Introducing: Mercutio

[bymyheelies]

Mercutio is lying on a very plush couch. It is not where he was, that is clear enough. This is nothing like a tavern, certainly nothing at all like Verona. Even the lights are strange-looking, not flickering or dancing like flame. Is it some kind of faerie-land? Without doubt, it is not any sort of heaven or hell he has read of, though he knows well he should be dead. The lingering blood on his extremely thin, gauzy shirt is proof enough of that. Strangely, he is no longer bleeding, but that only makes it easier to rise from his bed and proceed to look about the room.

Eventually, he makes his way through the house, poking in various rooms until he finds his way to the main foyer. He opens the door and stands in the entrance, examining the gardens and forest beyond; before deciding that it is unreasonably cold outside. There's more proof, then, that this is not Verona, it had been the middle of summer when he had been fighting Tybalt. He shrugs, and proceeds to rifle through the papers at the table, not exactly reading or retaining anything on them. Clearly there are inhabitants, but he hasn't seen any of them yet. A queer faerie-land, indeed.

Comments

[ninth_cavalier]

"A kitten?" asks Gideon, putting the sandwich on a plate and putting it down on the table. "Like, a literal kitten? There's a talking cat here who could probably kill a man if she tried, but she's an adult. I think she might be a terrorist, but also she's lowkey the coolest person here." She gestures Mercutio to sit.

[bymyheelies]

"Oh." He blinks a moment, remembering that he's in a sudden probably-fae place, and amends his words, sitting. "Nay, a Capulet, a man. A fool knave who fights as though he hath learned from a book."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon rolls her eyes, though more fondly than she would have before she'd gotten to know Magnus Quinn. "I know the type. How'd he beat you, then?"

[bymyheelies]

“My friend came between us. I was hurt under his arm.” He absently rubs at the spot where his wound used to be, scowling. “I know Romeo meant it well; but he is a fool.”

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon leans against the counter. "So your well-meaning, foolish friend intervened in a fight between you and a book-learned idiot, you died about it, and now you're here." She raises her eyebrows and nods at the plate on the table. "Being given a sandwich."

[bymyheelies]

“Ay, ‘tis a tragic tale.” He’s joking, though, mostly, and shrugs, grinning. “I pray thy sandwich is not.” And so he sets happily into that sandwich, he is quite hungry.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon hops up to sit on the kitchen counter. "You're not the only person here who arrived after dying," she says. "Or, like—at the point of dying."

[bymyheelies]

"Mm." He does have enough manners to swallow his food at least, before fixing her with an inquiring look. "Didst thou?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"The point of, yeah," says Gideon. She grins, deliberately challenging. "Not killed by some bookish little bitch, though."

[bymyheelies]

He rolls his eyes and takes another bite of sandwich. "Told thee, I was hurt under Romeo's arm."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Gideon waves a hand. "That was supposed to be a prompt for you to ask me what I was killed by," she says, and then, without waiting, "it was a giant skeletal construct. Kind of halfway between a spider and a crab." This was technically untrue, but a much cooler thing to say than admitting to suicide-by-forced-necromantic-cannibalism in order to defeat a giant skeletal crab-spider construct.

...Shit, she could've been telling these people anything. Why the hell hasn't she been lying this whole time??

[bymyheelies]

He lifts his eyebrows, impressed. "Such a thing would not be dreamed of in Verona. 'Tis certainly more impressive than mine."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods, feeling more glum than she expected at this victory. "Verona's where you're from? No necromancers, then. Any chance you have space ships?"

[bymyheelies]

"There are ships, ay, only those in the river. None from the heavens. Hast fallen from there, lady?" He waggles his eyebrows a little, just to be obnoxious.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon snorts. "You're barking up the wrong tree, dude, but. Yeah, I literally did." She wiggles her fingers at him, like, mystically. "I'm from the stars."

[bymyheelies]

He can figure that out just by looking at her; but he couldn’t let that joke pass. He does look, at least, mildly impressed. “And I just from lowly Italy, nothing so impressive.”

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shrugs. "I don't know what Italy is. That's your planet? And Verona's, what, your—island? Your castle?"

[bymyheelies]

He shrugs and settles back in his chair, finishing the sandwich in another few bites and tilting his chair to settle his feet on the table. "Italy is my country, where I am from. Verona is a town in 't, in the northern part. 'Tis a few days on horse to the sea from it, but not so far as some."

[ninth_cavalier]

A town. Gideon's never seen a real town. They supposedly have, like, markets, and little houses. Restaurants. And people—lots and lots of people, all moving around and doing things apart and together. "What's it like? Verona, not the ride to the sea or whatever."

[bymyheelies]

Big houses, in his case; but then again, he is related to the prince of Verona. "Oh, 'tis fine enough; I suppose. Not so big as Rome, but it hath good company and excellent entertainment. There are two houses that oft war between themselves; there is some excitement¹ in that. What else would you know of it?"


¹ ????

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shrugs. "I've never really seen a town," she admits, "so I'm kind of just wondering about like. What life's like, in a place like that." Normal.

[bymyheelies]

"Oh --dull, for the most part. Unless blood is running hot 'tween the Montagues and Capulets."

[ninth_cavalier]

"If you want dull, try living on a desolate rock with nobody but like 200 nuns and a fuckton of skeletons," says Gideon. "Who are the Montagues and Capulets?"

[bymyheelies]

"That does sound dull," he says solemnly, tilting back in his chair some. "They are two families of Verona, alike in dignity and wealth, and yet they feud over the smallest things. My friend -- Romeo, he is a Montague, and the one that slew me, he is a Capulet."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon raises her eyebrows. So other places do have Houses like she's used to, though it sounds incredibly cramped. "Two Houses trying to run the same city? No wonder they're squabbling all the time. Why doesn't one of them leave?"