faderift | closed.

Young people play such ridiculous games, though it's mostly a fond thought with her toes in the sand. Given up on shoes here, and there's a relief for it, enjoying digging them into the ground. So she only has half an eye on it to briefly understand the rules. Pick one or the other. Do whatever nonsense they ask. She pauses with the wine on her lips, eyes sliding over the distance, half mad with the sea air, watching them move about with a certain interest and -

Oh, they were talking to her. Right, yes, that. She clears her throat and picks like throwing blind.

"Dare."

Edited 2018-10-24 16:16 (UTC)

He is not helping.

Which doesn't mean it's not hilarious, granted. The choke of laughter that bubbles up from around them. The immediate flustered Lord. She at the very least pauses, her face too blank to say that she's not laughing behind it. Right, time to get out of here before this got worse.

She rises, taking small steps underneath the long amounts of material that really aren't made for too much movement at once. Her hand lifts to indicate to him, to draw him close that he can lead her off. "I'm tired of sitting, are there gardens we might walk in?"

Get them out of here before they somehow offend a one day contact she might need.

"Then," Lexie dimples at her, her eyes dancing with happy mischief, "I exhort you to deliver to us a profound and heartfelt instructive sermon about the immutable masculine virtues of being clean-shaven," Has anyone not heard the Rani of Jhansi on the network?

"You are a marvelous orator, I expect it to be passionate enough that all the hair on our fine companions faces falls off immediately to obey your desires."

What?

She blinks, confused for a second. For certain she'd have something else in mind that wasn't completely ridiculous. Her mouth opens, shuts, waits.

Takes another sip of wine.

"Just... to this company?"

"Mais oui, I should never ask you to betray your most dearly held feelings in the greater public sphere." Lexie sits up abruptly and points about the company with her bottle, her face a study in gravitas, "Not a word of this to any other soul, mes amis, we are bound together now in a sacred trust. Take what you hear in the following moments to your pyres and, I pray you, remain silent upon it even after as you gaze adoringly upon the Maker at his side."

She drinks with the same focused intensity as the previous was delivered in, and then flops back down to the sand with a bright cheerful smile and gestures a 'well, go on!' to Lakshmi.

Oh if Lexie doesn't get a look for that. One that promises, later on, when the opportunity presents itself, you are going to get it. But as for now -

She picks herself up off the ground, smoothing her hands over her dupatta, fixing it against her hair and flicks the hair she's given up on keeping away over her shoulder. She's sure it makes a dramatic sight, all billowing in the sea breeze. Pfft.

Still, she felt perfectly ridiculous, as she stands there, trying to remember her lessons. Because whilst Lexie might insist she well crafted at speaking, she was sure she most certainly wasn't. Especially now they were expecting it. So she closes her eyes, takes a long, deep breath as she presses her hand's palm to palm, bowing over them respectfully, and it has less to do with them so much as giving her the time to think of what she's going to say.

( It is so dreadfully tempting to cheat. It wasn't her fault if they didn't understand Marathi, was it? But. No. Best not. )

When she opens her eyes - they are her soldiers and this their battlefield, her gaze direct and sharp like she meant to cut. "It is when a boy grows his beard, that he has declared himself a man. It is a man that faces, for himself, for his love, his family, his faith and King, every ill that might come in life. The becoming of something which is truly mighty, a man willing to be brave no matter how fear might strike them. He has accepted his responsibility to his people, his community. So what then is a man without one?"

She pauses, a little break for the all-important drink of her wine, that she tilts her head back to down it in one, and then throws the cup - so very dramatically - into the sad in front of her with the burn of the drink on her throat. Lets it fill her voice. "He is a man who is beyond the reminder. Like a priest's cuts his hair to put away the earthly vanity, like Rani Padmavati put herself into the flames, they are as Arjuna when Krishna revealed the truth of the universe. He is a man who has realised beyond his duties, he is a man who has realised himself. No longer has that man the need to hide behind his trappings. He meets his death with the surety that whatever might come, he has commended his soul higher and no longer walks with fear. The soul needs no dressings, and when that is itself known, what need that man need no longer seek a coat against the cold - "

A deep breath, a parting of her hands, her face tilted up. "And that man, that man is one who will live eternal."

She finishes her - ridiculous, completely idiotic, and not drunken enough for this - speech with a flourish of her hands.

An effect that is utterly ruined when she drops the visage away and blurts out far more irritated than anything she'd just said a minute ago: "Don't you dare shave your faces, you will look like a pair of boys that don't have a day between you."

Looking exceptionally surprised, her eyebrows arching gracefully over the perfectly guileless blue of her widened eyes, "Surely you do not mean to say that those with value assigned to them by society largely have members of that society be willing to summarily overlook their value as a solitary individual in order to curry favor from the society as a whole? Pre-pos-ter-oh!" Alexandrie interrupts herself to grip the cloth at her companion's shoulder with excitement and shake him very slightly, "He has done it!"

And indeed, through a quite fabulous series of missteps that seem more complex than the dance itself, their hero has managed to actually kick his partner in the knee while turning her. Admirably, she doesn't yelp, and her glare is gone by the time she completes the turn. Alexandrie releases Nikos's sleeve to clap her hands with quiet delight, holding her glass deftly with her thumb while she does so, and takes a rather long and satisfied drink from its contents.

