Comfort and Joy

[simplestgift]

Who: Come one, come all! ...In formal attire.
What: A Christmas ball, old world style.
When: December 1st, beginning around five in the afternoon and ending when the last person leaves.
Where: The rec center.
Summary: Earth's eighteenth-century peeps are throwing one hell of a party.
Rating: Well, considering no one is serving water? Probably PG-13 for alcohol consumption and the results thereof (there's coffee and hot chocolate!).

The recreation center has been utterly transformed.

The doors open to a host of candles and a warm, old-world smell and feel. The scent of food and spices hangs in the air—mulled wine, wassail, evergreen boughs, fresh bread and roast meat. Cream brocades, simple but elegant, are draped over the walls. Traditional red rugs have been thrown over the floor. Gone are the billiard tables, ping-pong, and foosball. It looks like a different place entirely, every table impeccably dressed with light linen cloths and set with fine china and crystal. At least one-half of the room is cleared and ready for dancers.

The tables are lit with candles, and five chandeliers have been temporarily added to the room for more light, giving the room a golden glow instead of the sterile luminescence of fluorescent lighting. On the tables, boughs of evergreen and holly surround the candles, and mistletoe has been hung discreetly here and there. In one corner of the dancing area, by a large and beautifully decorated fir tree (Buffy’s insistence), the musicians are set up to play, unobtrusive to the diners but essential to the dancers. Leading them is Frederic Chopin himself, and few here can say they have had anyone better play for their pleasure.

Things will begin with a grand dinner late in the afternoon, with a light supper (mostly consisting of cold meats, bread, and other lighter fare) at around nine o’clock. The selection of food on the tables is enormous. Most of it is meat-based and some of it is simply meat. Roast beef with mushrooms, goose in giblet gravy, herbed chicken, baked salmon, and a whole pig are among the choices. There is some hope for vegetarians, though, with spinach mixed with bread crumbs and cheese on small toasts, turnips (or rutabagas if you speak American), onions, carrots, parsnips, mashed potatoes, asparagus in breadcrumbs, and savory onion and wild mushroom pies. There is hot fresh bread and rolls with butter and heaps upon heaps of small mince pies filled with fruit, molasses, and yes, a little minced lamb. Moreover, there are fresh winter fruits like oranges and mikans and many different desserts, such as Christmas pudding, a rum chocolate dessert, and spotted dog with custard. Sit and help yourself. For a complete list of the food offered, take a look here.

Among the drinks throughout the evening are wassail, tea, hot chocolate (less sweet and much more intense than most modern characters would be used to, made with cinnamon, vanilla, and a hint of cayenne pepper), coffee, brandy, wine both mulled and plain, port, sherry, and gallons of rum punch. Even though the food is fantastic, overseen by Jack Aubrey, the conversation is the point of the game, and who knows who they will wind up sitting beside. At the center of each table is placed a pineapple as a sign of welcome and wishes of prosperity.

There is dancing light as the music itself, with Archie Kennedy and Elizabeth Swann teaching the steps of each dance before striking up the music and letting everyone go to town with it. They are poised and elegant but relaxed and seeming to glide as they demonstrate the motions with an effortlessness that comes with years of practice. They were both raised on these dances and this sort of social function and seem completely at home here. The dancing begins after dinner with the minuets and continues after a light supper with some informal English country dances. Anyone unused to dancing like this may find that it’s harder than it looks, but when one gets used to it, it feels very graceful, beautiful, and…fun! The activity will only end when there are too few dancers left to continue, and will continue all night if possible. As dancers pass each other or move hand-in-hand, eye contact can be made, quiet words exchanged, subtle (or not) messages passed as they spin through the room, or perhaps the room spins while they remain still.

It might depend on how much they’ve had to drink.

Those who do not wish to dance have other activities to participate in. In one corner, card tables are set up with multiple decks of cards stacked up, and there is even a box or two of dominoes and a handful of dice. The tables themselves are round and made of polished rosewood or mahogany. This area is well-lit and on the opposite end of the room from the musicians and dancers, probably as a mercy to the tone-deaf Horatio Hornblower who loves cards but can’t abide music. Here, discreet (or indiscreet) gambling is inevitable. There may be no money here, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to wager.

