open | your baddest behavior

[cozen]

WHO: Alexandrie, Bastien, Byerly, and their captive audience
WHAT: Mandatory etiquette and dance lessons
WHEN: Justinian 15, 9:45
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See the OOC post and IC announcement for more information! If you didn't sign up, you can still participate in Parts A and D, and just handwave the other two, without needing to sign up or get an assignment. If you want to do B and C, you can find your own dance partner/seating group OOC, or you can sign up now and we'll dole out new assignments if we get enough latecomers to do so. If you signed up and are missing from the lists when you shouldn't be, I'm sorry and please tell me!

disclaimer: event less fancy than pictured

Seating Assignments
— Table One: Gwenaëlle, Iorveth, Matthias, Athessa
— Table Two: Flint, Ilias, Darras, Med Seller, Yngvi
— Table Three: Julius, Thranduil, Anders, Brienne
— Table Four: Benedict, Colin, Valentine, Six, Derrica
— Table Five: Teren, Salvio, Bartimaeus, Osana
— Table Six: Freddie, Petrana, Kain, Merrill, Silver
— Table Seven: Yseult, Cosima, Steve, Inessa
— Table Eight: Sidony, Fifi, Nell, Fingon
— Table Nine: Thor, Nathaniel H., Solas, Skadi

Dance Partners
— Cosima & Nathaniel H.
— Athessa & Anders
— Teren & Flint
— Freddie & Bartimaeus
— Yseult & Darras
— Nell & Julius
— Merrill & Colin
— Skadi & Benedict
— Gwenaëlle & Solas
— Petrana & Salvio
— Osana & the Medicine Seller
— Sidony & Matthias
— Six & Thranduil
— Brienne & Valentine
— Fifi & Steve
— Thor & Fingon
— Ilias & Iorveth

Comments

table five.

[radiosa]

While they're waiting to begin, Osana straightens her silverware (which didn't need to be straightened) for a second and then pulls her hands back and into her lap in a rush—is touching the silverware rude? where do hands go, in general, ever?—and keeps them there, picking at a thread on her skirt beneath the table but otherwise managing to look somewhat collected until the bruschetta arrives.

Then she says, "Oh, I know this!" with an Antivan accent to underscore why.

She's instantly aware that she sounds like a rube. But she's glad, anyway, that they aren't being given anything that requires specialized tools to eat, so her subsequent pursed lips are still most of a smile.

[doneisdone]

Teren is dressed in a somewhat outdated but nonetheless Sufficiently Fancy gown of blue and silver, with an embroidered griffon pattern on the bodice and a soft leather eyepatch that would be beautiful if it weren't, you know, covering her very scarred and ugly left eye (she decided not to bother acquiring a mask for the occasion, even if the future deems it a necessity).

"Stop your squirming, girl, you'll look untrustworthy," comes an admonishment, gentle compared to most of the things Teren says but still decidedly brusque to someone who doesn't know her. "Hands in your lap when they're not doing a thing."
She demonstrates.
"Keep them above your waist when they're not folded. Drawing the focus to your face, not your feet." A little smirk indicates that she's willing to acknowledge how ridiculous people are.

[reshapes]

"Oh good. I've arrived just in time. I just love a good appetizer, don't you?"

With a squeal of chair legs and a flurry of eye searing color, a truly dreadful specimen of humanity descends upon the table. Spotted and sweating, smelling powerfully of cloves and garlic from what surely must be pockets stuffed full with both, the gap-toothed floppy haired wastrel who all but squelches into the heretofore conspicuously empty chair promptly hooks one elbow on the table and fetches up the nearest glass in his other hand. Whether it belongs to his place setting or not seems irrelevant to the gentleman in question.

And a gentleman he most certainly is meant to be. Gone is the pointy, dark-eyed youth known for his unrivaled sparkling wit and a penchant for useless loitering. The slimy man at the table today bears absolutely no resemblance to him. He is, however, the spitting image of every feckless third son of minor peerage to ever exist right down to the yellow tobacco stains on his fingertips and absent chin.

