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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

[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.