multiversallogs | It's like paradise, spread out with a butter knife

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It's like paradise, spread out with a butter knife :: [OPEN]

Who: EVERYONE
What: Réjean has decided that more people ought to celebrate and help raise a bit of dosh for one of his favourite bars. See: flyer.
Where: The Apache.
When: Misdi night and into the wee hours of the morning.
Warnings: Discussion of Pickman's manky feet.

The Apache is much the same as it always is: dimly lit, with the jukebox playing in the background, and the bartender serving whatever's on tap. Tonight, the bar is packed with people from all across the city, different cantons and cohorts, all out to celebrate surviving the fungal plague. Patrons are encouraged to buy tickets for a door prize with the proceeds going to repair the damage tunnelling ants made to the cellar.

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Ruby turns up a little late in the game, slinking in with big eyes and thinly disguised uncertainty; is it really wise, she wonders, to go to a party on her very first night in a new place? A new place that abducted her on that very same day? She knows now (with her usual Knowing) that she is not dreaming, and that places like this exist and have maybe always existed, and she doesn't know how she'll get home, but that can wait until tomorrow. She's not one to pass up an adventure.

Ruby is not dressed for a party, in her shirtdress and outdoorsy boots. She sidles along the edges of the throng of people, a wallflower, and she makes herself a little invisible for just a second, though it's an illusion more flimsy than usual and she isn't trying very hard. There's a group of party-goers drunk and wildly dancing in the middle of the bar, pushing together, colliding half the time--there's not a lot of room, it seems like, but they're carried away by alcohol and music...and something else, though she can't pinpoint what exactly has induced it. It feels like relief, and she remembers what people told her on the Network about the city being attacked. So it's a celebration--even though she wasn't present, it is, at least, amicably shared good fortune.

Ruby pushes out her lower lip and blows air upward to get her hair out of her face, simultaneously rolling her eyes toward the ceiling, as though saying here I go. She then swings exuberantly forward into the throng of dancing strangers, joining them with a seamless ease, the quickly drawn-up invisibility spell slipping off her shoulders like an old shawl. Her bright hair whips behind her when she turns, and she thinks, as a vaguely amused afterthought, it's lucky she didn't get anyone in the face.

(One of the many hazards of hair that long.)

In those outdoorsy boots of hers, at least, she can be sure of her balance.

Edited 2011-08-09 20:39 (UTC)

The air feels different, and Ilde in the midst of that throng isn't entirely sure why; not bad, she decides, it doesn't throw her off-balance, only something has changed and she feels as if she should change, too, in its direction. She'd been halfway to starting a conversation when she turns away without a warning, drifting in search of what altered her evening, and the dim bar lights catching on Ruby's hair like a candle flickering in the corner of her eye seems appropriate to the metaphor that hasn't occurred to her yet but should.

"Dance with me," she says, beaming, blue-black eyes out of place in a face that is otherwise illusion. Sometimes it makes more sense to look without a filter, but it might just be all in her mind.

Edited 2011-08-09 20:55 (UTC)

Some people might have been startled by the sudden approach and the raven's wing colored eyes, but Ruby responds as though this is utterly natural (flame is not an inappropriate reference to make, here); she alights with a slowly blooming grin, and catches Ilde's hand in her own. What she senses there is a deep and acutely felt loss, but animation, too, as though life is being breathed back into something that had been balanced on the cusp of a great, terrible quiet. She also tastes blood in her mouth, which is, incidentally, also bright and red, but she knows that sometimes you have to kill your way out of a hole, and that could mean anything. It could mean more ants, for Christ's sake.

And regardless, it's not going on right now, is it?

So what she projects back is that same feeling of sloughing off the old and the unnecessary remnants of the past, and it's hard for any of those remnants to catch two people who are dancing this fast, anyway.

