Gathering: Masquerade Ball

[concierge]

A large sign placed prominently in the Nexus lobby reads:

The Nexus Hotel
proudly presents the
MARDI GRAS MASQUERADE BALL

Event Location
Nexus Dining Hall
8 PM - 2 AM

Masquerade dress recommended, but not required for all guests

The Dining Hall's central table and chairs had been removed to create a dance floor wide enough to accommodate fanciful masquerade costumes. On one end had been placed a long bar providing free drinks, and on the other a small chamber orchestra providing the music for dancing. The entire room was bedecked in gold bunting and twinkling candlelight, and masks were available for those guests who hadn't brought their own.

Comments

[praiseandglory]

Porthos fingers the collar of his jacket, as if trying to gauge whether he should be feeling hot. "Missing Paris a bit, I suppose." And Aramis, of course, but at least two of his friends were there. That was better by far than none of them being around. "But at least there's some adventure to be had on the other side of some of these doors."

[the_dawnster]

"I would be missing Paris too. The shops alone. Plus I hear they have really good desserts. I don't know where I heard that." She ponders that for just a few moments.

Then she looks sideways at him, curious and excited. "What doors have you been through? Some of them are pretty cool. But others are only cool in theory. I thought the dinosaurs would be fun but that turned very Jurassic Park super fast."

[praiseandglory]

Porthos stares at her for a few seconds, brow knitted. "I hope you don't take this the wrong way," he tells her, almost tentative, because he really doesn't want to offend her, "but half the time I've no idea what you're going on about."

The other half - well, he supposed that some of the merchants in Paris did have a reputation. And the food was amazing, desserts included.

[the_dawnster]

She gives Porthos a partly apologetic look, one shoulder lifting in a half shrug. "I don't doubt it. Sometimes even people who aren't from lots of centuries past have no clue what I'm saying." Another shrug before she looks down to the floor. "It's okay."

[praiseandglory]

And now she's looking down, in every sense of the word, and Porthos feels terrible. "Perhaps you could tell me more of your world?" he offers, hoping to make it better. "The more I know, the more I'll understand, I'm sure."

[the_dawnster]

"Oh! Well... yeah I could do that. It's kind of on the crazy side of things but, in the name of understanding." She looks over to him, her eyes wide and bright again. Honestly, Dawn goes through moods like a baker goes through a sack of flour. But the good thing is that she's very easily readable. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, so to speak.

"So I'm from California. And I do the college thing at Berkeley with a major in language studies with a focus on Sumerian, Latin and Turkish and a minor in English Literature." She smiles a bit. "I like books. Old books. New books. Just books."

She pauses, trying to decide how much to say without breaking Porthos's brain. "In my world there are all kinds of monster creature features... and my sister is like... a super hero. She keeps the world safe from the monsters. I help her with research and translations and sometimes do some fighting myself when she's too busy to tell me no."

[praiseandglory]

That is a lot of information, not all of which Porthos understands, for all that it's obvious she's trying to keep it simple. So he just focuses on the last topic she's touched upon - and look at that, it just so happens to be about something he cares to discuss.

"So your sister's a fighter?" That much he can understand. Monster creatures... He'll get to those in a minute.

[the_dawnster]

"Yeah, she's like a super hero. One girl in all the world. Slayer. Comma. The." She tells Porthos, knowing how confusing that will be. So she tries to elaborate. "She saves the world a lot. From big bad evil. Gloom and doom. And the occasional apocalypse."

Of course she has to add this too: "Sometimes I help."

[praiseandglory]

That doesn't really clear things up for Porthos, who does his best not to let it show, and he simply reassesses his previous statement. "So you're both fighters."

He wouldn't have said, although it's probably best not to say so out loud.

[the_dawnster]

"Well she is. Sometimes I help." But Dawn has yet to reach a point where she would call herself a fighter, not a true one anyway. No matter how much she has helped out. Maybe it was because she had been around true warriors for so long that she knew there was a difference between what they did and what she did to help them do what they did.

