all time ever does is pass ( closed )

[elegiaque]

WHO: teen girl squad* (* none of them are teenagers, abby, clarisse, gwenaëlle) (old men may cameo)
WHAT: a slumber party
WHEN: during Camp Out 9:50, loosely before various lesbians leave or arrive.
WHERE: La Souveraineté.
NOTES: I definitely did this starter a week ago when I said I was doing it.

One of the many benefits of being Gwenaëlle's friend (or it's a benefit, anyway) is this: if the houseboat is not exactly an oasis of calm (three men, Gwenaëlle, a dog, a cat, several birds, a fire-breathing dracolisk,) then it does feature one. The bath has its own room on one of the upper stories, private, comfortable, with a vanity and seating and towels heated by hot stones if Guilfoyle gets enough advance notice. The door locks and while there is certainly room in the bath for more than one person (probably, if they were very friendly with one another, about four) there is no expectation that it be shared.

(Though Small Yngvi likes it enough that it pays to be mindful when closing the door, in case of being unexpectedly less alone than previously thought.)

So: the bath. Due to the number of people who live aboard, nowadays, using it is easy but needs some degree of planning to ensure availability, which likewise means that it only makes sense to arrange a day that suits more than one of them, and then the prospect of having gone to all that trouble to be clean and go back out into a camp blowing work-dust this way and that before one's hair is even dry makes no sense at all, which is how it comes to be that it's actually just practical and sensible and really the only reasonable way forward that Gwenaëlle arrange bedding and dinner in the gallery's conversation pit and Clarisse and Abby should stay, obviously.

She is working oil through her own damp hair, methodically, a robe wrapped around the only sort of nightgown she owns (indecent without the robe); she has, naturally, offered the lend of their like to Abby and Clarisse, as well as a sampling of various costly Orlesian lotions and potions. “Do you need your hair braided? I sort of miss getting to do it with other people, it's been forever.”

Gwenaëlle has a mind like a steel trap for loves come and gone; it is almost certain she could be unsettlingly specific about how long.

Comments

[laruetheday]

Clarisse is making it pretty obvious that she's probably never done this before. She keeps reaching down and patting the fabric of her robe like it's some kind of strange, soft animal, and right now she's unscrewing the cap of one of Gwenaëlle's many, many lotions and giving it a sniff like it might poison her.

Huh. Not bad. Kind of... sweet, or something? Flowery? Definitely not citrus. That's about as specific as she can get with this kind of thing. Gently, she squeezes a pea-sized amount onto her index finger and rubs it with her thumb.

At Gwen's question, she looks to Abby, waiting to see what her answer's gonna be. All her life she'd just assumed that real sleepovers were nothing like this, that it was just Hollywood bullshit, but it turns out that some people actually do wear robes and braid each other's hair. Go figure.

"French braid. Do it."

[armd]

Need is a funny word to use for this experience. Abby doesn't need any of it but she does like it, actually; it's nice wearing the loose, soft robe and having her hair down, fanned out across her back. She is watching Gwenaëlle finger-comb oil through hers and noting how it makes everything smooth and shiny, the appearance of being wet but in a fashionable way. The different smells from all the assorted products are fighting for a spot up her nose but she doesn't mind that yet. She is looking with great interest at a little row of bottles with brush lids, because she thinks they could be nail polish. Abby hasn't seen nail polish in years.

When Clarisse looks at her, she shrugs.

"We could make a train of braiding hair. Gigi does yours, and you can do mine."

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle has missed this— the sort of easy, familiar camaraderie of the sort of friendships where one can find a little circle of hands and hair. It's warm, and there's wine, and she says, “Perfect,” and it's a little thing, really. This is all just little things, the scent of all these oils and creams and the colours of her nail varnishes (—not much variety, shades of pearl and gold, some creamier, some nearly brown), a friend calling her Gigi.

It's — just good. Don't they deserve just good, a bit.

“Here,” wiping her hands off on a cloth, shaking her hair back behind her. “I learned most of my braids from— it's, uh, my ex-husband and I had a lover for a while, and he used to like to do it. I woke up once and he'd braided Thranduil and I together, I only noticed because I tried to get up to let Hardie out and our hair pulled. Also I was stoned out of my fucking mind.”

Still, a bit. What a morning that had been.

[laruetheday]

"Okay," Clarisse agrees, "just don't be mad if I mess it up."

