multiversallogs | (no subject)

Who: Shrieky and Xas
What: A Mermaid and an Angel take in the pleasures of a ~Xenian Spa~
Where: Sobek Croix
When: Coardi! ...and Xas they do overnight stays let's wait! No I can pay it's fine, I am still doing pretty well for lack of rent payments...
Notes: We encourage the making up of unearthly spa treatments for fun and profit.
Warnings: Spa treatments may be creepy :>

"The treatments starting in the next ten minutes, are reverse hatching, communal bathing in the moon pools, de-jointing, a secretion massage, and a fast drying adhesive shower, but the lady at the front desk told me de-jointing and the adhesive shower would be ill fitted for people of our particular skin and bone construction, so we should do one of the others."

Shrieky was perched on the edge of one of the stone columns inside The Glossy Weurele, with a martini glass full of clear green liquid set daintily beside him. The tickets had been expensive, but the drinks were deliciously free.

The decision to come to a spa had come from a lovely young Xenian woman who had mentioned the Spa while questioning Shrieky about his skincare regime in a bar down in Badside. The seed had been planted, and the Mermaid's desire to go to one had slowly become an all consuming one. Now that he was actually out here, the Spa turned out to be nothing at all like anything that Shrieky had expected, but he found himself delighted by every new revelation. The floors were made up of mosaics, the location was deep in the forests of Sobek Croix, and the cocktails were all included in the fee.

Everything about it seemed good.

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Xas raises his eyebrows above Shrieky's drink, swallows and takes a moment to consider the flavor, and then says, "Communal bathing it is."

A few weeks ago he might have balked, but he'd since taken the mermaid's advice and gone swimming at the beach. The first time he wore a shirt, saw a dozen people with stranger skin and more painful-looking scars than his, and felt stupid. So the next time he didn't. Someone whistled at the one on his side and asked if he'd been stabbed with a pike, and then showed him where she had once been stabbed with a pike, but otherwise no one seemed to care.

And, anyway, he is not going to come between Shrieky and his potential octopus love.

"Do we have time for me to get another drink?" he asks, holding the Shrieky's glass back out to him. "I want what you have. You can finish mine if you'd like."

He's only in it for the tentacles, Xas. He never got to meet an octopus in the moat, and he wants to know what they're like...

"It's an open bathing session over the next few hours, so we can take as long as you need. Don't you like your drink?" Shrieky accepts his glass back, but quickly reaches for Xas's as well, because yes, he would like to finish it for the angel.

Scooting his butt forward, he slips off the edge of the column he's sitting on, and manages to land with what might almost be considered grace, if you compared it to how he normally moves. This done, he begins to loiter towards the bar, "Mine's called Antivenom. Apparently it's alcoholic and detoxifying!"

"No, it's good," Xas says. "It's sweet. Yours is better."

And Xas can't get drunk, so the only reason to drink is for the taste of it. He probably won't finish the next one, either. Shrieky is going to be offered all sorts of leftovers. There's only one other person ahead of them at the bar, but he's taking his time choosing, and Xas rocks on his feet while he waits - occasionally looking, on the upswings, like he might be about to take off. It's a happy habit. "Do you feel detoxified?"

Shrieky tips back Xas's drink smoothly. It is sweet, and a little cloying. The green one is definitely nicer.

He plops his arms across the bar top and crouches so that he can prop his chin on his arm, peering over it towards Xas as he rocks into the air. "I don't think I've consumed enough toxins of late for the difference to be notable."

When the bartender turns his attention towards them, Shrieky jumps the queue without thinking about it, and blurts out before Xas can order: "Can I have a hot, sweet drink? Like hot chocolate, but with alcohol?"

He knew they existed, he'd had one before!

Xas barely changes expression - he's neither surprised nor bothered - but inclines his head, puzzling over the mermaid's request with all of the experience and ancient knowledge of a millennia-old being who has never, ever tasted chocolate.

He imagines a hot, thick, brown version of the orange drink. It's not appealing.

"And an Antivenom," he chips in before the bartender can get away, but she isn't going far, anyway: she gets a piece of paper from under the bar and puts it in front of Shrieky.

"Our chocolate and chocolate substitute options," she says. "The bottom three are for clients who need to ingest dirt."

Shrieky slides the piece of paper towards Xas without missing a beat, and turns to look at the angel expectantly, "Read these for me. You can skip the bottom three. I don't like dirt, it clogs up your gills."

The bartender sets about making Xas his Antivenom, while Shrieky waits patiently to have the list of drinks read to him. There's a slight bemusement in her expression at Shrieky's demands, but it's gone by the time he mentions his gills. Water monsters and their literacy problems. She's seen it all before.

That's better than shouting at the bartender. Xas looks obediently down at the list and reads off four options - dark with chipotle powder, white with crushed moonflower, dark with blood, milk made with wampa milk - before his mind catches up with what Shrieky said and he lifts his head and his eyebrows. "Do you have gills?"

"Of course!" Shrieky replies airily, gesturing to the curved scars on the sides of his neck, "They don't really... work as effectively as they should, any longer, but that only means that drinking dirt might end with them permanently clogged up inside my throat, which is certainly not a risk I'm willing to take."

Then he licks his lips and leans forward to study the list, seeking out the word 'moon' with his eyes, before pointing to it, and gesturing to the bartender for her attention.

"This one, please. White with crushed moonflower."

Xas takes Shrieky's leaning as an opportunity to stare unabashedly at his neck; his hand moves an inch, too, but he doesn't want to be a hypocrite - or set any precedent for touching scars - so he diverts the movement to pick up his new drink, instead, as the bartender sets it down and turns her attention to the chocolate thing.

"Do they work at all?" he asks, not sure if that was an under-exaggeration or not. They don't look like they would work, but he isn't especially familiar with gills.