Hamis.

Was it really already so late in the year? Just how long had Charlie been in this dump, anyway? Old Rose was never meant to be a permanent place, not for him. When he'd broken it off with Wilford (with all galdori) and run off to lick his wounds, he'd crawled into this gutter of a city. Taken some things, valuable ones mostly, from the Almond estates in Vienda, pawned them off and gotten himself his squalid little Sharkswell flat. Wasn't much, not by his standards, but the landlady didn't seem to mind him much long as he kept his hands off their pretty little daughter. Easily done, and then he had himself his temporary hideout. Give himself some space to breathe, pull his pathetic self back together.

Near on three years ago now, that was. What, exactly, had changed? Nothing! He was still here, worthless and scrounging about for some halfblood, some plowfoot, some bit of drink here and there. Any more free are we, Charlie Ewing? Feel so much better than Charlton, do we? He'd never go back, he'd rather die than take that name again he told himself, but Alioe! Becoming gradually more and more worthless wasn't really the point of the venture.

Charlie made a noise of disgust and swallowed a mouthful of his cheap, greasy-- whatever it was he'd ordered. Beer of some sort, probably. Cheap beer with cheap, greasy fried fish, surrounded by cheap people in a cheap town. Charlie Ewing wasn't meant for this. Charlton, maybe, pathetic little sod, but not Charlie. Charlie invented things. Some of them were even useful! Surely he could make something of himself that way.

He flicked the phlogiston open and closed, open and closed. Such a little thing. "Got to be worth something, hasn't it?" He was addressing everyone around him, and as such was addressing no one in particular. "People'd pay for this sort of thing, I bet."

Juniper was, to put it lightly, tired. He'd been up early that morning to fix some problem of the captain's (early being the moon was just rising) and had never gotten back to sleep in the drafty warehouse hammock that was now his bed. It would've been a better bed with someone else in it, of course, but that sure as hell wasn't gonna happen.

His birthday was in three days. This was the first one he'd spent away from home, he'd realized. And a year since Andy'd told him about the baby. Was it born yet? He or she? Wait, why did he even care? He left the kid, whoever it now was. Still, he couldn't help thinking just a little, you know? He had a kid somewhere.

He had just finished a grocery run, but he was too hungry to wait until he had to make dinner to eat. Laden with a few bags, he stopped in at some no-name fish place. It wasn't going to be any good at all, but whatever. It would be edible, most likely. And he'd grown up mostly on his mother's food; he could survive anything.

He sat down at the counter and quickly ordered some greasy fried something or other and a beer. He could use a beer. He had enough money for...yes, he did, okay. Fine. Bad food.

Afternoon was a pleasant to time to slip off into some greasy spoon crater of a place. The food was pitifully cheap and that was fine by him, even though he found bone slivers in his fish. Anything remotely related to food in Charlie Ewing's flat was tinned or pickled, and all of it cold. And the beer was cat piss smelling swill, but that too was impressively cheap. It was enough to slip Carmine into a warm glove of buzzed contentment before he slinked off to the boneyard to go burying dead things. The straight whiskey in his flasks (mind, plural) would be saved for when it got dark, when the rain got heavy.

The crowded restaurant was crowded with hungry, scummy races -- and that made Carmine an unnoticeable smudge among the sea of faces. Always good. And, the crowning piece of goodness, it was not Charlie's flat. Carmine had spent nearly the past month -- for fuck's sake, where had all the time gone? -- holed up in that dingy, metallic cage. More specifically, the cracked porcelain claw-footed tub in that cage. The whole business was nothing he wanted to -- and nothing he would allow himself to -- analyze very closely. It was temporary. Once the rains blew away to whatever miserable part of the world they lived in, once summer came roaring back in warmth, once he found a new place to hide...Carmine would leave, suddenly as he'd appeared.

The idealest of the ideals that sprang from shoving himself away in some greasy eatery, however, came from the fact that Charlie Ewing himself -- the only accoutrement of the flat he couldn't get used to, never on his life --with his touchy field and his goggles and his leathery hands, was not in it.

