[color=9aa9a6]“Wah, you damn tall [i]lé[/i].”[/color]

Cienie the performer had put on his best impression of the Captain’s posh accent and a more neutral narrator’s voice. Now that he was ‘backstage’, even if only for a few moments, he let loose his natural speech — a somewhat idiosyncratic dialect with distinctively non-Europan intonation and grammar, and at times the odd loanword or calqued expression thrown in. Now he couldn’t say that he really knew Victoria, but she was not a wholly unfamiliar sight. Especially around the pub.

[color=9aa9a6]“Mm, very nice show! Thank you!”[/color] He gave her a grateful clap of the paqpe. [color=9aa9a6]“Cienie, pour vous servir. I think I got see you before. Let’s see ah… Oh! The barkeep got talk about you. You are Vii-kii from the Ocean? Regular customer! Good business.”[/color]

Victoria had probably never been in one of his audiences before — he remembered the crowds remarkably well, at least when it was bright enough to see their faces. Now the odd night-time performances were another matter entirely, but those shows also tended to have more drunkards watching than average. The lack of memory would be mutual.

[color=9aa9a6]“From B-Coy also? The Butter one? Hm hm, they just transferred me over. Nice, nice. My Mee-ddleton voice how ah? Like the real one or not?”[/color]

Speaking of which, ‘Vii-kii’ absolutely reeked of both vices. She hadn’t just been drinking before noon: that cigarette was probably not her first. Or second, now that she’d tossed one aside. Cienie was somewhat of a teetotaller himself, and the Stygian smoke of tobacco reminded him too strongly of that odious opium which was sadly still popular among many Honngìn. Still, labourers and soldiers alike generally didn’t appreciate being critiqued on their choice of outlet.

[color=9aa9a6]“I think faster finish the smoke. You going to the medical post also ah? Later catch by the nurses, [i]then[/i] you know.”[/color] Certain injured men could have their spirits restored at once by a mere whiff of spirits of the less-wholesome kind, and more than once had a patient tried to get buzzed on even the bitter and decidedly non-beverage surgical spirits. Or, so the stories went. Now that they had arrived at the entrance of the casualty clearance station, perhaps they could find out the truth first-hand.

Knock-knock.

[color=9aa9a6]“‘ello—“[/color] he poked his head through. There were ‘angels’ aplenty, flitting and fluttering about, tending to their agonised and anguished patients. Cienie waved at one of them. [color=9aa9a6]“Mind some music for these troubled times?”[/color]

He looked back at the Oceanian woman.

[color=9aa9a6]“And also Vii-kii is here, for moral support. Can come in or not?”[/color]