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]

Jack popped another pastry into his mouth. "Mmmhmm. Like a Renaissance master, you."

[herotypical]

"Exactly like...one of those. A regular Da Vinci, me."

It was possible that she was mistaking Renaissance master with Renaissance man; however, we should all remain eternally grateful that she at least correctly identified an m-word someone from the Renaissance.

Just a little closer.

[all7seas]

"I expect you'll want to keep it, now, and I'll have a devil of a time getting it back from you?"

[herotypical]

"What? No. I'm not keeping it. I don't want to keep it."

Innocent tree-finding was just fine. The thing, in general, still freaked her out.

[all7seas]

Apart from its magical properties, were odd associations with the compass for certain. Jack had left the thing to Derek when he thought he was dead. He didn't think Buffy would act so skittish about it, but he let it lie.

Subject change, perhaps.

"Have you spoken to Aubrey about a certain project on the horizon?"

[herotypical]

"...Project?" She asked lightly as her arm flattened against the table. So so so unsubtle, this scheme.

I left out the word "there" in the first sentence above. : |

[all7seas]

So unsubtle and so known-about and so appreciated. Jack took several more bites of his meal, apparently not noticing any of it.

"Your boat."

that's what you get for immortalizing clams.

[herotypical]

"...Boat. My -- I have a boat?"

Fingers poised to pilfer a parsnip now pause in position; preoccupied. "Since when do I have a boat?"

I will gladly take one for that team. : D

[all7seas]

"Since you don't. Yet. Technically. Not til we build it, you an' me." Gentle, calloused fingers met her thieving ones, and Sparrow brought them to his lips, delivering a rather devilish bite.


"Whups. Sorry. Thought those were parsnips."

[herotypical]

Her fingers twitched between his teeth but certainly not from pain. Buffy Summers was far too busy working through this new news to get at all uppity over devilishly bitten fingers. In public.

"We're gonna build one? Together?"

[all7seas]

"Only if you desire it? Just a small one, mind. Just a small boat for two--for learning."

[herotypical]

Fingers -- rescued from his teeth between words -- went on to spread themselves against his cheek. Food-stealing was quickly forgotten.

"You're gonna teach me."

[all7seas]

"If you'll have me?"

[herotypical]

"Oh, I'll have you. I'll have you all over tha--"

Buffy's mouth snapped shut with a guilty look. Not one of those truly guilty looks but more like a mischievous guilt. Playful and aware and glittering. "I'm on board with this plan."

[all7seas]

On the inside, Jack shared every bit of the enthusiasm of that half-spoken sentiment.

On the outside, he pouted a bit. False pouting. "Just as long as you're not overboard with the plan, I think we're good with it."

[herotypical]

And her thumb caught the bottom of his fake pout. A light pressure.

"Fair warning? I've never built anything before. Back home, Xander tried to teach me a few carpentry tricks when he got really tired of solo-fixing the front windows after every new disaster but I never managed to pick that skill up. Me and woodworking get along as far as whittling and not much further.

You'll have to be patient."

Again, that word.

[all7seas]

"I can be a saint if I want to, you know." The problem was that this sort of wanting pretty much rarely-to-never occurred. Patience, though? "I did wait for you for a year."

[herotypical]

"We're talking a whole different patience ball-game, Jack." Some lovers had pet-names; Buffy, instead, had a certain way of saying Jack's name that was different from all the other many ways. It was as wholly affectionate and demonstrative as any endearment.

"Waiting is one thing. Trying to teach a someone who's not easily teachable? Something else."

She inched her chair closer. A whole year. It was true. And -- from what she knew of Jack and doubly so, now, after the impression she got from Elizabeth -- that apparently was a Big Deal for Sparrow.

She made a mental note to express her gratitude later.

[all7seas]

Sparrow reached out and dragged the chair the rest of the way closer. He could eat and keep an arm around her at the same time, couldn't he? But his patience was, in a way, legendary. Ten years following the Black Pearl. It had only given out when he'd reached the cave of the Fountain of Youth but lacked the knowledge and chalices necessary to ascend to the next level.

He'd wandered a bit after that; no next step planned. A lesson learned about immortality.

"I expect one of us will be mortally injured before the end."

[herotypical]

Nestled beside him, she did finally swoop in and try to snag herself some stolen food.

"Wanna start taking bets on who?"

[all7seas]

"That's just the sort of wager I'm more likely to avoid, actually." He let her steal, but made a big show of tucking a napkin into the bosom of her gown. Lots of tucking.

[herotypical]

"You just knocked down my classy factor by at least fifteen points. Just so you're aware." But she didn't touch the napkin -- just took dainty little bites from each new morsel she broke off with her fingers and claimed from his plate.

[all7seas]

"Who cares about class?" A pat to her bosom and Jack resumed eating. "Just imagine that dress with my great sooty handprints all over it."

[herotypical]

"...At least it would've meant I'd had your great sooty hands all over me. It. Whatever." She wasn't really hungry and so she only picked. His meal, after all -- and he, she suspected, was far more hurting for food.

She leaned her chin on her palm. "You dodged a Shift, by the way."

[all7seas]

"...A bad one?" He paused and waited for the verdict on that.