lucetilogs | Comfort and Joy

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Comfort and Joy

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Indeed it was all a calculated risk. Lupin was starting to see that more and more as the days slowly drew by.

He let the matter drop. There'd always be more time for plotting a rebellion later. "No I haven't tried the wassail yet," he replied. "I may be a party-goer, but I haven't been to many medieval themed ones. I do like cider, though."

".....'Medieval-themed'?"

Lupin shrugs. "You know, King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail...

"Given that you're a pirate of the high seas, and I'm a thief accostumed to tricky locks and even trickier marks, I think is safe to assume that we're from different eras if not different worlds. Wealthy people where I come from like to have these grand parties, and sometimes they go for a theme. Usually its holidays, though picking out a different era from history isn't too unusual.

"Toga parties are pretty fun..."

Oh, wow---Lupin was one of those who were uninformed about the past. This is just a bit embarrassing.

"Mate, this ain't the medieval Dark Ages. It's modern times. Enlightenment and such. You're in the wrong epoch."

Whoa--where did that come from again?

"You mentioned the wassail, I mentioned theme parties, you asked for clarification, and I clarified. Captain, I think I know what I know what era this is, unless you want to argue that the world is flat!"

More drinks were in order if any further conversation was to be understood. "Anyway, that wassail?"

"No, no nononono---this here is all from Kennedy's time. Modernity-themed. Nevermind. It's over here, is the wassail, and it's waiting especially for you lad. It'll put some medieval hair on your chest."

"It's not gonna smile and make me speak in an Irish brogue, is it?"

...if he drank enough, it might get him to sing Danny Boy...

"If it does that, let me know. I'll want my share, in that case." Without further ado, Jack lead the way through the party---dodging dancers, winding around chairs and clusters of conversation, and stopping to snatch a cookie off someone's abandoned plate before reaching the drink table. There was a large bowl of rum punch there, which he happily availed himself of---making sure to add more rum to his goblet from a special flask he kept in his pocket.

"That's the wassail, there--" pointing to a steaming pot that contained a spicy delicious mulled cider. "But there's wine, too, and punch."

"You said wassail, I'm going for that."

Lupin, always one who was eager to partake of new tastes and new traditions, gladly served himself a glass full of the steaming beverage. The scent of the spices and the apples hit him even before it reached his lips. He partook of it--and was in gastronimical paradise.

"Jack!" he exclaimed. "This--the spices, the taste...i can see why this is a perfect Christmas drink!" He could envision snow weary carolers being welcomed back into thier homes to a mug of wassail as easily as if it were hot cocoa covered in whipped cream.

It was better than rum-laden eggnog, or hot coffee with a healthy shot of irish cream in it.

"The perfect Christmas drink, eh? For all those moments when you're trapped in a dining room with your family? Wassail! When your best girl accuses you of buying your other best girl a prettier bauble? Wassail! The Christmas ham is undercooked and everyone ends up with a horrible case of tapeworm? Wassail!"

There were probably more WASSAIL! situations to enumerate, but Jack was too busy drinking to express them.

"Heist gone bad? Wassail! Fujiko trying to get me with a bear trap again? Wassail! Having some kid getting in the way of a job? Wassail! Discovering that he two-hundred year old wine we stole has turned into vinegar due to time? Wassail!"

He bobs his head, following the rhythm that Jack started, and drinks more of that delicious, delicious wassail. It was infinitely sweeter than that rare two-hundred year old vintage that had soured in that dusty cellar over the centuries.

"So you can see, lad, how useful such a drink can be admidst the unique pressures of the season. Have another, do!"

"It is indeed. I wonder how that lady who was absolutely begging me to attempt a theft on her jewelry store that one Christmas would have faired with a mug of wassail in her hands instead of that camera."

Lupin gladly helped himself to more, his mind awhirl with jests and half formed ideas. The alcohol and the party were stirring up his adoration for directed chaos. "I also have to wonder...would the wassail help us with all of the unique problems that we have around here?"

