SATINALIA

[incaenstrix]

WHO: Everybody!!
WHAT: SATINALIA!!
WHEN: Backdated to the first day of Firstfall
WHERE: Gallows courtyard
NOTES: Drunkenness and shenanigans. HALLOWEENMAS!!

This Satinalia is, perhaps, less grand than in years past. Blockades are still limiting access to luxury goods, after all, so the fine liquors and dainty foods that have been featured before are nowhere to be found. And Tertia, the temporary Morale Officer, doesn't have the connections or deft touch of organizers past, so things are rougher than they've been before - the musicians are less polished, the ale a little more watered-down, the decorations somewhat haphazard.

But you know what? It's still Satinalia. Nothing can really screw up Satinalia. Especially because there are some rather lovely touches, the best of which might well be the ice skating rink. A section of the Gallows Courtyard has been roped off and frozen over with magic, leaving a (largely) smooth sheet of ice covering it. Skates are available to borrow if you don't have a pair. Of course, some injuries are definitely going to result (if you skate off the edge, you're smacking into stone instead of a soft snowbank, which can be disastrous), but hey, it's fun.

Other perks are the bonfires, with mulled wine and cider being served out of cauldrons around them, where people might sit and reflect while watching the flame. There's also dancing, of course, with the musicians basically being any band that's been recommended by members of Riftwatch - so there are lots of half-competent cousins-of-friends playing here. What they lack in skill they make up for in enthusiasm; this is the first gig for a lot of them, and they're thrilled to be here.

One thing that's missing is the Satinalia fool being named ruler. Tertia wasn't familiar with this tradition and didn't arrange it - so there's a last-minute campaign being held, in which people can either nominate others or self-nominate to be named Riftwatch's greatest fool to be celebrated.

Enjoy yourself. Exchange presents. Get drunk. Have a blast. Don't lose any teeth.

Comments

i don't wanna

[armd]

(Abby hides her curl of amusement behind the lip of her half-empty cup. She notices that Flint does not say this actually happened to him, which conjures up an image of straight-backed boy who took and carried out his orders with a great deal of seriousness. She likes that little revelation, because she's always been much of the same herself.)

Hmm, (is the sound that she makes, contemplative. She tilts her cup toward the fire to fill the rest of it with flickering light.

A little more to her apology, then. Give it some legs.) I was dealing with something else at the time, I- shouldn't have talked to you while I was feeling like that. (She's so at ease compared to the last time they spoke, the low slouch of her shoulders testament to the change. Her mouth curls up at the ends.) Thanks for not... flogging me.

(yikes man)

[katabasis]

[The tilt of Flint's temple and the flex of his brow could very easily stand in for a kind of reply. 'You're welcome for not flogging you,' it says (—strictly not 'Think nothing of it'; those are entirely two different things). Maybe, 'I suspected as much.' And, 'Well, it's not like I'd had a whip on hand.'

It's not flippant, exactly. One may be safe in presuming that Flint hardly knows the meaning of that word. Just economical. Even in the shadow of that wolf mask he's propped up onto the crown of his head in order to drink from the cup, he's not inexpressive. Presumably, Flint must know that his face often speaks on his behalf.

But also:]

It's possible, [has an air of negotiation.] That I'm occasionally given to impatience.

[So there's that too.]

[armd]

(Oh, well.

Abby makes a face into her cup, lifts up one of her shoulders. Honestly, she only came here to say her bit, not to collect, so this is... a nice surprise, really. The pyre is crumpling in on itself, eating all the wood. She looks for a moment longer before she speaks, clearing her throat gently. That she wants to explain herself a little better isn't a split second decision in this moment, but something she gave some thought before now.)

I found out a little more about the part she played in our past. She threatened to hurt somebody I care about, just to provoke me into fighting her. And I did, we- nearly killed each other. (Whether or not Flint knows it, it's huge for her to have said this much aloud.) That's why I can't work with her.