And then Carmine had to glance up and see that he was in it -- murmuring to himself and toying with that bizarre fire-thing Carmine hated so much . There was no possible way he could choke down any more fried haddock with that chrove in the room looming so close to him. It was bust out now, or wavering around waiting for Charlie to leave.

Silently as he could manage, Carmine teetered up from his chair and started slinking towards the door -- he did not want that strange golly-thing to notice him, especially not when he was drowned moony by cheap beer and funny metal flames. Of course the bastard had to be right in the eyeline of the only exit -- but Carmine had escaped from Brunnhold, for the Lady's sake. Surely he could manage escaping a dirty little diner undetected.

And he almost managed it, he really and truly did. But like all too many things Carmine ventured to do it, it all reared back and slammed in his face at the last possible moment.

Quite literally.

The rickety front door of the establishment was blown in by a hard seawind portending a storm, sending the door smashing squarely into Carmine's nose.

"Fer fuck's sake! Cocksuckin' motherffff--" he snarled, leathery hands fluttering up to clutch at his gushing nose. Whatever other curse would he wanted to spout garbled up into a litany of growly noises. He gave the door a viscous kick and sent it clattering back to its right place.

That would teach it not to fuck with him.

Fish.

Seyo loved fish, of course, to live in Old Rose and not...that would be just dumb. This fish however, it was just gross. Now it was at least cooked until it was done, but when you have just one little thing done the right way, well in a craphole like this, the rest must be done wrong, right?

She picked at a piece of bone still in the fish, eventualy getting so bored she just pulled it out. On top of the bones and bland taste, the grease didn't help her appitite.

slowly pushing her plate away, Seyo noticed some mumbling from a few seats down and decided to see what it was all about. She turned her head towards the galdor, who was playing with some fire mechanism. Poor guy must have been insane.

Seyo looked at Tsulu, who was perched on her left shoulder, and then to the bartend. "Can i get some bee-" She had started to ask, but was interupted by a loud crash.

After half falling off her seat from the scare, she turned her head to see a passive kick the exit's door as if to prove he were stronger.

Of course he turned to look. Half the restaurant turned to look. Charlie was as normal as anyone, in that respect at least. Normal for the Rose, wasn't he? Some poor bastard getting his face smashed by a door was always at least a little funny as far as spectators were concerned. It was only when he saw that far-too-familiar ginger mop that his expression turned sour. His erstwhile flatmate was the absolute last person he wanted to see at the moment. Thick scrap. His mouth compressed into a grimace. Well, he wasn't about to get Carmine's attention. The git probably thought he was sneaking out.

"What do you think?" Abruptly he turned to the person next to him. Some dark halfbreed kid, but it didn't matter. Wasn't Carmine, and that was Charlie's main concern. Better than nothing, at least. "Start a fire anywhere! More reliable than magic, safer than a match!" Charlie grinned, all white, mostly-even teeth and a seemingly friendly blue gaze. If the kid had been paying him any attention at all, Charlie's slick change in moods wouldn't go unnoticed. Almost suspicious, the mercurial shift, though his enthusiasm was quite genuine. Nobody appreciated Charlie Ewing's genius quite as much as the man himself, after all.

Why was this golly talking to him? He sure as hell didn't want to start up any conversation with any golly while he was waiting for his bad fish. But the golly just kept talking for some unfathomable reason. So Juni took a large swig of whatever swill they called beer here, immediately regretted it as it tasted like utter piss, and attempted to talk to him so he would go away.

"Very nice." He said this without any inflection to indicate he was paying much attention or caring at all. Just leave me alone, stupid magical idiot.

The golly's face was very nice, he'd give him that. But he wasn't doing anything with any golly, no matter how much it warmed his hammock and for how long.

The greasy slab of fish came, and he winked at the waitress behind the counter. She smiled back, much to his surprise. Must not've been looking. Or despite his voice being that of a young man, assumed he was 12. Great.

He wasn't even going to mentally comment on the guy having a fight with the door. Was probably drunk. He'd seen it a million times having to stay at work with Delly. Still, he did turn to look, and regarded the man with a gaze that communicated, really? You got drunk off this shit? You have more of a stomach than I do.