Introducing Benvolio

[keep_the_peace]

Waking up in a strange bedroom, in a strange house, was bad enough, but then when Benvolio finally made his way to the front door he was greeted by snow outside. Summer might be coming to an end, but it definitely is not snow weather yet, nor is Benvolio dressed for such, in his black silk doublet, black and blue trimmed trunk hose, and black stockings. He does have shoes on, thankfully, though he can't imagine how he would have fallen asleep wearing shoes. It's not like he's had much opportunity to celebrate to the point of blacking out lately, after all.

Regardless, he takes one look at the snow outside and decides to shut the door and instead turn his attention to the table covered in different pamphlets and papers. He has many questions.

Comments

[kadewest]

Kade laughs. "Maybe it's better to demonstrate," he says, and throws open a random door. Inside there are fifty-three paintings of geese hanging on one wall--the goose in each is identical, but the paintings themselves are of different shapes and sizes, fitted together precisely, like a puzzle. The shelves in the room hold three broken typewriters; ten boxes of floppy discs that are, allegedly, blank; one pure-gold gem-encrusted statue of a leopard missing one of its emerald eyes; a chewed-up dog toy; an unopened box of packets of silly bandz; and a mannequin in the center wearing a string bikini made out of crocheted candy necklaces.

[keep_the_peace]

Benvolio cautiously picks up the box of silly bandz, looks at it for a moment, then sets it back down. "I do not even know what most of this is," he admits.

[kadewest]

"Me neither," cheerfully. Kade is slightly too modern to be intimately familiar with floppy discs! He picks up the silly bandz in turn. "Some of my students were quite taken with these things, though, about ten years ago."

[keep_the_peace]

“What are they?” he asks first, followed closely by, “You are an instructor then?”

[kadewest]

"Oddly-shaped bracelets, if memory serves." He puts them back on the shelf. "You could say that. I ran a school for Worlds-travelers, back on Earth. In addition to the tailoring."

[keep_the_peace]

“Worlds-travelers… mean you people who have found themselves,” he gestures around. “Like this?”

[kadewest]

"Exactly!" Kade grins at him. "More specifically, my students were people who found themselves like this... and then ended up back home again."

[keep_the_peace]

"I did not think it so common." He has never known someone who was actually sent to a different world and then came back, after all. He knows at least several people.

[kadewest]

Kade laughs. "It's not, actually," he says, gesturing for Benvolio to follow him back into the hall. "It's rarer than being struck by lightning. My school was in a very large country, so out of the millions of people, we had maybe thirty students at a time."

[keep_the_peace]

He absorbs that statistic, then says, “I find this preferable to being struck by lightning. The latter sounds much more painful.”

[kadewest]

"Spoken like a man who's never left behind a World to which he's perfectly suited," Kade says, tone light.

[keep_the_peace]

"What does that mean?"

[kadewest]

"It means a lot of my students would prefer the lightning."

[keep_the_peace]

"'Tis that bad?"

[kadewest]

"It can be, yeah." Kade lifts one shoulder. "I don't mean to start our conversation off in such dire place, though. What can I tell you about this World?" It's clear from the way he says the word that it's meant to be capitalized.

[keep_the_peace]

"Well, I suppose firstly... the things here, they truly belong to no one in particular and are for whoever finds them?"

[kadewest]

"Within reason, I'd hazard. Anything in a public space is fair game."

[keep_the_peace]

“Ah. Then in that case,” he opens the silly bandz and puts a giraffe, a flamingo, a bear, and an elephant on his wrist.

[kadewest]

"Kickass," says Kade, who approves of any sort of wardrobe-based self-expression.

[keep_the_peace]

Benvolio's not familiar with that phrasing, but he can put together context clues and assume the meaning. "Do you know what they are made of? I've never seen anything like them."

[kadewest]

"Now," Kade warns, "I know next to nothing about European history, so I don't have any idea whatsoever about the kinds of trade goods you might be familiar with. But I imagine it's a synthetic--that means manmade--approximation of rubber."

[keep_the_peace]

“Rubber…” he repeats, looking at the bracelets. So no, he’s not familiar with it¹.


1. Look I did some googling and got some slightly confusing answers but I feel confident in the assumption that it is perfectly logical for him to NOT know what rubber is. If I’m wrong we can just blame the translator or something.

[kadewest]

"It's stretchy," says Kade, taking a cat-shaped silly band and giving it an exemplar tweak.

[keep_the_peace]

"I can see that!" He laughs. "I like it."

[kadewest]

"I'm glad," Kade grins. "They are fun, aren't they? Bit different from the things you'd find in--Verona, was it?"