"I didn't miss anything important, did I?"

[assistente]

Teren's words were not meant for Salvio, but he had begun to follow along with her instructions and her modeling, in small ways, so that he would not attract any bit of her attention. He knows who Teren and Osana are on paper: by reputation, as numbers and names on ledgers and forms, and enough to be intimidated by them both, for different reasons.

The repulsive person who joins them next, he does not know, and his sudden appearance startles Salvio outright.

"Ngkf," he says. It is the first thing that he has said at this table. He tries immediately to melt backwards into the chair while also racking his brains for who this fourth guest is. He cannot bring himself to ask outright. Not just yet, anyways. Instead he looks around at Osana and Teren with mute helplessness, waiting for one of them to ask the question instead.

[radiosa]

Osana, hands in her lap rather than reaching for any of the food, the very picture of serene obedience and teachability, turns her head to watch the abdication of her drink, and by the time it’s done turning her expression has replaced all of its serenity with incredulity that’s doubly impolite for how little she knows anyone here. The man could be a local fixture, for all she’s aware, who everyone else knows better than to gawk at.

“That was my,” she begins, before the potential rudeness catches up to her and she looks at Salvio instead. Hoping for an ally. Finding only fear.

Only Teren can save them.

[doneisdone]

"Just a decade or so of civilization, by the looks of you," Teren intones without looking at either of the others, and takes a measured sip of her drink. "Now if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to be offputting." An eyebrow arches as her visible eye meets the stranger's: you're not fooling anyone, bud.

[reshapes]

The stranger meets that singularly¹ penetrating gaze with seemingly no comprehension whatsoever of its owner's meaning. In fact, give him just a moment and-- ah there, a flicker of distaste and offense passes over the wretchedly oily face.

"Little old me? That's not a very nice thing to say about a fellow dinner guest, now is it?" He sets Osana's half emptied wine glass back, jarring her needlessly straight flatware in the process. "But not to worry. I won't say anything to our merciless overlords this time. The first faux pas is free."

He gives Teren an exaggerated wink, then stuffs the entire slab of bruschetta from his plate into his cavernous red mouth.

1. Get it? Singularly. Because she only has the one eye uncovered. --Oh nevermind. No one appreciates the fine art of the pun these days.

[doneisdone]

"Well bless you for that," comes Teren's grumbled reply, and she takes another drink of her wine, because he won't be stealing that. "...but if you bring our table the wrong kind of attention, on your head it shall be."

[assistente]

Salvio's fear tints to a fearful revulsion as that great maw opens to receive the bread sacrifice. If it wouldn't attract attention, he would actually stand up right now, in order to distance himself from the chaos and carnage.

As it is, he pushes his chair back from their shared table. It scuds against the stone floor, producing a honk of mournful distress.

"Please," he says--quickly, quietly, furtively-- "This is not-- That is to say, you, we-- We do not need to have such-- If we could just get through this trial. Peacefully. Please."

Please, please, please, please please.

sorry hi

[radiosa]

The honk of Salvio's chair breaks Osana's silent fascination with how much their new arrival is able to fit into his mouth, and she starts, then smiles at him. She would like for it to be a reassuring smile, but the way her eyes slide right back to whatshisface with barely-restrained curiosity might limit the effectiveness.

"I'm sure it will be fine," she says. "Perhaps he is to test us."

She takes the wine glass he's discarded, riding an impulse to reclaim and protect it, but then realizes that that might require putting her mouth somewhere his has been, and settles for frowning at the rim.

[reshapes]

"Testing you?" Crunches the tobacco stained man, small crumbs hanging ominously at the corners of his wide mouth. "My word, what a welcome. This isn't the first time the three of you have done something like this, is it?"

He bats his pale, nearly transluscently blond eyelashes. It's somehow distinctly unpleasant.