OPEN :: A golden bird was singing

[baedalites]

Who: Everyone!
What: St Kelley's evening
Where: The Apache and surrounding environs.
When: Veerdi evening.
Notes:
(1) The topic threads are just suggestions; if you've got somewhere else that your characters simply must be, make your own thread.
(2) All mementos will appear overnight in some part of your character's apartment.
(3) Dance!

St Kelley's is one of the more sedate occasions in Baedal, at least as holidays go. It passes more or less unnoticed by the majority of the population as many of them feel it doesn't concern them. It's not their holiday; it's for the others. Those with severed ties and broken hearts. The temple and church preach that it's a time for reflection or for glorifying the generosity of the gods. It's one of the few days on which no one looks askance at first generation Citizens mourning their missing loved ones publicly.

As night rolls around and floating lanterns are set to sea, the Apache in Mog Hill prepares to accept guests from the newer cohorts. It's something that happens every year, making it a practical tradition. The alcohol will be cheaper for first timers, and the music will be kept at a reasonable level.

Comments

[gwynn]

"Oh, that's so pretty! Dang, you got something good. I saw someone who got like... a hat. Not even a good hat, it was like, a Yankees cap. The Yankees!" That's not going to mean anything to Shrieky and she knows it, but she hopes that means he will instantly take her side there. Megan would never steer him wrong, after all. "Yeah, I got something of my mum's, which I think is the gods taking a big shit on me, but it's like, whatever, you know?" Like whatever indeed.

[wontturntofoam]

Megan appears to have figured out exactly how Shrieky makes decisions, because the moment she derisively mentions the Yankees, he's pulling an unimpressed face. The terrible, terrible Yankees. "I would imagine that it would be one thing to receive a warm, or attractive hat, but that sounds like a terrible thing to be delivered."

He goes to take a sip of his beer, before deciding that really, he should probably share, and pushes his glass across the table to Megan, "Would you like this? I can fill up an empty one for myself, because I know who was drinking from them, but it seems like it would be impolite to offer someone else's glass to you." And going to the bar for a clean one is obviously out of the question. Shrieky grabs the abandoned glass of one of the Xenians he'd arrived with, and reaches for the pitcher.

"You got something of your mothers, though? Isn't that a good thing? Did you not like her?"

[gwynn]

Excellent, that didn't take any effort at all. What other correct opinions can she instill in Shrieky before someone confuses him with their evil and wrong thoughts? The possibilities are endless! "Yeah! It sucks to be that jerk, I guess." What... they're not a jerk just because they're a Yankees fan, calm down, girl.

But she laughs at his logic when it comes to beer glasses -- "I promise you I've drank out of weirder things than some stranger's glass," she says. She'll take it, though, there is no reality in which Megan will turn down offered alcohol. "Not exactly worried about cooties. Cheers."

On the subject of her necklace, she frowns, smooths her expression out immediately and plasters that sunny smile back on her face. "Mum's a bitch," Megan says, as cheerfully as she'd say anything else. "My family's all fucked up. I was hoping for something from one of my buds, or something, but oh, well."

It's not that she hates her mother or that she doesn't think of her sometimes, but it's easier for her in terms of her mental health to have that clear divide -- her versus her mother. It hurts less that way, thinking about the things she said about Megan's mutation. How she failed to protect her.

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky scoots in towards the table a little more closely, his expression pulling down into an earnest little frown, "I'm sorry to hear that. It was always my understanding that the relationship between a mother and her children was more significant than any other."

He fills his new glass with beer, frowning ponderously, "When I would see mothers and their offspring together, they seemed very... active in the guarding of their children. I was always really quite jealous of them."

Almost all that Shrieky has seen of mothers has involved monitoring their children's proximity to the moat, so he might be speaking from a point of bias here.

[gwynn]

Megan pauses with her glass halfway to her face, her eyebrows going up. "You didn't know your mum?" She sounds alarmed and saddened by the thought -- and now feels a little guilty, because her mother wasn't perfect, but at least she was there. She's known a lot of people from non-nuclear families, but mostly people who never met their dads, or whose parents were separated or nearly separated, like hers. "That's so sad."

[wontturntofoam]

"I spent almost all of my childhood alone, actually. The significance of not having parents, specifically, was sort of lost on me. Someone explained it all to me later, but I think he may have oversimplified it all somewhat." Shrieky doesn't sound particularly disheartened by any of this. Parents were always something that he sort of fancied, but which he imagined he could have done without, if he'd had all the other things that he'd wanted. He pauses at her final comment, "It is sad though, growing up alone. I'm glad you think so."

Delicious vindication of his issues.

[gwynn]

"Oh my God, that's so sad. I can't even imagine. Just, like -- being alone, I mean." Megan can't even live without constantly texting other people, checking her Facebook, her Twitter -- although with the absence of the latter here, it's more checking the Network every five minutes. "But! You're here now, to the realm of awesome people? And booze?"

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky smiles, a little reassuringly. He does like having someone acknowledge that his life was a source of great sadness and that he has good cause for feeling sorry for himself, but... at the same time, he doesn't actually want Dragonfly to feel upset, even if it is only on his behalf. "I am here now! And I have booze, and I have our cohort, and I am surrounded by people almost constantly!" Keeping his voice utterly earnest, he adds to this: "I am most happy here. Beyond the bounds of any other happiness that I have ever known."

[gwynn]

"I'll drink to that!" And drink to that she does, downing the rest of the glass in one go -- which, to be fair, she stops after to cough, hits her chest, and then lets out the tiniest of burps. Because she's a fucking lady, okay. "'Scuze me."

[wontturntofoam]

"You are excused!" And there he goes, cheerily topping her up from what's left in the pitcher, and... it's probably safe to say that Shrieky is not going to be the best influence when it comes to helping Megan to moderate her alcohol consumption.

"So what posession of your mothers were you given?"