Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

[at_your_side]

Intoxicated. Yes, that was- that was the word she was looking for. Intoxicated was just the very thing she could use to describe herself...or her state...the state of herself?

While the details of it had become increasingly fuzzy with each of the delightful, oh so colorful cocktails the bartender sat in front of her (how many had she had again?), Constance was fairly certain the day had begun well enough. There had been a bath, a bath! One with an endless supply of hot water piped right into her room so she might lie in her tub with the dawn light filtering in through the glass of her colored windows and wiggle her toes in easy contentedness.

But then there- ah! There had been the issue of dressing. Or, rather, not of dressing but of what to dress herself in when her only...dress, yes, had been worn already for the day before. She could have made do with it if she had had to, had even pulled it on while not pulling too much of a face, but had been all too grateful upon meeting the lovely Ruby in the hallway not far from her door.

Never had she seen a woman who wore so little out in public. It had left her gaping in the second before she had recovered herself, to see so much skin on display with not so much a flicker of concern in the other woman's expression as she had smiled and introduced herself. Somehow - now here the details were particularly fuzzy at that moment - they had gotten onto the subject of Constance's singular dress and somehow further the conversation had become one of the other woman, still a stranger, but so earnestly friendly, had volunteered her help.

All of which led to her sitting there at the bar of the Smoking Room, wearing pants of all things while Ruby slid a drink in front of her. She was certain there had been sense behind the action, and no, she did not feel the least bit overexposed with the buttoned shirt she wore beneath her corset or the coat she wore that hung down to her knees (she tried not to giggle at the thought of needing to cover her bum, but was only partially successful). What was even more certain was that these - those little cocktails, they were delicious.

Comments

[at_your_side]

"A shower?" she asked, "As in a..." Alcohol let the words slip right out of her head and left her making a gesture with one hand that might've signified rainfall or snowflakes or even some strange meteorological effect that could be described with a wiggle of fingers half in front of her face. The discovery of a great bath that could be filled with no more than a turn of a knob had distracted her explorations of the cool, ceramic space of her bathroom before she had gone looking into the box made in one corner of panes of clear glass.

She followed the path of his gaze to watch a bit dizzily as the woman behind the bar used a strange, loud machine of glass and metal to finish the drink. Constance had been asked whether she preferred her daiquiris blended or not and had been left to shrug and leave it to the other woman's discretion before the thick orange treat had been set before her.

[praiseandglory]

Porthos frowned briefly at the use of the machine, but then looked back at Constance. "You haven't tried them? They're like hot waterfalls, for washing."

He thanked the wench with a warm smile when she set the glass down in front of him, and he picked it up and raised it at Constance. "Here's to new experiences."

[at_your_side]

The world seemed to have advanced far beyond them. In new strange ways, to be certain, judging by the amount of skin the woman behind the bar bared with no hint of self-consciousness, but as well with technology Constance had never thought to imagine before. The thought of water being piped right into one's room with so little difficulty that when she had mentioned it to Ruby, the woman had blinked in surprise that it would be spoken of at all. As if it and electric lights were too commonplace to even appear on one's awareness.

"That sounds..." she tried to find a word to encompass the idea of hot waterfalls, of bathing beneath one as if it were an everyday sort of thing. "Glorious. How do they do that?"

There was no difficulty in raising her glass to match his, "May they all be this lovely."

[praiseandglory]

Porthos took a drink, and immediately broke into a very pleased grin. "This one is lovely," he confirmed happily, then only went back to her question. "I've no idea how showers work. Much like anything in this place."

[at_your_side]

The introduction to the cocktails offered by the Smoking Room had done nothing if not impress upon her the breadth of this foreign world's variety of foods, alcohols, and particularly of delightful new fruits she'd never imagined. What was in their markets paled so entirely beside the tropical fruits and glorious array of vegetables she had only begun to explore. "This may be my favorite yet," she agreed, considering whether she would trade wine entirely for such deliciousness before deciding that no, wine would always be a staple and the colorful cocktails a treat.

"d'Artagnan called it magic," she told him, lifting up her glass to peer at its (delicious) orange contents before lowering it again to shrug at Porthos. "Whatever the reason, I cannot complain about so much hot water, and such, such delicious fruit."

[praiseandglory]

"I've heard people call it technology," Porthos answered. For him, that term covered showers and cocktails alike: every advance he could see, from their time to this. "Scientific progress, I suppose."

But everyone seemed nonplussed about the doors, which led him to believe that they were magic. Their ambivalence only lent credence to that belief; magic was never an entirely good thing.

Showers, as far as he was concerned, were.