pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

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Enjolras is not, on the whole, a man with a great deal of appreciation for the beautiful outdoors. He's a city boy, and a man whose interest is mostly occupied by people, and abstract concepts concerning people.

But Milliways is a very enclosed place, and a very boring place, and there's no city to go walking in here. And Enjolras is also a fairly athletic man, who would prefer a lot more exercise than one easily finds around this place.

All of which is to say: he's out for a walk. At the moment, he's just stopped by the stables.

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DUNCAN KNEW IT. But he doesn't seem too betrayed, as he happily crunches away at the carrot (and gets bits of orange all over his bit for Harry to clean off later.)

Rachat, for her part, noses at Enjolras's pocket in hope, and juuuust gently enough to not have her nose pushed away for bad manners. "No, I've nothing for you," he tells her, but he does scratch her neck in apology.

"A good horse, and willing," he says to Harry. "And good at her paces -- much better than I'd've thought for a horse who's available for all to ride unquestioned. I liked her fine."

This kind of sounds like damning with faint praise, but there's real approval in his voice and in the way he pats her arching neck. And they both could see her conformation and responsive speed perfectly well.

"It is strange," he agrees. "But for aught I know, the both of them may have some magic in 'em. Here, who can say?"

"...That's true."

He hadn't thought of it.

"Well, either way, they seem good horses."

And not, oh, sentient or mechanical or about to sprout wings or talk, or whatever.

It's still a strange thought. Milliways.

....yeah, sorry for planting that seed, Enjolras.

"When next thou hast a wish to ride, or need a companion in't, I would glad accompany thee."

"I'll look for thee, then."

And not worry about it if he doesn't find him or if one of his other friends wants to go riding with him or some such, of course, but a casual hey let's hang out again sometime agreement is just fine with him. This was fun.

(Enjolras, despite some occasional allegations of his friends, is capable of having fun! Just only mildly, occasionally, and in the background of more pragmatic activity.)

He presses a hand to Rachat's chest -- not too hot; good -- and glances at Harry with Duncan. "Does he need walking out, or shall we put them away?"

Or turn them out to pasture, or... whatever the habits of this barn are. He hasn't observed closely enough to be sure.

"Nay, he is well enough," Harry says-- though it's not his usual flippant assurances, he does check. He'll always be more careful with a horse than with himself. "The day is yet young, we may put them out-- dost not think?" This last is directed to Duncan, whose snuffling exhale Harry decides to interpret as a yes.

Works for Enjolras!

So there's a quietly, companionably busy while of taking off bridles and saddles and (for Enjolras) remembering which peg they came off, and brushing down horses, and checking hooves (again, something Enjolras is competent but not notably efficient at), and leading them out to the pasture Harry indicates as the correct one for them, and so on.

It's nostalgic -- far more powerfully so than Enjolras had expected. Of France and home all around, as the smell of a stable is, but especially for his boyhood in Auvergne, and lessons under his tutor's gimlet eye and his father's mild, keenly observant one. He feels a nagging sense of dislocation, of home just out of sight; not exactly unpleasant, and certainly not unfamiliar, but complicated.

Unsurprisingly, it's all much simpler for Harry: it feels like home, so he likes it. He's not someone who's ever really at ease, but he seems close to it here.

"Well then." He grins. "Have I made thee too long the truant?"

Enjolras gives him a wry look.

"From the pressing engagements of my busy schedule? Certainly."

Harry snorts.

"Why, Feuilly is ever running from place to place, ever has some business in hand-- I did think it the French way."

"Feuilly," Enjolras admits, "is better than I at filling his time here."

That's because Feuilly, despite being just as intensely justice-focused as Enjolras, is a man who had a day job most of his life, and is consequently much better at figuring out how to have hobbies.

(Most people are better at figuring out how to have hobbies than Enjolras. But Feuilly is also better than some of the rest of them at figuring out how to have hobbies that don't require a bustling city full of peers and shared pop culture.)

"He has some skill in it," Harry agrees. He'd never thought of the ability to fill time as a skill before-- but it seems that it is.

"Well! We idle men will find a way. Thou canst teach me-- what was it called? With the-- the walking-stick?"

