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[tartanisstylish]

John Gates has opened communication!

[ Aziraphale's tones are more clipped and precise than usual, as if trying to contain his temper. He looks tense and exhausted. ]

I have restored and organized the shop I am meant to run. Gates's, at [ street & directions ]. It's not comprehensive, but if you don't want to break into a library it is possible I might have helpful information amidst - everything. All the history that I can't quite make sense of. The little devices - readers - I have those too.

[ He pauses and works his jaw for a moment. ]

And I have blank books. In case anyone has things they need to remember. . . . Appointments, that sort of thing. After all, 'memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.'

[ He shifts to switch off the communicator; if you look very carefully, you might catch a glimpse of a stack of books behind his elbow, real books, though they look incongruously new. Most of them have blank spines, but on the binding of one near the bottom of the stack, it says Lyrical Ballads. ]

Comments

[trickntreats]

Aaand those are the lyrical ballads of what, exactly?

[Yes, his tone implies that they should be ballads of Things.]

[ audio ]

[tartanisstylish]

[ Ignoring tone. ]

It's poetry.

[ audio ]

[trickntreats]

Well, duh. It's 'what kind', I'm interested in. Don't disappoint me now, Azzy.

[tartanisstylish]

Doubtfully the sort you're hoping for.

[trickntreats]

Try me.

[tartanisstylish]

Well, I feel Wordsworth and Coleridge might appeal to you a bit more than Blake, at the very least.

[trickntreats]

[He's right. And he's wrong. Part of Gabriel hates Blake with a passion and yet the archangel can quote him from memory, because part of him doesn't. It's Milton that Gabriel refuses to look at.

[But Gabriel has no intention of letting Aziraphale know that.]

Well, sure! Who wouldn't like Wordsworth? Man had a hidden streak a mile long.

[He speaks this next in a singsong, not nearly enough to come close to being a 'song' because of just how teasing it is.]

She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed 'pon my sight
A lovely apparition sent
To be a moment's ornament
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair
Her bosom with a lovely flair;
And all things else about her drawn
Up in ways to turn one on
A dancing shape in the hay
A work of art, an awe-some lay.

[tartanisstylish]

[ This is the longest pause in history. Ever. What have you done. ]

Well, I suppose my first question is why.

[trickntreats]

Uh, because I could?

[There is such an unspoken 'duh', there, Aziraphale, you don't even know. His tone makes it ambiguous over whether he's referring to changing the poem or doing the woman, though.]

[tartanisstylish]

[ GABRIEL WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU HAVING SEX. EVER. ]

Oh, yes. I can never read that again. Thank you.

[trickntreats]

[Too late!]

You know me, Azzy; I'm just the giving kind!

[tartanisstylish]

I very much think ruining a work of art counts as taking.

[trickntreats]

I prefer to think of it as 'embellishing according to the original author's secret wishes'.

[tartanisstylish]

You - [ He makes an extremely frustrated noise. ] How do you know what his secret wishes were, pray tell?

[trickntreats]

I may have just happened to meet the man once or twice.

[tartanisstylish]

No you didn't.

[trickntreats]

Are you so sure, Azzy?

[tartanisstylish]

Yes. This is clearly a joke at my expense.

[trickntreats]

Why can't it be both?

[tartanisstylish]

Because it's simply ridiculous.

[trickntreats]

If that fact somehow gives you the impression I still won't have done it, bro, then I haven't been trying hard enough.

[tartanisstylish]

Perhaps this is what they call denial.

[trickntreats]

Well, it ain't just a river in Egypt.

[tartanisstylish]

[ SIGH ]

You do realize Wordsworth was a genius, yes? Not a - libertine.

[trickntreats]

You do realise that most geniuses are some scale of both, right, Azzy?

[tartanisstylish]

Where do you get your statistics?

[trickntreats]

Did it ever occur to you that I might watch the most interesting people? And the most interesting people are, usually, geniuses? Trust me, bro, there's some crazy mofas wandering around history under the guise of intelligence.

[tartanisstylish]

Well, madness, yes. But I still maintain you're reading too much into all this.

[trickntreats]

Azzy, Azzy, Azzy. Are you saying you don't trust your big bro's word? Tsk.

[tartanisstylish]

Not terribly much. Most of the time you're stretching the truth.

[trickntreats]

But you admit I'm using the truth as a base!

[tartanisstylish]

Human anatomy was Picasso's base. That doesn't mean his depictions were accurate or even recognizable.

[trickntreats]

Potay-to, potah-to! There's still a grain of truth there.