You step onto a cracked but clean tile floor that was probably once red, but is now a faded salmon pink. A large, rectangular communal table seating about 10 takes up the middle of the floor, with mismatched smaller tables arranged near the large front windows. The long counter in front of the kitchen door sports plates of fragrant bread, cookies, and muffins and bowls of fresh wild fruits. A small, rattling fridge in the corner holds a selection of juices and cold spring water in reused bottles and jars. Atop the refrigerator is a can for cash donations; next to it is a box for barter payments. Scrawled on the box in black marker are the words "Pay what you can, when you can."
Did someone call for 'tall, dark, and handsome'? Well, dark's fairly well covered, at least. Jet-black hair's pulled into a long, loose tail at the nape of his neck, a few stray strands about the face occasionally drifting into his almost equally dark eyes, the irises of which are a brown deep enough that one needs to look closely to find the pupil. Nut-brown skin that sets off the white of his teeth and eyes -- it could just barely be mistaken for a very deep tan, if one really tried. Tall is a miss; he's still several inches off six feet, and he probably won't ever get there. Handsome... well, not a classic beauty, to be sure, but well-proportioned, with a stunning, frequent grin and deeply expressive features. Slim, but in perfectly good shape.
He's clad in... well, black leather pants. Somewhat faded, well broken in, but nicely cut and really =quite= nicely fitted. A simple cream shirt is tucked into them at the waist; the collar of it's left mostly unlaced, the ends of the cord hanging down. Over that, he wears a decidedly well-worn old black trenchcoat, almost too big for him -- the cuffs hang down half-over his hands, when he lets them, and the hem hangs perilously close to his heels. Scuffed black leather boots with worn soles adorn his feet; there's a seemingly random collection of bracelets, all on one wrist, and several piercings along the upper section of each ear -- little silver hoops.
This is a man, human to the core. No strange blood runs in his veins, but there is an air of power about him nonetheless, arcane knowledge on a tight leash. Physically, he is a perfectly average height with a broad and stocky frame that is not fat but is made to carry a lot of it. He's probably from a variety of European stock; his face is open and gentle, his nose just large enough to be interesting. He wears a short, neat beard, trimmed close, and gold-wire-rimmed spectacles with expensively slim lenses. Behind the specs, his eyes are a light, tawny brown, almost golden. His hands are a scholar's: large and dexterous, inkstained, callused where his pen rests on his right ring finger. Callused in new places, lately, from rougher work than turning pages. His hair is dark, somewhere between auburn and brown, and almost excessively thick and shiny. It's very long, ending about waist-length, and usually worn in a glossy braid. The color is broken by a thick streak of startling, pure-white hair that starts above his left temple. So much white in his hair makes him look older than he might otherwise seem--mid thirties, as opposed to late twenties.
He wears jeans, a white shirt under a dark grey sweater, and leather lace-up boots of a rusty color. In the cold of the late year he often wears a heather-gray woolen cloak, as well. Always within reach, if not actually in hand, is a wooden staff as tall as he is
Although he moves with the ungulate grace which is too often compared to deer, unlike a deer he usually does not make a sound, this slender young man with a waterfall of perfectly white hair-- not blond, but white and fine as Queen Anne's lace-- which has been rather carelessly confined with a simple tie at the nape of his neck. His eyes at first appear to be dark rather than the blue that is their shade, as they are so saturated with color that they absorb rather than reflect, like the evening sky. The planes of his perfectly symmetrical face reflect a beauty so delicate and finely drawn as to be almost inhuman, an impression furthered by the translucent pallor of his skin. Yet the lovely lines of his collarbones and his wrists showing delicately through that transparency paradoxically reinforce his humanity by suggesting his fragility.
He is currently wearing a calf-length dark blue cloak or full coat of wool with carved bone buttons and a shoulder cape instead of proper sleeves. Under this, he wears plain but sturdy-looking brown leather boots that reach halfway up to his knees, pale brown pants, a buff-colored shirt with wide gathered sleeves, and his green leather vest.
At rest, he sits quite still, not even fidgeting with his long and capable hands. His face tends to assume a clear, icy expression which is a first cousin to sorrow.
