Happy Birthday to You...

[stillplaying]

Who: The Everdeen sisters and whoever knows them (plus dates, if applicable)
What: Belated birthday party for Prim.
When: Starting Saturday evening (6/8), around 5 PM.
Where: House 43
Summary: Thanks to the spirit possessions, Katniss cancelled the original party she had planned. Time for Surprise Party #2!
Rating: PG/PG-13 if any fights break out?

She had gotten up early to make certain everything was perfect. Double checked that all the bedroom locks worked, moved all of the valuables out of the living area and into Sharpe's bedroom. And then she cleaned the house more thoroughly than she had in a long, long time.

Hours later, with Aang's help, everything seemed perfect. The inside of the house was decorated with crepe streamers. Though there was an emphasis on blue, she made certain to alternate with other colors: whites and greens and purples and reds. Balloons floated along the ceiling, interspersed among strings of twinkling lights. A huge banner reading "Happy Birthday Primrose!" hung across the space between living room and kitchen.

Food covered every available surface, bowls and plates and bowls of punch and other drinks resting on top of blue paper table cloths. Peppermints and chocolates and other sweets covered the dining room table, with a two-tiered cake in the center. It had been pushed against one of the walls to make space for dancing and talking. In the kitchen, various dinners - stews and roasted meats and an assortment of vegetables and starches - covered the counters. Snack type foods were scattered both inside and out, a mix of cheeses and crackers, vegetables and fruits.

Extra chairs surrounded a table in the backyard, which had been equally decorated. Balloons were tied to chairs and a mixture of streamers and lights hung over any tree branches that crossed into the yard. In one corner, a goat stood tied up to a poll with a pink bow around her neck. Space had been provided for a D.J. table if Teddy or Sabriel grew tired of playing.

Everything seemed perfect. She only hoped that Prim would love it, too.

Comments

[greenjacketed]

"More like I ain't agreeable with them," he corrected in a dour voice. Sharpe was a hard man for hard times. He could spent quiet afternoons with the rest of his household and he could smile and enjoy their pleasant, small dinners. But grander affairs? He presumed he wasn't the person wanted for such a party.

He cuffed at his own chin -- considering the offer. "Labour, eh?"

[antivanleather]

"If you are going to take up space you may as well do something productive, yes?" A flick of his wrist and he finished the serrated edge of a leaf on the melon in his hand, turned it slightly, and began on the next. It was a repetitive, mindless process, the carving. Soothing in so many ways.

"I need potatoes peeled for a dish after I am finished with these platters, or you might brush lemon juice onto the exposed flesh of the apples and melons to prevent the color from turning. In return- your pick of the platters before they leave the kitchen. I may even be convinced to carve you an apple all your own."

[greenjacketed]

"You want me to peel potatoes?" Yorkshire's broad vowels stretched their utter surprise over the words. Bloody hell. In the years before landing in Luceti, Sharpe left the potato-peeling to his men. Since arriving, he'd only done such things for a select few: to the women he was paying court or to the two young lasses he'd taken under his care.

But -- he tried to remind himself -- this was indeed for the Everdeen sisters. So, with a sigh: "Orright. Potatoes it is." He unslung his sword-belt and its brutal yard of Birmingham steel, and for a moment it appeared as though he was about to propose his sword as the instrument of this task. Thankfully, he was actually just setting it aside so as not to tangle his sheath with the rest of the damned room.

Sharpe grabbed a far more sensible blade from the drawer. "But you won't need to carve up my apple like some buggering prince's snack."

[antivanleather]

"Unless you think that to be too much of a challenge." Drawl matched for drawl, the thick staccato of Antivan consonance swapped out for a casual mimicry of the man's broader, rougher tone. "In which case I shall simply inform one of the lovely ladies of this household to the fact that you are hiding, for shame."

The threat was for naught, however, and he was somewhat glad for it. Informing Katniss or her sister would mean leaving his work and he'd finally settled into a comfortable pattern of seeing what needed cutting away and what needed to be left. He was about to comment on something else when the sword, long, brash, terribly lethal and horribly fascinating thing that it is, was swung about.

Often when his eyes darted to a man's belt it was for entirely different reasons. Well checking weapons was but one of many. For a moment he's lost in the thrall of lustful weapon envy, even if the length of it was beyond something he would use but it was such a sexy sword.

Not entirely fair that those words slipped out without his intending. He caught himself after, cleared his throat, and pasted on a smirk. "And if I wish to do so? Would you deny an elf their art? How terribly cruel of you."

[greenjacketed]

At the thought of it being a challenge, he merely snorted. He did look just a tad more sheepish when the threat was made to tell the girls about his truancy. It wasn't his authority he feared, but their disappointment. Heaven help him should he disappoint either Katniss or Prim.

But Sharpe did not quite miss the covetous glance his sword had garnered, and didn't he just stand a little more proudly for that fact? Bah, soldiers.

He tested the knife's edge on his thumb and then glanced about for these dreaded potatoes. "I don't care what you are or what your art is, I take my apples plain when I can."

