[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

Comments

[oneandmikleonly]

[takes a deep breath and lets it out]

Was it that obvious? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. I've just never been so close to a living dragon before this without, well, being in the middle of a fight with it...

[rootandbranch]

I don't mind. I've never talked to a lot of alive humans, either.

[there's a dangerous glitter in his eye, but he closes it, body still relaxed, and sighs a tiny sigh after that small joke is done; letting the moment of knife-edged predator pass, perhaps]

Is "was it that obvious" your question, or did you have another one?

[oneandmikleonly]

[lets out another very slow breath, allowing himself to relax once that gaze is off him]

No, that one was a rhetorical question. Um -- this one's not on the list, but did the Palai actually attach you to a chair for this?

[HE CAN'T CONTAIN HIS CURIOSITY HE MUST KNOW]

[rootandbranch]

[Geir opens his eye again to look at Mikleo and picks up his right foreclaw




the chair is stuck to it.]

[oneandmikleonly]

[that's incredible. he applauds the Palai's dedication to form]

Oh, wow, they really did. Ah. Your turn for a question--Geir?

[rootandbranch]

Hahaha!!

[his demeanor is much different, the sharpness gone entirely.]

Oh, sure! Um--[he needs a Palai to tell him what the paper says, but...]

What's your biggest "pet peeve?" What does that mean, too.

[oneandmikleonly]

[this conversation is so strange, but Mikleo seems to have steadied up, too; Geir's obvious intelligence is more reassuring than his teeth are offputting]

A pet peeve is a small thing that irritates you in your day to day life, not necessarily rationally...everyone's are a bit different. A lot of mine have to do with cooking, I suppose...I don't like it when people mess up recipes for no good reason and wind up wasting food. Do you have something like that?

[rootandbranch]

I haven't done much day to day life. Umm...

[all of these intended-to-be-boring little questions are making him genuinely think to answer them. he searches deeply for the answer to this one, but he can't remember much that's irritated him about living with Vern so far -- it's been too new and too wonderful.]

I guess, when someone asks a question and the person doesn't-quite answer it. Like all the stuff about Qri here so far. When people do that, it's really annoying.

[he really does prefer directness in his communication... it's so much easier that way. Loki would roll his eyes and say he always knew his son was a simpleton, Geir reflects, rueful rather than bitter.]

What are you, anyway? You're a person, but you don't smell human.

[oneandmikleonly]

I'm a water seraph; we're like a sort of protective spirit that lives alongside humans, but humans mostly can't see us.

[he considers Geir's answer rather deeply himself, though for different reasons]

...when you say the person doesn't quite answer, are they actually sliding around giving you any information about Qri, to use your example, or just going 'I don't know'? Sorry, I'm trying to make sense of that.

[rootandbranch]

Huh! What are you protecting?

[and, decisively:]

Both. The first thing is much more annoying, though.

[oneandmikleonly]

Huh. It might be possible they're trying to talk up their own speculation about her, or something. I just found that curious since honestly, apart from maybe Brie and Genette, none of us know anything about her other than 'supposedly a mage and brought us over.'

[he looks down at his hands curled on the table, thinking, before answering]

...depends. Most seraphs protect the places where they live with a domain against malevolence, and maybe people or other seraphs in the area depending who else happens to live there. I protect a human, since I'm pacted to him and he's, er, technically my living space, but from what I've seen since leaving home that's actually pretty rare. Is there anything similar where you're from?

[rootandbranch]

Genette is the one who gets on my nerves most!

[puffs a little before deflating. he's not fond of Genette, but...]

Even if she's annoying, it's still Qri's fault for being so mysterious in the first place, though.

[a spirit protecting a human... Geir stretches out further, losing the last of his flash of annoyance in consideration of Mikleo's answer.]

You sound like one of the spirits from the other branches of the Tree, compared to home. Like the fire spirits from Muspelheim, though they're not protectors... I've got a pact with a human too, but I'm not usually the kind of creature who'd be summoned. Were you expecting to make a pact-- was that the plan?

[oneandmikleonly]

Yes. I do hope Qri makes herself more directly known to us soon...

[he smiles, a little ruefully]

Your world sounds pretty interesting. I never thought about making a pact when I was younger -- humans who can do it are so rare, and it wasn't necessary where we grew up. But everything got complicated when we left home, and my best friend had to do a lot of fighting, and a pact was the best way to be able to help and protect him. So no, it wasn't planned, but I don't regret it.

[hesitates]

Do you not want to have been summoned, or is that question too personal...?

[rootandbranch]

I didn't want it before, but I did after it happened!

[vehement.]

I just wondered if there was something you were supposed to have been doing, that's different now.

[oneandmikleonly]

Not really. I didn't have a life plan or anything, but I've always been looking out for Sorey, I guess, so...um, it worked out--

[his chair is rising and about to whisk off, oh no]

--let's talk more later! I forgot to ask if you could teach someone how to fly--!

[rootandbranch]

[why would a human-shaped creature like Mikleo need to know how to fly?

Geir considers the question for a moment, then dismisses it - he'll find out later. for now, more breadsticks.]