The diner looks very much like it usually does, if rather deserted -- most likely everyone's out taking advantage of the distinct lack of ice storm. There's food on the counter, moonlight through the window.... and a pair of legs extending above the table. A quick glance would reveal they belong to Serendipity, sitting upside down in his chair, legs bent over the back of it and head dangling off the seat. He's eating an apple -- or rather, singing to the bottom of the table, and conducting with the half-eaten fruit. o/~ ...saw a maid milk a bull, every stroke a bucketful! Thou hast well drunken, lass, who's the fool now? o/~ He's... not bad, actually.
The back door opens and closes, the bang faint in the main room, and then Miki enters, shoving aside the kitchen door in rather a hurry. His cloak is buttoned all askew, but he doesn't look cold; in fact, despite the sound of the back door opening, he looks as though he hasn't been outside at all, let alone having walked several miles in the bitter snow. There's a slight rime of snow and ice on the bottoms of his boots, and wet footprints leading back to the kitchen, and that is all. He looks at Serendipity's feet impatiently and goes to pull back the curtain and peer into the cot room.
o/~ I saw the Queen kiss the Pope, fie, man, fie! Saw the Queen kiss th' Pope-o/~ Ren breaks off, peering at the legs walking by, and grins broadly, adjusting the lyrics, o/~ ...but I see someone =I'd= rather grope... o/~ He lets it die there and twists to emerge from beneath the table, turning right-side up in the chair. "Oh Miklos, muse of the east. 'sup, beautiful? You look perturbed."
"I need to talk to Rowan about the place we saw, in the Mountain," says Miki, flinging the cuntain down as if it had offended him. "But he is not here, he is out howling at the moon." There's an element of something more than annoyance in his voice. "The moon, after all, rides high in the sky, far out of reach," he adds, pulling at his buttons with a vengeance.
Serendipity glances to the window, then back to Miki, and nods. "She does, indeed. But my people used to visit her. I hear Rowan's've been known to, too. For all we know he's there, hey?" He grins, and pulls out a chair beside him, patting the seat, "...but he's gonna be back to sleep here soon enough, right? So all you gotta do is hang out right here, and he'll come to you. And meanwhile, hey -- there's me!" Beam.
Miki struggles out of his coat and flings it carelessly over a chair, thumping his backpack into the seat of the chair as an afterthought. "He may stay out, in such a moon as this. I know I do not sleep over much when the moon is full, and I am not even a wolf." He sits down in the proferred chair, leans his elbows on the table, and sighs. "You do not need to be nice to me when I am so bad tempered."
Another song makes its way to the Diner, this one carried in Justin's rich, well-trained voice, the words growing clear as he steps up to and opens the front door. "I served my time there to the saddlers' trade, and I always was a roving blade...Good evening, gentlemen," he bids the two young men as he comes in, throwing back the hood of his cloak.
Miki turns his head alertly to the door at the sound of Justin's voice, and he smiles, a full yet shy smile. "Hello, Justin," he replies, pushing himself back from the table.
Serendipity leans an elbow on the table, toward Miki, and rests his chin on the back of his hand, still grinning. "Eh, you're easy to be nice to, cutie. Moon or no moon..." And then Justin wanders in and spoils all his fun. Hmph! He sits up and back into the chair as Miki rises, glances ceilingward, and grins again, tilting his head a bit to greet the entering Mage. "Evening, oh Justin."
Justin hangs his cloak up, smiling back at Miki, happy to see him, and nodding at Serendipity, his smile turning amused. "Too fine a night to sleep, is it not?"
"Too fine a night to be where anyone can find you," mutters Miki to himself, perhaps a trifle sulkily.
Serendipity takes a good bite of his previously almost forgotten apple, and settles back lazily in his chair, watching the pair of them. "Too fine a night to be just sitting around," he opines with airy melodrama, "but here I sit, nonetheless..."
Justin raises his eyebrows at Miki, and crosses the room to where he and Ren sit. "Why the long punim, Miki?" His expression is concerned, now, a little worried--he often looks like that, it seems. He does, however, give Ren another amused look. "You could always leave before Katahdin drags you to your doom."
Miki gives Ren a half-lidded, amused look. "But I thought you were a wanderer, Ren, and with such fine weather, why do you not wander?" His gaze flicks to Justin for a moment. "It is as Justin says, if you stay, the Mountain may keep you."
Serendipity gives the pair a wounded look. "What, you're trying to get ridda me alREADY? I see how it is..." Oh, woe is him. Except, y'know. Tasty apple. Crunch. "...I'm still here 'cause it's not time t'go, that's why. ...Plus, there's so many attractions here still t' be explored," he replies, giving the pair of them a broad wink and shifting the chair to kick his heels up onto the corner of the table.
