Come gather 'around the fire...

[kismet_loop_mods]

Who: Anyone
What: A gathering for the citizens of Haven.  A time to relax and mingle...and a little something more.
When: All day and night of the 14th
Where: Outside of The Hub, and perhaps inside too if you wish.
Event: Not everything is as it seems.  Some of the offerings will cause some...unexpected results.

The Guardians have been hard at work getting the large open street outside of the Hub and Warehouse set up for a massive gathering.  There were tables set up all over the place full of all kinds of food, drink, and fuel.  A large bonfire had been set up in the middle of everything, and various volunteers rotated in and out throughout the day and night playing various kinds of music or providing other types of entertainment.  There would be a constant flow of music, skits, acrobatics, and magic tricks.  The festivities will be held throughout the day.

Not everything would go as planned, though.  There were a few tables among that many that had been set up courtesy of the Miasma.  They go unnoticed with everything else going on.  Really, there is enough for literally hundreds of people of various races, the handful of suspicious tables are easy to miss.  The contents of these tables will have peculiar effects on those who consume the contents offered upon them.  Nothing harmful really, just some effects to further encourage the lighthearted purpose of this gathering.

((ooc: tag in, mingle, have fun.  Effects can last for only the party or through the end of the week, and can be mixed as much as you want.))

Comments

[fractalize]

"Bradbury...oh I'll have to remember that, I do love my stories." she mused. "I've never heard of him otherwise."

Her response though has her giggling.

"No really, I've never been to a bonfire, either! It's much more relaxed, I wasn't expecting a non formal affair. Balls are uptight and quiet, and sometimes the only thing to look forward to is the food, especially if it's thrown in your honor! Then everyone's looking at you, constantly, asking you to dance...which usually isn't a problem, but you don't really want to know how my last one went..."

Inebriated is probably not the best way to start this story, but it seemed inevitable at this point...and who didn't know about her powers?

[10_20_15_5_50]

"I think I saw an anthology when I was in the Warehouse, once. This brick of a book---had to have a hundred of his stories. I'll see if I can't find it for you sometime soonish." It would have to be 'soonish,' since Sam couldn't remember exactly where in the Warehouse she'd seen it... and the stacks were so many. "If I had the opportunity, I'd take you to another, since you seem to be enjoying this bonfire quite a bit. When I was in university, there'd usually be one accompanying the ill-advised Gopher Hill Grand Prix, but we'll get to that."

The adept looked at Elsa, slightly surprised and entirely earnest.

"I do want to know, though."

[fractalize]

Gopher Hill Grand Prix, University, Anthology...yeah, she might as well be speaking Greek. She reaches over for a flute off of a side table, humming with amusement. Oh, how was she going to start this epic.

"Okay, okay. Well. It's a little bit of a long...confusing story without any context, but...you'll get it. Anyway." She takes a short sip out of her flute and with only a moment's thought.

"To start, I sort of froze over my entire country. On accident. On my coronation day."

[10_20_15_5_50]

That was some start.

Sam spent a long moment staring, eyebrows up, before she shook herself and settled---with an effort---back into something approximating her usual attitude.

"I've got a couple of questions, and I find myself f-floored," nice save, Samantha! "but I'm following. Do tell, please."

[fractalize]

"So that happened, meanwhile I was...well, I panicked, like anyone would, and I ran away. And my sister, Anna. Anna came to find me, try and make me feel better, but you know. My whole country. I was still a little unnerved. Well, then I pretty much---well, I did it again. Only to her. On accident! On accident. But to her heart. So things sort of went....downhill from there."

NO BIG DEAL. No big deal. Right?

"Sorry, what was your question?"

[10_20_15_5_50]

"My first question..." What was it? Right. Back on-track, despite not the start but the whole story so-far. "Was going to be 'excuse me, but how?' My second question would be 'did everybody get better?'"

It felt like a legitimate query, since she'd started to suspect magic---something which would explain Elsa's unusual aura. She hoped it was one, and hoped like hell the answer would be an affirmative.

"Third---your coronation? I've heard correctly?"

[fractalize]

"Oh! Yes, yeah, she was fine. Act of true love, so on, so forth. We were all really worried for a while there though!" Again, said nonchalantly. Thanks to the intoxication.

"Oh, how, that's, uh. That's a thing, I should've probably explained awhile back, huh?" Now putting ice in your champagne was sort of a big no-no, but freezing the glass it was in?

Holding the flute out at arms length, frost crawls up to the rim.

"Yes. Coronation." Oh wait.

"I didn't....tell you that either, did I."

icon keywords

[10_20_15_5_50]

This story was starting to sound like a full-on fairytale, but after befriending a fairy, (and a knight, and a dragon,) Sam wasn't about to discount it---not at all. She listened, rapt, until Elsa decided a demonstration was in order, startled into a wordless exclamation by the sight. Then:

"That's friggin' fantastic! What---what do you do, to do that? How long have you been able, and! An entire country..." Sam clapped her hands together, shaking her head and laughing a little. "I've got some good tricks, but they're all much smaller scale. Skin-deep stuff, I should say; that's my sphere."