Are you lingering at the dining tables, drinking and talking loud and laughing with friends, or will you shyly sit and watch the dancing and games and hope to be invited in? Are you sitting quietly alone and listening to the music as your foot taps on its own, or are you unable to sit still and ready to dance all night if they’ll let you? Are you playing cards with a few new acquaintances, or are you hanging on someone’s arm and helping them cheat?

Whatever you do, have fun.

Comments

[all7seas]

"BUGGER." The pirate jumped and turned and stared. A skull. With a candle on it. Not particularly Christmassy.

"Not particularly Christmassy, that. Where's the pineapple gone off to?"

1/2

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"Bwahahaha! Were you scared? Were you terrified?!"

He's not very Christmassy at all, but at least he's jolly. In his own way.

2/2

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

The pineapple comment has now occurred to him and he's really not quite sure what to make of that. This whole Christmas thing is already far out of his league.

"Pineapple?"

[all7seas]

"Aye! Kennedy's Christmas pineapple, you silly bit of....

Oi. You sound familiar, my nobble-headed little friend. Have we crossed paths before, you an' me?"

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"Indeed! In your worst nightmares! Bwahaha-wait, you're that pirate talking from the book in that infernal box!

[all7seas]

"You're that talking talky thing what couldn't escape! Ha! How'd you manage it in the end, lad?"

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"The sheer force of my will cannot be imprisoned! It is futile to resist me! As the poor fool who released me discovered.

His wicked tone drops and he sounds more casual and cheerful in his way.
"Actually he wasn't a bad kid. Very clean pockets. And, he brought me to the bar."

[all7seas]

"And once at the bar, I expect you drank your fill. Having anything tonight, my good bone?"

Because Jack would happily fetch him some sort of alcoholic nog.

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

An alcoholic nog would be good for a mess, but probably not much else unfortunately.

"I outdrank every other poor fool there!" He looks a bit longingly at all the food and drink surrounding him. It's always worth another try. "And I certainly have the stomach for more! Er, figuratively, of course."

[all7seas]

"What if I set you atop a small jug?"

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

Or in a punch bowl, but that would render that particular bowl useless to anyone else.

"That might work!"

[all7seas]

"Here, I'll just go fetch it for you, shall I?"

When Jack returns, it is with an ice bucket, a pair of tongs, a small wreath of holly, a flagon of wassail, two tea light candles, and a napkin.

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"At last! Some excitement!" Though he has to wonder what the holly is for...

[all7seas]

Garnish.

"Right--if you don't mind, mate, I've got to place you on top of this bucket."

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

Being picked up is hardly new to him, or carried.
"Go on then."

[all7seas]

Jack will place the skull over the upturned bucket, propping him mouth-up. The wreath will go over the top of Murray.

"Might I light these and put them in your eyes? You'll be far more festive." He holds up the tea lights.

I love the icons going on here lol

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"Yes! Let my eyes burn with flames. My mighty demonic presence shall be known! Bwahaha!" He's really not quite getting the whole festive aspect here.

XD

[all7seas]

So very carefully, Jack will light the tea lights and slide them into the eye sockets. There. That looks.


Festively horrifying.

"Now keep it open wide, mate, and I'll pour some drink right down where your gullet used to be."

Re: XD

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

Festively horrifying. That's probably a fairly apt description considering the subject.

He's opened wide waiting for that delicious delicious alcohol that he probably won't be able to taste.

[all7seas]

Here it comes, then! A mixture concocted from leftover stuff at the bottom of people's glasses, forgotten on tables or windowsills or wherever they were hastily discarded.

"Here, lad! Enjoy!"

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"Ahhhh that's the stuff to burn my insides. If I had any."

Now there's a festive skull sitting on a bucket of leftovers. Whether or not he was truly able to enjoy it is a mystery.

[all7seas]

"D'you want anything else? A muffin? A dance? Suppose I could carry you about the floor."

Ewww. On second thought--

"Ooooor maybe not dancing. Sandwich?"

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

Now there is an image that would have been best avoided.

"Ha! Dance with you? Never! Now if one of those fine wenches happened to come over here..."

Food would be another messy endeavor. Though, if something needed to be ground up he would be the skull. Or he could get into the Christmas spirit and be a nut cracker. Though food doesn't seem to be of concern to him right now.

[all7seas]

"Oh! I know! What would a Christmas party be without a proper game of ninepins, eh? And YOU can be our ball!"

1/2

[evildoorstop.livejournal.com]

"Ball? I am no man's ball! Any man who dares roll me shall meet a fate worse than death!"