Gathering: New Year's Eve Gala

[concierge]

The annual Nexus New Year's Eve gala began at 8 in the evening. Too grand to be contained by the lobby or dining hall, the gardens at the front of the hotel were employed, with long strings of white lights forming a twinkling canopy from the front doors all the way to the hedge maze. The weather was temperate and calm, and the night perfectly clear.

Drinks were served at various bars set up throughout the gardens and lobby, with champagne cocktails being the specialty of the night. Wheeling through the crowd was a bartender with golden cart providing warm drinks on the go: Tom and Jerrys, rum punch, negus, and Irish coffee.

Crisply-dressed wait staff wove through the collected guests with an abundance of hors d'oeuvres for all different tastes. The Bistro remained open with a limited selection of items for those who were wanting something more substantial.

Above the front doors was hung a large, gold-rimmed clock counting down the last hours, minutes, and seconds of the current year.

Comments

[matt_murdock]

"Okay, that really doesn't negate..." Matt begins, but quickly enough abandons the argument. There's a manic energy around this man that doesn't seem as if it would be much affected by logic, and it had been a joke in the first place.

"I'm not a faerie, buddy. Sorry," he says instead, with a helpless little shrug.

[magicallystrange]

The disappointment builds in Strange until it's a terrible thing, clawing at him and causing a new sort of anger and madness, one that he can barely control. "I suppose I saw your predicament and I thought that you might be as though Cassandra," he says, the hope slowly weaving out of his words. "I'm searching for my wife, and I know a faerie can aid me with the task. Here, on what I still believe to be part of the King's Road, it only seemed right to find one."

And yet, he has not. "My deepest apologies, sir," he says, offering a curt bow. "Jonathan Strange, at your service."

[matt_murdock]

"Matt Murdock."

By this point, it isn't often that he legitimately feels compelled to give away that he can, actually, see when someone naively thrusts a hand his way or dips into a bow, but this time it's tough to restrain himself. This man is a walking contradiction—Outwardly he's prim, but chaos is pulsing around him like a heartbeat. The guy is clearly adrift in a very real way.

"No need to apologize," he says, gaze firmly on the middle distance. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but what happened to your wife?"

[magicallystrange]

"A terrible thing, I'm sorry to say," Strange replies, his own guilt rising at the memory of how he had accepted the wooden bog creature to be his wife, how he had sworn himself to her, and then how she had been taken. "She died. But you see, it was not her," he shares. "For when she was dug up, it was the bog that we found, not my wife. My wife, and Lady Pole, they have been taken by the faeries," he says, reaching forward to clasp onto Mr. Murdock's lapels.

"Madness will draw me to them. When mad, one can see them!"