Sometimes in the water Ilde feels weightless and perfect and not still, never still, always in motion but moving with and not against, like she's where she's meant to be; she remembers reaching for that feeling and never being quite able to grasp it, before, when parts of her felt sluggish and wrong and not her own. Twirling and laughing and moving, now, she feels like water and the heat of someone else's magic only underscores it, draws it into contrast, sharp and lovely and deep, deep down.

She isn't expecting the roll of feeling that swings her shoulders back and makes her arch, twisting her free hand up above her like she's filled to bursting - but it's good, even with the remembered taste of copper blood. (Or- especially.)

Probably this is not just the alcohol.

While arguably there is no one quite 'like Ruby', something that can be asserted not because Ruby is deeply special but because she comes from a world that's utterly bizarre in its own particular way (phoenixes that proclaim their love, Witch Babies, things like that), this is, instantaneously, about as close as she's come. Something about it is evocative of a much more old-fashioned kind of dancing, Maypoles and girls in white dresses, as though they should have ribbon in their hands to spin and spin.

When the song slows, so must they, movement corresponding to the music like they're made of it, but that doesn't dampen Ruby's smile.

Ilde's still smiling when they finally stop, coming away from the other dancers like the inexorable flow of water, and for a moment she doesn't know what to say. There is nothing to say, it seems like, just that somehow she should be exactly like this-

"I'm Ilde," she settles on, aware she's still holding Ruby's hand and serenely disinclined to immediately let go. "Hello."

Ruby is fine with this, though extended contact amplifies the sensation she got earlier--she breathes in magic, and lets it dance around them, even though the song has changed to something else.

"Ruby," she offers, and then laughs, a little, primarily at herself. "I just got here today."

It's not really an explanation, but it is, at least, true.

"What are you?" It's the kind of fascinated question she's usually more tactful about, more careful, more aware that people don't necessarily enjoy being asked something like that; it's not that she doesn't know there's a line to be crossed, now, it's just that she's a little drunk and the most prevailing thought in her head right now is gosh you're pretty, let's be friends. She doesn't mean to be rude, she just sort of wants to rest her head on Ruby's shoulder and revel a little in the strangeness. Her curiosity about magic and other supernaturals is limitless, but this is some kind of first.

The question doesn't jolt her out of this immediate friendliness, per se, but it makes her pause and think. What is she? If she knew the other witches in Baedal, she'd know she's not quite the same as them, and she has an inkling, anyway, but at the same time, that's how she's begun to think of herself. She ducks her head, though she maintains her black-eyed eye contact, and shrugs.

"I don't know. I'm just...Ruby."

(The origins of her ancestors remain a mystery to her.)

"What are you?" Bluntness for bluntness seems appropriate.

"A fairy," Ilde says, promptly; what kind is slightly debatable, beyond some generalities, but she makes no secret of it and there's a certain pride underlying the declaration. "I'm a fairy."

Ruby looks closely at Ilde for a moment, and then nods in confirmation, as if to say so you are. Her body language is still uncommonly familiar, for this being their first meeting, even considering Ruby's general catlike amiability.

"A river fairy, aren't you? A nixie."

That's-

-actually, that's a little unexpected. The word 'nixie' is not one she's heard before, and she's briefly bewildered by it before it occurs to her that not everyone is making this up as they go along.

"Am I? That sounds as if I'm a pixie, only wetter." Now is perhaps not the most ideal time she's ever attempted some sort of meaningful conversation. "I didn't know that. Can you tell those things? That's clever as anything."

"Well--a bit," Ruby admits; her gifts are as unpredictable and mercurial as she can be, but they're somehow stronger in Baedal. Or perhaps there's just a lot more to notice. "I did some research on these things not very long ago."

She pauses.

"We should have a drink. You really didn't know?"

A drink sounds like a very good idea, Ilde decides, and she starts moving in the direction of the bar accordingly; at some point, presumably, she'll realize she's still holding onto Ruby and think to let go. "No one to tell me," she shrugs, absently adjusting the sit of her skirt with her free hand as they go. She leaves it at that, here - a party isn't the best place to go into her history as a captive of Prometheus - but it's almost tangibly not all. "I've been making it up as I go, I suppose-"

"That sounds familiar." It really does. (And if she knew as much as she should, she'd understand how distressing it is that her first ever spell was one of invisibility. That's powerful magic a newbie shouldn't be capable of freestyling, much less performing.)