She won't, though. It's a braid, she's not incompetent. It just won't be anything fancy. Clarisse clambers over to sit in front of Gwen and runs a hand through her own hair. It's still damp, and sort of wavy, though it'll dry straight. She's gesturing for Abby to come sit in front of her, but gets distracted halfway through because...

"You were married? And you guys had a lover?" She sounds sort of scandalized, but actually the ex-husband is the more shocking information. This is wild.

[armd]

"I'm gonna be so mad," Abby says, clearly joking, and gets up so she can go to where Clarisse is patting for her to sit down, cross-legged. Clarisse's reaction is so funny, she doesn't even have to look at her face to know the scandalised expression that she's making right now.

Maybe Abby hasn't heard this exact story from Gwen before but she has heard... others, so she really can't bring herself to feel shocked by this latest piece of information. Only bad jokes, now.

"Here? Like, literally here? Not where I'm sitting, right—"

[elegiaque]

“The boat was very much post marriage,” Gwenaëlle says, primly, instead of anything about whether or not she's fucked Stephen Strange in the gallery's conversation pit since then. (Probably not. There's a lot of windows and sometimes he says meaningful things about the state of his knees.) “Anyway, yes,”

hair braiding waits for no bitch; she is combing out and sectioning Clarisse's hair even as she speaks, her hands assured and experienced. No untoward tugging or snagged hairs,

“I was married. There was a lot of political math involved in Thranduil digging up a Chantry mother who was prepared to marry a fucking enormous rifter elf to an aristocratic human, even one born on the wrong side of the blanket and subsequently disowned, and regardless of my opinion on all of that, we did pave the way for Wysteria to marry de Fonce.” She reflects on that for a moment, then: “Still not sure what that was about.”

[laruetheday]

Gwen combing her hair feels ssoooo good, for a few seconds Clarisse just sits there blissing out on it before she remembers that she is supposed to be braiding Abby's hair too. She begins to comb her fingers through it and section it out, going slowly so she doesn't pull.

"Would you ever get married again?" she asks Gwen. Her own mom never married after meeting her father, and to be fair how could she really, with Clarisse around? But she never seemed like she was missing anything, like she was upset about it.

"It's supposed to be this huge thing that you dream about and plan for. For girls, at least," she adds. "Not me, though."

[armd]

Abby doesn't have any hair to braid at all but she's more than happy to sit and listen to story time, slowly cracking her knuckles, hands gathered in her lap. She thinks the last person who braided her hair was maybe Derrica; she fed a ribbon into it. Abby still has it, a bright yellow skein, but now she uses it as a bookmark.

"Is it?" In response to Clarisse. "I've never dreamed about it."

... Though, in fairness, having big, dreamy, future plans always feels weird when you're living in an apocalypse but even here, in Thedas, she's not thinking about it. But maybe Gwenaëlle did. "What was your wedding like?"

[elegiaque]

The face she makes at the prospect of being married again isn't enthusiastic, although that has very little to do with the fact of her own marriage—

“That depends on which wedding you mean,” she says, “we had two. My husband was a rifter elf— among his people, it's sort of like, they're you know, like swans. Mate for life. It was one of the reasons we know as much as we do about how rifter bodies are different, which is ... a long and weird story, anyway, the point of it is, sex is a commitment for elves from Arda. Inherently. So my first wedding was the better one, I sewed us matching outfits and we were visiting Nevarra City before it was overrun by the dead, and we rode his massive fuck off elk into the woods and fucked about it and then as far as he was concerned we were married, which was— I liked that one. At the time we were still keeping it quiet, so it was a very private thing, altogether.”

It's not an uncomplicated memory, but there are certainly worse memories she has than Thranduil, beautiful and naked just outside Nevarra City, promising to love her forever.

“Our public wedding was later, it was all politics, he was making a big show of converting as an Andrastian and it was all, of course rifters are people, look, they want to get married and be part of our lives— I chose a dress and showed up when I was told and Lexie was doing extremely precision work keeping me just drunk enough not to bolt and not so drunk I actually said my opinion to anyone present. Worse than the void. I did it because it was important to him and I loved him, but I can't think of many good reasons why I'd do it again. But marriage was really more of a nightmare, growing up— my lord and my mother always wanted to arrange a good marriage for me, and I always thought, how fucked would I be if I'd married some duke and he found out about my birth mother? I'll get my fucking throat cut. Easy for them to say don't worry, no one will find out, it's not their throat. And everyone did find out.”

