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

[galvanising]

Good news, because Nell is here to make him look at least a bit more knowledgeable. She can dress the part--in a gown fit for any Hightown ballroom--but, as she's not the least bit shy in admitting as she locates her assigned partner and offers her hands (where do they go for Fancy Dancing anyway?): "I've no notion how to do this. I'll do my best to avoid your toes, but no promises at the start."

[overharrowed]

"Noted. We'll muddle through. At least I'm not limping anymore." Small mercies, though that might have gotten him out of the dancing part of the lesson. From observation, he guides her left hand to his shoulder and then takes her right.

"I should have stuck to research. Now I'm in diplomacy and I may need to actually remember this for later. Though based on a few of the comments, if I'm sent back to Ferelden it's mostly stomping and clapping ones hands and saying look, a dog if one needs an inconvenient noble to look the other way." You're allowed to make fun if you're from there.

[galvanising]

Nell laughs, setting her hands where he points them, because not being from a place is never going to stop her making fun.

"Nowhere near sophisticated enough for Diplomacy," she says, drawling the word out before flashing him a crooked smile. "You should consider Forces. A very different kind of dancing. We'll see if it translates."

It might at least at the start--without music or real steps just yet beyond making squares to a beat, she picks it up easily enough, watching those around them who look confident or following Julius's lead if he's inclined to take it. "So is that what you're doing for Diplomacy?" she asks, "Making nice with Ferelden?"

[overharrowed]

Counting to four, at least, is something that doesn't seem to take so much concentration from either of them that it affects the conversation. He leads, but it's hardly an overbearing one as he tries to pick up the steps beyond simply moving forward and back.

"Still early days. I suspect that after the phylactery negotiations and calming some annoyed nobles who were worried about mage inheritance in the aftermath, someone thought my talents could be put to better use." He smiles, wry but warm. "I suppose I should be grateful I didn't acquit myself better at Ghislain; Forces might have been more eager to poach me."

(He'd done fine at Ghislain. Better than some, and survived to know it. Still, every time he's in a major battle, he remembers he'd pledged to avoid those the last time.)

"Short-handed as we are these days, I suppose that's always a standing risk, though."

[galvanising]

"And getting shorter by the day," Nell agrees. "I don't know if Research or Diplomacy will save you if we run into another Ghislain."

A happy thought! to go with their dancing. She follows easily enough, falling into the simple rhythm of it.

"There's no way they're going to let us off this easy," she says, eyes narrowing at the leaders of this event, observing from the edges, and the drummer setting the beat, "What do you wager it turns into one of those complicated ones with all sorts of claps and hops any second now?"

[overharrowed]

"60-40 in favor," quick enough he'd probably thought of the odds before now. "It'd be higher, but I suspect they may winnow out the hopeless ones here and make the people who are good at it do a special advanced lesson where no one is likely to run into them."

He'd glanced over at Petrana and her partner; he suspected heroic efforts on her part not to betray just how elementary she found this bit.

"What are Forces up to these days, between masasive, all-hands-on-deck battle situations?"

[galvanising]

"So I should be treading on your toes after all, is what you're saying?"

Nell follows his gaze with a flick of her own, but doesn't comment immediately. Instead she gives an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, you know. Languishing in boredom, polishing swords into needles." She shrugs. "A bit of this and that. Watch duty, escorting supply shipments, nabbing the occasional suspect, getting loaned out as guards to folks we're trying to impress. Last week I helped the City Guard break up a fight, that was a strange new experience."

[overharrowed]

"I can imagine." A brief pause, then: "I met the new Captain of the Watch. He gave the impression that he'll have them saving kittens from trees and doing outreach to the local youth in short order. Not that I disapprove, we can use all the goodwill we can get. But he seems very earnest."

Julius is not entirely sure whether or not Steve Rogers is having them all on. More observation needed.

[galvanising]

"He does, doesn't he? I got the same impression." A shameful waste of a figure, in her opinion, but that's hardly polite ballroom conversation, even she knows that.

"You never know what you're going to get with rifters, do you?" They've certainly run the gamut. "But he seems eager and there's an air of competence, so we figured it was worth a try. If nothing else he was smart enough not to come through and start shouting, so that's something. It puts him in fairly select company." She doesn't feel the need to tack on an actual pointed look toward Petrana.

[overharrowed]

"Given the diversity of life experiences, a diversity of reactions are only to be expected, I should think," he says, mildly. "Some of them seem better primed to adapt than others."

And then there's the sneaking suspicion that all of them are, somehow, echos from the Fade that could vanish when Corypheus is dealt with, or literally any time before then. It's a worry he's doing his best to ignore for the time being.

"Of the rifters I might be inclined to worry about, from a diplomacy perspective, he is not near the top of the list." Implying that Julius has a list. He probably does.