LAST EDITED ON Sep-20-20 AT 10:50 PM (EDT)
 
The setup: It's after dinner at SDM, and the new rule is that work is over for the day at that point—Gryphon and Meiling aren't to do any more repair work, and Sakuya is to consider herself off-duty once the dishes are squared away. Meiling and Flan go outside to do tai chi in the west yard, while the rest curl up with wine, books, and/or knitting in the living room.

Oh, and earlier in the evening, Meiling and Gryphon broke down a jammed door in the south wing and discovered an abandoned full-dress Fusō-style bath, much bigger than the ad-hoc wooden tub one upstairs, which they are now determined to get working again so there will be no more waiting around in shifts for the small tub.

The reason why Sakuya is able to relax and be off-duty in the first place can also be found in a previous scene, but the particulars are not necessary for this one.

"I should make myself a bokutō and get back into training," Gryphon mused. "We've got plenty of scrap wood from all the construction, I don't know why I never thought of it before."

"That sounds like a Fusōnese word, but I don't recognize it," said Remilia.

Gryphon nodded. "It's a wooden sword. For kenjutsu practice. Remember I told you I was trained in kenjutsu during my exile? I lost my swords a while back, and hadn't gotten around to replacing them before I came to this era. I've got a bokutō back at Saint-Ulrich, but that's not doing me much good here." He chuckled ruefully. "And trying to use a raw tree branch didn't do either of us any good."

"No," Remilia agreed, unconsciously touching the spot on her chest where she'd been staked with a fragment of that tree branch.

"Not that I'm expecting Flan to go off the rails again," Gryphon noted, "but it's really not good to be so unprepared for contingencies. I'm getting soft in my old age," he joked with a little grin. "When I eventually go back to April, they're going to be like, 'How the hell did you get so fat in one afternoon?'"

Remilia snorted. "You aren't getting fat, mon vieux. Trust me, I pay very close attention to your condition." She smirked. "And so will everyone else, if you and Meiling do manage to get the Fusōnese bath working."

Sakuya, in the midst of a sip of wine, suppressed a snicker—without complete success, causing her employer to give her an arch little smile. "Looking forward to that, are we, Miss Izayoi?"

"I've seen it before," Sakuya quipped, then said, "Oh dear, that was indiscreet. Ah, well. Now you know, Chief. At some point in your future, I've seen you with no clothes on."

"At some point in my future, who hasn't?" Gryphon replied philosophically, making both women laugh. "I don't suppose you'd care to tell me whether the situation was reciprocal."

"Are you flirting with my maid right in front of me, you libertine beast?" Remilia demanded with faux outrage.

"A bit," Gryphon conceded mildly.

"No, no I would not," Sakuya replied primly to Gryphon. "I've already said too much. The Doctor would scold me if he were here, and he'd be right to do it. I know better than that! I just got drawn into the cozy atmosphere." She gave Remilia a mock-reproachful glance. "I warned you the discipline of the household would suffer if you let me get familiar, m'lady."

Remilia laughed and settled back in the Ottomane. "Ah, well, I suppose I shall have to get used to this. Suddenly my house is filled with predatory females, and they're all going to want a piece of the only man in the game."

"Eh, I'm pretty sure Meiling's not interested. We're just buds," Gryphon said, and then, with a sly grin, "She's got everything she wants already."

Sakuya, going very red, did not reply with words; only looked down at her knitting with an insuppressible goofy smile while Remilia laughed again, higher and heartier this time.

"I'd almost forgotten what it was like for things to be lively around here," she said when she'd finished.

"Nice, isn't it?" Gryphon said.

"Very."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Note: mon vieux literally means "my old", and is used as an affectionate tag for men as in "old man". Remi's teasing him about his "in my old age" quip and the fact that, immortal time traveler or no, he's actually still five years younger than she is.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

This is as good a place as any to publicly wonder about my own theory as to What, Pray Tell, Is Up With Sakuya:

She has two hearts and they do a kind of a bossa-nova thing. The Doctor mistook her being too collected to ask all the usual questions as her being aware of her heritage, rather than the lost foundling she is.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!