She cupped her chin with one hand, and cast a contemplative eye at Elsa. "No, you didn't. Coronation... as in, you've become queen?" It hit her, really hit her, and the cupping hand rose to cover her face.

"Oh, man. It took me minutes to swear in front of you; my mother would be mortified."

[fractalize]

"Skin..deep? Wait, woah, I don't---follow. What're you----yes." She grinned, sort of waving it off.

"Yes. I'm queen---but where I live, not here, of course! Swearing---oh. I don't mind it at all. It happens. I'm not a prude." Actually, yes, she was. Just not when she was half a glass and well magically sloshed.

"I've had them for as long as I can remember, they're really just. There." she punctuates with a wave of her hand, and a neat little gust of flakes burst forth.

"There's a time I tried to suppress them, thinking maybe they'd go away, but then you know. Kingdom froze over and that was that."

[10_20_15_5_50]

"I've also got---ah, abilities; I can affect the superficial, the immediately-accessible, from first impressions and some assumptions to physical surfaces. It's not exactly easy to explain, but bottom line; I can work some witchery and have only ever met a handful of others who're able." Sam's surprise had started to fade in favour of delight and something resembling relief. "This is awesome... and alright."

She couldn't've kept a mischievous little grin from her face, even if she'd bothered to try.

"It's said 'profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer,' but since I like using sacres, I get the best of both."

[fractalize]

"I'm afraid I still don't understand, like...people's opinion's of you? Really?" That's all she'd managed to understand so far.

"You know, that's not entirely incorrect. I know a few who swear quietly to themselves." she muses, sipping down the rest of her champagne flute.

[10_20_15_5_50]

"Expectations more than opinions, but a bit of both. And I can manage more tangible effects, for shallow stuff---heal a scrape, open a scar, or---or push pigments so that they're somewhere else on the spectrum." It's an admittedly odd sphere, and stranger still for being between 'sympathetic' and 'blood' magic, but it's always made sense to Sam... Even if explaining isn't easy. "You and I have got to sit and talk shop sometime soon. Party's not the best place for it, but hell's bells! I'm glad I didn't learn later. All of this just got a little less lonely."

The gorl's grin softened, until she again glanced at Elsa, one eyebrow up.

"Am I looking at an example?"

[fractalize]

"Oh my, yes. That sounds incredible. There's a few more here that also have powers; Lea. Jendayi. We're all a cute little network." she again, muses with some degree of a smile.

Sam's immediate follow up though gets her smiling and laughing.

"I don't know, but, if I told you, I would spoil my perfectly good reputation as a figurehead!"

[10_20_15_5_50]

"Really...?" Sam fell silent as she digested the information, hands rising slowly, in circles, as if she stood a chance of pulling something more from air. At shoulder height, both hands snapped shut and Sam simply crossed her arms. "That's incredible. The handful of others I mentioned? I met the first only a few years ago---seems like it was so long before I knew anyone else. But now that I know who I have here..."

Her tone shifted on 'know,' as the conversation was quite clearly no longer about magic; the adept emphasized it by tapping Elsa's elbow with her own, minding that it was the arm opposite her still-frosty flute.

"I've got an idea. But I shan't say anything to anyone else---your reputation, and the words you use in emergencies only, are safe with me."

[fractalize]

"Good! I'd have frozen over the fjord, that's forgivable. Calling someone a name, and they'll have me in chains!" Oh goodness, that only gets her even more giggly.

"Others." she pauses, finishing off the flute and setting it on the next available surface, her expression made serious.

"Mmm, tell me about the others? I seem to be the only one here in this place who doesn't have 'others' at home." she tacks on. Somewhere in her subconscious, that insecurity has been growing.

[10_20_15_5_50]

"They'd. Past tense. Here and now, I'd help you out... Or offer a little invective on your behalf, since that's something I have done for people in the past. And about those people..." Sam shifted her weight from side to side, considering Elsa's words as she tried to decide where to begin. "Well."

The broad strokes seemed best.

"The ones I really know, we call kitchen-witches, the whole family. The things they cook up have... qualities way, way beyond what could be explained by the ingredients, which are all normal things---stuff from any grocery shelf. Only they can mix up a hot toddy which will clear a cold overnight, none of them are ever sick themselves, the plasters they out together---for burns, infections, anything---work wonders, and they don't age as quickly as everybody else. What they do, they've been doing for generations; Felix, the youngest, is my good friend." It was what it was; not a bad beginning. The adept offered a small smile; the absence of 'others' hit close to home. "He and his sisters were taught by their mother and grandmother; his mother was taught by her mother and grandmother. I'm self-taught, though."