[laruetheday]

Clarisse huffs out her nose at of course rifters are people—gross.

"If I had to do it," she says, like there's actually some chance she's going to get forced into the prospect during her lifetime, "I'd want to do it the way you had your first one. Private, I mean."

Not necessarily by fucking around in the woods, though that wouldn't be the absolute last place on her list either. She and Ellie have been known to fuck around in the woods sometimes.

"In ancient Greece, marriage ceremonies took three days," she adds, which, like... ew, what the fuck? Two days too many if you ask her. "Except in Sparta. There, the bride would get fake kidnapped, forced to dressed as a man, her head shaved, and then dumped in some dark room to wait until her husband showed up."

places this so delicately you dont even notice how late it is

[armd]

"Two—" Abby repeats, in a funny voice underneath of Gwenaëlle's explanation, glad for being last in the braid line and therefore facing away from the both of them. Whatever expression she just made in response was probably rude. "And that head-shaving thing is fucked up. Super romantic.

"We had weddings up at the FOB, the, uh — forward operating base, I mean." She shrugs. "I went to some. Apparently, before the outbreak you had to be 'ordained'," air quotes are happening, held up so they can be seen, "before you could marry people together, but I don't really get why. Like, it had to be somebody's job. You couldn't just ask anybody to marry you."

Somebody explained it to her once, but obviously it didn't stick. "It's stupid. If I was getting married, I'd want a friend to marry me. To the person I'm marrying, I mean." Clarification.

[elegiaque]

“There was a rifter who thought it should be a week,” Gwenaëlle says, not unlike the way one might tell a ghost story around a fire. Can you fucking believe. “But you do need a Chantry sister if you want it legally recognised, and I sort of don't see the point in marrying someone other than for that,”

what, for love? She's done it and she still isn't convinced it was necessary. In the way of his people, it had felt meaningful— in the tradition of hers, less so.

“Marriage is about assets and ownership and whose children inherit what and cementing partnerships and alliances; I don't think there's really any point to doing it if none of that matters. It isn't as if marriage has all that much to do with who you love or how you do it. I mean, Maker knows I promise I'll only legally acknowledge your children has ever stopped someone from having bastards. If it did, I wouldn't exist.”

[laruetheday]

"Neither would I." Clarisse pokes her tongue out in concentration and redoes a section of Abby's braid. There, that's better.

"I think the marriage thing is more complicated than that. Sometimes. Sure it's about legal stuff and assets and all, but sometimes it's about being treated like a person." Or something, whatever, don't look at her.

"I still wouldn't do it unless the person I was with really wanted to," she adds. "Besides, my mom would be pissed if I didn't invite her." So, really, she's off the hook completely here in Thedas.

[armd]

"I thought it was about making a commitment," Abby says, half-laughing, turning her head even though it's gonna fuck up Clarisse's work. "In front of everybody, so they know you really mean it." People in the novels she reads marry each other for money and power, and as quickly as possible, but that's... books, it's exaggerated. "Aren't you supposed to do it for love?"

The moment she says it she feels weirdly childish, but — nobody bothered getting married for any other reason back home. Not that she knew of, anyway.

Nobody had 'assets', so what was the point.

[elegiaque]

Probably there's some sort of irony in Gwenaëlle saying, immediately, “In a novel, sure. My mother was trying to get me a duke before she decided she'd settle for someone who'd bury me in the countryside where I couldn't embarrass her. I just didn't want to end up married to someone who'd kill my children if he found out about my other mother.”

She says it very flippantly, now—

that defining fear of so many years, defanged now. That she'd be vulnerable, that her children would be vulnerable; that what might happen to them would be her fault.

“What's more of a commitment, marrying someone so they can't leave or trusting that they'll keep choosing not to? I mean, some people do find marriage romantic,” she allows, “I've known people who marry for love. But that I was married and that I loved him during our marriage were completely separate things, to me. All the romance was what I chose. Not the things I did for people to look at. But that's more like what you were saying,” tugging Clarisse's hair, lightly, “it was about Thranduil being a person.”

What are gay rights.

[laruetheday]

Dammit, Abby. Clarisse huffs loudly and chases the end of Abby's braid with her hands as she turns her head, trying to keep it from unraveling with limited success. Now she needs to redo the last few inches again. Despite her loud huff she doesn't really mind it, though. She's been enjoying the Braid Train.

"All these things can be true," she intones. "Depends on your circumstances. But you're" (Gwenaëlle) "too cynical, and you" (Abby) "are too romantic."