There is first a lot of talking, easy to lose and ignore under the sounds of the surf, and then: the speech begins. As the orator's voice rises, Nikos lifts his head off of the sand in that awkward way where you refuse to sit up properly but still want to know what is going on. She is something to look at. Inspirational. Perhaps it is the moonlight.

The speech goes on. There are so many words, and names. And it goes on. Nikos--who has listened to thousands of speeches, and sleeps, regularly, with a speech-maker--begins to go cross-eyed.

"What the fuck." Someone else might say it in an undertone. He says it in a normal tone. If it helps, he is smiling a little, having already buried Nell's joke and moved on to be amused by an impassioned speech on beards. Or the lack thereof. Maybe it is about beards? "What are you fucking talking about. Someone tell me what the dare was, I forgot. Talk us to death?"

"Inspired and inspirational," Petrana says, over her drink, trying with some difficulty not to laugh.

Then, "But perhaps if only one were to bare his face-"

"Kostos."

Immediate nomination. Pleased that he got the first word, Nikos lets himself relax back in the sand, wiggling a little to work himself into his former comfortable position.

"That's the next dare."

"I'd no idea beards were such serious business," says Nell, once she's done grappling with the heap of slimy, sandy seaweed Kostos dumped on her, which promptly got caught in the embellishment on her dress. When it's free she lobs it up into the air behind her, knowing it has a good chance of landing on someone, no telling who. "They would look strange without them. I can hardly picture it."

"Lakshmi, who do you choose to go next?"

I mean to say that society's values are horseshit, would be how Nikos would start his response--angry, each syllable stiff with irritation, that the current system of power is reinforced by participation in its structure, no matter how funny she thinks she's being.

Then he wants to tell her to let the fuck go of his sleeve.

Then their wish is fulfilled, and better yet, they get to drink, and as Nikos raises his glass, he finds that he is already smiling, again, darkly pleased at the scene that has unfolded before them.

The start of his lecture is still stuck in his throat. Takes a large amount of wine to wash it away. He scans the room, looking for their next target. The room is full of idiots, rich peacocks strutting and preening. They are spoiled for choice.

"There," he says, and gestures with his glass. "That woman, in that pink tent of a gown. She takes a glass, takes a sip--then forgets that she has it, sets it aside. The next time a tray of wine passes her, she takes a fresh glass. And it repeats. If she does it four times..."

He raises his glass.

"We drink. To the fucking excesses of the rich."

It's like drinking with a person-shaped storm cloud. How cross he seems with her airy flippancy, with the greater dance of the event itself, with the entire structure of—

Alexandrie wonders suddenly whether or not he knows Kitty. Certainly they must have gravitated together by now, the disaffected often do. Although it is much rarer to have someone who profits from the established order of things waving the torch.

A curious man, to be certain, but he does have a wonderful eye for the ridiculousness that often seems to come part and parcel with wealth. The woman he indicates is readily found—the gown is a tent on her, although the color really sets off her skin and hair quite nicely—and Alexandrie nods her successful acquiring of their target.

"She has—" she looks about the woman to find where she is placing the near-full glasses. Ah, there. "—one abandoned beside her and one in her hand at the moment. Are you proposing four glasses acquired, or four discarded glasses in total?"

Edited 2018-10-26 04:04 (UTC)

Lakshmi goes to liberate that seaweed from Nell, almost the second she's free of it. Gathering it up in both hands to stomp over to Kostos -

- And dump it straight onto his head. There. They were now even.

That done, she dusts off her hands and marches back to her seat, flopping down and reaches for whatever bottle of wine was closest. Putting it to her lips. Tempting as it was to pick Nikos in repayment. Hrmm.

"Madam Petrana. If you will."

Although she's still laughing, a little, at the sudden application of seaweed to gentleman (by a loose definition of the word), that doesn't mean she doesn't (smilingly, mildly) correct Lakshmi, “de Cedoux,” while she mulls over this prompt. It would probably not be unreasonable to consider oneself on first name terms with people one is playing a drunken game of truth or dare with on the beach, and yet.

She's unbent far enough to participate, that's plenty: “...truth?”

No one's taken that one yet, though there's always time for punking out and asking for a dare instead.

Edited 2018-10-27 08:20 (UTC)

She sips her wine, and shakes her head, although there is no expression of judgment or distaste. "I know," Constanze replies, "but you'd do better with your plans if you could control that temper of yours. Such things can be used against you."

Constanze takes a step forward, and corrects his collar. "If you are to fool anyone and undermine them, then you must move amongst them seamlessly. Give them no reason to believe you are not one of them, befriend them, learn about them, and then you can destroy them."

A little quirk of her brow. "And if you cannot destroy, it serves to have a hand where you can influence, while you build something better, and freer." #pirateforlife #yolohoho #freedom

A rumble of laughter, and sets a hand on Kostos' shoulder. "True enough. It's very good to see you."

