(Untitled)

[secretarybird]

Probably enough jokes have been made in the history of H. D. Hollister's Bar And Grill about "a ___ and a ____ walk into a bar." Today, it's a god and a vampire. No, not the usual vampire. A different one. They seem to have been rained on; the god has taken an unobtrusively human form, and the vampire, he hopes, won't attract too much attention

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[blackribboner]

The vampire is doing very little to NOT attract attention, unfortunately. He is completely engrossed in the newspaper that has been used as both a shelter from the sudden (pathetic fallacy-induced) storm, and as a crash-course in modern color newspaper techniques.

The vampire is, indeed, clearly a vampire: gray-pale skin with blue veins, clawlike hands and protruding canines are the least of it. He moves like a vampire, a sortof graceful jerkiness, an almost robotic flow. And then of course there is the black satin vest with tails...and uncountable pockets sewed in to hold all of his iconographer's paraphernalia, for iconographer he is! Slung over his shoulder is a box with a lens, and one pocket is smoking slightly. Also, there's the accent.

"Zis is amazink, Djehuty! Have you seen zis? I sink it is all done viz leetle dots! Can you imagine? I vunder if ze engravers haff thought of zese little dots?" Vincent price would weep to hear that accent flowing effortlessly, like bargain-bin silk, from this somewhat gangly bug-eyed, dead

[secretarybird]

The H.D. Hollister's regulars are used to a little eccentricity. Djehuty, on the the other hand--well, Ruthven just doesn't go quite so all-out with the vampire attributes. Even Dracula didn't (except for surrounding his castle with villagers who wave garlic and hiss Nosferatu at pallid visitors). Djehuty stares, at least while he's sure his companion is engrossed by the newspaper.

"Yes, I believe it is done with colored pixels--called the four-color process." He feels like he's breaking the Prime Directive here. "But please, I am not familiar with your equipment there. Is that--is it a salamander?"

He looks around for someone to take an order: a beer would be nice. "I hope you do not mind, I asked my--I asked Ruthven to join us, if he's feeling well. I am sure he would be glad to meet another vampire."

[blackribboner]

"Yes yes! Zis is vat I am trying to be telling Villiam! Zey vere all sinking like painters and not like printers! Before, you see, ve haff ze imps do ze picture and zen ze engravers make a plate, but I thought, vy not just haff ze imp paint ze plate directly, viz acid? But zen zey sink of color, vich I haff thought of already how to do, so I haff bigger cameras viz four imps in, some viz colored glasses so zey vill only paint ze reds and ze blues and sings like zis, and ve get green because zat is yellow viz a little bit of blue! Still zey do not really know how it vorks, zey just leave it to me. 'Ve vant some amazing impossible sing for ze next issue, Otto. You make ze magic happen!' And zen I tell zem, 'ha you are all slowjabs! I figured zis whole sing out yesterday vile you vere still putting your pants on, just get me some more ink!' Oh hey, you haff put on a different head." Apparently he'd run out of pictures in the paper to stare at. "Are you sure you are not from Djelibeybi? Maybe ze gods just call it Ejipped. Because zis hat

[secretarybird]

"Z-The wagon?" Djehuty feels just a little bit lost in the patter. "I...Oh, a Bass, please, thank you. And perhaps something curried for the salamander? Will that be spicy enough?"

Huu. The collecting of thoughts while the waitress goes off. "I think that perhaps I should tell you that there are other worlds. Really. And that, huu, well, perhaps your Djelibeybians are very like my ancient Egyptians, but--I would not like to mislead you with the idea that we are precisely the same. And even that vampires are--precisely the same."

There. Djehuty crosses his hands on the table and hope he hasn't done anything very wrong.