[open] picnic at hanging rock

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, EVERYBODY, a bunch of demons, and I guess some guy named Tony Stark
WHAT: A picnic to celebrate a Riftversary goes terribly wrong. No, it has nothing to do with the rift that opens in the middle of it and everything to do with Wysteria forcing everyone to speed date.
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway
WHERE: The Scenic Vimmark Foothills in September
NOTES: Some light demon fighting and rift closing violence, will update if necessary.

PICNICKING
With the weather having only just recently cleared of its end of summer storms, taking the worst of the miserable humidity with it, it's almost a pleasant time accept an invitation to a picnic in the foothills East of Kirkwall. Posted on the Gallows notice board and distributed personally to a few close friends and enemies, the invite had read:

You are Cordially Invited to attend a Celebration acknowledging the completion of a year since Miss Wysteria Poppell arrived in Thedas. Please follow the Map on the facing page. Refreshments Provided. Games Obligatory. Gifts Optional.

And so roughly twenty blankets of varying sizes and patterns have been requisitioned (unofficially, with written apologies to the Seneschal slipped under his office oor) from the Gallows and laid in rough rows on a slightly less miserable than usual hill overlooking dark line of the Waking Sea. The refreshments? Meager. They're largely Gallows-typical fare packed in baskets, end of summer fruit and what is sure to be the last of cheaply had honey cakes before the shortage of sugar causes the market value of honey to skyrocket. But at least the wine on hand is excellent.

PARTY GAMES
--Which is a good thing, because the party games require a certain level of inebriation to be truly enjoyable. For those who'd like to preserve some sense of dignity, there are various card games and croquet (get your practice in now, Riftwatch Leaguers!); for the brave and daring, there is Snapdragon - a game in which participants snatch raisins from a shallow bowl of burning brandy.

But the main event, dubbed Tête-à-Tête, requires all partygoers to be numbered off intos ones and twos and then break up into pairs. Each pairing has three minutes to have whatever conversation they like together. At the end of three minutes, Wysteria rings a bell and Number Twos rotate to the next Number One waiting on their blankets of choice. And so on. No exceptions.

IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL--
The warmth of the day, the scorched fingertips, the limping conversation, and the dry Gallows rations all conspire to indulge in a not insignificant liquoring up. Which means the rift tearing open over the party is potentially more disastrous than normal. Good luck; don't get slashed by a Terror demon, and don't get caught under under new Rifters falling through from out of the fade.

Comments

[propulsion]

Tony's chin retracts into his neck ever so as she gets all up on him, and the faint familiar whiff of wine-breath only registers dimly in the sensory overload he's enduring. His brain feels overcooked. It really could just take one day-drunk blonde girl to tip him over the edge into nonresponsive.

Instead, he knows -- while being barely conscious to it -- some delight in distraction. He imagines this is what it's like to yell at someone about a road accident when you're too poor to not care.

"Okay, sweetheart," he says, the veering into sarcasm no less aggravated, as he extends his arm past her head to point at roughly where that green glowing nonsense had been hanging in the air, "why don't you go ahead and open the sky back up again, and I'll be on my merry goddamn way." He thinks he saw her, anyway, hand glowing green like his is glowing green, but with some kind of connecting point, a flow of energy between her and it. Maybe? His mind is racing again.

His arm drops. Eyes bright. "Betcha can't. Right? Or can you?"