(no subject)

[knittingbackwards]

Who| Merlyn and Stylists; Merlyn and OPEN
What| Merlyn throws a mild temper tantrum over the clothes available to him. Also, passive-aggressive knitting.
Where| Wherever the stylists are; in the lobby
When| Now (a few hours after the network message)
Warnings/Notes| A centuries-old magician with the emotional maturity of a six-year-old?

i. clothes maketh the man

The ridiculous by-our-lady clothing had been bothering Merlyn ever since he had arrived. True, there had been a time when he was used to shirts and trousers, but that time had been several centuries ago, and he hadn't been particularly fond of dressing that way even then. It was hard to cut a suitably mysterious figure without the cabalistic symbols and flowing robes of his trade, and although he had managed to procure himself a skullcap (which he had immediately filled with a fascinating mixture of fishing flies and the occasional dead mouse in case Archimedes put in an appearance after all), the District 2 stylists were proving remarkably resistant to giving him his proper attire back.

It was partly that which finally led him to seek out help elsewhere, and partly the post that had come across the network earlier. He had given it due consideration, and, really, it was ridiculous to try and gather supplies when all he had was a few little pockets. No, he most certainly needed something better to disappear items into.

That was what brought him, one by one, to the Stylists of every District he could find. He didn't knock when he found them, just cleared his throat, pushed his glasses up his nose, and said firmly, "I need robes. Velvet would be best, I think, though silk or wool will do every bit as well. I wrote down the measurements somewhere, now, where are they....?" And, still glaring, he began to pat down his woefully understocked pockets, producing a remarkable range of bits and bobs and muttering under his breath as he looked for the correct piece of paper.

ii. aggressive knitting

It was remarkable, in a way, just how little time it had taken Merlyn to locate knitting needles and yarn. He was currently settled in the lobby, knitting ferociously and glaring at the dark blue wool as if it had personally insulted him. Every so often, he would unpick two or three rows, muttering under his breath about by-our-lady knitting patterns and by-our-lady stylists and a by-our-lady supply of by-our-lady hats being necessary for civilisation.

After an hour or so of this, he finally gave up, brandishing his needles at the nearest passer-by. "I ask you, does this look like a hat? No matter how hard I try, the by-our-lady wool is too soft for this nonsense! The dashed thing keeps flopping all over the place, look at it!"

Comments

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland raises his eyebrows. The old codger doesn't seem aware that shaking those long needles that way could be taken as a threat - that, or he doesn't care. Roland's own knitting needles are sticking out of a back pocket, along with lumps of blue yarn that peek over the pocket's edge. They will stay there. Roland is not about to needle-duel anyone over a badly thought out gesture, especially someone this age. Besides, he's met enough men like this in his time. Apparently they're everywhere, even in a place like the capitol. The man likely just wants a body to yell at. "Aye, I see it, old timer. Have you thought of using something a little stiffer than wool?"

[knittingbackwards]

Merlyn bristles a little. "Old-timer?" he repeats incredulously, pulling his needles back and glaring at Roland with eyes almost as blue as the gunslinger's own. "Manners, as my friend Horman says, maketh man. And you, my dear chap, seem rather lacking in them." Harrumphing, he starts knitting again, rather distractedly, squinting at the man in front of him. "I thought of gluing fabric to cardboard, as it happens. But it did seem rather undignified, and it would react so poorly to getting wet, you see. Perhaps a cardboard backing under the wool, though... oh, drat it, this would all be so much easier if they'd only left me with some magics!" He seems to be talking to himself, but after a moment of mutterings, he looks back up at Roland. "Well? Aren't you going to introduce yourself? Do I have to do everything around here?"

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland finds, with a little surprise, that some dim version of a smile has crept onto his face. It's no wonder. There's no better room than the lobby of the tribute tower to remind a man of the nature of this place - full of simpering fools who're looking for your favor just as much as they're looking to stab you in the back. Even if this man didn't put Roland in mind of hundreds of grouchy old buzzards he'd known back in his other life, in his old world, he'd stand out. Doesn't give a shit whether Roland takes offense or not, and not a hint of arrogance to it. Not the kind that grates, anyway.

He presses his hands against his knees and sits, since said old buzzard has apparently assumed Roland is sticking around. Why not?

"Roland Deschain, lately of district four, sa- sir," he corrects himself, speaking this world's form of address instead before the machine in his brain can force it out of him. He sets the bag that'd been hanging over his arm on the chair beside him, pulling a knitting magazine out from it. "Mayhap there's a pattern in here that'll help you some. Though I don't think it's got any advice for someone used to making his clothes with magic." Witnesses Roland's expression, only a little curious, and his words, more broaching the subject than asking an outright question. That's right. Subtlety.

[knittingbackwards]

"If you have a question to ask, Mr Deschain," Merlyn says primly, "ask it, don't dance around the issue like a by-our-lady ballerina. Thank-you," he adds as an afterthought, taking the knitting magazine and leafing through it briskly. He doesn't much expect to find anything useful - even the knitting magazines he's occasionally had imported from the magician's school at Dom-Daniel tend not to be all that helpful in hat-making - but it can't do any harm. And goodness knows it's better reading material than half of what he found in the Capitol's library.

