#but i cab see him liking ferrets lol

[cherrysmokesaconha]

Idea

Loud bob loves ferrets and calls them noodle rats

He wakes Tord up one day and holds a noodle rat to his face whilst Tord lays there half awake wondering why there's a weird long rat in his face while Bob rambles about the ferret

AAAA AKNSKWNSKSNKSKS THAT WOULD BE SO CUTE OMG <//3 /POS

Thank u for the idea!!! I love this :]

[holmesoverture]

The Christmas Party - Chapter 2

Eeeeep it’s been a week since I posted chapter one so I guess I better post chapter two lol

Link to Chapter One Link to more info on this universe

Warnings: Towards the end, one character starts to have a panic attack.  Also, since it’s 1881, there’s some outdated modes of thinking throughout; I think the worst offenders in this chapter are the unchecked colonialism and description of a mummy being unwrapped/desecrated.

As ever, if you see any booboos or feel like I’ve handled something insensitively, feel free to comment or send a message <3

*

The operating theatre was a large clean room with wooden floors and long wooden benches illuminated from behind by a series of large windows.  The room’s focus was a low operating table upon which a mummy, swathed in bandages grey and crumbling with age, had been laid out.  Beside the table stood Sir Gideon Hibbert, a small, ferret-like man with a well-trimmed beard and moustache a shade darker than the receding red hair atop his head.  His close-set brown eyes brimmed with delight as he greeted me, though I felt the sheer enthusiasm of his reaction would have been more appropriately directed at a relative who’d been presumed lost at sea for several decades.  Flustered by his attentions, I fell upon the one subject I thought stood a chance of distracting him.

“Have you had word from Alexander?” I said.

He’d had quite a few words, as it happened.  Upon the war’s end in September the previous year, Alexander Hibbert had gone on to South Africa and served under Major-General Colley.  After the convention of Pretoria he elected to remain in South Africa and establish there a home and a life of his own.

“I have every confidence in my boy,” Sir Gideon said, “but still I would have felt much calmer if you were there watching over him during the hostilities.”

I began to suspect Sir Gideon had confused me with the man whose birth we were set to celebrate, but I happily never had to find out as he introduced me to Professor Rodrick Angues, in whose honour the party was being held, and excused himself to greet some new arrivals.  Professor Angues was a large and courteous man with slicked black hair who performed the usual social niceties with the ease of long practice.

“So what do you think of our special guest, Doctor?” said he, indicating the mummy.  “Sir Gideon purchased him from a merchant during his last trip to Thebes especially for this occasion.”

“I’m afraid I am not well-versed in Egyptology, but from a medical standpoint this event should prove most interesting.”

Professor Angues smiled blandly and agreed that it would. In defiance of his manners and his congenial appearance I thought I detected something unctuous about him, and I was not sorry when we were urged to take our seats so the operation could begin.

The event progressed slowly at first, as Sir Gideon and his assistants required a hammer and a chisel to remove the first layers of resin-coated bandages, but once they broke through, the remainder of the afternoon passed with extraordinary rapidity.  Several people were overcome by the odour of decaying flesh and had to leave before the end.  I placed a handkerchief over my nose and mouth and was rewarded for my endurance with the sight of a man, four millennia gone but remarkably preserved, with coarse hair sparsely covering his scalp and a full set of teeth of which many a living man would be envious.  I wondered what else might be gleaned from this astonishing specimen.  Its age?  Its cause of death?  Its occupation?  With a wistful sigh, I reflected that Holmes would probably have told me all of that and more before I had thought to wonder about them.  Perhaps I could leverage Sir Gideon’s disproportionate goodwill towards me and arrange for a private examination of our mutual Egyptian friend at a later date.

Of greater interest to the Egyptomaniacs than the mummy itself were the dozen or so charms hidden within the many layers of bandages. The former and small snippets of the latter were distributed amongst the appreciative audience.  I pressed the delicate scrap of fabric into my notebook.

We did not linger very long in the now pungent chamber, hurrying into our coats and wraps and gratefully stepping into the foggy twilight.  Those of us invited to Sir Gideon’s Christmas party gathered outside of the hospital and employed a small fleet of cabs to convey us there.

