multiversallogs | open log :: time made me soft around the edges

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open log :: time made me soft around the edges

Who: Everyone.
What: The Harvest Festival!
Where: Howl Barrow outdoor park
When: Through the weekend.
Notes: The companion OOC post for this log is here if you have any questions or concerns!
Warnings: Please give me a head's up if a thread contains something that should be edited into this section.

Locations: COSTUME PARTY, COSTUME PARTY - VIP, MARKET STREET, CARNIVAL GAMES, THE PARK.

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No outdoor seasonal event is complete without the opportunity to dunk local clergy in water tanks via hurling blunt objects at them. Several higher ranking priests and priestess of Carme, and two or three TMU professors, are lined up to be dunked for charity. (One particularly famous professor has taken to enthusiastically heckling his students when they miss. He is making his charity a fortune.) Darts for stuffed toys, pie eating contests, and other standards line the canton's central courtyard. There's a small stage for artistic performances, as well – dancers, contortionists, and the like. A handful of wooden benches are strewn before it, occupied by wandering patrons, usually munching on snacks from the market.

Though Ivan and Ilde are both more "dressed up" than properly in costume - though given Ilde's affinity for music, Ivan's half mask is probably the clever jab of someone who lived through several iterations of the opera ghost story and found at least one of them amusing. They look like they are either going to or coming from the VIP party, though they're neither of them in any great hurry.

Ivan pauses, as they pass a particular booth and says, "Wait a moment." He grins, lazily, like a man who is endlessly amused at his own cleverness. (He often is, though Ilde knows it's as much a mask as the Andrew Lloyd Webber knockoff he got god knows where.) "I've something to do, if you'll wait for me?"

Ilde has a mask on a wand, green to match her dress, which she's spending more time using to poke at things with than actually attempting to wear - which is what she does with it now, giving Ivan a jab in the side on principle, seeing as how he probably deserves it for something. Even if she finds his cleverness nearly as amusing as he constantly seems to-

“What am I waiting for?”

"Well, come along if you like, it's not a mystery." He makes his way over to one of the dart games, a row of giant stuffed... well, they could be pandas, if you'd only heard of pandas and never seen one - along the back of the booth.

"I used to beat Mitchell at darts, back home, now and then," he commented, offhand, and he paid his coins to play.

And what are carnival games for, if not showing off for your date a little.

“I don't fail to notice that you only tell me about this once he isn't around to disagree,” she observes, following him to stand a little ways back, where she's not going to accidentally take an elbow while he's demonstrating the might of the modern vampire vs a probably rigged carnival game. “I suppose that's just happy coincidence?”

"If I was going to lie to you about Mitchell, I'd aim a bit higher than his skill at darts," Ivan said, dry but smiling. "Still, darts in a pub and darts in a game are different things."

Mainly in that at the former, you just want to win outright. At a game one wants to put on a bit of a show. He buys his first set of darts, and the first throw is close, but not quite on target. He makes a small show, without over-exaggerating of concentrating before throwing the second. A little better, but still not quite.

"It's not a cheat!" protests a voice, rising from a minor verbal skirmish at one of the dart games. Sherlock Holmes scowls at his accuser.

"You must be, how do you throw perfectly eight times in a row?"

"I calculate the trajectory," he explains, with no small amount of exasperation--honestly, can't everyone do this?

It seems they can't, and his talent for doing so is further deemed an unfair advantage. He's ejected.

He pauses as he moves away, turning up the collar of his wool coat. He's here watching tonight, getting the lay of the land and some sense for how people interact, the culture, the traditions. But he can't sit and openly watch, that could be suspicious. He's got to look like he's taking part.

Perhaps the professors next, he thinks. Surely no one will protest his accuracy when it comes to money for charity?

After the market, Emily has wandered over to the games. She say the end of the overly successful game and comments, "It's the same everywhere - no one likes it when you're good enough it looks easy for you."