>"No, no I would not," Sakuya replied primly to Gryphon. "I've already
>said too much. The Doctor would scold me if he were here, and he'd be
>right to do it. I know better than that! I just got drawn into the
>cozy atmosphere." She gave Remilia a mock-reproachful glance. "I
>warned you the discipline of the household would suffer if you let me
>get familiar, m'lady."

Spoilers... <eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil grin>

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

This looks like probably dropping tomorrow. Uh, later today. Monday afternoon/evening sometime.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>This looks like probably dropping tomorrow. Uh, later today. Monday
>afternoon/evening sometime.
>

Relative time is always a challenge for nocturnally inclined. Though I find it somewhat amusing that delving into this storyline seems to have either caused or possibly solidified a fairly night-owl schedule for you. Life imitating art and all that.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "If you start hissing at the sun, though, you may want to check for bite marks."

>Relative time is always a challenge for nocturnally inclined. Though I
>find it somewhat amusing that delving into this storyline seems to
>have either caused or possibly solidified a fairly night-owl schedule
>for you. Life imitating art and all that.

Oh, I've always been a night person, but it is true that, particularly in the first surge of this project, for a while there it seemed like nothing wanted to get written except at around the time of night it would have been happening.

Right now the situation is even more unstable than usual owing to the fact that I'm on the downslope of a steroid-burst-and-taper to treat an MS flareup, and prednisone is many things, but a sleep aid is not one of them. For instance, I just spent the last... what... 10 hours or so in bed, and I think I was actually asleep for maybe two? And not all in one bloc. :/

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Oh, I've always been a night person, but it is true that, particularly
>in the first surge of this project, for a while there it seemed like
>nothing wanted to get written except at around the time of night it
>would have been happening.
>
>Right now the situation is even more unstable than usual owing to the
>fact that I'm on the downslope of a steroid-burst-and-taper to treat
>an MS flareup, and prednisone is many things, but a sleep aid is not
>one of them. For instance, I just spent the last... what... 10 hours
>or so in bed, and I think I was actually asleep for maybe two? And
>not all in one bloc. :/
>

Insomnia: the prize fight where you lose if you don't get knocked out. I now expect some period of time where you replicate, roughly, the scene from the Core stories where visitors disturbing your sleep are threatened with summary disintegration (though I suppose IRL the closest analog would be perforation instead.) Hopefully it comes soon, I'm not sure if the creative process is helped by sleep-deprivation-induced vision quests.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Probably a bonus to creativity, but a massive reduction in coherence."

>Hopefully it comes soon,
>I'm not sure if the creative process is helped by
>sleep-deprivation-induced vision quests.
>
>"Probably a bonus to creativity, but a massive reduction in
>coherence."

I reported the problem to my neurologist's nurse this afternoon, and he said that as it's an 18-day taper that I'm on day 2 of, it's a legitimate concern, then joked, "On the other hand, you'd probably get a lot done!" We ultimately agreed that the quality of the work would not likely be acceptable, and he said to try diphenhydramine. (Which always amuses me when a medical person suggests it, because it says right on the label "don't use this as a sedative". :) So that's my plan for later tonight.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I reported the problem to my neurologist's nurse this afternoon, and
>he said that as it's an 18-day taper that I'm on day 2 of, it's a
>legitimate concern, then joked, "On the other hand, you'd probably get
>a lot done!" We ultimately agreed that the quality of the work would
>not likely be acceptable, and he said to try diphenhydramine. (Which
>always amuses me when a medical person suggests it, because it says
>right on the label "don't use this as a sedative". :) So that's my
>plan for later tonight.
>

That is probably there just for legal purposes, since I've seen some sleep aids with it as the active ingredient, though not recently so they might have axed that usage without medical advice.

Also Firefox spellcheck wants to correct that drug name to 'methamphetamine' which is... pretty much the entire opposite end of the pharmacological spectrum.

	-={(Astynax)}=- "Diphenhydramine: can't sneeze if you're not conscious."

>That is probably there just for legal purposes, since I've seen some
>sleep aids with it as the active ingredient, though not recently so
>they might have axed that usage without medical advice.

I think I remember being told once that the message is mainly there in an attempt to prevent parents from drugging their children willy-nilly with it. Which, well, fair enough.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.