[OPEN EVENT] Weekend Winter Wonderland

[wintershepherd]

Characters: All?
Date: March 8th-11th
Location: All of Keeliai
Situation: It's been a stressful month thus far for a lot of people, but Jack is determined to Make All The Happy and decides he needs to get back to his wintery roots by giving the city a proper snowing.
Warnings/Rating: People high on snow glitter?
NOTES: Actionspam OR prose, whatever is preferred! (Settings were just easier to prose.) Make your own thread headers if none of these suit! ♥



Jack had spent the last three hours balanced motionlessly on the top of a flagpole, head tilted back as he listened to the wind and the sound of the city below. Where is Winter? it asked. I'm here! the spirit replied, but he knew it didn't mean his physical presence. He'd had too much on his mind and too much in his heart and in that sense he had indeed been absent these last few weeks.

Eyes closed and thoughtlessly trusting, he tipped forward into open air, letting the wind catch him and hurl him upward into the misty cloud cover that scudded across the stars tonight. At his touch they thickened, fat and pale grey against the indigo backdrop and Jack swirled them up, the motions so ingrained in him they felt just like breathing. In the small hours of the morning snowflakes began to fall on the sleeping city, specks at first but then quickly becoming heavier.

Now with a fresh canvas to work with, Jack was really in his element. He could never have done something like this back home, not anywhere in his world. It would have been too strange, too inexplicable, drawn too much attention. But here on the turtle, things were different. There wasn't really a semblance of normal and Jack poured his imagination and heart into the things he wanted most to share, and from the snow rose gleaming swirls of snow and blue light, forming things of exceptional detail and delight.

By the time the sun rose, a solid three feet of the snow had blanketed the city, glistening and crisp and Jack went rocketing down the streets, rapping on doors and windows to leave spirals of frost on every surface.

"Whooohoo! Snow day! Get up sleepyheads, everyone come out and play!"


THREAD STARTERS
Ice Skating | Snowball Battle | Sledding Hill | Ice Cityscapes | Kids Playground | OOC Plot Post

Comments

[usavatar]

"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it," Steve says, and bounces the kedan on his shoulder before lifting her down into the snow.

He watches the girl leaping between his footprints for a moment before continuing the conversation. "How are you adjusting to all this? It must be... different, the work and everything."

[epigrammatical]

He waves a graceful hand, a gesture that seems to say that nothing is ever really difficult for him. Only a slight twitch of the mouth at the word work betrays that gesture in any way. "Oh, to be sure, it is a very long way from London in every respect. But I was fortunate to have some assistance in the first days of my being here, and I have many charming new acquaintances—to say nothing of an entirely new set of gossip. For that alone I could be perfectly grateful."

[usavatar]

Steve smiles at the ground, slight irony in the expression. He can't deny there's a certain satisfaction in a man of station being forced to find a job, but the thought is disingenuous and stays private.

"I don't know if I should ask what kind of gossip."

[epigrammatical]

"No doubt many would find it mundane, but to a newcomer all is of interest," Henry said, "and I have always been of the belief that one should enjoy novelty as much as possible until the inevitable growth of familiarity and its blossom of contempt."

[usavatar]

"I find familiarity creates comfort," he says, and shrugs, gesturing in the direction Harry was walking before he starts moving himself. "If you can't find the novel in the mundane, then maybe you're not looking carefully enough."

[epigrammatical]

Henry falls into step beside him. "You are not wrong, but London society—in my era, at least—is worse than the smallest village and twice as low-minded. One grows weary of hearing opinions that have been espoused since the Napoleonic Wars. Perhaps I shall return from this sojourn refreshed, and appreciating that milieu anew."

[usavatar]

"You could always travel." Except someone with Henry's view of the world and its people wouldn't be... well, Steve is no stranger to racism. Even the supposedly enlightened kind that feels pity for the poor non-white-Anglicans instead of being simply disgusted. He has a hard time envisioning the man going far. The kedan are one thing - they're a completely different species. But back in a strictly human world...

Steve hides a grimace with a joke. "Maybe America. One way or another it's bound to be an education."

[epigrammatical]

Henry laughs softly. "Oh, I have. Paris and Italy, of course. Trouville-sur-mer is quite lovely, and Algiers is an excellent place to be when winter has England too tightly in its grip. I confess I have not yet been to America. I am told it is a marvellous country—less a country, perhaps, than a world unto itself."

He's watching Rogers without appearing to do so, out of the corner of his eye; he wonders, with amusement, if the other man is expecting some kind of paradox or insult to his native land.

[usavatar]

He was. When it doesn't come, he raises his eyebrows and glances at Henry - and promptly realizes he's basing his expectations on Oscar Wilde's words, which is exactly what he promised himself he wouldn't do. Somehow it's harder with Wotton.

"You're not wrong." Steve's voice changes, all but imperceptibly. Even in his disillusionment he has a helpless affection for his home. "Sometimes I think it's a miracle that it's all one place, with how different the cities and the people can be, but then someone says something or does something and I'm reminded how it all fits. Like a puzzle that keeps getting painted over and taken apart for us to figure out again."

