Open The Bilge In The Bucket Rumors, Rumors

[Vertherian Ullyanov]

It was an ugly Smarch day, the kind with cold, wet winds and the kind of driving slush that soaked through fur and left a beast miserable and muddy. The dark-furred she-cat pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders as she trudged down the street towards the Bilge. 'In like a badger, out like a mouse' they say, but I don't see any mice around here.

As soon as she thought it, though, the sentiment was proven false. There was in fact a small family of mice hurrying along the street in the opposite direction, having about as much luck as the cat herself in keeping out of the worst of the weather. How the Imperium had changed. How everything had changed. It used to be that she could show her face on these streets without needing to take precautions against somebeast recognizing her. The consequences of her own actions, she knew. The acknowledgement was not to be confused with regret. It would still be safer to remain away, of course, but as good as her contacts and her sources were, sometimes a beast just had to use her own eyes and ears.

It was a risk being here on Vulpinsula in the flesh, of course. But a manageable one. As far as anybeast knew she had not been a player of concern for many, many years, so the likelihood that they would be looking for her in particular seemed slim at best. She looked different, too. Age had silvered more of her fur, leaving more streaks in the black fur she suspected was one of her more identifiable traits. Her hood-- a perfectly reasonable choice on a blustery day like this-- cast enough shade across her face to obscure the dark blue of her eyes, and the dim lighting in the Bilge would do much the same. She was still the same diminutive cat as she had been when she last set paw here, but she was hardly the only short beast in the Imperium, and her height would be made less obvious just as soon as she sat down anyway.

And if worst came to worst and it turned out she had miscalculated by even being here, it wouldn't be the first time she had to escape over the rooftops or through the sewers. Until then, she was just another old seabeast returning to the Bilge to learn all the latest gossip.

She slipped in through the doors, stomping the mud and slush from her boots and pulling her hood back to reveal the face of an aging black wildcat, ears tattered from a lifetime of violent endeavors and close calls, still long-ish headfur tied back with a single ribbon. There were empty seats at the bar, and she crossed to one of them and sat, raising one claw and ordering a beer from the monitor lizard behind the bar before turning to the next nearest patron.

"Good old Bully Harbor," she purred. "The more things change the more they stay the same."

 

[Keinruf Zvirskyy]

The pine marten sat at the bar, one arm draped across on the wooden top, his face tucked into the crook of his elbow. His ears were limp and askew, his tail dragging on the floor, occasionally fluttering with a twitch. His other paw clenched the handle of a half-full mug of something thick and noxious. The green army officer's coat he wore was pulled tight around his shoulders, golden epaulettes scrunched as he tried to curl in on himself further.

Not from the cold. No, the cold was fine. He liked the weather. But this drink.

It was amazing. It burned without scalding. It felt syrupy, yet thin as water, and left his mouth tingling as though ants had bitten the insides of his cheeks and tongue. And it made his head feel...

Absolutely atrocious. Sailing without sailing. He'd already swayed, his first hour or so back on land after the voyage, and now the world swayed with him. He was certain if he opened his mouth he would throw up, but somehow it never quite came.

Instead, he straightened up just long enough to bring the mug back to his mouth and chug down another gulp of the fascinating brew, before his face fell back against his arm, his head tilted to the side, glassy-eyes wandering. Something swam into focus. It looked like a wildcat, but also like a shadow, and he blinked a few times, nuzzled his face into his arm to clear some tears out that had swelled up, and looked again. It was a wildcat and a shadow. That made sense.

"Tell me about it," he muttered, without really meaning to. The thought had appeared in his head, and then it had left his mouth, and he didn't care for that happening without his permission. "Horrible bloody place. Awful, terrible. Rude, smelly beasts. Someone ought to clean dzem up. Out. Clean dzem out. Stab... every last... von of dzem..."

He couldn't stop it. He grit his teeth, but the will was not his. His tongue was not his. It belonged to the ants, to the drink.

He groaned and hiccuped, and pulled his arm from the bar top and let it fall to his side, and let his head fall forward onto the wood with a good, solid thunk.

"Hallo," he mumbled into the bar. "Vill you be my friend? Help me stab everyvon?"

He lifted the mug above his head and gave it a little wave, surrendering to it.

 

[Tanya Keltoi]

It wasn’t so much the rain as the incessant cold which bothered Tanya. Chill seeped into her bones and set up residency there with far greater ease than it used to in her youth. A lifetime of seafaring and long nights waiting for targets had made her rugged towards the elements back then, though she had been merely a scrap of a vixen with a thin, brittle coat and little padding about her muscles to speak of. Decades of milder Kutorokan weather had gone a long way towards reversing her tolerance.

The realisation had become an unshakeable thought that morning as she’d paced her office between meetings, watching raindrops slither down the panes. You got old. Worse, they’ll think you got soft. Next thing you know they’ll be planning your retirement and shipping you out to Downel if they don’t drown you on the way over.

Hours trickled by with the necessary drudgery of her workday, but always green eyes would return to the windows and so, too, to her thoughts. It was maddening to the fox that she could not break from the cycle, and so it was eventually decided that a brisk walk and good drink would prove sufficient cure for the melancholy which had settled in her chest. A good, sturdy, scruffy old spot like the Bilge would be the cure, she was certain of it. No sooner were her duties concluded the vixen was out like a rocket, barely pausing to grab her heavier coat before ducking out into the downpour.

It was a brisk walk to the Slups indeed, made all the brisker by blustery Smarch winds tugging and playing with her tailbrush. By the time she arrived at the Bilge she was suitably dishevelled from the rain, chillier than before but imbued with fresh energy as though she had just proven something to herself. Her reward was now in sight.

Tanya caught the eye of the monitor behind the bar before she’d even reached it (a necessity learned when as short as herself: beasts rarely thought to look down, though perhaps that had changed now mice were beginning to frequent the area) and gave a nod. She’d never been choosy on beverage. Trotting to the bar itself, she regarded those closest: a marten who seemed to be doing an admirable impression of a dishrag with the artful way he had draped himself over the bartop caught in conversation between the furniture and the feline next to him.

She gave the cat a look. Looked again. Her ragged half-ear twitched; surprise, admiration, and a small flicker of malicious glee all communicated in an arch of the brows. She’d not seen that face in seasons, and at once the memories flitted through her mind of a longbow-wielding Captain leading a raid; a well-deserved Ministerial position; biting her tongue in the palace of the Emperor.

How times change, indeed.

There had always been that inherent feline elegance about Therin and even now Tanya felt a flutter of self-consciousness to be in her presence looking as she did. The smile she offered was genuine, though the relaxed nature of it less so. “Well now, ain’t this a pleasant surprise? Yours ain’t a face I expected to see around these parts again.” Inclining her head towards the mustelid whose name she would later sorely regret asking for, she grinned. “I ain’t interruptin’ you and your mate here if I was to take a seat, am I?”