"Canne de combat." Which the Milliways translation may or may not translate as singlestick, unless of course Harry is hearing this whole conversation in French anyway.

"Yes, whenever thou likest -- dost thou have one?"

Easily gotten from Bar, if not.

Also, you know, practice padding is an option, but they may not need it for the first lesson or two anyway, depending on how different it is from what Harry knows.

Harry shakes his head-- a cane is a rather foppish affectation in his time (or at least, in Shakespeare's time which is half his), and so of course he doesn't carry anything of the kind.

"Will Mistress Bar provide one? Does she think it a weapon?"

"Mine came from her."

So clearly not!

Which is convenient, and points to the technicalities of the no deadly weapons rule as clearly as all the glass bottles of strong alcohol she gives out. A walking stick is the kind of thing any gentleman of the middle class might carry in Enjolras's day, and many of them would think little of it -- but, in the hands of a skilled bâtonniste, it's three feet of hard wood that can break a leg or a skull.

But then, anything can be a weapon, with enough skill or enough desperation behind it. There's no way to avoid handing them out. Enjolras knows this to his bones, and assumes Harry does too.

Harry breaks into a grin that would probably make most people think twice about letting him have one.

"Why, shall I go beg one of her, then?"

Why is Enjolras not surprised that whenever Percy likes translates to right now? Not that he objects, and in fact he was more than half-offering it.

He smiles back, much smaller, but genuine.

"Sure. --Where should we go? There's a room upstairs I use often, but thou mayst practice elsewhere."

Hey, no time like the present, right? Even when you have eternity. Or perhaps especially when you have eternity.

"O, we do but practice nearby, Feuilly and I-- but 'tis no proper sort of place at all. But this room I would gladly see."

Well then.

Barwards let them go!

To the Bar! Harry keeps up a brisk pace: he is On A Mission.

"But it is flat foolishness, is't not, that a stick may be given and a sword cannot?" he says as they make their way back across the lawn.

Enjolras matches the pace, which admittedly is easier when one has longer legs.

To the question, he makes an equivocating face. "Well, I do see the logic. A stick, that has other uses. A man might want to be fashionable, or support a weak leg. A sword or a gun..."

Well, hunting. But Bar gives out food, and there are no livestock here to protect except the few horses, and some animals are patrons.

"But if she refused to give out anything a man might use as a weapon at enough need, she'd provide us only porridge."

You could still fling porridge in somebody's eyes to blind them, or to make a slippery mess under their feet, if you were desperate enough -- but never mind.

Harry snorts. "Ay, 'tis true. Well, it is kindly meant, I warrant." (Though this is a rather grudging admission.)

They step inside, and there is the lady herself. Harry strides over to the Bar. "How fare you, madam? May I ask a walking-stick of you?"

Why, of course the Bar is happy to oblige! In the form of a nice, delicate little cane, gold-topped and intricately carved. Harry is not particularly amused.

"Something stouter, if you please."

Something like this short, fat little stick, really more like a rather long club?

Harry looks to Enjolras in exasperation: You describe it.

Enjolras is looking tolerantly bemused, in the way he often does when friends joke around: okay, if it makes you happy, but what's the appeal...?

"Like mine," he supplies, "or Joly's."

Bar takes him at his word. The short club-stick is replaced by something that's exactly like Enjolras's, down to the detail, except that the wood is several shades darker.

"My thanks," Harry says, more to Enjolras than to the Bar. Maybe the next thing he can learn in Milliways is a sense of humor, but-- not today, evidently.

He takes up the stick and feels the heft of it in his hand.

"Well, then. I shall follow thee."

Enjolras's is based significantly on tolerant patience.

So doubtless Harry's gonna grasp that one any day now.

Enjolras leads the way equably upstairs, and down the hall with its many doors. (They may pass by a room with a placard of Feuilly's making on the door, perhaps.) He stops at a particular room, and opens the door. It's unlocked.

Inside is a room with a wooden floor, and a few mirrors of very fine glass and no decoration, and a stack of dark blue mats of some futuristic plastic down at one end, and a closet with the door ajar. It looks like somebody took a standard Milliways room and converted it into a gym for aerobics or martial arts, with the bathroom turned into a storage closet, which may in fact be what happened. (Or maybe it's a Room of Requirement or something. Who knows?)