Patchwork Universe

liason · Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 9:12 pm Post subject: The Ambassador Arrives

At the back of the junk shop, the rusted iron gate was pushed slowly open by a gloved hand.

A tall, spindly figure in a dark cloak walked slowly and wearily through the gate, closing it behind him. His skin seemed pale as moonlight and his narrow eyes scanned back and forth across the miscellany of junk as he made his way towards the door.

On arriving there, he knocked sharply but slowly three times, then waited with great patience, reluctant to enter the place uninvited despite its appearance as a shop of sorts.

Yarrow · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:28 pm Post subject:

From behind the door clinkings and fumblings could be heard, as of someone approaching. The grimy glass was all but impossible to be seen through but something that might have been a face was briefly pressed to the other side.

"oo is it?" a querulous voice could be heard asking from further back in the bowels of the shop.
"Looks like a toff," another voice replied with a sniff of disparagement.
"Tell 'im to go away," the first voice snapped and there was more rattling on the other side of the door.

Some minutes later it opened a crack, held at that distance by a rusty length of chain. An elderly woman, her face half obscured by a black bonnet with a poke at the front, looked out at Liason with doubt and suspicion.
"Not today, thank you," she said. "We don't want any."
With a rattle and a bang the door was pulled shut again.

While one daft old lady may appear to the untrained eye much like another, it had dawned on Liason that the person he had seen was unfamiliar to him.

liason · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:41 pm Post subject:

The etiquette of this situation was not clear to Liason, but at length he decided that maybe this was not the appropriate entrance. So, he slowly made his way to the front of the establishment (via a rather tortuous route) and tried again.

knock, knock, knock

Yarrow · Posted: Fri Apr 16, 2004 5:14 pm Post subject:

The door opened with a rattling bang and the jangle of a bell fixed to the opening mechanism. An old man stood in the entrance, although his posture was so bent that stood might be considered a generous term for it. He was apparantly dressed in pieces of brown sacking, sewn together inexpertly with thick black thread into shapes approximating those of a shirt and trousers. But his clothes were so covered in a mixture of cobwebs and candle grease that their precise elements were difficult to guess at. He was thin to the point of emaciation and a quantity of boney arm and leg protruded from his clothes, ending in the first place in hands in fingerless woolen gloves and in the second in feet apparently wrapped in brown paper and string.

The man's hunched posture was such that it took his eyes a long while to reach Liason's, and when they did his mouth expanded in a grimace that revealed itself to be an attempt at a smile.
"... come in, come in... " he said. "I told those old besoms it would be a customer but they ain't used to the quality, you see."

"oo says I ain'tn't?" a peevish voice demanded from the interior and the old man turned about with an alarming creaking of joints to bawl back.
"I sez it, ye daft haporth."

liason · Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 12:15 pm Post subject:

"Thankyou sir, thankyou." Liason entered with some relief.

"I was hoping I might find one Madam Yarrow here - have I come to the right place ?"

Yarrow · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 10:45 am Post subject:

"This is her place, alright," the old kman confirmed, creaking and lurching away from the door to give tyhe ambassador space to enter.

From the other side of the dark shop, behind the counter, an elderly woman peered at him. Her head was wrapped up in a shawl and her face had the discontent expression of a malingering invalid.
"She ain't here though," she said., regarding him maliciously.

liason · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 12:52 pm Post subject:

Liason stooped to get through the doorway, then entered the building. He bowed briefly to the old woman, but addressed the man.

"I have travelled some distance to speak with Yarrow. Accordingly, if it is not too much trouble, I should like to wait here until her return."

Yarrow · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 12:54 pm Post subject:

"Well you got here alright so whatever suits you," the old woman said. "But if you breaks somethin' you pays for it."

liason · Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2004 1:00 pm Post subject:

"That seems only fair madam," Liason replied.

In fact, he considered it very unlikely he would break anything since he planned not to so much as move.

Seating himself in a shadowy corner, he simply folded his cloak about himself and fell - still sitting upright - into a much needed sleep.

Yarrow · Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2004 6:09 pm Post subject:

Beespatch entered from the warren of rooms at the back of the building and darted a sharp look at the sleeping Ambassador.
"You went and let him in?" she said and then pursed her lips in disaproval. "Missus Y won't like that. Not at all."
"I said he didn't ought to do it." Codswallop said with satisfaction.
"But he got in alright," Stickleback protested. "If they get to the door we got to let them in. S'what keeping a shop is all about. Got to let the customers see the goods."

Beepatch sniffed.
"And what goods is he going to look at away away in the lad of nod, then? Our fine selection of castles in the air?" She sniffed again more vigourously. "Anyway, I tole you, and you wouldn't listen so on your own head be it when Missus Y gets back."
"She'll be back soon," Codswallop said with pleasure. "And then there'll be trouble with a capital T."

Stickleback had been looking from one to the other of them with growing alarm but at this he gave a rapid jerk.
"Tea!" he said. "Best get the kettle on if she's on her way back, hadn't we?"
Beepatch flitted back into the warren of rooms from which presently came the sound of vigourous clanking.
"It's buns today," Codswallop said, not moving from her slumped position at the front counter. "You'd better be getting them ready hadn't you?"
"I'm doing it," Stickleback grumbled, creaking his way towards the back of the shop. "And what about 'im. What's he s'posed to eat?"

Codswallop pulled a face, indicating that she didn't know and cared even less but Beespatch snapped back from the pantry to reply:
"If he's who he's s'posed to be, he's an ambasiddor. It's chocolate what they likes, with goo in and wrapped in kitchen foil."
"And where's we supposed to get any of that muck with herself about to arrive any minute?" Stickleback demanded incredulously. "I knows where I can lay me hands on some sticky buns and mebbe a biscuit or so, but where's I s'posed to find this gooey bisness?"
"P'rhaps there's some in the back?" Beespatch suggested with a shrug and Stickleback creaked onwards.
"It's those things in piles you're thinkin' of, aint it?" he called back over his hump. "Those Ferrari Rozzers."

"S'right." Beespatch paused. "Tell you what, I've got some foil put away nice as anything. Can't be that hard to make 'em now, can it?"

Yarrow · Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 12:06 pm Post subject:

[ ooc note: this thread now completed. plot continues in "Tea and Sticky Buns".]