Cosette Fauchelevent (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lark_in_flight) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
milliways_bar2017-01-05 11:32 pm
lark_in_flight) wrote in milliways_bar2017-01-05 11:32 pm
Twelfth Night Party, Pontmercy style!
You -- yes, you, whoever you are -- got an invitation to the party. All of Milliways is welcome!
If you choose to come, you'll find Bar directing you to a big round tent that went up this afternoon on the lawn outside the bar. Marius and Cosette and various friends spent a lot of time this morning ferrying decorations in, and the waitrats spent a lot of time in the afternoon ferrying food in, but the doors won't officially open until close to sunset.
But this isn't a cheap white plastic tent, oh no. It's warm and domed and made of thick fabric, something like a very large yurt. A bit of magic keeps out the drafts, making everything extra cozy.
There's a fire in the middle of the floor, with a low screen encircling it but also magic meaning that this fire puts of warmth but will not actually burn anything, even if you step right into it. The floor is wood -- great for dancing, if you feel like it! There's a piano over against the wall for anyone who wants to make some music.
Everywhere there are garlands of European evergreen branches and herbs, studded with bright dried fruit and sparkling ornaments. (Mistletoe might very well be among them, though the Pontmercies haven't thought to supply that as an intentional party game.) There are candles and lanterns everywhere, and a big chandelier. There are no electric lights at all -- it's all fire -- but a good number of them are magical, so that nothing's going to get set on fire or covered with smoke. The general intended impression is of genteel, welcoming festivity, in a very French and very early 19th century European way.
There are food and drinks galore. Come in and enjoy the party!
[OOC: Party-style post! Subthreads for various categories and activities, etc. Open from now until whenever!
Edit: As of Joly's arrival, Cosette now has a mini-polaroid camera. Fear, Milliways. Feel free to assume that she's popped up to take a candid picture of your character(s) at any point, as long as they're not doing or wearing anything scandalous! She will happily give the resulting picture to your character if they want; it probably won't be a very good picture, in terms of composition or focus, but it will be cheerfully enthusiastic.]
If you choose to come, you'll find Bar directing you to a big round tent that went up this afternoon on the lawn outside the bar. Marius and Cosette and various friends spent a lot of time this morning ferrying decorations in, and the waitrats spent a lot of time in the afternoon ferrying food in, but the doors won't officially open until close to sunset.
But this isn't a cheap white plastic tent, oh no. It's warm and domed and made of thick fabric, something like a very large yurt. A bit of magic keeps out the drafts, making everything extra cozy.
There's a fire in the middle of the floor, with a low screen encircling it but also magic meaning that this fire puts of warmth but will not actually burn anything, even if you step right into it. The floor is wood -- great for dancing, if you feel like it! There's a piano over against the wall for anyone who wants to make some music.
Everywhere there are garlands of European evergreen branches and herbs, studded with bright dried fruit and sparkling ornaments. (Mistletoe might very well be among them, though the Pontmercies haven't thought to supply that as an intentional party game.) There are candles and lanterns everywhere, and a big chandelier. There are no electric lights at all -- it's all fire -- but a good number of them are magical, so that nothing's going to get set on fire or covered with smoke. The general intended impression is of genteel, welcoming festivity, in a very French and very early 19th century European way.
There are food and drinks galore. Come in and enjoy the party!
[OOC: Party-style post! Subthreads for various categories and activities, etc. Open from now until whenever!
Edit: As of Joly's arrival, Cosette now has a mini-polaroid camera. Fear, Milliways. Feel free to assume that she's popped up to take a candid picture of your character(s) at any point, as long as they're not doing or wearing anything scandalous! She will happily give the resulting picture to your character if they want; it probably won't be a very good picture, in terms of composition or focus, but it will be cheerfully enthusiastic.]
Re: Drinks!
That's... not entirely wrong, really.
"Yes," he agrees, looking around.
The room is full of people, laughing, talking, eating; some sparkling, some looking confused by this or that, some making oh my god this punch is strong faces after the first sip -- but full of people, in the glow of a room filled with the warm light that electricity, for all its wonderful progress and achievement, can't match.
"It's good."
It's a party, so he's always going to be hanging off at the edges talking politics instead, but -- it's good, however bittersweetly so.
Re: Drinks!
It's too quiet for Paris, even for being inside a house, and there's nothing beyond the little tent but the land around Milliways. But looking at the display their friends have put together, it's easy to feel like there is , there should be. He presses Enjolras' shoulder for a moment; there are moments when quiet is enough.
Only moments, though. This is a party, however sedate, and part of the glamour is in the sound of voices and company. "--Though I hadn't been to one as sedate as this in a while. It doesn't feel quite authentic without at least someone discovering they've become a bat and need to jump off the furniture to prove it. Absurd, of course, if you're a bat then you are."
Re: Drinks!
It's not home, of course. It's Milliways; they're dead men, and out that door is the Milliways lawn. But there's just enough that's just enough like it. His face softens in the faintest shadow of a smile at the hand on his shoulder, and he glances over.
Bahorel understands, in a way that even the rest of their friends don't, quite. There's no need to say anything, on either side.
...Which of course means that Bahorel is launching into something about delusions of bathood. That shadow of a smile becomes less faint, and significantly more amused.
"I can't say that was a feature of the parties I remember."
This is because he and Bahorel attended very different parties, when in fact Enjolras could be prevailed upon to attend a party at all, but that's all right.
Re: Drinks!
--The words stop in a choked sound. It's back full force, the loss of all those other conversations, all those faces he'll never see again, absurd and serious and strange and loved, ripping up through him like a butcher's meathook. He can't keep talking, can hardly breath.
It fades, as all such intensities have to -- seconds, minutes, it takes the time it takes.
He takes a breath, and runs a hand over his face, and half-laughs. "--a more dangerous party than I expected. My compliments to the hostess."
Re: Drinks!
And yet -- and yet, really, that's what's been right under every minute at this party, for both of them; right under every waking minute at Milliways, for months or years or whatever this hazy taffy-time works out to. There's no shame in letting it surface.
It's Enjolras's turn to clasp Bahorel's shoulder, and leave his hand there for as long as it seems welcome.
Softly, "My dear friend."
Re: Drinks!
"I had been planning to bring some new souls in--good men, you'd have liked them." Enjolras isn't hard to win over, really, for anyone who'd have been worth bringing to a meeting of the ABC. "They had the real dream in them. You'd have known them already, if they weren't so new to town--and young. Damn! They were young! And the sort to take a fight more to heart the harder it becomes. The fire we left behind won't go out for lack of new hands to stir it."
He's read histories that argue the other direction; but he hadn't needed to find other voices from the future arguing with them to know they were wrong. He knew the people of his city, his time. He saw them. He's sure, to the heart. It doesn't make the thought of the work left unfinished any easier. But it makes him fiercely proud to think of them all.
Re: Drinks!
"But I wish I could have met them."
None of this is an empty statement. Enjolras doesn't do those, for one thing. But also Bahorel vouches for these men, loved them, and that's enough. And he knew the people of his city and his country and his time, and his certainty runs just as bone-deep as Bahorel's.
It is a comfort, to have that certainty and that faith burning still, to think of those left alive carrying the torch forward into the future, even knowing what horrors lie in store too in that future. But it's a comfort that's sometimes colder than other times, as they stay here, beyond death, beyond work, beyond France.