He glances about to see if Constanze is lurking anywhere to swoop down to condemn his cake holding, and satisfied that his wife is not around, relaxes a little. "But you are hiding away from us. Do you prefer to observe, or are you trying to avoid awkward chitchat?"

Amancio isn't foolish, or oblivious. His daughter was in the Circle, and he has heard of the terrible things that have befallen mages. It could change any person. What happened to Keto would change a person as well; Amancio could think of little that would be more painful, than to have had an unintentional part in the death of a dear family member. His nephew seems— different than how he remembers him, in more than age.

Kostos—who is not shaving, even though Lakshmi's speech, even with the words he didn't know mixed in, was enough to make him touch his own jaw with absentminded consideration before he realized he was falling for it and refused—accepts the deposit of seaweed with dignity. Scowling dignity, but still. He lets it droop and drop off of his head on its own, without starting or shaking it free, and only then raises a hand to straighten his slightly slimy hair.

"Daring," he adds, to Madam de Cedoux's selection. She might be the first.

For a moment Kostos looks at her hand like he isn't sure what it means, not because he doesn't actually know, but because he's currently more interested in goading her new friend into throw a punch than escaping to look at flowers and petulant about social customs in general besides.

But the moment passes, hastened along by a glance at the lord's pink face and a decision about what a short and anticlimactic fight it would be. And how much trouble he would be in. And how nice it would be, actually, to not be in this room anymore. So he comes close enough to offer her his arm.

There are gardens—not empty ones, with the size of the crowd, but the comparatively dim lighting and distance from the food and music mean they are at least more sparsely populated, and a significant portion of those there are very distracted by whomever they're there with.

"I should apologize," he says, which isn't the same as actually apologizing.

"You should," is the affirmation, not letting him off the hook by simply saying he should. "But if you didn't something wretched, I would have next. He wants a rifter to be his whore no doubt because it is mysterious, but he doesn't risk his reputation with someone else's wife or sullying himself by fucking his household staff. So you spared him his life when I had to challenge on behalf of my honour."

It's a frank sort of assessment, but her voice doesn't rise and fall in ire. It is pleasant as remarking on the sky, smiling pleasantly at anyone that passed her by. The brief acquaintances she'd made so far. Her hand light, poised, careful with every gesture that communicates in its own way.

"But at least we're away from it now, thankfully. So that will do for now."

There is a brief sound of mourning from Alexandrie when the seaweed finally drops off of Kostos's head.

"Do replace it, it was terribly fetching," she remarks sidelong before turning the fullness of her attention to Petrana, who has chosen the unthinkable.

"De Cedoux." She corrects herself with a nod and pressing on - wiping her hands off from the mess of seaweed, fishing for her cup of wine most for out of the sand where she had tossed it.

"Do tell us the most wretched, terribly unforgiving, absolutely scandalous thought you have had this evening about the party."

Edited (auto correct will be the death of me ) 2018-10-30 19:16 (UTC)

"Let's see." Words of curiosity, but Nikos drawls them, invokes them with flat sarcastically. "Which of those will get me drunker faster. Four glasses discarded," in case she needs help to get to that answer. The flighty often do. "Which means we look for two more discarded, and then we are allowed to drink."

Preferably enough to drain his glass, so he can discard it, and get a new one. Or at least a refill. Nikos points, heedless of how rude it might appear. Purposefully heedless. Like he gives a shit what any of them think.

"A tray approaches."

A slender serving-girl, in the understated finery that is the uniform of the event. She carries a tray of glasses--a white, faintly gold in the flush of candlelight. Her path will put her in line with the woman, will entice her with a new glass.

Caught up in his anger, Nikos is too late to twitch away from his aunt's cool capable hands. She adjusts his collar; he barely suppresses the urge to mess it up again. At least he's grown up a little since childhood. As a child, he squirmed away from kisses, ran around corners to avoid embraces, mussed his hair with his fingers, growled like an animal, declarative in his independence. The stage is different, the cast has changed, but she is still his aunt and he is still her nephew, their roles cemented by time.

"I prefer to move straight to destruction."

He's heard lines just like hers, before. Aunt Constanze's approach is more Caspar's, and at the thought of him, Nikos' attention jumps to the room around them, scanning the crowd for Caspar.

"If you burn a building down, you can build on the ashes. The earth is often improved by it: a controlled burn, to eradicate the withered and the dead and the dying, and build anew. Instead of inhabiting the corpse, and building inside it."

Amused by the extremity of heedlessness, Alexandrie raises her glass without thinking about it and catches her own action just in time to avoid being a cheater. She turns the movement into a thoughtful one instead, continuing her raise of the glass until she can rest her cheek briefly on the backs of the fingers holding it, watching the movement of the tray and waiting to see if the woman will forgetfully set aside her glass before it reaches her.

"I have always found it interesting," she comments, "how purposefully flouting convention in a way that grants knowledge that one is well aware there is such convention—ah, nous avons la chance!" The woman's conversational partner has gotten her excited enough about something to require her to put her glass down to make gesture with both hands, although whether she resumes the same glass or takes another from the impending tray has yet to be seen, "—can sometime reinforce it near as much as simply playing along."

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