"You may call me Merlyn," he says at length, still perusing the magazine. "One of the last true wizards in Albion. Or is it the first? I always get so dashedly confused."

[ka_sera_sera]

While he waits for the man to browse the magazine, Roland raises his right hand and rubs at the messy line where the baseplate for the two mechanical fingers meets flesh. Once the apparent wizard decides to introduce himself Roland lowers his hands to his lap and looks up, looking interested.

"Maerlyn," he says thoughtfully, pronouncing the name in the manner of his own world without really thinking about it. For all the man told him to flat out ask, this question does have to be phrased carefully. Old men - any man, but the kind who likes to yell and rant at strangers especially - can be pushed into empty boasting at the slightest hint of doubt. Maybe ask something else he's genuinely interested in, work his way around to outright asking the man if he's got the ability to match up to his namesake.

"Does magic work so in your world, your Albion? All tied up with the workings of time?" Because, though he can't quite wrap his mind around it, this man must be a tribute, too. Even if he were simply a little addled, Roland can't help but feel senility would manifest in a Capitolite quite differently.

[knittingbackwards]

"Well, now." Merlyn looks, if anything, a little pleased by this question - as he tends to when given a chance to show off. "Now you're beginning to ask the right questions. Of course it is. Everything is. We move from point A to point B, and sometimes we use magic to help us across the gap. Only, you see, I'm rather a special case. My point B is, as it were, your point A. Sic t... Sic tr... s... Oh, drat it all!"

In a fit of passion, he snatches off his skullcap and throws it petulantly on the ground. Ignoring the scattering of beautifully-woven fishing flies that spills out of it, along with at least one dead mouse, he sits back rather sulkily, his good temper quite gone again. "I ask you, what good does it do to take away our by-our-lady languages? It's childish, I tell you, purely childish! What I meant to say, before I was so rudely interrupted by myself, is that I live rather in reverse. I was born, and before that I lived, and before that I will eventually die. It has its benefits, I suppose, but it does make everything rather confusing. All the more so," he added bitterly, "when I arrive here and find I must readjust entirely to living in one direction. No foresight, no side-sight, nothing whatsoever. I can't understand how you people can possibly manage this way."

[ka_sera_sera]

Old as Roland's knees are he is - rare as this happens to be - the youth in this situation, so he slips off the chair and squats to pick up what the man'd tossed. After a moment of inspection to decide where everything had been stored, the fishing ties are deposited one by one back into the cap. "Very badly, for the most part," he says, considering the mouse for a second. He picks it up, sets it back inside the man's cap, too. "Those of us without the sight can only trust our instincts, and hope we don't fuck up too badly."

He stands again, holding the skullcap back out as he sits. "Whatever plucked us from our worlds must have been very powerful, to interfere with your... situation." A situation Roland is not going to pretend to understand. He understands that it is complex, if it is true - and with tributes, it's usually best to assume what they say of their worlds is, simply because there is no way to prove otherwise.

"I've been assuming it's done with some sort of machine, because if there was magic here the kind of strength it'd take to do something like that - no human could do it. Save perhaps one. But what each world calls magic tends to differ, I've found. If you were to try it with all the strength of your namesake, how would you? Could the people of this world manage the same?"

[knittingbackwards]

"Ah. Thank-you." Merlyn takes the skullcap, looking a little surprised by the courtesy, and settles it carefully back onto his bald head. The mouse's tail sticks out comically above his ear; with a little harrumph in the back of his throat, he tucks it delicately back out of sight. "Don't mind the mouse. I'm still living in hope that Archimedes will make his way here one of these days. Goodness knows I could use the company, and he does enjoy a little treat now and again."

Dusting himself off, he picks his knitting back up and casts on a couple more stitches, knitting diligently for a few moments as he considers Roland's question. He's already thrown one tantrum in the last five minutes, so it's better to take his time considering his response, because if this place stops him short in another by-our-lady learned quotation, he's more than liable to throw another.

"Firstly," he says at last, regarding Roland over the top of his spectacles, "you appear to be labouring under a severe delusion as to my identity. I have no namesake. I am Merlyn, and Merlyn, as they say, is me. I assure you, if you had spent decades of your life tutoring Arthur and centuries more in a by-our-lady cave getting arthritis in joints hitherto unknown to man, you would understand that there cannot possibly be any confusion on the point." One bushy eyebrow arching, he scratches the side of his nose and considers. At last: "As for your question, young man, I could perhaps do it, but it would be a serious undertaking. To say the least. Anyone with that kind of magic, black or white, ought to know better than to mess so deeply with the fabric of reality. It rips, you know."

