[ open: all arise! ]

[vorbratta]

WHO: you. yes, you there. you're invited
WHAT: Sonia is throwing a big party, because everyone needs an excuse to get good and drunk together right now. And dancing. There is always dancing.
WHEN: Justinian, shortly after the return of the jungle crew
WHERE: The suite at the top of the mage tower
NOTES: ♫ have some party jams ♫

The month in the jungle was a long one, made longer by the total lack of any alcohol to mitigate the experience. Utterly unthinkable. Sonia is addressing a public need by throwing a grand party -- a public service, even. Besides, it's what she does. When was the last time she got to plan a party, anyway? Granted, this is not a Denerim soiree for the young nobility, but the venue doesn't matter. Only the people and the drinks, and Sonia is assuredly rich in both. It is also a fantastic excuse not to think about any of the bad things that have happened since she was last in Kirkwall.

The decoration in the residential suite at the top of the mage tower would be best classified as improvisational -- one of those drapes tacked along the wall for ambience may be a bedsheet -- but it's the spirit of the thing that counts. One makes do with what one has. In one corner are a few tables laden with spirits, some provided by Sonia, others by generous partygoers. There are a few Barra vineyard vintages in the mix, highlights of her personal collection, a testament to the celebration she considers tonight to be. There's a small selection of food nearby, mostly for snacking to go with the drinks, though guests are free to bring whatever they like to share.

And there is, of course, music. Someone here has brought a fiddle or a flute or a bunch of pots masquerading as a drum set. Maybe you've brought your very own a capella choir. Whatever the accompaniment, there's something to dance to. Sonia makes sure there is dancing.

Tonight is not for licking wounds or swapping grisly stories of terror and survival. Tonight is for feeling alive, getting properly and delightfully drunk, and having a good god damn time.

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie hums back on the same pitch, sketches a brief wave of her fingers in thanks for his acknowledgement of her potential primacy.

“Did the both of them go to the jungle?”

[cozen]

“Yes. Next time you should join us—it was not so bad.”

[coquettish_trees]

“He asks me to get my slippers dirty?” She wrinkles her nose with exaggerated distaste. “I cannot charm a jungle into spilling its secrets, Bastien, and camping is wretched. Tell me when it is of the utmost importance to the war effort that we all go to the theatre.”

Alexandrie lets go of the bottle finally, setting it on the floor with the extreme precision of the inebriate.

“Are you not tired?” She asks, just above the brightness of the music and laughter. “I am tired. I wish to have a house near the sea and paint and never see blood or fear for those I love again.“

[cozen]

Bastien isn’t tired—not on the whole, not any more than when he was living above a shop in Val Royeaux, spending his mornings alone with coffee and his days frowning at ledgers or arranging letters on a tray and his evenings making counterfeit small talk with people who wouldn’t have related to a single true thing about him. But the question seems rhetorical.

“You could,” he says, adjusting the angle of his slump against the chaise to look at her more fully. “You could trade on your marriage and take your family north. Learn to be agreeable.”

[coquettish_trees]

Ah, yes. Trade on her marriage to the disguised adopted Saarebas son of a House that fights Corypheus’s control of the Magisterium, taking her father who will never abandon the land and people he is loyal to in his bones, her mother that is so to her father, her elder brother and sisters with their own families and lands to care for, and Geneviève...

No. When she takes her husband’s arm to cross the border, it will be only them. But in truth it has been only them since the moment they found each other. Alexandrie says none of this, scolds lightly instead.

“Bastien, when have you known me to be agreeable?” She waves a hand in airy dismissal. “Besides, Geneviève will leave her place by the side of the Empress only for her pyre. She has both our honours.” A pause, and then, to set that particularly difficult piece of truth at a remove, “In return, I have the bosoms.” She draws a particularly illustrative breath.