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

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"What?"

She blinked, then thought back to her own question. "Oh, no...I mean...I don't know. She just stayed on the Britannia, and I know Archie had a hard enough time convincing him that Jack was okay." A fact she wasn't sure Horatio actually agreed with, even now.

"...She doesn't seem very...pirate-like." But it's not a disbelieving tone. Jilly knows a lot about things not being what they seem.

[herotypical]

"She didn't start out a pirate. I know there was some kinda pre-contracty wackiness between her and James and...wait. I'm gossiping. That's probably not what I should be doing. Point is? Jack and I are supposed to be like oil and water. He's the oil, I'm the water. And then there's her. And I suspect she's as slick as they come and..."

And the way he looked at her sometimes. "They carry the same club cards. That's gotta stand for something."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"Buffy...I'm an artist. That doesn't mean that I'll be with someone just because they're an artist."

[herotypical]

"...But you'd have to be with someone who values art, right? And not someone who was kinda-mostly-often offended by your art. And what your art did to other people. And all the legal grey-areas of your art."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She gave the other woman a small smile. "I don't know how legally grey my art could be considered..." She shook her head. "But I get it. And I don't know that there's really an easy answer...except that Jack's legally grey-areas are usually more mischievous than harmful."

[herotypical]

A soft sound suggested that despite all of the love and good will, she might not be so certain that the pirate's activities have tended mostly towards the non-harmful.

"Whatever the result? They share their legally grey-area. And me? I'm..." A soft sigh. "Official. Law-like. It's...never mind.

Now's not the time, right?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She squeezed Buffy's hand sympathetically. "You're you, and that's all you need to be." Later, she might remind her of how upset she'd been at Jack suspecting her of harboring feelings for old flames. Now, though, Buffy is right. This isn't the time.

[herotypical]

"...Maybe you're the one with the right idea. Just don't bother with the menfolk. Have any of them here even caught your eye?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She laughed. "It's not really a...conscious choice. I guess I'm usually just too busy to think about it." As well as an overactive imagination for all the ways it could go wrong.

Releasing Buffy's hand, she crossed her arms around herself, looking over the crowded hall. "Besides, if anything is proof that you two care about each other, it's how you've managed to stick it out despite shifts. Ups and downs included. Finding that... that's special." Nevermind if anyone had caught her eye. That comes dangerously close to letting herself consider that type of relationship at all.

[herotypical]

She waved off the specialness. Oh, she knew -- there was something spectacularly solid and dependable about the fact that the Malnosso could throw almost any curve-ball in Buffy and Jack's way and they need only seek each other out in the treehouse. Take the time to talk it out. She, herself, had never before given so much consideration for a partner. This relationship was the culmination of learning from all her other mistakes. It was touch and go, now and then, but they were doing rather well -- given both of their histories.

But Buffy didn't want to talk about her and Jack. "Too busy? This is Luceti. You've been here...how long now? Almost a year. And not a single eye caught? Maybe you just have better standards than the rest of us."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

She shook her head slightly. "Believe me. I'm the last person to talk to good relationship standards."

Almost a year. Back home, this conversation would have been with Sophie and Wendy...and there would have been any number of boys pointed out and laughed off and denied. And they would have understood...but it would have been...safe.

Part of her is back there, picturing the friends she'd left behind, but part of her is very much in the ballroom with Buffy and not even realizing how easy it is to slip into the same patterns.

"Most of the time I spend is with Archie, who might as well be family, and Horatio, who's married." The first two come easily as she obligingly counts the people she knows off on her fingers. For each, there's a reason not even to consider...all too quickly accessible for it to really be the first time it's come to mind.

"Jack Aubrey is married, I hardly know Stephen," and she had an odd sense about him from what she did know, if not an unfavorable one, "and nearly every other guy I know is too old, too young, married, or about to be."

She smiled. "It's okay, though. I wasn't even really dating, back home. I haven't really had a relationship in years." Certainly none that had lasted long.

