I had not expected to see this on a Monday morning. A welcome surprise.

> She didn't generally utter an incoherent scream and just summarily tear the
> whole business off the wall, though, so he found that startling when it
> happened. Rising, he turned and saw her standing by the wall, shoulders
> hunched, breathing hard, while the device she'd been wrestling with lay
> scattered in various mechanical bits on the floor in front of her.

In Meiling's defense, I've sometimes felt like doing that to recalcitrant equipment without the added stress of resurgent unhappy memories. And that thing had it coming anyway.

> "You mean when you told me I couldn't go out and see the world, and then
> immediately went out and saw the world?" Flandre interrupted, but
> with a mischievous smile rather than the scorn implied by her words.

I believe there's an iron clad rule in the sibling handbook that mandated some form of this exchange.

> "He can do whatever the two of you like, within reason," Remilia said,
> reflecting inwardly as she did that Flandre would probably have enjoyed
> the frightful machine Gryphon called "The Belv" more than she had herself.

The legend of the Belv retains its potency.

Also, it seems that Flandre has perhaps just a hint of competitiveness with her sister when it comes to G's affections, in magnitude rather than type at least, which is another of those sibling handbook rules I think.

> "And no one there had ever heard of the Earth Kingdom, or the Fire Nation,
> or... or anything from the world I knew."

There's Meiling's point of origin generally confirmed. I do sort of wonder if she knows how familiar G actually is with her home realm (such as being friendly with no less a personage than the Avatar herself.)

> Although our origins and powers are supernatural, nevertheless we must
> always bear in mind that we are people, not monsters.

"Vampires are people too" continues as an on-going theme (not that it already wasn't, but the explicit restatement brought me a chuckle at least.)

> She'd take being uncontrollably revolted by licorice over being unable to
> enjoy half of Gallic cuisine any day.

The reaction of any properly reasoning sentient being that enjoys Earth foods. Also, recent news stories have brought back up the fact that licorice is potentially lethal even to people who somehow enjoy its taste.

> Except vichyssoise, and was that really even cooked? Cold onion soup, blech.
> Who thought that was a good idea?

Food snobs? And I have to note, I was already a bit on Team Flandre when it came to 'if you had to pick a favorite character at gunpoint' purposes, but her sequences here have managed to solidify that (I suppose that makes me a Flan Stan... and yes I'm prepared to dodge the rotten produce about to be launched in my direction for phrasing it that way, it was too good to pass up.)

> "By the government, not the people they're directly protecting. It's...
> different." Remilia sighed.

Would the government of the area in question in the 1200s have really been set up to be, or interested in, paying a monster hunting squad?

> "Not really." Flandre grinned. "A lot of it's pretty common-sense stuff, you
> know. 'Stay out of direct sunlight, remember silver hurts, and don't randomly
> attack people, it's rude' isn't exactly high arcana."

The phrasing on the last bit earned a hearty chuckle. Not sure if some personal bias is involved in my interpretation but it almost strikes me as Addams-esque.

> "... Wow," she said at length, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the
> back of one hand. "How can you eat those by the handful like that without
> an instantly regenerating tongue?"
> "I grew up with 'em," Meiling said.

This actually left me wondering, everything so far about Meiling has screamed earthbender, or at least that culture, to me but I was under the impression fire flakes were rather specific to Fire Nation territories and settlements (or deliberately cosmopolitan areas, but I'm not sure if Meiling is from Korra's time period) so now I'm nursing renewed curiosity about just where she hails from.

> Meiling put a sheepish hand behind her head and said, "I'd love to, but the
> only instruments I can play are the erhu and the tsungi horn—and I'm not
> very good at tsungi horn."

I feel like she may not be good at it, but she'd certainly be entertaining, if only for the reactions of onlookers. Sometimes poor performance can be good in its own way, like the fellow from American Idol a ways back.

> "I haven't got much, and what I have got mostly isn't great, but I can make
> you three promises. One: I'll always look this good. Two: I'll carry all
> the heavy things. And three: I'll always let you have the last baozi in the
> bag. So what do you say? You and me forever?"
> Further silence while Sakuya considered her answer, and then, with a soft
> chuckle, she said, "Only a fool would turn down an offer as good as that.
> Yes, Meiling, I'll marry you."
> Meiling grinned at the shadowed ceiling and pumped her free fist in the
> dark. "Yessss."
> "Once we're in a time and place where it's legal," Sakuya added.
> "Oh. Right." Meiling considered this. "In the meantime, can we shack up?"
> "We already have, you adorable fool," Sakuya pointed out. "Go to sleep."

These two are almost frighteningly cute together, and Meiling has really come into her own on the page, something of a dark horse contender to the 'if you had to pick one at gunpoint' stakes among the characters.

> On the other side, the letter was addressed to him in a firm, rounded, quite
> old-fashioned hand, and though it bore no stamp, it was postmarked from the
> central post office in Colmar... two days ago?!
> "C'est impossible," Auriol mumbled.

For a world quite aware of its reliance on magic for some things, they have clearly forgotten a lot of the more mundane utility is can provide.

> "Get me Septième Bureau," he told the operator. "Urgently. Yes, I know what
> time it is in Paris! I don't care who you have to get out of bed."

This sort of scene always gets a grin, though I am somewhat concerned about this "Septième Bureau." IRL there was a Deuxième Bureau that was military intelligence in its time, but I haven't found any real life analog to Septième, and I'm really hoping it's more of a diplomatic or historical records arm of government than darker alternatives.

I expect we'll find out soon enough, so if it is meant to tease important things I understand not spoiling anything, but I'm mostly commenting to see if I'm reading a bit too much paranoia into this last bit.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "This Space For Rent."