[epigrammatical]

It could be that Henry guessed that Rogers was expecting some pointed epigram, based on their previous conversations, and decided to subvert his expectations to keep him off-balance. He's not above that, after all.

Or maybe he's just genuinely being nice, for once.

"You have a poetic soul, Captain Rogers," he says, smiling. "And a patriot's heart, indeed."

[usavatar]

Steve is going to go with the or maybe.

He laughs quietly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I don't know about the first part. But thank you."

[epigrammatical]

It's surprising, really, how often people do tend to give Henry the benefit of the doubt. ("Don't mind him, my dear," whispered Lady Agatha. "He never means anything that he says.")

"I merely state what I observe," he replies. "If I may say so, it must be trying for you, to find yourself under a sort of imperial monarchy."

[usavatar]

The thought of the Emperor gets a very obvious reaction. A sharpening, a narrowed focus, like he's aiming a gun.

"Under this one? Yes."

[epigrammatical]

The reaction does not go unnoticed. When Henry speaks, his voice is lowered enough to be discreet.

"That makes it sound rather as if it is not simply a matter of principle," he says. "As principle can often be tedious, I am relieved. But tell me, what has our mysterious Emperor done to earn your acrimony?"

[usavatar]

"We're supposedly here to help, to save this place somehow, but they won't even tell us what's wrong. Everything is 'the Emperor's business' and as far as she seems to be concerned, we're not worthy of knowing what that business is. She dragged us here just to threaten us, give us enough comfort to stave off most complaints and enough distractions to keep us from asking the important questions."

Even the cheering effect of Jack's magic doesn't stop the slow rise of Steve's temper. "From everything I've seen, I feel like we're here less as helpers than as cannon fodder, and I don't like the feeling."

[epigrammatical]

This actually pulls Henry up short a bit. He had hitherto been thinking of this entire escapade as a sort of peculiar holiday, preferring to concentrate on his interesting new acquaintances—and one unexpectedly complicated old friend—rather than spend much time considering the larger purpose in being here. If asked earlier, he would have said that he was sure all would be revealed eventually, and left it at that.

Rogers's words are a bit of cold water down the back of his neck, though it doesn't show on his face except for a slight frown.

"What is it that we can accomplish that the kedan cannot?" he wonders. "And if we are indeed the Light Brigade, then who are our Russians?"

[usavatar]

Steve reigns back on his anger, scuffing one combat boot through the snow and kicking up a flurry at an ice sculpture as they walk past. "I don't mind doing and dying if I know what I'm doing it for."

He catches his distorted reflection in the sculpture's curves and can't stop a shudder. "But I'd prefer to avoid the mouth of Hell, just the same. I can say that there's something wrong here. Just... wrong. As beautiful as the city is, the mainland..." The mausoleum, the ilothi, the miles and miles of dust. "It's one big open grave."

[epigrammatical]

It isn't often that Henry is inspired to quote anything but his beloved French writers, but there is one—and an American, no less—who his favourite Baudelaire admired enormously, and it's a few morbid lines of Edgar Allan Poe that come to his mind now.

"Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest."

He looks over at Rogers. "I was unaware that there was a mainland, in fact. I had imagined that our turtle plied the waves of an endless ocean."

[usavatar]

Steve listens to Henry's recitation with his eyes closed, pausing in the street to enjoy the sound of Poe's verse in the man's voice. The book was certainly right about its musicality, and despite the morbidity of the lines, it's somehow calming.

"The City in the Sea." Like something out of the Revelations. Steve falls in beside Henry again. "You were? I suppose it's not too surprising - none of us knew, either, until the first time we made landfall."

A slight grimace. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hit you with all of that at once."

[epigrammatical]

Henry smiles, his hand drifting in a graceful gesture that at once accepts the apology and suggests that it was unnecessary, but appreciated. "I am glad to know of these things. Does the turtle come to land very often, then?"

[usavatar]

"Only once while I've been here. Once in almost eight months."

Eight months. Every time someone asks a question that has to do with the duration of Steve's stay it shocks him all over again.

[epigrammatical]

"There must be very little mainland—or very little of it worth visiting, then," Henry replies, and then is unable to resist adding, "Rather like Australia, or so I am told."

[usavatar]

"Or a lot of ocean." He finds himself inclined to be contrary in conversations with Harry. He ducks his head to hide a smile regarding the Australia thing, though. "I've heard that the only thing in Australia that doesn't try to kill you is the people, but that's only because they were on our side."

[epigrammatical]

That contrariness is, in fact, one of the things Henry is growing to like about Rogers.

"Indeed; considering how the people got there, I should hedge one's bets against them as well." Transportation stopped when Henry was a boy, but the place still has a rough reputation in his day.

[usavatar]

He kicks another spray of snow into the air, for some reason wanting to play with it. "This might be a strange question, but... do you know Oscar Wilde?"