It's a sharp insight, direct and accurate, and it gets his attention. "Indeed," he agrees, giving her a pretty blatant once-over, but not in any prurient kind of way. She speaks from experience, he decides; there's a confidence both in her bearing and in the easy way she approaches a stranger to strike up conversation with such a remark.

"You can't win. We celebrate success, but not too much success." There's a shift in his expression that's something approaching a smile, not quite there. "Pretending you're not as talented as you are is disingenuous and more work than it's worth. But you know that already."

"Do I?" she asks, with a grin and a wicked glint in her eye. "I could just be an acute observer of human nature with no talent at all to speak of."

...probably not. She's not sure what his line is, but he's sharp in ways other than his talent for spatial relations, which makes him both intriguing and potentially dangerous. For Emily, there's often a great deal of overlap.

There's a quiet guffaw, very similar to the smile a moment ago--not quite right, like someone who doesn't do it often and is trying it on for size. "An acute, observing eye when it comes to human nature is talent enough. And a damned good one at that."

And interesting, and potentially in a dangerous way. Great minds!

"Sherlock Holmes," he offers.

She offers a hand. "Emily Finch. Do my ears deceive me, or is it Sherlock Holmes of London?" At home, she wouldn't bother asking - either it is or he's good enough to pass - but in Baedal, things go a bit sideways, she's coming to learn.

"I've come from London, yes," he says--I've come because he has only just arrived, within the week. "You've been to the city--or you have an excellent ear for an American."

"Or both." Humility is for things you're actually not good at, apparently. "Though given the spread of origins here, I had to ask. Lots of people evidently come from places I've never heard of at all." Which was curious - slightly worrying, but also interesting.

"It only stands to reason that would be the case." It hasn't happened to him yet, but that's likely a function of his not having met many people yet. Or, more correctly--not having conversed with them, he's come across quite a few people in his explorations of the city.

"So what's your theory? You sound like a man who would have one," she asks, with a small grin.

"I've run through several," he says, in a tone of voice that clearly conveys of course I have theories, "but the simplest answer is often the most correct. And the simplest answer is that some power or force, for reasons unknown to us--"

And therein lies his little bit of uncertainty, for knowing why would go a long way to figuring out how and who--

"--has brought us here, on purpose, with a goal in mind. Something greater than the vague claptrap in the informational brochure. At least, one hopes."

Edited (fff enter key) 2012-11-24 22:14 (UTC)

"We can only hope. That explanation was so vague as to be no explanation at all, and it's disheartening to think you were kidnapped for no reason."

She's still not sure she believes all of the others in her cohort are actually prisoners, but for now she's not tipping that hand.

"I rather suspect they were aiming more for reassurance than information--though they failed on that front, too." His gaze drifts upward slightly as he recalls the brochure's contents. "To many, in the throes of confusion and fear, that brief bit of you'll do fine, you were chosen with a purpose would do, but to anyone who reads carefully, neither enlightenment nor appeasement was really present."

"Lots of words without saying anything useful - sounds like government work to me." Not that others couldn't write that sort of nonsense, but it seemed like the work of some sort of propaganda office; appeal to people's egos, give away nothing in return.

"Indeed. The sort of thing a government pencil-pusher would be instructed to write."

And he thinks of his brother, for a moment. Wonders what Mycroft must be thinking, with him nowhere to be found.

"You're familiar with the type, yes? And the work of government. You've worked for them, or with them, I presume."

She smiles just a little. "A brush here or there." She's not going to go blabbing her connection, even if it doesn't matter here. She's not sure yet, what she believes, and no sense being foolhardy. She leavens the lie by omission with something true:

"My dad used to say that government spent half its time telling you how much it's doing and half its time making sure nothing gets done."

There's a little twitch of a smile in return. "Likewise." He's been hired to consult here and there, and of course his brother's deep involvement in the British government came to bear (though at times he wishes it didn't). "Enough to know your father was wise in his observation."

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open log :: time made me soft around the edges

CARNIVAL GAMES

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