(To be clear,) If I have to, I will. (The war has priority. Abby will grit her teeth and bear it, for Riftwatch, if Flint asks her to.) But if I don't have to, I don't want to.

[katabasis]

[With the cup in the circle of fingers on one hand, he idly folds the other across his wrist. There's a particular, canny way in which Flint sometimes listens—the tip of his temple, the sharp focus of a pale eye diverted from directly at her instead to the toe of Abby's boot or some crack in the courtyard's pavers—which marks some intent to absorb rather than any alternative. It's much distanced from the prickling, not quite snarling glare he'd fixed on her most recently from behind the broad desk of the division office.

Some minor motion of the hand turns the ring on his small finger to glinting.]

And this recent bout of scrapping. [Abby had been sporting a black eye when she'd come to insist on this whole thing.] How did that resolve itself?

[Not with anyone's corpse, clearly.]

[armd]

(No, not with a corpse, but Abby hunches around her answer.) We fought, I- broke something. That's all.

(Hurting Ellie felt the same way that killing Joel did, in that it didn't help but she could have gone on doing it. It's always been easier to start than stop. Owen interrupted her in the ski lodge, Lev after that, when they were down in the dark red basement of the theater and Abby had a knife at the throat of a woman she didn't know, but Abby stopped herself down in the cellars. She brought herself and Ellie to a grinding halt, maybe there's something in that.

She releases a held breath, and can't bring herself to look Flint-ward. His attention is on her boot or the ground, somewhere lower, off her face, it's nice. Helps.)

I'm like this all the time, (is a confession she did not expect to make. It slips out awkward, aching.) But I don't want to be.

[katabasis]

[Beyond the circle of radiant heat put off by the bonfire, the air is cold and wet; he can feel it against the crown of his skull just there above where the fringe of the dark fur mantle lays across the back of his neck. To allay it, and to permit some some measurement of this thing she's laid out at his feet—(all but literally)—, Flint helps himself to the contents of his mug. The spiced wine won't hold its heat for long in this weather. Might as well make use of it.

A pop from the fire dazzles the black air with a scattering of sparks. Somewhere, a long time ago in and in a very different place, there is a young man who doesn't need to be told that he would be best served the mind his temper. He knows that; he has historically been made perfectly familiar with the sting of a cane for it, and he isn't a boy anymore. He knows better.

(Mostly.)]

Have you decided want it is that you want out of this place? [Could be a change of subject, but isn't.] The shape of your future here.

[armd]

No. (It isn't an answer that requires a lot of thought, just a hand drifting to the nape of her neck and resting there, rubbing. The habit has an odd history, having graduated from something she used to do to relieve pressure in her shoulder from fighting, into a nervous motion, the cup of her palm across her nape.) I know what this sounds like, but I'm not used to thinking about the 'shape of my future'. (The perks of living in an apocalypse.

If this were an ideal world, though.) I'd like to live my life without making anybody else's worse in the process. If that's possible.

[katabasis]

[Months from now, trudging along through the broken teeth of a city from the place Abby came from, this will make a more dimensional kind of sense. But it isn't unfamiliar in this moment, either, and he is well used to observing a place first as lines and measurements rendered on a chart and only later becoming acquainted with its reality.]

It is. Though anybody else coming to same conclusion as to what is a reasonable way of living will rely almost entirely on their understanding of what is worse. [Is a joke in that halfway way that also isn't, but at the very least is punctuated by a flexing eyebrow and a sniff of humor across the edge of the mug.]

Given how little control you have over that, it's valuable, [he says.] To pick out a landmark for yourself. It makes it considerably easier to determine who is moving in a similar direction, and who is traveling so far opposite that turning to address them becomes counterintuitive.

[He looks at her then, having lowered the mug and laced both his hands loosely about it.]

I don't think you need me to explain that the thing in you which drives you most naturally to anger is extremely good at first convincing you of a certain kind of isolation.

