bouchonne | contact part deux

I'm delighted to hear it.

[ And, indeed, By does sound glad, in his weird, always-at-least-10%-ironic kind of way. ]

Would you possibly tell me a bit more about your skills? Strengths? Passions?

Um...I can sing. And play the piano, and the guitar. I got through half of high school. [ Wait, they probably don't have that here. ] That's, like...ten years of school?

And I...used to live outside a lot. At home. So I can start fires, and help build shelters, and stuff like that.

[ Absolutely delighted: ]

Maker bless us, a musician! You're joining a fine musical contingent in the Diplomacy division, you know. Bastien - wonderful Bastien - is a peerless cellist, and Alexandrie is marvelous on the pianoforte. And I am a fiddler of some modest skill.

I talked to Bastien a little. [ A smile in her voice there. ] Do you get a chance to play much?

Absolutely not. My duties are very solemn and consume all my time.

[ Guilelessly: ]

What's an outrage, though, is that there's a fellow who's the spitting image of me who traipses around Kirkwall, playing in cheap taverns and the pits of low comic operas for just a few coin. Can you imagine? The fellow will ruin my reputation. They say he plays beautifully, though.

[ All right, fine, you got her. She laughs a little. ]

Where does he play? I've never been to an opera before.

Really? Not even a rude one? The rude ones are the best.

They...weren't really a thing, where I'm from.

Well, you must go. The fellow who looks like me plays a number of different places, but there's a rumor that in three days he - and a fellow who looks rather a lot like Bastien - will be playing at the Red Lion theater in Lowtown. The opera will be The Baker's Three Wives, a comic opera focusing on mistaken identities, manners, so on and so forth. It's saucy but not scandalous.

I think I can probably handle 'scandalous.'

[ How bad can it be? Someplace like this, where they don't even have electricity, she's kind of assuming there might be a flash of bare ankles. Something quaint. ]

But maybe I'll go to that one.