tushanshu_logs | [EVENT] Bonfire Night

[EVENT] Bonfire Night

Characters: ALL!
Date: February 21st
Location: Various.
Situation: It’s cold. Time to cuddle up and make bonfires for the warmth.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

As night falls the city’s lights take something of a unique turn. Instead of being lit by millions of paper lanterns, Keeliai is tonight lit by the flames and warmth of dozens if not hundreds of fires. Some of them are small, not much more than warming hearths in a barrel on a street, but others encompass squares and boulevards.

The fire lighting procession winds through the city’s streets, beginning at the first bonfire in Fire Sector. By the time full night has arrived, that procession is a snake illuminated by dozens of torches, parting from the main parade to light smaller fires in smaller streets. It ends, finally, in Central, in the Courtyard of Public Opinion, whose bonfire is second only to the initiating one in Fire Sector.

In some areas an exchange of goods arises, mostly in terms of woollens and other warm clothes and blankets. Though food is considered a public resource on this occasion, bartering small knickknacks, songs, stories and even other woollen items is not uncommon an exchange.

Meals are shared among kedan and Foreigners, commoners and emissaries--primarily stews, soups and other foods easily baked in the coals of the fires. Everyone brings food, and what isn’t contributed to the pot is nevertheless shared around after preparation. Although some bonfires are markedly wealthier than others, food and shelter is spread around to make sure everyone is safe and warm. No one goes cold and alone on this night.

LINKS
Fire Sector (main bonfire) | Water Sector | Metal Sector | Earth Sector | Wood Sector | Central Keeliai

OOC Notes
The five Bresilykian emissary NPC can be found moving from Sector to Sector and partaking in the various traditions of each, and so can be engaged anywhere, while the Keeliai NPCs generally are staying in their respective areas as detailed below. Please put the name of the NPC you're requesting in the subject line of your tag if you want to interact with them. Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They would, wouldn't they? Perhaps that is why it is so easy to appreciate this now. Enjolras nods at Midii's answer, some of his hair falling from its braid and framing his face as he does so.

"Maybe so. They say time heals many things. Obviously not all, but I do think there are some. Perhaps we've gotten lucky and this is a bridge that's been rebuilt. Or can be."

"I think it's more like...an entirely new bridge altogether."

Too much time had passed, and there were too many new faces. Too many new rules to follow.

"A new bridge. Maybe that IS more fitting. Well, I hope that we will manage well enough, crossing it together."

"I've been...I don't know yet, actually. Until now, I've been mostly staying up at the Hotel. Do you know it?"

She assumed so, given it had been the centralized 'safe' zone for Foreigners.

"I have been there too. Mostly downstairs." Enjolras has been looking for somewhere else to stay, so that taking a room seems wrong since he hopes it to be only temporary at best. He doubts it will be, sometimes, but.

"I confess I am eager to try moving on, but finding out HOW I mean to do that is...difficult."

That would explain why they'd kept missing one another.

Her brows knitt together for a moment when he mentioned moving on. Personally, Midii had very few issues with the Hotel. It was a centralized, relative safe Haven where she could get her rest and find food in the kitchen. It was affordable, so long as she kept up her odd jobs--and, really, she would have been charged no matter where she went.

Not to mention, she was able to come and go at her leisure. There was nobody to stop her from roaming the streets at an hour she choose. So what could be so bad about it that people always seemed to be eager to leave, and more interesting in the moment:

"Why?"

"I suppose I am too used to my independence?"

Enjolras offered as a half thought. Well, and he felt somewhat as though he ought to be freeing up space for newcomers or those who could use the hotel's resources a bit more than he was, currently. That was a vague thought at best, considering he had no idea what to do, but he still did cling to it a little.

"I suppose part of me wishes for things to SEEM normal again as well." He said, considering more now. "And that for things to seem normal...I equate being out of the hotel with that?" He shook his head. "I'm happy enough to stay for the moment, but it feels...rather temporary somehow. I also have no real way of paying for things yet. I suspect if I found a bit more to do, that one would go away. The hotel is amazing, really. Perhaps in time, it will feel more like home too."

A lot of factors, really, and most of them related to his own stubborn notions,honestly.

"Is there something wrong with the Hotel, though?"

She could understand being independent. For him, who he was and what Midii knew of his past, it was of the utmost importance. To a slightly lesser degree, it was important to her too.

"Or is it just that it isn't the houses we used to stay in?" That it's too different from what we had before.

"Oh nothing is wrong with it at all, no." Enjolras is quick to answer the question there. He appreciates all that is being done, and he would quite enjoy VISITING there again, for something of a break from time to time, but, it doesn't feel quite like 'home'. Not that he's sure his quarters in Earth were home either, but they were much closer, anyway.

"I suppose it is a bit more of the second only..." He shrugs. "Not so much that either. It does not FEEL like home, if that makes sense. I would like to find somewhere that does, somewhere down the line, but in the meantime...it does just fine. It is not the houses themselves that I miss."

He's adding, pondering the question and deciding that no, really the house, the things he lost, do not matter SO much, even with Combeferre's papers and drawings long gone. "More...the feeling that they brought about, perhaps? There is something in being able to call a place one's own. Well, and..." he pauses, eyedarting just a little.

"The lines for the bathroom are something I could do without."

The only home that had ever felt like home to her...had been her original home. With papa and Michel and the Twins. To a degree, she had grown comfortable with the people in Keelai, but it was never the same.

Maybe that was why she didn't have the same problems with the Hotel. To her, it was just a place. One more stop on her seemingly never-ending travels, big and small.

...though she did smile at the bathroom line: "The girls' line isn't so bad. But that could be because I go there late at night, when most other people are asleep."