[antivanleather]

"I am tempted to make the most elaborate carving possible on the apple now just to spite you. I hope you know that." He tipped his chin in the direction of the sink, the aforementioned potatoes scrubbed and ready for peeling. A little salt, a little butter, then into the oven. Simple fair for simple needs and it was more comforting than he might have thought it to be to prepare it for Katniss and her sister.

"There might be some edible gold leaf sitting around here somewhere..."

[greenjacketed]

"Bugger yer gold leaf," he muttered as he cradled the first potato in his palm. "I won't be eating it."

[antivanleather]

"It'd be wasted on you anyway." He sniffed and turned the melon in his hand, peering at the space left. Leaf or flower. Furled or in full bloom?

[greenjacketed]

"Bloody right, it would. Do I look like a man much taken in by gold anything?"

The golden eagle currently squirrelled away in his bedroom to the contrary.

[antivanleather]

"A golden haired woman, perhaps. And coin. I've yet to meet a man that would not heavily consider the shine of gold coin."

[greenjacketed]

Sharpe, grateful that he was turned away from this man as he set to work, perhaps considered himself all too weak in the face of one of those things.

"All the guineas in the empire are no good to any man, here," he retorted -- quickly betraying his allegiance to the first by rejecting the second.

[antivanleather]

"And all the women in the world are not enough to put our situation from our minds, mm?" Furled flower it was, and he set about coaxing the shape from the flesh and rind of the fruit in his palm. "Or men, were that to your taste."

[greenjacketed]

"It ain't," he responded -- curt. Firm. But not, it would seem, horrified. There wasn't much left in the world that could surprise an old soldier. He also firmly believed that just the one right woman could make the most difference, but he couldn't bring himself to speak such sentimentality aloud.

[antivanleather]

"I was making no assumptions one way or the other. Men from other worlds seem to have varying stances on the matter and I'm never truly certain where one is until I mention it. The shades of purple most turn is quite fascinating." Zevran shrugged and glanced back over to the man. The knight? Noble bearing and a wariness in him that marked him as a warrior of sorts even if the blade did not.

[greenjacketed]

He was, at first, clumsy with the potatoes. Although accustomed to a knife, he rarely used it for such fine and delicate work as shaving skin off of anything. But he improved by leaps and bounds over the course of two or three potatoes. A quick learner; a hard worker.

"I think I liked it better when you were goin' on about edible gold."

[antivanleather]

"I was not allowed to bring any into the kitchen. Solano decided it was too...something about districts and fanciful foods, and made certain I kept to simple fare. As it is for her sister, I complied." Without any argument whatsoever, and for that he was proud.

"If it is edible gold you want, however, I might carve you a golden apple. I've a few I am not quite certain what it is I am to do with them yet. Something will come to me."

[greenjacketed]

"Solano?"

From the context, he understood the man to speaking of Katniss. However: "Like the wind?"

For Sharpe had been to Cádiz, and he had experienced those bloody hot winds on his own.

[antivanleather]

"Katniss." He provided with an emphatic flick of a sliver of fruit to the bin. "Solano. It is the Antivan name for a particular plant she reminds me of. Fairly plain at first glance, modestly lovely in bloom- terribly lethal if mistreated."

He set the finished fruit down and plucked up an apple to work on next. "I think here it is called 'nightshade'."

[greenjacketed]

"Antivan? You mean -- you ain't Spanish?"

Because he'd been assuming the man was Spanish, even with the elf angle. At the very least, this confusion saved him from weighing in on the choice of nickname.

[antivanleather]

"I do not even know what it is to be 'Spanish'. Save that your Spaniards have accents much like Antivans, though culturally we seem to have more in common with your Italians. I suppose this makes you 'English' rather than 'Fereldan'." A Spanish elf. He almost laughed at the thought, even if Antivan elf wasn't that much more dignified.

[greenjacketed]

"English, aye," he confirmed -- lightly, though. As if trying to suggest that the rest of the comment made more sense to him than it actually did. "But I spend a great deal of time in Spain, and I'd swear you speak a dead ringer for a Spaniard."

[antivanleather]

"I am terribly sorry to disappoint you." He said in a flat tone that suggested he was not sorry in the slightest. "Though I am surprised this is the point you choose to find odd rather than the fact that I am an elf."

Pointed ears, slighter frame than the average man, the height, even the tattoos or single pierced ear? None of that seemed to bother him. Just the accent. Odd.

[greenjacketed]

"A man learns to let a great deal slide by without comment, in Luceti."

There were things one didn't comment on for the sake of propriety. He likely would not have even tackled the issue of Spain had a familiar word not reared its head.

[antivanleather]

"There are few that seem to be of that frame of mind." The thin knife in his fingers twisted and flipped as he turned, and in a gesture that was far more playful than threatening, he flicked a bit of fruit in the man's direction.

"You, I like."

[greenjacketed]

It landed, with little circumstance, on his jacket's shoulder. By all rights, he should have been able to duck out of its way. But then he wouldn't have this delightful change to pluck the carved fruit-flesh from his clothing and pop it contentedly into his mouth. Score one for Sharpe's tastebuds.

After he swallowed: "Christ. I sure will sleep better knowing I've garnered your approval. Thanks for that." But the attitude was just a mite better intentioned than his earlier growlings. Blink, and one might very well miss the slight improvement.