For a moment, it seems as though that's all he has to say. He goes on knitting, squinting at the wool, his long nose almost touching the needles, for several seconds before adding, in the same almost neutral tone, "It dies out on its own, you know. Magic, and power in general." When he looks up, there's something rather sad in his large blue eyes. "That wouldn't be the difficult part. You can take a person and turn him into a fish, or a bird, or a badger... why, it's barely even a sidestep to turn him into a person without magic or a proper linguistic education, even to turn him all around so he's facing the other way in time, so to speak. But that's not the hard part. Things run their course, they have to. You live, and then you die, and all the bits in the middle fall into place. If interrupting the flow of that was so easy, we should never say goodbye at all." For a moment, he looked rather affected by his own words, a hint of tears gathering in those big eyes, and then he shook it off with a scowl lest anyone accuse him of feelings. "The point is, it might be possible. By magic or by mechanism. But it would be damnably expensive, and I don't just mean financially or ethically. Not to mention extremely rude. It seems such an abominably long way to go just to plunge deeper into Orwellian dystopia."

[ka_sera_sera]

Roland sits back, rubs the fleshy half of his right hand over his lips. He'd paid attention to what the old man'd said after 'Arthur', but only by dint of a lifetime honing the strength of his own will. "I know," he says absently, still trying to take it all in. "There always is a price."

He leans forward, gaze focused on the blue of the old man's eyes. "If I knew the name of your Albion I might think you the man who tutored my own ancestor. If his name were Eld, instead of- of-" Susannah's world had a different name. She'd told him. Hadn't she?

Can't remember. He misses her, suddenly - Susannah, presumably in district 13 still, presumably fighting the battles he's too trapped and too wary to even attempt. He can remember almost nothing of the days he really knew her, at least not safely, and he misses that, too.

Nevermind. He straightens, leans back, finds the thread of what he'd been saying and the troubled frown disappears from his face. "-of whatever his name was in your world. But a twin-n-" Roland's tongue stumbles over the last few letters of twinner, and he frowns. Truly? Well. Nevermind that either. "-is still the man himself. More or less. Know you anything of machines? The type that can achieve nearly the same effect as magic?"

[knittingbackwards]

"Pendragon. The name you are looking for, my dear fellow, is Pendragon." Merlyn frowns, polishing his glasses absently on his knitting, and replaces them on his nose, squinting at Roland. "You do bear a passing resemblance to him, I suppose, if you were blonder and younger. There's something alike about the eyes, though. Hm. Fascinating. I would never have thought to look." He muses on that in silence for a moment, continuing to knit. He knows for a fact that Arthur had no offspring, besides Mordred. But parallel universes, well. Who could really tell, with those?

"As for machines," he says at last, dragging himself back to the present, "well, I'm no engineer. Besides, where I came from, it'll be most of seven hundred years until anyone even thinks of quantum mechanics or microengineering. And one does forget, you know. I have some books on it, back in my cottage, but, well..." His sweeping gesture takes in all of their surroundings, so very very far from his cramped, homely little cottage in the woods. "I'd imagine quantum engineering is what you'd need, though. It's all quantum, really. Find a way to make the particle be here instead of there, because there's no reason it oughtn't to be, and then follow that through with all the other particles in a person, and I suppose eventually you could reassemble that person anywhere you wanted. It must take a tremendous amount of power, though."

[ka_sera_sera]

If anything could go a ways toward genuinely convincing Roland this man is Maerlyn - at least, another world's version of him - that latter would do it. Words and concepts few in his world even knew existed, and most of those gunslingers taught from Vannay's oldest, most treasured of books. "There were peoples in my world who the Capitol bears quite the resemblance to, people thousands of years past. A good many of their machines were still running, when I left."

He takes a breath. This hasn't accomplished much, has it? Well. Maerlyn. It was worth the asking. "If you'd like some other material for your hat," he says in a lighter tone, his two mechanical fingers gesturing toward the man's knitting, "I know where you could get some. I'm sure my district's stylists won't miss it." And by 'won't' he means- well, look at Roland's expression. Could someone with such a bland expression as that really be suggesting something purely because it will piss someone else off? Of course not.

[knittingbackwards]

Merlyn regards the other man thoughtfully, if not a touch suspiciously. At length, he arches one eyebrow. "I'm sure," he echoes dryly, still looking at Roland. "Ah, well. Perhaps in a little while, I might take you up on that. For now, well, I have just got myself settled with this." He brandishes his knitting again. "Even if I can't wear it for its intended purpose, it does no harm to have a nightcap for those chilly nights. You can sit with me," he adds, magnanimously, "and tell me about these machines of yours. They're quite after my time, I suspect. I was a young man when Man reached that stage of his evolution."

aaaand fade

[ka_sera_sera]

He nods. "It's been long since I've talked with anyone who might know the working of them. I'm sure there's much I've forgotten myself. But if I explain wrongly, I'm sure you'll set me to rights." Roland gives the man a brief, dry look, because awe-inspiring figure of power and legend or no, Roland trusts that his initial impression was at least partially accurate - here is a man who will correct his conversational partner, and in so doing prove how wise and all knowing he is, at the slightest opportunity. The fact that the old man is probably right in that self-assessment just makes that pride all the more useful.

What wouldn't Roland's old tutor have given to be here now, with the chance to learn a little of whatever ancient knowledge Merlyn's mind possesses? Roland will simply have to do it in Vannay's place, and take note of whatever he learns. "Not much was known about them in my time, but we kept some of their knowledge. Much of it, if I recall correctly, had to do with quantum particles..."