[OPEN]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, Marcoulf, Flint, and/or Fitcher & YOU
WHAT: Open log for Wintermarch
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Mix of open and closed prompts; some threads closed to first come first serve and/or contain a few different prompts. Want something specific but don't see it here? Hit me up on discord/plurk/PM/the astral plane, and we can figure something out (or just toss me a wildcard starter if that suits your fancy; I'm pretty flexible). Action brackets aokay if you prefer it over prose.

[see comments below for character specific starters]

Comments

[cozen]

Bastien isn't prone to infection, but it's infectious nonetheless—not enough to make him laugh, too, but enough that his more shell-shocked (pardon the anachronism) forward gaze cracks and animates with several soundless, failed attempts to find and form the first word of an explanation for what has just happened to them.

Eventually he settles, ridiculous and self-aware, on, "It is a metaphor."

[unshut]

Which prompts a fabulously undignified cackle from her. The sound carries, pleasantly loud in the narrow street. She doesn't bother to ask For what?; clearly Bastien has no option but to desperately clarify.

[cozen]

"Each, ah," he says.

Then he needs a moment. Not to organize the bullshit he's about to invent. Just to enjoy the laughing, like a song, in respectful silence.

"Each of les chats represents a period in Orlesian history, with Ancien Deutéronome as something akin to the Council of Heralds, deciding which facet of the Empire should triumph."

[unshut]

"Ah!" It's a singularly delighted gasp — a reaction fit for conjuring rabbits out of fancy hats or a particularly clever card trick. In essence, it is the only suitable response to such an ass pull.

"That certainly adds a rather shocking subtext to the choice of putting Rum Tre Tremper in a lion's mane."

[cozen]

"Truly," Bastien says, and if Rum Tre Tremper is the chat he was most interested in perhaps finding sometime later to buy a drink, he will keep that to himself. "But he is our period of greedy expansion, non? We want Ferelden, we want Nevarra, we want the Marches—in and out, in and out."

Somewhere behind them, in the street, other escaped members of the audience sing several lines of a song and burst into peals of laughter.

"So you see it makes perfect sense."

I refuse to type 'wicked grace face'

[unshut]

"Yes, I see it now. In fact, I should be quite sharp with you for not remarking on it during the production so I might have context for the thing." She shoots him a sidelong look, less cutting due to her grin. For a prodigious gambler, Madame Fitcher's poker face is rather poor. "But I suppose I can allow that there was hardly time or opportunity. And the silks were charming even without."

Charming. That's a word for the barely there, laced tight 'garments' the actors had been poured into.

"Maker. It's a shame Satinalia isn't for months yet."

coward!!!

[cozen]

That was, depending on perspective, exactly the right or exactly the wrong thing to say. He lights up, steps ahead of her to twist and walk backwards, talks with both hands.

"We must. You must promise me. Not the silks; I would die. But the masks."

[unshut]

"Not the silks? Then what good is it. Honestly, Monsieur Val Royeaux. Your lack of commitment is might almost be demoralizing were I a more delicate woman."

This all said breezily as she trails along behind (before) him.

"Which petichérie chat would you like to be?"