[herotypical]

"Give it time. You're a sweet girl. They'll be chomping at the bit to bring you flowers. Once we get a few less married gents. Though -- as a point of interest? Just how old is too old?"

Sub-quest: find a good match for Jilly. She did not realize that this might be a terrible idea.

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"Eight years." The answer comes too quickly, with a lurch to her stomach, and she's quick to pull a smile back to her lips as she shakes her head. "Or...I guess around there."

Thought had, she cast a sideways glance at Buffy. "....what are you thinking?"

[herotypical]

Laughter. Oh, goodness. "Jack's sixteen ahead of me -- but then again, I've also dated twice in the over a hundred and fifty years of difference category. Eight..." A nod. "Fair enough."

She ran the side of her thumb over the edge of her mug. "Just...going through the mental list of the menfolk. Forget ages and marital statuses for three seconds. Come on. Who's lunchable?"

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

Jilly bit her bottom lip, thinking, and then laughed as well. "I guess...if were ignoring all the outside factors...Nicholas Wolfwood?" He was easy company, at least, and there was no denying he was cute.

[herotypical]

Her responding smirk is sly. "...Huh. I did not see that coming. That's your type? Really?"

Said the woman who dated the undead, the bleached blonde, and the dreadlocked.

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"Hey, this was not about type. You asked for attractive." And Wolfwood was safely unattainable. In a game like this, the more remote possibilities were the most comfortable.

[herotypical]

"Okay, okay. Tit for tat, right?" Buffy bit down on her grin. "Derek Bliss. There's a serious case of yum, if I ever saw one."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

That got an approving smile, her eyes lighting up in amusement. "I can't argue with that. I met him at Thanksgiving. He seemed nice."

A game like this was certainly nothing to take seriously, and she doesn't mind derailing it even further, the corners of her mouth quirking upward with laughter even before she gives voice to the next. "By sheer personality alone...Guy Burgess. One would never be bored." She was fully aware, maybe more than most, of where his actual interests lay...but if marriage wasn't an obstacle, why should orientation be?

[herotypical]

"Very nice. He doesn't...doesn't remember me completely yet but -- but he will. He'd better." The Slayer held a very hallowed tenderness for the other vamp hunter.

But conversation moves on and Jilly named Guy and Buffy nodded -- slowly. She was well aware of Guy and his interests; recently, she even jokingly warned him to stay away from her man. She liked Burgess. He was peppy. "Not my usual look but...he's a fire-cracker. I can appreciate fire-cracker-ness."

A moment to consider, then: "In a totally untouchable and entirely between you and me and also never my usual? Albert Silverberg."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"I won't tell a soul," she said. She'd met Albert at Thanksgiving, too, and her head tilts a bit. "Though why all the cautions with him?"

[herotypical]

"The Shifts have tried twice to match the two of us up. Romantically. But me and him are determined to keep it strictly professional. You know that he's the big-wig strategist for most of the village's martial affairs, right?"

And Buffy was his general. Official.

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"...the idea of the Malnosso playing matchmaker at all sounds terrifying. So...fair enough. No Albert."

[herotypical]

"Besides. I'm holding out on him holding out for Raine. More his pace, I think. I'm not...outside of Shifts, me and him'd never -- well, he's him. And I'm me."

Oh boy. This was more than she had bargained on saying. "Okay. Okay. Scratch all of that. What do you think of James? Forget about all the stiff and dull parts. And maybe try and picture him sans-wig. He...could be quite the arm-candy."

[tehoniongirl.livejournal.com]

"James?" Looking across the room, she sought out the admiral, a bit bewildered by the question. "I hadn't even-"

Trailing off, she laughed. "I don't think he's dull. Stiff, yes, but not dull." And attractive, certainly, when the wig disappeared. "But I barely know him. He seems pretty set on formality." As much or more than Horatio. And the rather focused questions about Elizabeth raised questions as well..but she shakes her head before voicing any of that. It was just a game after all...no need to treat it as something serious.