the next shell. If there's a lesson to be learned there, it's to enjoy life while you've got it. Go get the thing, go do the thing, tomorrow might be too late."

Then his lip twitches because he knows very well how much of a hypocrite he is. "You make me kind of wish I understood a word of Hungarian. I've seen it in writing of course, but it looks like somebody confiscated all the vowels. I had a student once whose name was spelled Hkl. That was it. Three consonants."

"Indeed, do the thing. Roll for initiative. Have a plan: attack. Whatever catch-phrase floats your boat." Ariadne briefly smiles down again at the sighthound gone back to his cat-napping again. Who needs a cat when this long-legged maniac cuddles just fine?

Glancing across the table at Ravn again, the barista shrugs and smiles with the barest hint of chagrin. "It's entirely possible that student was fucking with you because he knew you didn't speak it," she notes with a puckish pursing of lips. "But I recognize the name regardless and yeah, there's no vowels in it. Yes, it's a different language. I just told Sam he's a good boy indeed and called him a furry jerk in the process. I admit, I taught him a lot of his more important commands in Hungarian; the critical ones, like his emergency stop. There's 'stay' and there's marad. One means 'hang out' and the other is unquestionably serious."

"Nah, he was for real. I had to help him get sorted out because Copenhagen U thought the name was a prank." Ravn hitches a shoulder. "It kind of happens a fair bit -- people with names that don't translate well. Danish ears are notoriously bad at foreign sounds, and we have some very unique ideas of what sounds letters actually make, at least according to the rest of the planet."

Then he looks at the sighthound again and nods. "I am guessing that that command does not mean 'go shed nicely on that man's feet'. It's probably a good choice. I can tell you that during my brief career as a burglar, I did my best to avoid residences with dogs. Trained or not, it doesn't matter. A trained dog will hurt you. An untrained dog will think you're the best thing ever and make such a racket. A dog is a surprisingly effective burglar alarm."

"Yeeeeeeeeeep." Ariadne pops the last syllable off her lips. "Sam is an amazing burglar alarm -- not that I would know and thank fucking god for that -- but we can easily assume because when he's truly interested to see someone, he yodels."

A lean-glance down at the sighthound. "Don't you, you furry lunatic." One swishing tail thump. "I make my point," the barista notes as she sits back in her chair again.

"And I only allow people I am interested in seeing into my residence. He extrapolates beautifully. Marad just means 'stay put', it's nothing fancy. I'm not going to argue with you about those unique sounds though." She smirks again. "And then there's Norwegian and just...lord. I had a childhood friend who spoke it and I just used to stare at her when she did. Like, how do you even make some of those vowel sounds? It remains a mystery to me."

"Worst part of that? Norwegian is Danish. It's literally a dialect. A dialect that broke away from Denmark when we lost Norway to Sweden in 1814, granted, but it's still the same language. And I don't understand a bloody word." Ravn laughs. "That's old Norwegian, granted. They've instituted bokmål after achieving independence. That is what was the Norwegian countryside tongue back during Danish colonisation, and nobody understands that."

He cants his head. "Of course the Swedish claim they don't understand the Norwegians either, and the Norwegians claim no one understands Swedish. And the one thing all of us agree is that no one ever understood the Scandian dialect of Swedish because it's literally Danish-words-in-Swedish-inflection, stuck in 1680."

Hashtag EuropeProblems.

"Really," murmurs Ariadne at being informed of Norwegian being Danish but not-quite-Danish because messy intercontinental historical reasons. Her brows lift.

"I think I'll just stick to my messy English with the fact of 'read' rhyming with 'lead' and 'lead' rhyming with 'read', but not 'read' and 'lead' and 'lead' and 'read'." She grins. Try that on for size, poor, poor non-native speakers. "And my Hungarian. And ASL." A quick little flicker of her hands, there and gone, and easy-going shrug. "The ASL is more for dog-training. Sighthound are sight hound. They'll watch your hands. I can direct Sam in complete silence if I wanted to. It's a damn cool trick."

"I feel a certain patriotic urge to point out that a quarter of English is Danish too. You just get the pronunciations wrong a lot of the time. Granted, it's more fun to give that particular speech to an actual Englishman. Particularly if there is a Scot, a Welshman, or an Irishman in the building. There is no such thing as English. It's a bastard language derived off various Celtic dialects with a massive infusion of Romance languages and Norse dialects." He practically beams; you can just tell the Dane has picked this fight many times before.

"I don't speak a word of any of the Slavic languages, though. I know my way around the basics of German and the Scandinavian languages have enough overlap that I can read Swedish and Norwegian. Finnish is actually related to Hungarian, instead of any of the Norse languages. Icelandic is probably closest to the original Norse tongue, but, well, that was almost a millennium ago and no one else understands a word anymore."

Cue a drily-amused expression on the barista across the way. She can't help the slow, slow appearance of a one-sided grin, bright and cheeky.

"Alright, alright, you etymological nit-picker," she says before laughing, taking the edge off of her words. "English is West Germanic anyways and, yes, the loan words are insanely prevalent. And I know, Anglo-Saxons does include southern Denmark and the Netherlands." A circling finger is pointed at the Dane almost like a lazily-offered rapier. "I had a very good friend in college who loved etymology. Liberal Arts major. I miss the hell out of him sometimes."

"Sounds like somebody I'd have loved to argue with. The Angles were from my home region as it happens. Southern Jutland, northern Friesland, that's us." Ravn makes another of those wide, lopsided smiles. "The Jutes were from further north, the peninsula proper."

Then he laughs and raises a gloved hand in surrender. "I shouldn't really be talking. There's nothing more mutt than an old noble house. We somehow manage to all be related to one another while simultaneously having family everywhere. I have Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, French, Scottish, Italian ancestry -- and probably just about everything else if you step beyond the immediate family connections. They didn't call Queen Victoria the grandmother of Europe for nothing. We literally all are one big inbred mess."

"Honestly, Ravn, he would have argued you into the ground out of sheer cussed spite. Drinks or no drinks. I've never met a man more certain of when he's right...even if he's not right. I have the distinct honor of calling him out on his bullshit now and then which remains hilarious. He's a good sport about it too. I think he's in Montana now...?" Ariadne thinks. "Yeah, Montana. I need to check up on him, note to self. He's been busy as hell lately."

She shifts in her chair, looking up at Ravn again. "Here...I need to get up and stretch my leg a bit. Let me get more water going. You can tell me about how the language evolved. That way, I have ammunition for my phone call to my friend." A sly grin.

Oh, it's on, Montana friend. It's on.