Steps from the shadows, all trenchcoat &amp; cigarette &amp; arrogance

"I mean, I'd guess they'd be animals," Kanan noted, raising an eyebrow and shrugging. "Hell, I'd even go out on a limb and narrow them down to mammals, unless they're some kind of reptile species and an example of convergent evolution. We see that sort of thing all the time where I'm from, though I'm not exactly a zoologist, and anything that comes out of my mouth at this point is speculation. Well on the way to being drunken speculation, at that."

Look, he wasn't an animal nerd, exactly, but his lessons as a kid had included all kinds of fun tidbits, like basic biological science. It helped for things like, oh, occasionally communicating with them.

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"And the loveliest shade of green in the room, no doubt," he said, giving her a little half-bow. "Don't worry, I won't make you drag him back up the stairs if he passes out, that's what my couch is for."

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"I would agree with you on most of those, except I have seen an alot that seemed to be sentient fire, an alot of made of what I think were dishtowels, and an alot of bugs." Verity shook her head. "I can't make proper sense of what the classification should be when they don't even obey the normal rules of what's possible. Not to mention that when it comes to cryptids, even rules like 'what makes a mammal' and 'what makes a reptile' get fluid?"

And people thought the platypus was weird.

"Where's 'not from around here'?" she added, taking another long sip of her drink. "Not a lot of people can bring up the concept of 'convergent evolution' in casual conversation."

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"Not from around here is not exactly this planet. Or star system. Or galaxy," Kanan replied, shrugging. "Even if I didn't already know about that sort of thing when I left home, the fact that there are humans here, too, kind of threw me for a loop. Never mind that we all speak the same language and for some reason I'll never figure out, your planet has some of the same produce as we do, too."

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"Fandom is, in and of itself, a sentient nexus of realities. Sometimes it gets bored, once it had a baby, and it tries desperately to understand 'humor' but tends to fall flat," he said with a shrug. "How? No fucking clue. How does my library manage to have every book ever written? Or have its own pocket universe for Special Collections? It just does."

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"It'll get you drunk. And if we decide you still need help after a few of these, we've got Peter's beer."

John, no, you'll make the poor boy sick.

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"We have what?" Verity asked. "Look there's convergent evolution and then there's that."

This made no sense on any scientific level. Verity was going to finish her drink just to stop thinking about it.

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"So I got the speech about it being a reality nexus," Verity said, "but I missed the--did you say every book ever written?"

Oh lord, you were in for it now, Constantine. That? That was the look of a woman who'd just been offered the location of the holy grail.

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As if that was the worst that could possibly happen, here. Kanan had plenty of experience with time spent face-down on cantina floors, after all.

"Sounds like a plan," he laughed, grinning and raising the rest of his drink toward John in a kind of toast-shaped salute. "Hey, I was looking for something to do tonight. This works out nicely."

Kanan, you moron.

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"You have potatoes," Kanan shared. "Why the hell does Earth have potatoes? I don't even know. But here we are, on Earth, and you have potatoes."

And humans, but Kanan was well on his way to drunk, as he'd said, and even while sober he had to harp on the potato thing whenever possible.

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"As far as I can tell. One of the reasons they hired a mage-- someone has to know if the magic theory holds up, or if it's a bit of fiction that tried sneaking over to pretend to be one of the big kids." He gave a long-suffering sigh. "The books tend to be sentient, too. Or at least animated inside the bounds of the library. 'Genre War' isn't just a way of talking about the NYT's Best Seller list."

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"Magic?" Verity groaned and covered her face. "Oh god. My grandma's gonna get wind of this place and then you'll have a problem."

What was Constantine's opinion on grenades in the library? Just asking. For reasons.

"A mage, you said? Like, not a routewitch or someone with a penchant for accidentally setting things on fire or whatever, but an actual, like, wielder of the arcane arts or whatever?"

If he was a snake cultist, Verity was burning this place around her ears.

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"You don't have bananas, right?" THIS WAS VERY IMPORTANT TO VERITY. Especially since she was also now on her way to being tipsy. Look, she was pretty tiny and absinthe didn't mess around. "Not the kind of bananas that you buy in an Earth grocery store."

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"Yellow-green? Crescent-shaped?" Kanan shrugged. "We've got something close, anyway. Uses the same name and everything. But then you guys go and do something ridiculous like have furry dogs, and Earth goes right back to making no karking sense."

He had one such furry dog. It... wasn't really a typical Earth furry dog anyway.

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"Only thing I light on fire are my smokes, and I tend to use my lighter," he said, giving her a weird look. "Unless it's for effect, then I'm not above a finger-snap."

"Magus. Mage. Bastard. Humanist. Whichever descriptor floats your boat, though 'librarian' is what they pay me for."

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2_old_for_this

"You're always welcome to mine," Peter said with a shrug. "Not like it does anything for me, after all."

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futurespacemom

Hera blinked. "Huh. I don't know that species. The only thing too much eye contact does with twi'leks is get awkward, just like humans. And they're lekku," she said, gesturing at them. "I keep forgetting twi'lek aren't usual on this planet."

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futurespacemom

"Thank you, sir," Hera said with a grin and a bow back. "And don't worry - half the fun of it will be dumping ice water on him in the morning. Assuming we have water to waste."

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"Hey, more for me?" Kanan grinned. "I can live with that. Just so long as you don't mind dealing with me when I'm acting like a drunken idiot."

In fairness, he often acted like a drunken idiot even while sober.

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"Verity, cryptozoologist and semi-professional tango dancer," Verity said, used to the weird looks. Magic and her family didn't always play well together. Look at what had happened to Grandpa Thomas. "Neither of which pay me at all."

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"Except our bananas are the result of generations of selective breeding, so even if you were going to have something like a banana, it shouldn't be the monoculture that is the modern Cavendish."

Still not the weirdest conversation she'd ever had, but up there.

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"Not at all," Verity said, noting the word lekku. Her fingers itched for a pen and paper so she could ask Hera all about twi'leks, both biologically and culturally, but she refrained. Because she was a grown adult who knew how to carry on a polite conversation, even with a species she'd never encountered before.

Which brought the total up to five or so since she arrived.

"I also just learned that Kanan isn't from this planet, either," she said, nodding in his direction. "Have you had a chance to talk with him yet?"

She wasn't going to assume the aliens knew one another just because they were aliens.

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