After Many Things

[merryeccentricities]

The dream with the inventory and the surplus of penguins is familiar; that the penguins take off flying is (also familiar) not at all, and Joly blinks half-awake in some confusion. Which turns to panic because he's gone he's gone where is he, and that sets him gasping, awake completely.

As soon as he is entirely awake, the weird panic vanishes. No one is missing; Bossuet is right next to him, the cats are asleep on the furniture that they should least be sleeping on, and even the beetle is still on the ceiling where he'd flown last night before they could put him in his warren.

Joly rubs his eyes and curls up closer to Bossuet again, already starting to fall back asleep , half smiling. Maybe they'd both had a little too much last night (last week) after the fireworks, but that's all right, everything's all right, they're both here and Bossuet is missing Guignon she's gone too--

Joly frowns. He's used to fretting, but there is...nothing wrong? Maybe things are a little complicated now, but it's a complication he doesn't mind. Of course he is upset, they're all upset with the political situation being what it is,all that fighting at the barricade just to see another king--

He blinks and sits up. He hasn't thought about the barricade in weeks, really; not since the anniversary. And the barricades of 1830 haven't been on his mind in months and months, even though it just happened--

--three years ago.

Maybe he's having a stroke? Or drank something he really shouldn't have? That would be comforting, he knows how to worry about medical problems.

He's just sure he isn't having one.

"Um." he says, very quietly, to a room somehow missing everyone who should be in it.

Comments

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle would call the frown highly effective; he raises his eyebrows at it immediately. "You are rubbing your nose," he says, "which is the sign of a sagacious mind. Will you tell me what you're thinking, my dear, with your sagacious mind?"

[merryeccentricities]

joly blinks at that--he's never really noticed his own habit-- and then laughs a little. " I was just trying to remember. Well, what that version of me remembered. About Musichetta,and the daemons, but--mm." But his memory keeps getting fuzzy about everything beyond Milliways, and the people he talked to in Milliways. And the untranslatable experience of the daemons, and the odd sensations of their interactions with each other, and with other people--

He fidgets a moment. "...have I been very slow for very long?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Hmmm?" Slow is the last thing he'd call Joly. Laigle blinks at him. "I think I'm the one who's slow; I don't follow you?"

[merryeccentricities]

..Really?

Joly frowns in frustration,trying to think of how to explain (and what is he trying to explain?) and settles for making a frustrated noise and pulling the sheet halfway back over his head in surrender.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Hey, now!" Laigle studies the sheet situation for a moment, then begins prodding slowly and gently at Joly's elbow and anything else in reach. "I know you're under there, Jolllly."

[merryeccentricities]

Legle's scientific investigation of the sheet situation may reveal that there is a Joly, and he is still ticklish. Joly shouts and flails and falls over onto Bossuet's lap. " No fair- aha! --no fair!" He flails again, trying to turn so he can look up into Lesgle's face. He is very put out. Legle can probably tell by the giggling.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Prod. Prod. Proddd.

Eventually he relents, and runs his fingers through Joly's hair instead. "No, but I'm afraid you've lost me. I've never known you to be slow." Joly's is one of the most agile minds of his acquaintance!

[merryeccentricities]

Argh, some more. Joly sighs.

"I am sometimes. I know I am sometimes." He smiles a quick little half- smile. "--Just ask Feuilly how I'm doing with English. But I don't need to know English..."

And English isn't the problem. Joly sighs and reaches up run a finger along Legle's cheek.

"I remember-- that other-me, I remember, he knew, things between all three of us were--how they were." he still doesn't have the words. He hadn't in that world either. But it had mattered less, when he could just put his soul into his dear ones' hands, when he could hold them and know they felt-- it fades again.

"And I-- me, I mean, just me, not the..other me..oh this is an impossible way of talking-- anyway, that was 1830, and I hadn't even considered, until--?"

He really doesn't have the vocabulary to talk about this. And if Legle looks at him all confused and says what, Joly will thump him with a pillow.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Um?" Sorry, he's looking confused. But only for a moment; he says "Um," again, in a more thinking sort of way. Then he scratches his beard. "You haven't been slow. And we've both been happy--that is--we have, yes? No?"

[merryeccentricities]

Well, that's all right. Joly smiles. "I always have been." He reaches out for Bossuet's hand "I just... It feels like having been home again. A little. And I always thought..."

He trails off for a moment, not out of any confusion this time, only thinking.

And then he laughs, and shakes it off, and sits up. "--What did you want to learn about the computers?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Always thought...?" He'll let it go, though, if Joly doesn't answer. "Ah, well, computers! I suppose I ought finally to learn to do...whatever one does with them. I keep meaning to, you know, and never quite get around to it. I recall the ones in the library had suggestions about curious books one could find..."

Eyebrow waggle.

[merryeccentricities]

Joly can't compete with the Eyebrows. But he's got a pretty good Significant Grin. "Oh, well, if that's what you're looking for..." He grabs the tablet again. There's a morning's uncomplicated entertainment there, at the very least.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

It's hard to say which is more predictable: the several minutes spent looking at pictures of naked people, or the subsequent discovery of Cat Videos.