Enjolras missed home, when he thought about it. The waves and winter market in his village, the libraries and cafes of Paris, the smell of ink on a freshly printed copy of Le National... They were simply things which could not be done here.

He did not consider himself overly sentimental and had managed well enough without those things, but there were times that he became nostalgic for the streets of Paris, the Musain and the Corinth and...maybe his home was there, among the people.

But here, with Combeferre, he HAD felt it for a while and tried with Taraja and, well, now that it was gone, it felt like he was trying to recreate the feeling, maybe. That was probably his real reason, deep down.

"That would be far more beneficial." He agreed, smiling.

"Just don't take that as an invitation to start using ours."

(Not that she figured he would. Probably.)

"Do you know, as interesting and as easy as it sounds, I think I will pass on the same.

[He actually laughs, tossing his head a little, while loose tendrils float in front of his face.]

I can see that causing quite the commotion somehow.

Midii was both old enough to understand why, but also experienced enough in conditions where gender separation wasn't always possible that it wouldn't have affected her, personally.

"For people who aren't used to it, yes. Plus, if the boys started using our bathrooms, then our lines will get longer. Which wouldn't be fair."

In Enjolras's world, one would never look at certain parts of a woman's anatomy if he were not her husband, after all. He had never paid it much mind before, other than to roll his eyes as his friends discussed beauties they had wooed, or to stop them when the detail got obscene.

He HAS had a few awkward moments here and there, but he's much more used to the casual nature of things here now. Sometimes he even goes out without wearing his coat. And he's seen plenty of ankles in his day, and shrugged them off. There are more important things to think about, after all.

"I can imagine the chaos now." And Enjolras really COULD see it blowing up a little. Those who were unused to shared nudity being struck with it firsthand, Those who were shy or ashamed for some reason... no, it simply would not work at all.

"Ah, your reasoning most of all, naturally. It WOULD defeat the purpose."

...it had probably always helped that, back then, Midii had still been a child. Her way of thinking regarding the opposite sex had been vastly different.

Even now, at fourteen, she was only just barely approaching a state of mind where it might have been more embarrassing than she'd once thought.

"Chaos is something we don't need right now. The last time I heard, we were still trying to smooth things over with the few locals who aren't happy we're still here."

THAT was an excellent explanation, really. One did do that, didn't they? Girls versus boys or SOMETHING? Enjolras wasn't up to date on how all of that worked though.

"No, we cannot have more, or have it coming from ourselves, can we?" He mused, pausing for a sip of cider. "We must be united now, the entire lot of us, more than ever."

He hoped that it would turn out to be that way.

She made a slight face at that. United, huh?

Easier said than done.

"...well, most of us."

"You don't think it can be done? "

He's glancing at her, raising a brow curiously.

"We did it once before."

For the most part.

She hadn't been on the front lines of battle, no, but Midii had been involved enough to know that not every single moment had been spent in total harmony with one another. And, on top of that...

"Different people. Different situation. There's no one, great big evil we have to fight or else." She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we can. But there are definitely some people here I don't want to be around, no matter why we're all still here."

"Oh, really?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I would say a good number of us who fought it have remained. A different situation, yes, and some new people, but we still have a good number of those who fought here." Enjolras shrugged. "I am only saying that if we managed to drive off that, we can handle our current problems here as well.

They're different, so we need to learn more of them before making a move of any kind, but once we KNOW more information, I think we can find a solution. I cannot give up or in so easily as that, I suppose. Not when I have seen the impossible happen before my eyes.

We can do near anything, with the range of people and talents here. I sliced off the head of our dark lord and others did much the same thing, with weapons, or talents, or whatever else, produced with the power of our minds and the Dreaming. The Dreaming is still a part of this world. Those ARE the factors that we need and they are in common."

As for those she doesn't want to be around, it's understandable, and he is nodding.

"Well, you need not be close friends with everyone, or even acquaintances. I don't know many of the people here, myself. Unity...we could never have it on all levels. I think that would be patently ridiculous. But in the broad terms...I still see it happening, somehow. And I am told that we are still here because we chose to be. At least, I know that I was asked."

That was the main difference between them. He had the ability to believe such things. To make such things happen.

Were it anyone else, Midii might have shrugged the notion off. But...Enjorlas did have a point, begrudged as she might have been to admit it. Many faces were new, but some of them were only new because she had never bothered to get to know them before. And the better they all worked together, the easier things would be. Teamwork had helped them defeat Malicant. Teamwork would get them through this next patch.

"...I did choose to stay. You're right." If only because she still didn't believe she had a home to go back to. Certainly not the same family she'd spent time with in the Dream realm. "But not everybody had the chance to make that choice."

Maybe so. Enjolras had never been one for inaction when there were so many things left that needed to be worked for made to happen. He did have all hopes that teamwork would do a lot for all of them. Cooperation in everything was a bit too much but he suspected they could get things down to a system, maybe voting?, of voicing opinions and making sure that all who wished it were heard. If they could function as one unit based on that, they would be doing fairly well.

"I suppose not." He allowed. "Some were pulled out of here before the fighting, and then returned here, weren't they?"

She nodded.

"And some were pulled after the fighting." She knew because of the particular questions they asked.

"Our new arrivals, yes." Enjolras had met Sokka's friend Aang that way, and there had been a medieval Lady he'd talked with over the network. It would be foolish to presume there weren't others it had happened to.

"In terms of them...Yes, they seem to have simply ended here the same as we did, you are right. But those of us who had been here, I mean. I think the question fell to all of us. It's strange, isn't it? Eshai's spell IS deactivated by now, is it not?"

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