002 - feeling a little down in the ducks-- i mean dumps. down in the dumps.

[toheirishuman]

Who: John Egbert, Casey the salamander, and you
Where: The park
When: Early afternoon to evening, whenever you feel like chatting
Style: Starting action but I'll match
Status: Open!

[Anyone who just so happens to be taking a stroll through the park today just may catch sight of a boy dressed in blue sitting on the edge of the pond. Next to him sits a yellow salamander dressed in a black cowl with a purple-striped scarf, though it's quite a bit bigger than your average salamander and it is...quite literally seated next to the boy. Clearly this is not your typical salamander, but the boy doesn't seem at all perturbed by this. In the boy's lap rests a bag with at least half of a loaf of sandwich bread inside. Occasionally, he takes a slice out and rips it up into tiny pieces, tossing them into the water.]

[Just skipping work to feed the ducks, apparently. Real productive use of his time here.]

[At one point, he holds out a handful of bread chunks to the salamander.]

Here, you can throw a few too.

[The salamander looks at the bread, "glubs," picks up a few of the piece, and........attempts to eat them herself.]

Ack! No, Casey don't eat it! Throw it! Fuck you'd better not get sick from this...

[And isn't it just a little bit sad that this is the high point of John's day at the park?]

Comments

[echigo_wargod]

[ the samurai visited the park often. It was peaceful.

But someone feeding ducks and a salamander certainly would make things interesting today. ]

Are lizards fond of bread?

[ because honestly Kenshin never really paid much attention to lizards before. ]

[toheirishuman]

Well Casey is a salamander, not a lizard so technically I don't know! I've never had a lizard before, hehe. [Smartass kids.] But this is the first time she has tried to eat it so I don't know if she is. I think she's just hungry.

[It's really kind of hard to tell with consorts sometimes.]

[echigo_wargod]

[ not that salamanders were common in Echigo... ]

Interesting. [ smartass. ] What would she normally eat?

[toheirishuman]

Bugs, I think. But Casey isn't an Earth salamander so she eats some other things that might be atypical in addition to that. Like mushrooms and onions.

[echigo_wargod]

Quite the interesting diet. [ the same could be said for Kenshin's sake and rice diet... ]

[toheirishuman]

Hehe, yeah. And more importantly: a simple one. Only the really hard part about it is making sure she doesn't eat poisonous mushrooms.

[echigo_wargod]

Indeed. And that is quite an endeavor. Hopefully there are few poisonous mushrooms here, if none at all.

[toheirishuman]

There might be a few in the forest, I don't really know. I have been sticking to stuff for the store for that exact reason. I am not sure if I could tell the difference between a poisonous mushroom and a non-poisonous one in the wild...

[echigo_wargod]

I know not either. The plants here are foreign. [ still. ]

[toheirishuman]

Oh, is that so? What are the plants like where you come from then?

[echigo_wargod]

There is grass and trees, though the trees are often different and the flowers are completely foreign. They are quite beautiful, however.

[toheirishuman]

I see. Everything here is more or less the same as where I come from. Kind of makes me wonder if I am back on Earth again sometimes. Oh, I'm John Egbert by the way. What's your name?

[echigo_wargod]

A pleasure, John-dono, I am Uesugi Kenshin. It seems we may come from the same world yet different lands. I come from the land of the rising sun, Japan.

[toheirishuman]

Dono? [He's heard suffixes before, like -san and -kun, but that's a new one on him.]

You are right about that, though! I am from America, Washington state to be specific.

[echigo_wargod]

Formalities. [ Kenshin is very formal. ]

I am not familiar with America in the least. Nothing outside Japan, truly. [ no one was really for his time, save maybe Date Masamune ]

[toheirishuman]

Ohhhh gotcha. Okay. That was just a new suffix on me, nobody has ever called me that before. Haha.

[He laughs a little. If only he knew the actual connotation behind -dono. He wouldn't exactly be sure what to think of that.]

I am in a similar boat though. As far as Earth goes, I have never been outside of America.

[echigo_wargod]

[ He offers a soft smile. Everything about Kenshin is extremely formal. ]

It seems we have something in common. Tell me of America, if you will.

[toheirishuman]

Oh uhh...hmm. Well what about it, exactly? It is kind of a big place and I have only seen a very small part of it so it's hard to know where to begin.

[echigo_wargod]

What have you seen? How are the people? How is their lord? What sort of weather does your land experience?

[toheirishuman]

Well all of those depend on where exactly in America you are. Except for the lord thing, we don't really have those.

[For that matter, does Japan have lords? Don't they have a president or something too? No wait...hold on. He thinks he might see what's going on here. Possibly.]

But I live in the northern part of America, and typically the weather is pretty mild. Kinda rainy sometimes and it gets really cold in the winter. My friend Dave, on the other hand, lives in the south and he's always going on about how hot it is. I am not sure if they even get snow in Texas, to be honest. States on the coast have to deal with hurricanes sometimes, states in the middlemost part have tornados...basically there's a whooole lot of variance as far as weather goes.

And I guess the people are mostly okay. There are millions of people in America so it's kind of hard to speak for everybody. But I like to think that, despite personal shortcomings and the occasional mistake, people are inherently good. One thing I think I can say for sure is that Americans are really busy people. Even in my hometown, which isn't really all that big, I always kind of felt like I never got to see anybody. My neighbors were always out attending to serious business.

[He doesn't answer the first question, mostly because he's not really sure how to answer it. In his time on Earth, really the only interesting thing he saw was the end of it: a meteor racing towards his house. He's seen things people can only dream of since then, and things no thirteen year old ever should but that wasn't actually on Earth...]

[echigo_wargod]

[ of course this is all because Kenshin isn't from the same time. Just 400 years in the past. ]

America seems quite diverse, much as Japan, though in a much more vast case. The weather perhaps a bit warm for my tastes. It is good, however, to see that other lands are not plagued by constant war. Perhaps there is hope yet for my own.

That aside, your home sounds quite intriguing and pleasant.

[toheirishuman]

That is something I am glad for as well. We are involved in wars in other countries, but there hasn't been one actually in America for a while. If it's any consolation, though, the Japan in my universe isn't plagued by constant war.

[echigo_wargod]

That is rather comforting, though doubtful it will happen within my lifetime. I do wonder what turn of events would stop centuries of feuding.

But I digress. Your home does sound quite pleasant.