At the bar, Ruby orders a gin and tonic, citing gin's appeal to Ilde: "It tastes like Christmas, have you ever noticed that?"

"Does it? I drink brandy more." After considering the possibility of tasting Christmas, she orders the same, pleasantly curious, and at long last lets go of the other woman so she can rest her hands on the bar, swinging forward against it and leaning there, in some part just for balance.

The last Christmas she remembers was...loud, the house filling up with people and colour and arguments and music and alcohol over the course of the month. She hadn't liked a December birthday as a child until she'd realized she could essentially con her father into turning the entire season into a month long birthday festival, which hadn't been a bad deal, all told.

It seems vaguely appropriate that thinking about alcohol leads to thinking about her family, she thinks, absently.

Brandy reminds Ruby vaguely of her father--but then alcohol in general does, too, in a really negative way, so she tends to only drink lightly. It's something she's trying to repurpose and reclaim; these experiences shouldn't be denied her because of where she comes from, she supposes.

Their gin and tonics appear, and Ruby takes a decently long pull off hers.

When she puts it down (without coughing), she also informs Ilde, thoughtfully: "I think dives like this make their alcohol extra-strong, somehow."

"I can't hardly tell," Ilde laughs, quietly, her fingertips against the sides of her glass, "it all goes straight to my head just the same way no matter what it is." Really. Even piss-poor weak beer would have approximately the same moderately hilarious effect on her, which is presumably why her sipping is a bit more careful.

"Are we going to have to carry you out of this bar?" Ruby inquires, with a sidelong smile. Whoever 'we' is--she assumes Ilde's got a few people here who know her already.

"Sometimes Sonja puts me over her shoulder," is the blithe response to that, in the tone of someone who thinks this is an extremely charming thing for her to do. (Sonja is the only person who can do this without receiving a protest - usually issued through the direct means of 'teeth' - because it's all right when she does it. Ilde just doesn't like to feel helpless.)

"Well, as long as you don't mind, I suppose," Ruby says, thoughtfully. She can't imagine being lifted (at least by most other women; very tall and relatively strong men could probably manage, given that she's leggy but slender), but then, Ruby usually doesn't give the vibe that you should try.

'A stare that can stop a man at a thousand yards,' someone said to her once. She hasn't had any cause to show that in Baedal, though, which surprises her.

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rhinemaid - 2011-08-15 17:05 (UTC) - Expand

Ruby might not think she's dressed for a party, but Njoki appreciates that someone else has gone similarly causal. Comfortable in her own t-shirt and jeans, Ki has been either threatened or cajoled into dancing and while it's not something she regularly indulges in, she's not too bad.

Ruby engages Njoki in dancing at once, getting vague flashes all the while -- everyone here is so different, and she begins to wonder if this is a colony for the different. Misfit City. She couldn't help liking it, if that were true.

The young woman reminds him of home. Not the bustling streets of Metropolis, but the unexpected adopted hometown of Smallville where land can stretch for miles with nothing but the sun to disturb it.

Lex doesn't make it a habit of dancing, but the way Ruby is dressed and moves catches his attention and he doesn't want to let the night go without at least saying hello.

There is a break in the music and that's when he chooses to approach. "I don't think I've seen you before. Are you new to the city?"

In return, Ruby, upon his approach, takes in his smart clothes and much more professional appearance. She smiles at him, reaching up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. She's a little ruffled from her dancing, and still a bit breathless, but not so much it's a hindrance to conversation.

"I just got here today," she confesses, "but I thought this would be a way to...get situated, if we can't go home yet."

She's hanging hopes on that 'yet', mind you; it's what's keeping her relaxed.

"Have you been here a long time?"

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