[armd]

(Abby shakes her head slowly. That is one way to put it. It's an easy thing to trudge along with any complicated feelings balled up and stuffed down into some hollow, convince herself she's the only one who has ever had them. Has it ever fucking worked out for her, even once?

She looks at him, catches the edge of his eyebrow raising, and the tiny bit of humour sitting in his expression makes her snort.)

Do you have a landmark?

(It is a personal question, she can acknowledge that (however silently), but an example might do her a bit of good. At least she's gone loose where she sits, neither clenching her cup or her jaw, shoulders slumped, no longer tense. Content to listen to him, if he wishes to speak.)

[katabasis]

[It is—a personal question. Despite it, and in defiance all the black kohl smudged bleakly about his eye sockets tonight and the blunt braced quality of his frame that he so often adopts in every other theater, there is never a point during the pause which follows the inquiry where it seems he might outright refuse her an answer.

Perhaps instead, somewhere out on the horizon there is a shape he has so committed to memory that it's been some time since Flint actually noted any of its features in detail. Being prompted now to describe its shape first requires some examination.

Yes, maybe that's the reason he lingers before producing an answer.]

I've decided that eventually we will arrive at the other side of this war. When that happens, I would like there to have been a place reserved where someone might go should they wish to live outside the whims of Empresses and Divines. Better, if that place's security has been so assured that it's unlikely to require a sword working in its defense.

[It's not without humor that he says,] I'm tired of war, and I would like to go home.

[He'd told Petrana some similar thing once. It hadn't been a lie then.]

[armd]

(Abby spends her half of this lingering silence not looking at Flint again, because she thinks if she turns she'll see him sitting there, giving her a look for asking that. He surprises her by answering. He's been doing a lot of that this evening.)

That's a pretty good landmark. (Simple– not as easily achieved for Abby, but for the first time in her life her purpose does not have to be the same as her faction leader's. Maybe that's why she can't think of anything for herself?

And trying to imagine his home is interesting to her, do pirates have those? When her and Lev were on that boat sailing down the coast it felt like they could have come from anywhere. Home was the cabin, and each other's company. It gives her a brief mental image of Flint turning away from the Gallows as soon as the final sword falls, and walking away into the ocean without looking back.

A lick of cooler air across the back of her neck has her flipping the woolen collar of her coat up to block it.)

... I hope you get there. (Hope it hasn't changed too much, become something unrecognisable.)

[katabasis]

So long as we all do what's required of us, I will. [This has the kind of easy confidence of a legitimate belief. Why else would he be here—in Kirkwall, operating out of that gloomy room on the sixth floor of the Gallows' central tower, and all of them killing themselves in service to a war which presently seems to measure its success by giving ground only very slowly instead of immediately and without significant resistance—if not for that?

He levels a sideways look in Abby's direction; it threatens the imminent surfacing of some fragment of bone dry wit.]

But it's a little late for that to happen tonight and I believe good behavior is somewhat counter to the spirit of the holiday. I would advise you go make some use of the idle hours we have left.

[Surely there are better ways of frittering away the evening than sitting on some rickety box at the elbow of one's division commander.]

[armd]

(She chuckles at that explanation coming off as a thinly veiled order: just do as you're told, so I can get to where I'm going. Okay, okay. And as much as she has genuinely liked this bit of time spent keeping her division commander's company, he is right in telling her to take off for the rest of the night. Maybe she'll go check out the dancing, and the music swelling in the background.

She drains the last bit of her cup.)

Okay.

(Before she pushes herself to stand she tacks on,) Thanks, Flint.

[katabasis]

[The tip of his head is an easy thing, made faintly ridiculous by the kohl blacked into the sockets of his eyes; the black fur mantle and the snarling wolf mask propped up on the top of his head and well out of the range of interfering with his drinking. It isn't Your welcome, but rather—]

Happy Satinalia.

[A small raise of his half empty cup. The gleam in Flint's eye among all that black suggests he knows how improbable those words sound from him. Don't tell anyone; they won't believe you.]