Water bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice! comes from the kitchen as the bat adds yet more hotroot to the yak soup. Turns out to be talking to Loris from Cul de Sac, who is zooming out of her hair ties as usual rustling up some meadowcream to cool les gueules de ceux qui craignent le pilipili.

Nothing like twice-hot (temp and spice) soup on a cold evening, eh?

The snow outside is turning to sleet, d'après the sounds against the windows. Hope the twigs on the branches on the boughs on the trees in the holes (and the holes in the ground) are ok for the gnats on the feathers on the wings of the birds in the nests thereupon!

One of Loris' hairtie rubber bands sproings towards the soup, but out of nowhere, a rapier flashes and deftly wings it back to Loris.

-Thanks! I am forever running -
-Yeah, we noticed, from the bat
- out of those, from Loris, with a sideeye upwards at the bat.

Faint applause is heard from the local contortionist.

The bat is now filling a row of bowls with fresh spinach, and setting out pistachios, almonds, and, with a grinning thankyou aside to Loris, the meadowcream, for the pilipili pityparty people. A couple of ladles of the soup just wilts the spinach and cools the soup from lava to still-hot-enough-at-the-end-if-you-eat-fast-enough-to-risk-innercineration.

An old woman grabs buttered crumpets and starts dipping.

An Ivorian, slightly ashamed of his Afcon keeper [allez, les zéléphants, du zèle !] and with one sock noticeably stretched out grabs some extra hotroot and doesn't even sneer at those running for extra meadowcream, eyes bleeding,

A tentacle snakes in, encircles a bowl, and slowly drags it out, without spillling anything. A rapier from somewhere flicks pistachios into the passing bowl, and another tentacle makes an elegant and grateful leg.

The bat sees that it is time to grab a bowl themself before it's all gone! Foregoing the meadowcream and scooping mostly broth, they grab the bowl with their feet and wing off to the table where the old lady had extra crumpets.

Just as well you didn't need the meadowcream, comments the Ivorian, it would have looked like-
-So! How about this storm? interrupts a squeamish Loris from the next table over.

-Whatcha guano doo? asks the rapier wit, foiling the attempt to keep the dinner conversation from dégringoler-ing into the gutter...

This *is* the Tavern, after all.