quietmounds | (no subject)

(no subject)

WHAT in person
WHERE Heavenly Grounds
WHEN 75!!

[So how do you feel about getting into the holiday spirit? Because with all that wine around from the Bingo victories someone's put a sign up outside Heavenly Grounds today advertising a ~holiday party~ There's festive decorations with mulled wine, hot toddies, spiked egg nog. You name it, it's there to get you plastered.

And I guess there's cookies and fruit cake and stuff too, but who needs food when there's drinking?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gorgeous? Clever? Fun to talk with? I don't mean to sidetrack, I'm sorry—

. . .

T-this is why the Institute strongly discouraged interpersonal relationships, right? Because it's very distracting.

Are there no types of magic that... draw on emotions or bonds at all?

Not—not officially. I've heard rumors that there are witches that can, but that's super illegal.

Not just discouraged?

I mean, witchcraft is illegal.

Pardon the ignorant question, but is the difference whether or not one has been... registered through attending the Institute or something similar...?

Pretty much.

[he just seems sort of tired about this]

I'm sorry if it's ... [shrugs] I went to prison for illegal dance. That's... why I mentioned a trial where they dragged my reputation through the mud.

An illegal . . . dance.

Specifically, a banned one. I. Do you remember me mentioning... the extinction of a people...

I remember.

They were the only proper practitioners of their specific form of Songdance. I studied under them and learned, but so did many—albeit often poorly. I was informed by the council after the passing of the last of them that I, specifically, and alone, had been banned from performing it.

I respected that, although I didn't... well. It was the council who told me that, after all. But then I saw someone dancing a version of it, passing it off as the real thing, when there were none of their people left to contest it by showing what it should look like.

. . .

Why—why you, specifically?

Good question, isn't it.

[he frowns a little]

I never got a satisfactory answer. It doesn't matter, though.

How did your trial end?

With my miraculous escape, subsequent guerrilla performance pieces across the galaxy, and disbanding of the galactic council.

[l-laughing]

Miraculous escape!?

I still don't really believe it myself, but if you'll give me the benefit of the doubt despite its impossibility...?

It's fine, it's fine.

[Vasily kisses Mikk's nose]

You're—very admirable. Brave. I mean. Your heart? . . . [/// starting to go red] Damn, I messed that one up.

No, I mean, I will tell you, just that it sounds... fake.

I. I don't know how brave I am or not. I'm a bit righteous, which isn't really the same...

I believe you. I trust you.

[he looks at him with a flicker of a smile, a bit odd, amused]

Righteous . . . yes, I can see that too. But it's not bad.

[tilts his head against Vasily's.]

I'll take "Not too bad" over most things, really. [smiles back at him, though, kind of close now]

I didn't mean to sideline you. I'm suspicious of things that are illegal because they're not official when they're the same as regulated things. But that was an aside to your story too.