Miki shrugs. "Well, you may wail like Robin when you find Katahdin says you can not go, but you must not say we did not warn you!" Then he grins, briefly.
Justin stands next to Miki, slipping his arm around the younger man's shoulders. The look he gives Ren is wry rather than proprietary, though. "Far be it from me to send your scintillating company off, Ren. However, we're serious about the mountain. Especially for a rare specimen such as yourself. She likes rare things." He smiles down at Miki, as he says that last, as if he cannot help but do so.
Serendipity grins and shrugs, spreading his arms out over the back and arms of his chair. "Thanks for the concern. But I figure, if I get stuck here a while... well, Coyote'll have a reason. Hasn't steered me wrong so far, yeah?"
Miki tilts his head back and smiles back at Justin for a moment before looking at the Coyote-kin. "And I am sure the Mountain will treat you well, Ren." Then he says, not quite irrelevantly, "How is the unicorn, the ice one in front of your house, Justin?"
"It's fine! I thought it would be one massive lump of ice by now, but every detail is still perfect." Justin shakes his head. "It makes quite an entranceway."
"It nearly gave me a, an attack of the heart when I saw it in the morning," says Miki. "I thought it was a winter unicorn, and it was so big!"
Serendipity's brows raise, intrigued. "You have an ice unicorn outside your house?" he echoes. "...do you do parties? ...what's it for, you play horseshoes with the horn?"
Justin grins crookedly at Ren. "Not my doing, but Danny's, my Perunka kumi-mate. He apparently had a long chat with it, and it left its physical shell in front of the house. You have to walk through its legs to get in or out of the house, now."
"If it was that size when Danny talked to it, I salute him, it is bigger than any egzenges-shape I have ever seen," says Miki, awed.
Serendipity hehs. "Through its legs, huh? Classy," he remarks with enough gravity that he has to be teasing -- at least a little. "Hey, if it doesn't melt, it oughta be the center of activity in the hot months."
"It would certainly make an impressive addition to the garden," Justin agrees dryly. "If it does melt, I'll have to melt it away all at once, or the legs will go first and the rest of it will crash down on our doorstep..."
Miki laughs. "And if we are all underneath it, enjoying the cold, then it would be very... humiliating."
"And very wet," Ren agrees, "...or very painful." He reaches back and pulls the ponytail-thong out of his hair, running the fingers of the other hand through behind it and shaking it out.
Justin nods, mouth quirked. "Exactly." He glances down at Miki, questioning. "You all right?" he asks, probably in reference to Miki's earlier unhappiness.
Miki looks slightly puzzled for a moment, then pulls half his mouth back in a wry expression. "I need to ask Rowan about... something, and he is not here," he explains, only a little bitterly.
Serendipity pushes up out of his chair, and stretches like a cat. A cat heading out on the prowl. "Well, my bonnie beauties... I need some physical activity. ...feel like joining me in that quest?"
Justin raises his eyebrows at Ren. "What sort of physical activity might this entail?" he asks in a sonorous 'I know you're up to something' sort of tone.
Miki grins behind Justin's back, the corners of his eyes tilting up mischievously. He places a hand on Justin's shoulder and says, in a tone sparkling with innocence like the frost on the windowpane, "The sort of thing to keep everyone warm in the cold winter, I am sure." He pauses for a moment, limpidly, and adds, "A snowball fight, perhaps?"
Serendipity favours the pair with a crooked, wolfish grin. "Sounds like a start," he purrs, with a definite note of amusement himself, and gives them each a slow, searching appraisal from toe to eyes, catching and holding gazes for a couple seconds each, if he can. "But hey, if we come up with anything better... I'm flexible."
Justin blushes fiercely, coloring deeply at Ren's appraisal. He clears his throat, lifts his head, declares, "Last one out has an uneven balance of humors!" and bolts outside.
"Hey!" Miki whirls and races after the mage, snatching up his cloak from the chair but not bothering to try to put it on before he's through the Diner's front door. From outside, his voice calls out, "That was such a Hermetic thing to say, Justin!"
Serendipity laughs and gives chase, hair flying behind in in its unaccustomed free state, protesting as he goes: "Hey! My humour is not =either= uneven!" The rest is lost to the diner as the door slams shut behind him.