"I'm okay with a stake, or a sword. My favorite's the crossbow though." She was really good with a crossbow. "I think my sister likes me using the crossbow because it's more of a long range weapon."

She shakes her head. "It sounds weird, I know. But that's m world. Big bads come along and we take care of it. Plus, college."

[praiseandglory]

"I'm not sure what big bads are," Porthos replies, hopeful for some clarification. "But college is for education, isn't it?"

It is, in his time, and she did mention studying languages, even if no woman would ever have been accepted into one in the France he knew.

It didn't stop some of them from learning things on the side, thankfully.

[the_dawnster]

"Well, and this is probably gonna make me sound even more crazy to you than I already do, but... monsters are real. Magic is real. So, big bads are what I call the things that are trying to kill us or others or to generally destroy the world." She actually kind of likes Porthos and worries that he might think she's too crazy to be friends with. But there really is no easy way to tell him her truth.

"We have vampires and demons and ghosts and hell gods and goddesses and witches and Slayers all sorts of things that are both good and bad." She adds. "Just like people can be both good and bad... only they have special powers so sometimes their bad is really bad."

She'll pause there, to let him absorb that and see if he flees for the hills or has more questions. In the meantime, she nods enthusiastically at his question about education. "Yeah, I'm in my second year. Almost done with it. And let me tell you, it was not easy with all the pauses I've had to take cause of things of the odd that have to do with those things that fall into the 'big bad brewing evil' category."

[praiseandglory]

That is a lot to take in, and he barely listens to her as she goes on about this college business. He's still working through what she's told him about those monsters. Vampires and demons and ghouls, all manner of foul creatures.

It isn't that much of a shock; there are stories of such things with each culture. But it is still a surprise. His personal sentiment had been that if such creatures existed, surely they would have had proof of that by now.

Maybe they only exist where she comes from, Porthos tells himself, pursing his lips at the thought. That would explain a lot.

"I'm not sure your monsters exist where I'm from," he tells her. "I'm certain we'd have met some by now, unless they all avoid France like the plague, and Paris in particular."

Not, he supposed, that ghosts and witches would care very much about the plague, but it's a figure of speech.

[the_dawnster]

Well, he's still standing here. That's a good thing. She had hoped the college talk might add a bit of normal to what she had a feeling would be abnormal for him. Maybe it helped. Maybe it didn't.

"Yeah, they don't exist everywhere. And for a long time not everyone knew they existed. Only the people who fought them. But recently they kind of outted themselves all over the place. Vampires, at least. So people know they're there." Except for those who still tried to convince themselves that it was movie magic. Lots of make-up and special effects.

"So my sister is the Slayer. She has special powers to fight the creature features who want to kill people and destroy the world." She explains. "And pretty much everything in my life revolves around that."

[praiseandglory]

"Destroy the world how?" Porthos asks with a frown, still very thoughtful over the whole thing, but at least he is beginning to get the whole picture. Foul creatures, and a chosen one to fight them, Dawn's sister. He's glad he doesn't live in their world.

[the_dawnster]

"Well usually it's through magic something or other. Some dark magic spell or... magical keys that bring down the walls between worlds and realities." She was just going to leave that there since Dawn was said key, created to bring chaos to the world. That was probably too much for Porthos to digest right now, to know that she wasn't entirely real.

"It's... I mean there's never a dull moment. But I bet your life is like that too. Same shenanigans, different monsters." Monsters being people. Because people could be just as bad as the big bads they sometimes fought in their world.

[praiseandglory]

Porthos shakes his head doubtfully. "Our monsters never want to end the world. They have to live in it." It doesn't seem like a very strategically sound objective.

[the_dawnster]

"Well, there's heaven's and hell's and other worlds and realities for all of our monsters. The end is not the end, you know?" She explains. "I guess your world doesn't have all those, huh?"

[praiseandglory]

"Of course we've Heaven and Hell," Porthos replies with a frown. Everybody has those, haven't they? As far as he knows, anyway. "I'm not sure about these other ones. I suppose all of our worlds are linked, anyway, if we're all here?" Just one more of those things he doesn't think too hard about, for fear of headaches.