Sir Gideon owned an extravagant white stucco house in Lowndes Square.  We were shown into a cosy parlour with cloth-lined shelves full of relics from his many expeditions.  Canopic jars, fortunately emptied and scrubbed clean, amulets, knives, and jagged shards of pottery were all neatly arranged in no particular order for the guests to peruse at their leisure as they were attended to by their illustrious host and hostess.

While Sir Gideon had had variable luck with his sons, with his daughter Philomena, a plump strawberry-blonde with bright pink cheeks, I could find not a single fault, and I was delighted when she seemed to take a special liking to me.  Her duties as hostess, which had prevented her from attending the unrolling, similarly prevented her from devoting herself to me fully but she kept me by her side always, taking my arm and showing me around the parlour.

“It is the least I can do for the man who ensured I would be able to hold my dear brother once again,” she said.  I tried to say that she owed me nothing but she wouldn’t hear of it, and I confess that I did not try as hard to disentangle myself as I should have had she been less comely.  It was not as though listening to her speak was any great hardship. Miss Hibbert’s knowledge of Egyptology was nearly as exhaustive as her father’s, and she related to me the origins of every artifact in which I expressed even the slightest interest.

“Oh, this one!” she cried, lifting a pale green figurine, no more than twelve or so centimetres, with column after column of hieroglyphics decorating its robe.  “This is an ushabti.  The ancient Egyptians did not believe life after death to be the lovely endless paradise that we English do.  They thought there was much work to be done in the afterlife, such as ploughing and cooking and so forth, but since no one liked the idea of eternal work, they created the ushabtis to do the work for them.  Whenever a man died, especially if he was a wealthy man, he was buried with one or more of these little figures with the expectation that they would come to life and do his share of work when they arrived in the hereafter.”

“Perhaps I ought to stock up on a few,” I said, “in the event that the ancient Egyptians had the right idea.”

Miss Hibbert laughed and we moved on to a flint knife with an extravagantly detailed ivory handle.  Eventually Miss Hibbert had to leave me to allow Professor Angues to escort her into the dining-room.  I escorted Miss Linwood, a cousin of the Hibberts.  She was darker and more severe-looking than our hostess, though her amber eyes held the same spark of intelligence.  Despite being almost total strangers, we suffered no awkwardness as we entered the mauve and mahogany dining-room.  I was seated to Miss Hibbert’s left, with Miss Linwood on my other side and Professor Angues directly across from me.  Almost immediately thereafter, two parlour-maids entered with the first course.  Miss Hibert had told me she hired them especially for the party for their experience in serving at large social gatherings.  I had little familiarity with such events, but to my callow eye they appeared prim and lovely and proper.

One of the maids placed a porcelain tureen upon the sideboard while the other, very much taller than the first, placed a small decanter of sherry at each end of the table.  When everything for the first course had been laid out they silently vanished, leaving us to confront the molokheyyah, a vegetable soup of Egyptian origin that Sir Gideon had discovered and very much enjoyed on one of his many adventures.  I could not but wish he had left it where he had found it, and I was much relieved and still very hungry when the soup was replaced by a more English dish of roast turkey.

I cannot with any certainty explain what happened next, or why.  Perhaps it was the strangeness of attending a party after spending so long in relative solitude, or the refreshed memory of the smell of the dead, or the row with Holmes. I only know that I found myself falling prey to an inexplicable disquiet.  My heart gained speed, pounding as though I were surrounded by wild tigers rather than civilised men.  The conversation around me surged into a crescendo that would rival any cannon and I tightened every muscle to keep from covering my ears, causing my fork to jitter against the plate.  My other hand encircled my thigh, fingertips digging into scar tissue until it throbbed and pulsed in protest.  The table tilted.  The air was too thin to fill my lungs.  Everything spun slowly sideways.  The rapidly receding part of my consciousness that still could think clearly was convinced accepting Sir Gideon’s invitation was a horrible mistake, and then one of the parlour-maids collapsed at the sideboard.

*

Historical Notes

Convention of Pretoria  – The peace treaty that ended the First Boer War, fought between the Boers and the British from December 1880 to March 1881