It's really a good thing they have Clarisse here to be the one in the middle, huh.

[armd]

"I'm not," Abby argues, but she's smiling a bit which ruins her point. "I'm a normal amount of romantic, most people think marriage is for love." Like, come on. That's why so many people bother doing it, obviously. She takes up her glass of wine. Clarisse is redoing a section of her hair and tugging a little, maybe to signal that Abby shouldn't have moved her head but too bad. In sipping her wine she is moving it a little bit more.

"Do you know how your parents met?"

This is an open question, to anybody in the room who may like to answer it.

[elegiaque]

“Ye-es, but it's not going to make me sound less cynical. My grandparents married for love, if it makes you animals feel better. My grandfather fucked his way into a title and my father fucked my way out of one, which isn't,”

years out from the harshest sting of it and building a life that she finds satisfying, not merely resolutely accepting the consequences of everyone else's actions come down upon her head,

“not funny. And two of my grandfathers were in love with my lord's mother, that's doubly romantic, I assume.”

[laruetheday]

"Dude, I was on your side." Well, half. "Now I'm an animal too?" Pfft.

Okay, this braid is going to be lopsided. Clarisse is officially giving up on trying to control what Abby does with her head, she's just rolling with it now.

Also, that story is quintessential Gwen. No wonder her views on romance and marriage are so... what they are. Not like Clarisse has any room to talk on that front, though, so she can't judge. She shrugs both shoulders.

"I don't know a lot of the details. Just that my mom was finishing up her first five years of active duty in the air force when she met my dad. She'd been planning on staying in, but then she didn't," because of Clarisse, obviously. "I don't think they were in love. The gods get really infatuated with certain mortals and then forget about them after a while, so he was gone before I was even born. But my mom never really dated anyone else after that." Also because of Clarisse, let's be real.

"She'd never tell me who he was when I asked," she adds as an afterthought. "Only that he was military."

[armd]

Hopefully she's still rolling with it when Abby fully turns her head to look at Clarisse incredulously. "Wait, you didn't find out who your dad was until going to the camp? What was your mom's plan, exactly?" How do you even begin to keep something like that secret? Or think that it's okay to? Weird.

Abby is starting to think that she, the person born in the middle of an apocalypse, had the most normal upbringing of everybody here.

"My dad met my mom in college." She shrugs. There's nothing much more to say about it than that, really. "She died after I was born, but he had photos of her around. He kept one in his wallet."

[elegiaque]

Prepared to quibble about how easy it is to not tell people things about their heritage, people do it all the time, Gwenaëlle manages to remember who and what Clarisse's father actually is before she says something that would ordinarily be completely fair in worlds without 23andme but here and now would be powerfully dumb. Anyway, imagine thinking Clarisse could ever be less than remarkable.

“I didn't think any portraits of my birth mother existed, but the one in the foyer,”

the slightly racy one of Guenievre dressed in the late Comte's shirt and jewelry,

“I found it in my lord's things when I was shutting up his house. I don't have one of my other mother, though. I think I'd have been a lot less stressed if no one had ever told me about them,” is just a fact, really, “but that would've been a lot easier than whatever your mother thought was going to happen, probably,” to Clarisse.

Elfblooded means there's nothing about her that's discernibly elven. Clarisse is, any reasonable person might agree, fucking discernible.

[laruetheday]

Oh my god. Okay, she is giving up on the braid for now.

"She didn't exactly have a better option." Clarisse can read Abby's tone, and the look on her face, and is jumping to defend her mother's honor. She doesn't want Abby and Gwen to think she was a selfish person, that's all. "Once a half-blood realizes what they are, they start attracting monsters, like, all the time. She probably figured if I knew I'd just have to go away even sooner. It was better to make me wait."

Awkward to say, since that's one of those things she sort of resents her mom for, even if she understands why it happened. It was better, but it still felt bad. It's not like she grew up thinking she was normal. She knew that she wasn't, just not why.

"Even after I found out my dad was a god, I didn't know which one," Clarisse adds, mostly so they won't be dwelling on the first part. "You have to wait for your godly parent to claim you. It's this huge honor if it happens, and until they do it, you have to live in the Hermes cabin. Since he's the god of travelers, he'll take anyone. I was there for a few months, but I knew kids who had to live there for years." Like... forever.

And that's her little primer on how to raise a demigod, something that nobody is good at, apparently.