I've only just realised that I clean forgot to reply to the reviews. How very rude of me, I'm sorry. Hello, Guest! Kudos for managing to track me down while being in anon. Glad to have you back for the second journey, and thanks for reviewing!
Arthur sneezed.
He hadn't meant to. Puppies sneezed, when they put their noses where they didn't belong. Humans sneezed when their frail little bodies got too cold. Trees sneezed, albeit extremely slowly, when inconsiderate birds left feathers and bits of fluff all over their branches. God sneezed too, actually, but only because the noise amused Him.
Arthur allowed himself a moment of self-directed affront. Francis laughed.
He wiped his nose indignantly and craned his neck to see any straggling human souls, ready to tell them to approach the Portals in an orderly fashion. Francis waited in his ferry some distance away. "There appear to have been more than the usual number today", he called to Arthur, who didn't turn around to shout his reply.
"It's Christmas! Holiday seasons are the worst, really."
For an angel, Arthur didn't particularly like Christmas. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the celebration of God's metaphorical son's birthday. Jesus was a nice lad and all that, but everyone in Heaven knew that humans had been doing it on the wrong date for centuries. Arthur had asked once if this bothered him, but Jesus, bless the boy, had just been happy that anyone had thought to celebrate his birthday at all.
His toga blew a little in the wind, but Otherworldy endurance was such that one could easily stand in the same place for years and not feel a thing. He flailed his arms around a bit to displace the pigeons that had mistaken him for a perch. "Winged vermin! Look, there's a nice bloody big tree right in the middle of the bloody street with baubles and things to sit on, so get the bloody hell off of me why don't you! Do I look like a bloody bird bath?"
They didn't budge, but a few did spare Arthur disparaging glances. He'd always had this trouble with birds. Alfred had said that they must feel some sort of kinship with angels, what with them having similar wings and all. They never seemed to bother demons (although cats, for some reason, did). Dogs, Arthur noted, would wag their tails at anyone as long as they got a belly rub out of it.
Francis laughed at him again. Arthur bellowed at him across the snow to shut up.
"Where is your holiday spirit?" Francis replied cheerfully, stepping off his ferry. "We're done for the day, and the decorations really are spectacular this year. I hear the tavern across the road serves particularly good eggnog. We should verify this."
Arthur huffed. "Well excuse me for being high strung. Unlike you I'm actually working. God hasn't let me have a moment's peace since…" he trailed off and eyed Francis suspiciously. "Here, what about you? I can't imagine Beelzebub is being lenient with you. Are you not being punished?"
Francis avoided his gaze and instead set off in the direction of the aforementioned tavern. Try as he might, Arthur couldn't get a word out of him about the Devil for the rest of the day.
There's a little bookshop on a street in New York called The Plot. It sells second-hand books and dusty old tomes with cracked spines and yellow pages. The shop is owned by a man named Jeremy. It's not doing very well.
The Plot, however, has not yet gone out of business for one reason and one reason only. Its basement doubles up as both a café and a place to store the books that never get sold. This café is called The Plot Hole.
The coffee is crap and the cashier is a cheerful old man who gets everyone's orders completely wrong, but although the place is normally avoided by adults and people with good taste in coffee, the bored kids of the city flock to it like moths to a flame that conveniently looks nothing like Starbucks. It's the ironic and old-fashioned décor (which isn't so much décor as strategically used space and general lack of trying) that intrigues the ones who shy away from the mainstream. The Plot Hole has become the unofficial headquarters of the hipster population of New York.
Jeremy himself has no idea what the term "hipster" means, but that's really not the point.
One Thursday (the significance of this day is lost on most people, but to the few who know Certain Things, it is a weekly harbinger of doom), there was a young man sitting in The Plot Hole with his very tall friend, who happened to be wearing sunglasses. It was nearly ten o'clock at night, but given the usual crowd, it is possible that he only wore them to be ironic.
"I just love night time in the winter, don't you?" sighed the smaller one, leaning back in his seat and laying his iPad flat on the table. His friend said nothing. The one with the iPad smiled.
"Look at all that snow. Makes everything look perfect. Years and years and years on Earth and I'm still not sick of it." He stroked his finger lovingly across his iPad's screen. "But that just may be because the snow does such a good job of covering things up."
The tall man grunted. The smaller one smiled.
"You could try saying something once in a while, Berwald. It's a little like I'm talking to a chair."
Berwald considered this for a second. "Yes,Tino,"he said eventually.
"That's what I like about you. You always know what to say."
Berwald stayed silent. Tino laughed.
"Oh," he said suddenly, glancing at his iPad and then showing it to Berwald, who frowned at it momentarily before turning back to Tino. "Look at them, I like them. There are just three of them. That will take some getting used to, but it's just so much more efficient. I don't even know what we were thinking in the old days. I mean sure, a big old following has pizazz, but they can be unruly. I like that word, don't you? Pizazz."
He pursed his lips. "Tacky website, though. It's like I'm looking into the inky black asshole of Cthulhu. But, well. It's better than the Official Temple of Satan, at least. And look oh, Berwald, look, they're all blonde. How adorable. I want them."
Berwald grunted. Tino continued scrolling.
"They spend every Saturday night at the same bar," he pursed his lips. "How dull. Although, people do tend to be, don't they? Well. We'll take care of that, I think. Come on, you big gorilla."
He stood and Berwald followed. Tino tucked the iPad into his coat, tossing far too much money on the table to pay for the frappuchinos they hadn't touched. Berwald held the door open as Tino waved to the old man behind the counter. They stepped out into the snowy street and Tino stretched his arms and sighed, watching the traffic and people go past with a smile on his face.
"Look at all that white," he said. "Completely unblemished. Makes me want to stain it."
"Yes?"
Tino grinned. "Yes. Maybe with red. I like red."
About four years ago, Era (senderunknown) and I created The Plot as the basis of a cute group of characters. We never continued it. Shame, really.
If you clean your ears while bathing, it is wet.
Reviews are appreciated. Have a nice day!