But Jack was more caught up on the jewelry store tidbit. Problems in Luceti?

Rum was always the best solution.

"A woman caught you? In flagrante? Ha!"

Lupin sees what Jack did there. Focus on Tiffany's, huh? He could do that.

"No," he said, "she didn't catch me. I had Goemon take care of her video cameras and her entire store before we did anything. You see, she was bragging that her store had never had a theft in its history, she was even ballsy enough to give my friends and I a tour of her security system, and she was talking about televising it, because she was just an arrogant heart with a pretty face.

I initially said no...but I think Fujiko had other ideas. Again, women stabbing in the back." He gave Jack a conspiratory wink--it seemed like they both had a commonality of loving women who could give them a worse run around than their enemies. He downed the rest of his wassail and continued.

"So...I stole everything in her store. But, it was Christmas," he shrugged, "I gave it back to her...in the hands of a statue that is, from the ground to the very top, ninety-three feet tall and made of a few tons of copper. Incidentally, she's also on an island only accessible by ferry."

He chuckled a bit. There really was nothing grander than knocking a haughty dame off of her pedestal and dirtying her ego.

"You gave it back to her in a giant statue on an island? And did she recover it, this proud shopkeeper?"

Jack did not have very many exciting "give it back" tales from home, mostly because "give nothing back" was a guideline he respected.

Lupin shrugs. "Hell if I know. Tiffany's is still open, so that must prove something."

Lupin didn't have very many either. The exceptions were when there was a point to be made, like with the one he was describing, or when it was a part of a challenge that lead him to something bigger--like with Uncle Mark and the puzzle that lead him to the treasure of Gaudi's masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia.

"...you don't happen to have any tales of daring escapades while afloat on a stormy sea, do you? Any princesses with a holier-than-thou attitude whom you've put in their place?"

"Me? Daring escapades? Princesses?!"

There had been one princess in the past: Aiyesha. He'd freed her from slavery, and then he'd lost her.

"You might say a fair few. Most of the women I know seem to be more like your Fujiko than anything else. A man gets so he starts to think that he draws a certain type of the fairer sex. Mine happen to be pirates and murderers, mostly."

Fellow con artists. He and Lupin weren't all that different in that respect, probably.

"I understand that feeling. Mine are usually to flakey to stay with the same man for more than a few weeks, or dazzlers with a smile as dangerous as she is pretty."

He chuckled, knowing that all of those women had been worth the effort at the time. His thoughts drifted to Fujiko at her mention, and he idly searched the crowed for a glimpse of her hair...

"Speaking of Fujiko...did you do something to make her mad? She warned me to be careful around you. By name, too."

"Did that, did she? Fujiko?" This rather pleased Sparrow more than anything else. "Dunno. I'm not one that always realizes that his actions are having that effect on the female creature.

By name, eh?"

Oh, that was brilliant and lovely. His reputation was finally settling in, here.

Edited 2011-12-07 01:21 (UTC)

"She did," Lupin said. "Then again, she may have just been talking too--I've already been lectured on the moral problems of theft by half of the women I've met here. I can only imagine that's been happening here before my arrival."

He, too, was pleased to have his reputation preceed him, even if he circumstances were far different than anything he had imagined.

"The women here, you must understand, are entirely too moral and upright. Makes a man rather desperate from time to time, lad." He took an easy swig from his glass. "I typically request that they stay far from my marauding bridge whilst I'm on the prowl. Saves me a few stern lectures in the end, eh?"

"Good policy there," Lupin commented. He would probably hold a similar one himself, when the time came that he was spurred into action by restlessness or the need for a challenge. Then:

"Bridge? Shoulda figured you'd put yourself near water. You do much fishing?" Maybe Luceti Fish were delicious, tasty creatures without tentacles anywhere near them. Or maybe they were big monsters. A man could only hope.

"Erm....only if I need to to survive, actually."

There were plenty of both sorts, really.

"I...see."

So much for trying to find a fishing partner.

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