World: Paris
Scene: The Corinth Wine-Shop
Players: Maquis = Dessa; Grantaire = Abby
Maquis stands in front of Grantaire, hands on her hips and lower lip stuck out in the patented defiant gamin pout. "Well, I don't care!"
Grantaire regards her with unruffled countenance from his comfortable slouch. "Enfant, I don't care if you don't care. The fact remains that you need a bath."
Maquis says, "I need not a bath. It did rain, remember, day before yesterday, and I slept all night long in it!"
Grantaire retorts, "Did it rain soap? I think not."
[Maquis: A little gamine of 6 or 7 years, her light brown hair is only a few inches long, and her eyes are a deep dark brown, nearly black. Tattered shreds of clothes are caked with dried mud when they are present, otherwise her skin is pale and rough, the bottoms of her bare feet toughened from walking the cobbled streets. She's constantly smiling, despite her ragged appearance, and a freshly picked dandelion chain dons her head as a crown.]
Maquis snorts, "How do you know? You wouldn't recognize rain if it bit you!"
Grantaire counters, "How do you know I wouldn't?"
Maquis laughs, "Cause I've never seen you leave this wine-shop!"
Grantaire folds his arms, grinning at her. "Then you don't pay close enough attention, ma petite."
Maquis folds her arms in imitation. "I do too."
Grantaire returns, "You don't. Or you would know that sometimes I am in the other wine-shop, and sometimes I go home to sleep."
Maquis blinks in obvious disbelief. She had obviously been of the opinion that whoever had built this place had constructed a man, as well, a funny stinky wordy man, to inhabit the place eternally, and perhaps to guard it from burglars at night. "Prove it!" she challenges.
Grantaire rises to the occasion gallantly. "I shall." And reaching out to brace himself on the table, he unfolds to his feet.
Maquis scratches an ear and watches, awestruck, as the man becomes a good deal taller than she had always thought him to be.
Grantaire gestures Maquis to the door with a grand sweep of his arm. "After you, mademoiselle scruff."
Maquis turns about and steps lightly toward the door, peering behind her to watch.
Grantaire strides out after her.
Maquis stops in the middle of the street, toes fiddling with the edges of the cobblestones, and she turns around, watching as he steps into the open air. At the sight, so unnatural, she doubles over with loud laughter.
Grantaire braces himself on the doorjamb, and regards the child triumphantly. "Told you."
Maquis rights herself, subduing her laughter into giggles. She tears toward him again, circling around him as though to check for any sort of umbilical cord to the shop, and, finding none, her curiosity is piqued at possibilities for an outside life for this fellow. "Show me where you sleep," she demands.
Grantaire throws up a hand. "Very well." And he marches off up the street toward the boarding house.
Maquis tags after him, dragging a bare foot, of course, in the most fashionable gamin style.
Grantaire stops in front of #33 with a grandiose gesture. "There you are."
Maquis sits down in the center of the street, as through to express how small she feels next to the grand place. "Eee," she comments.
Grantaire peers down at her in amusement. "Eee?"
Maquis elaborates, "It's huge."
Grantaire chuckles, slouching against the doorjamb. "Only because you are small."
Maquis flies to her feet. "I'm not that small." She runs up to stand next to him, "I'm more 'an half as big as you."
Grantaire squints down at her amiably. Judicially: "I wouldn't say more than..."
Maquis stands on her tip-toes, "I would!"
Grantaire reaches out one awkward hand to cuff her lightly on the shoulder. "Of course you would. You just did." He grins at her.
Maquis says, "And I'll say it again, cause, it's true!"
Grantaire just grins the more.
Maquis touches the door. "Let's go in! I want to see."
Grantaire eyes her. "I still think you need a bath first."
Maquis says, "Aww, jeez, I don't even smell bad! I told you, it rained, only day before yesterday."
Grantaire shakes his head. "Besides--" he resettles himself against the doorjamb "--the landlady takes offense when I entertain female visitors." Not that this is the type of female she had in mind, but what's a generalization or two?
Maquis says, "Aww, well she can just go sing with the pussy cats!"
Grantaire's brows lift. "I'll tell her that."
Maquis nods approvingly, "Can I see then?"
Grantaire throws up his hands. "On your lice-ridden little head be it." And he swings around to open the door.
Maquis bolts inside, curious as ever.
Grantaire ambles in after her.
Maquis pauses mid-dash, and looks around in wonder, then begins to laugh for no apparent reason.
Grantaire braces himself in the doorway. "I told you."
Maquis questions: "What did you tell me?" Without waiting for an answer, she points to Madame Delacroix, "Is this the one who might sing kitty songs?"
Madame emerges from the office and lets out a shriek on spying Maquis.
Grantaire glances up. "That would be her, yes."
Maquis giggles, "She's fit for it," hearing the shriek. She sprawls on the carpeted floor. "Mmm. I could sleep on this, I think, it's soft."
Madame explodes into a flurry of recriminations and callings upon Heaven, attempting to eject Maquis from the premises without having to actually touch her.
Grantaire remarks to Maquis above the din, "I told you you would get me in trouble."
Maquis sits up and laughs loudly. "Aww, she's, like, harmless, look!" she points to the woman who will not even touch her.
[This seems to have gotten cut off. Hmmm.]