To the Start of Nonsense…

Long ago, in a drinking den to the Sorth…

"Lilack… ah think yur drunk!" Carol slurred as she slumped against the bar.

"Wha?" Lilac gasped, outraged. "Me? Dunk? I'm not dunk!"

She slammed her fist on the bar.

"I don't have any dunk! You're the one who's dunk. You're dunk. I'm dunk. That guy over there is especially dunk… Oh hey Schpade!"

Spade, who was perfectly sober, looked over and rolled his eyes. He returned to his alcohol-free pint and did his very best to ignore Lilac's over-enthusiastic waving. When he didn't respond, Lilac slammed the bar in a huff. She went back to ranting.

"Y'know ah yoosed to like him." she growled. "Now he's like a big, murdery jerk… and shut up that's a word! Muuurdery…"

"Ah thought that wash your fault?" Carol accused. She leant over dangerously.

"Eh, it dependsh who you ask." Lilac said nonchalantly. She pushed Carol up by the head, squashing her face up as she went.

A thud interrupted the conversation as Milla keeled over backwards. She fell off her seat and hit the wooden floor with a thud.

"Tink we shuld help 'er up?" Carol asked hazily.

"Oh… oh she's ok." Lilac said. "She shleeps on the foor anyweh..." She did check briefly for blood.

"Ish that becosh she's a dog or becosh she lived in a foresht?" Carol wondered idly.

Happy snores rolled up from the floor. Milla had passed out where she'd fallen. That might have concerned her friends before their eighth round. It also explained why she was there. They were well on their way to joining her.

"The Magister's gunna be pissed we wur out drrrrinking." Carol observed. She lent despondently against the bar.

"Well... Iiii'm gunna be pissed at the Magister fur not tellin' ush about that dragon." Lilac fumed.

"Merga?" Carol asked.

"No, the forty foot aboma… abomi… thing we found in the ruins today."

"Oh… right. I almosht forgot about that. More Dailey's please!" Carol cried desperately. She summoned another glass of memory removal juice with her hand.

"You know, thatsh the shecond time that git's made me confront a giant monster." Lilac reminisced. "That I can remember, anyway. Alcoholsh makin' things all hazay." Lilac waved her hands around in the air. She tried to capture the quintessential nature of "haziness."

"Like tranna see the future?" Carol groaned.

Lilac looked at Carol in surprise.

"Hey, achually that's a pretty gud way of sheeing things." she said. "Funny that. Y'know, d'yever feel like shomebody's makin' up your life as he goesh along?"

"Funny you shuld shay that." Carol slurred. "Ah shometimes feel like I'm not in control of my own body. Like some nerd's gotten into my brain, and he's like 'do this!' and 'jump there!' It ushuha…. Usu… ushually ends badly."

Lilac nodded sympathetically. They all felt like that sometimes.

"Why dosh he need a buncha little kids to do hish dirty work anyway?" she complained.

"We're all over eighteen..." Carol pointed out tiredly.

"Yeah, now." Lilac ranted. She slammed the table. "That's it, I'm gonna tell Child Servishes!"

"Child Servishes?"

"Yeah! Child Dervishes!" Lilac cried.

Carol absorbed that for a second.

"Ah think I can she two porblems Lilac." she began.

"Yeah, you always see problems... I mean porblems." Lilac retorted.

Carol wisely ignored her.

"One, we're adults."

"Hey thatsh no excuse! I want retroactive jushtish..." Lilac said, slumping down against the bar.

"Two, the Magister ownsh the gob... gub... people who run teh city."

"Darn corrupt politishuns..." Lilac muttered.

"Three..."

Carol pushed herself off the table. She glared at Lilac.

"If there were such a thing ash Child Servishes, y'think we'd shpend our childhood robbing templsh and shtorming alien battleships?"

Lilac thought about that for a second.

"I dunno. Never really thought about it. Kind of sounds like growing up in that alien city Glashgow..."

Both of them shuddered at the thought. Carol begrudgingly returned to her drink.

Author's Note: I came up with this on the spur of the moment one day and spat it out. As I'm not publishing a chapter of the Dragon's Mantle until next week, you may all consider this the closest thing I have to filler. :P

(Not a one-shot).