King Koin and King Coniferis sit across from one another at a table-clothed table in an opulent, ornately pastel pink-and-blue accented tea room. The domed ceilings are high with glossy, dainty Japanese pop-art chandeliers hanging from coloured chrome canopies like excess skin hangs from a cat’s stomach. The air is as pink as it smells--lilac and rose lingering--and Sunshine bursts through the windows with its clear invitation, taking a seat at nearly every table; every table, but one.
King Koin: “I’m glad you’ve joined me for tea.” The low, velvet, hypnotic sound echoing from his throat hummed from under a blanket of subdued hues and tones, like the shadow he sits in.
King Coniferis: “I’ve never felt comfortable in places like this.”
KK: “Odd, these places always seem to suit me best,” he holds a small saucer.
Tiny gilted, flower arrangements decorating the saucer's edges. Koin firmly lifts his tea cup, his pinky comfortably adrift from the rest of his fingers, and takes a single sip of the aromatic potion in hand. A thousand tiny grey umbrellas lift in an aerial ballet from the saturated ocean of trees, leaves and their respective aromas clinging on to two hydogren molecules who have seduced oxygen into their life-giving manage á trios. The warm glass is hot on his lower lip, while the balmy understory tickling his downward arching nose as the tip of his nose ever so gently kisses the caldron’s hot brew. “I hate them, too.”
KC: “It’s not that I hate them, per se, it’s simply a matter of a suitable atmosphere in which to have an honest and earnest conversation about… well, about your spending.”
King Koin raises an eyebrow as a whip—whipsh—slaps violently Coniferis’s tongue, sending it backward, retreating into his mouth. Coniferis feels the wizard of war games, the bishop of business’s every subtle gesture used to calm, console, and quiet him. “Confidence,” says King Koin.
“Confidence,” he repeats, as the word loses 2.6% of it’s literal meaning, but emphasizes the point of his next statement by a threshold of 21.4%. “I have a plan.”
“You say that,” says Coniferis, blood pressure rising, sweat forming, and pulse jumping. He begins feeling defeated before he has a chance to continue. “You always say that, but you’re a liar, King Koin. You’re a liar and you put our Kingdom’s lands in the most precarious situations with your lavish… your toys… your fucking dolls.” Coniferis trails off.
“Your don’t like my gifts?” says King Koin, pointedly, rhetorically while thinking, fuck off.
Everything about King Koin is either sharply pointed or immensely rhetorical at this phase of his expression. He is quoted in the New York Times as having said, “Pointed? Yes, dear, then nothing can be dull you see.” With an extra emphasis on the letter “s” in see.
“Tell me, Coniferis, how is your wife,” emphasizing ‘is’.
Coniferis grumbles under his breath, “She’s having issues coming to terms with the space my projects are currently occupying in the Sanctuary of Ten Spheres—“ He’s quickly cut off.
“You’re having space issues?”
“I’m having wife issues.”
In a low, droll, blasé droning voice, King Koin quips a cherry onto the whipped cream commingling of voiceless voices. “You’re having issues.”
The word, "issues" rush at both of them as a wind of thousand voices--voices high a low, from whispers to screams and in every language imaginable. A hushing curtain of silence then descends upon the tea room like the first gloomy snowfall of winter. For a moment, everything is silent. Like nothing happened, the the tearooms patron's then carry on in their previous low hum--a quieting of voices are naturally used in the midst of royalty.
“Like a fucking daily,” King Coniferus’s tone at once becomes a comical and depressant. “Like an allergic reaction to pollen,” then sneezes, “ISH-EW!”
King Koin takes removes an elongated, black, textured wallet from a hidden coat pocket with his gloved right hand and then dawns a simple, elegant, ink-and-glass fountain pen from a pocket designed specifically for such an instrument using his soft, elegant, pink paper-skinned left hand. He looks devilishly at King Coniferis, spreading his chequebook on the white-and-pink flowered tablecloth, the heaviness of his hand like a kick to a gong. The book is a baseball field, his hand a useless, ornate curtain atop the stadium.
King Koin knows nothing is free, there is a price tag on everything in the four kingdoms whether emotional, physical, or intellectual, He looks at the price tags hanging from the glossy, puppy eyes of Coniferis before glancing as those attached to the wallet, tea, tablecloth, and pen before him. He writes a long number, much longer than a cheque should take to write. Leaving the memo space blank, he tears the check out from the book, folds it delicately, and places it upon a saucer.
A moustachioed waiter wearing an over-the-top houndstooth suit brings the cheque from one side of the table to the other.
Coniferis looks at King Koin with relief, gratitude, and some disdain in his eyes. His humility overpowers his pride, aggressively wresting hubris to the mat, pinning him, and then making him say, 'uncle.'
There’s a moment of silence between the two kings to commemorate the occasion.
“Now,” says Koin, “What were we talking about again?”
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