losttruths (losttruths) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-04-29 20:38:00 |
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Perdita had sat through the performance at the Founder’s Festival wide-eyed and rapt. She had always loved theater, even when growing up in stuffy Anjou. Plays were an escape from the real world, where no one could talk to you about how you slouched too much, or how silly it was to want to leave the city. And now, there was an added bonus to attending a play: getting support a good friend. When Arielle Chiaro appeared at the Founders play’s curtain call, Perdita cheered and clapped the loudest. Later, Perdita quietly entered The Spoony Bard (an easy feat--compared to the din inside, just about any sort of noise could be considered quiet), the local tavern where the play’s after party was being held. Was visiting a friend while she attended a party some kind of faux-pas, Perdita wondered as she scanned the room for Ari. Although she couldn’t spot Ari just yet, perhaps Ari could spot her. Even in the crowd that made up The Spoony Bard, Perdita stood out like a parrot among pigeons, with a black dress patterned with patches of a dozen different colors, and bright red scarf tied around her neck. It was only by virtue of coincidence that Ari spotted her at all, as she passed from the bar fruity (and sadly virgin) drink in hand, her aim one of the tables near the stage which was occupied by whichever bards were in attendance and felt the urge to play. One way or another, it always worked out here; she’d gone through dozens of instruments and genres on that stage over the years. Tonight, though, she wasn’t planning on contributing, only enjoying. A woman was permitted a night to celebrate her success, now wasn’t she? She spotted the drab dress before she realized who wore it; her slightly confused expression became delighted as she detoured to the door. “Well! Imagine seeing you here, Perdita!” And dressed, she did not say, like an urchin. One of these days… Well, that was a thought for another day, and one did not need a fine dress to have a fine time. The dress, with its multicolor patches, was one of Perdita’s favorites. The more an outfit looked like something Anaïs Laertes would cringe towards, the more Perdita loved it. The young scholar beamed at Ari. “Ari!” she cried. “Oh, Ari, I saw the whole play! You were magnificent, I don’t think anyone’s played a better Rhavanni before or will, for that matter. And the conjuring! Either you’ve secretly been hiding the most amazing talent with magic I’ve ever seen, or you’re an excellent stage magician.” She paused. “And I imagine you had an brilliant machinist team, too, I suppose.” The sounds of cheers and laughter from the bar reminded Perdita of the slight concern she had just before finding Ari. “Oh, dear! It’s not too a terrible breach in etiquette to attend a party you haven’t been invited to, is it? I wanted to congratulate you immediately after the show, but I couldn’t get backstage, and then when I heard some of the crew members mention an after party, well,” she shrugged, “I assumed you’d be here! I’d be be a very poor friend if I didn’t at least try to congratulate you in person.” Ari laughed. “We’re not so formal as to require invitations around here,” she said. “It’s a tavern open to the public, isn’t it? I don’t mind your presence in the least, so I don’t see why anyone else would. Besides, bards and etiquette rarely go well together unless we’re making nice with nobles, and tonight isn’t about that. Unless the Duke shows up, as he did last year,” she added thoughtfully. “But then, he’s not the typical sort of noble.” She directed Perdita to the bar, said to the bartender, “Regular pricing,” before turning to her younger friend and saying, “unless you play?” She nodded towards the stage, added, “They’ll take payment in trade, but they’re not drunk enough yet to be forgiving.” Perdita shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t have an instrument.” Metis had been given harp lessons as a child, but something told Perdita that this instrument in particular would be too odd for someone with shop girl origins to know. “Oh!” Perdita looked at the list of beverages offered on the menu wall. “I’ll have...well, what would you recommend? I’ve had cocavino before, but it doesn’t look like it’s on the list.” The bartender laughed and said, “If you want it, we’ll make it. Someone will bring it over.” He disappeared to rummage under the bar and Ari pulled Perdita away. “Let’s find a table before they’re all gone,” she suggested. As they made their way between tables and chairs and revelers, she said. “Thank you for the compliment, by the way; I’ll have to pass it along to the poor, tired machinist they assigned to me. My magic is limited to…” A furrowing of brows, a bit of concentration, and electricity danced over her fingers for a moment before vanishing. “I can start something that’s stalled, and that’s about the extent of it,” she admitted. “I heal better with music than with Cure. And anything else is out of the question.” Finally, a table with two available chairs appeared; unconcerned with its other occupants, Ari claimed one and trusted that Perdita would take the other. “I’m not a magician by trade, so I suppose I can give the illusion away,” she said. “I had a harness on my back and along my arms --” she gestured -- “and I had to manipulate the controls inside my sleeve, right along my wrist. It did all the work -- I just aimed, more or less.” Perdita shook her head and laughed. “How clever!” she said. “If we hadn’t been in a playhouse, I would have been very confused, I must confess. Your footwork and gestures were excellent, dear Ari. It was as if you were a true mage this evening. ” A waitress came by, sliding a highball glass onto the table. Several cubes of ice, red wine, and a kind of fizzy water: cocavino, Perdita’s favorite drink. “I have another confession to make,” Perdita said after a sip of her drink. “I have never been to this tavern before! I mean, I’ve heard of it, and I’ve walked past it a few times, but I’ve never been inside. It’s a bit silly, now that I think about it. I’ve lived in this city for two years now, and I still act like I’ve just moved here! I think I should make a new resolution, in honor of the Founder’s Festival: explore the city! Or, well, visit a few places that the locals go to, anyways.” “I think you may be flattering me a bit, but I will take it,” Ari responded with a laugh. “I did have a coach for the gesturing, else I’d have made a muddle of it, but really, my lack of comfort with magic is nearly comical. My mother wished me to be a mage,” she added, taking a sip of her own cheerfully fruity drink. “I don’t recall -- have I ever told you? I got all the way to the entrance exam, and I wrote poetry all over it instead of reading the questions. The proctor took this not as childish rebellion but as a sign of idiocy -- or perhaps both. In any case, she wasn’t inclined to retest me, and thus I was released, to my supposed shame.” She grinned and added, “Or relief, as the case may be. I suspect I’d have made a dreadful mage even if they had ever broken me of the poetry, which would have been a difficult feat indeed.” “But spellwork is poetry!” Perdita said, flabbergasted at the behavior of the proctor’s in the story. “Serena Felices, this mage from the past century, wrote a whole set of meditational chants that were written in iambic meter. It was meant to resemble one’s heartbeat or somesuch,” Perdita added. She took another sip of her drink. “That reminds me,” she went on, “Have you ever read the play Sen’s Summer? The way your machinists styled the magical effects made me think of…” And so she went on, describing the way the spirit that Sen freed during the play emerged from the “water” off-stage, and how it looked so much like the Flood spell that had appeared in the Founder’s Festival play, had she noticed. They would swap stories about stagecraft and spellcraft a while longer, until Perdita worked up the nerve to ask Ari to introduce her to one of the cast members. |