A Midworld Greeting....

"Believe that that's a Roland and his father in the window up there," Joan said, pointing at a young (bare chested) man and an older fellow in the window staring down at them.

"Heil Gunslingers!" Jarlath calls up with the others (who are able) to the two men above them, giving the proper formal greeting, hiding a slight wince.

Now, before learning of one of the otherworld's history about this one group of would be world conqueror's that Roland sometimes still would accidentally call "Not sees", he would have thought nothing of such a greeting. Yes, the young mage was well familiar with "cross cultural contamination" and how certain odd phrases can get passed on into other worlds by one means or another, but after learning about the horror that was the Nazi regime.....

Jarlath would follow Midworld custom, but darn if that greeting wouldn't cause him to have an internal twinge.

Stevens and Roland, waiting a beat or two, call back down the proper return greetings in return. What else was there to do, despite the oddity of it all? For right now, ordinary ritual would have to do and while Roland's father was somewhat happy that these strangers greeted him like an anonymous Gunslinger (officially he was still abroad) he still had to wonder about something. Something that topped all the other questions suddenly dancing through his mind right then and there.

Another question, immediately dismissed as utterly foolish, was about if that actually was a Door to a world other than this! Impossible, since all those Doors had been closed for centuries. So.....

"Who are these people?" Roland's father, Steven, asks himself softly, eyes flickering back and forth between these odd people and that eldritch door behind them. Then his eyes seem to register something subtlety wrong....or more correct not wrong with the street below.....with everything about him!

"Father, I...." Roland begins, blinking as he senses it himself, "Something's not.....ordinary here."

The last part is said in a somewhat querulous tone of voice, because Roland just couldn't think of a more suitable word for what he sensed along with his father.

Steven nodded slightly in agreement, and then made a small gesture (unseen by those below) at the mysterious strangers. That and perhaps even they could somehow explain the odd....glimpses of something else out of the corner of his eye. A glimpse of ghostly place just like this, but not? A place that his imagination (something he kept under firm leash) yammered where the world still had moved on? If you listened to that, then one could well believe the foolishness of thinking that the world here had suddenly......

Nevermind...

"So it seems," he continues, after calling down to those below to wait right there for a moment, "And unless I've suddenly grown addle-plaited , yon strangers are a key to unlocking this sudden mystery."

Roland frowned but said nothing against his father (who some jokingly called Roland senior, due to the way Roland usually acted). Whoever these strangers were, they were alien indeed. Indeed, it was the way this group looked that stood out in Roland's mind. There were Gunslingers in the group (the way they carried themselves proved they could be nothing less), but.....while Roland surprised himself by having no qualms about such, since when do women (one of exotic cast) become Gunslingers? Then there was the other part of the group: magic users! Frankly, after almost finding Marten and his mother in a....compromising position Roland would have been happy never to have to deal with that ilk again! But while Marten always seemed to carry himself arrogantly and secretively (always seeming to have something up his sleeve as it were), something about the two mages below (one with fox tail and ears for Lord's sake!) was more open...and not arrogant in the extreme. Roland almost got the impression that the faces below belonging to those mysterious mages were.....friendly?

Pushing aside for the moment what he couldn't fathom at that particular moment, Roland instead concentrated on more practical matters of dressing quickly so that he and his father could more readily investigate those below.

Odd that they should show up right then and there,. Roland's father thinks to himself, Indeed, in a moment of rage, he'd proven to me that he'd not forgotten my face when I saw the real reason why he'd gone and challenged his teacher early (by quiet a few years) for the right to become a Gunslinger. He'd done it so to have the right to carry the guns I'd just shot out of his hands on some foolish quest to kill Marten. Now, while I'm beginning to see that my son was more skilled and deadly than I'd given him credit for, I know that it was a fool's errand. He'd done it out of a sense of keeping the family honor, and I....find myself proud of him, but I had to stop him.

See, Roland at this point in time still was no match for Marten. Steven would have made Roland see reason, and both would hug each other, unmindful and uncaring of Roland's nakedness (Roland had been laying with a woman earlier before his angered father had crashed into the room).

Well, anyway, as it would have folded out until Andrea's yelp had interrupted things!

So, instead of that, Steven instead did a truncated version of it instead and was still explaining quietly to Roland what must be done (right after this particular business). After talking some sense into Roland in going immediately after Marten) his father had instead just suggested that it would do well for him and his friends (Cuthbert and Alain) to go abroad and inspect some lands well away from court intrigue until it was safer (i.e. Steven could ferret out and squash any mischief that a Marten, angered that his plans to get Roland banished failed, would unleash on his still somewhat politically naive son). Pausing for a moment before exiting into the streets, Steven then decided to lay on the last part of this assignment on his son now rather than right before he and his friend were on their horses, ready to ride.

He tells Roland to be on the lookout for Merlin's grapefruit (a magical pink colored crystal ball said to be able to show it's viewer things that others wish to remain hidden), and if he and the others should find it that they should carry it back forthwith to him! If the Good Man should have it, then it would spell nothing but doom for the Alliance. If Steven and the Alliance should have it, then the chances were much better. Oh, Steven had no intention of using the cursed thing, because rumor had it eventually consumed it's user, but by denying it to the enemy.....

Then, in a rather rare display of affection, Steven hugs Roland and whispers two things to his son. He whispered that he'd known of the affair Marten was having with Roland's wife for the last two years (rocking Roland). The second rocked Roland even harder. It was entirely uncharacteristic of the older Gunslinger to let such feelings show, even with his son, but sometimes a father has to be a father instead of a ruler of ancient lands. One had to remain aloof and powerful seeming or one gets oneself dashed by the cruel winds of Ka, thus Roland had always been something of a lonely child when growing up....

"Son, I believe in you and know you shan't let me down," is all that Steven says, but for a brief second in time he sees in Rolands eyes something. Something that tells the father that that was the greatest thing that had ever been said. It's gone in a flash, Roland's emotional armor back in place, but Steven gets the feeling that there was more depth to his son than what showed, and that was saying something.

1. "Wonder what we shall see," Roland finally says, gathering himself before going out into the bright sunlight, "Wonder what they shall say."

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