[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

[talim]

I don't mind at all. It's only fair.

[ jude hums, mulling it over before launching into an explanation. ]

Our world is built on the foundation of spirits. Everything we've come to know, our entire way of life... Without spirits, we wouldn't have any of it. Humans from Rieze Maxia typically have something called a mana lobe that enables them to cast what are called spirit artes. For example, I went to med school to become a doctor, so I'm particularly proficient in healing artes thanks to the training I've had, but we use spirits for things as simple and mundane as turning the lights on and off.

Then there are Great Spirits, watching over us from an alternate dimension called the Spirit Realm, and...

[ jude pauses, mid-ramble. ]

It's pretty lengthy, but basically, yeah. I'm no stranger to spirits. I even spent a good amount of time journeying alongside one.

[oneandmikleonly]

That's...amazing. It's sort of like an inverse of where I'm from. Most people think seraphs are unseen spirits, legends who don't exist anymore, and do their best to make their way without us. There were definitely times in the past where we coexisted more closely, and there are still some amazing relics to be found that combine human construction with seraphic magic, but remaining unseen gets in the way of that a lot, nowadays. Not a lot of seraphs trust humans enough to live too closely to them, either, and humans can't use magical artes, not without seraphic pacts.

[ah]

Did you journey alongside them because you grew up close to them? Or did they visit from the other realm somehow?

[talim]

Wow. That's... It really is like an inverse, huh? Like both our worlds were just sort of flipped upside down and shaken around a little.

No, I didn't grow up close to them. They left the Spirit Realm and we happened to meet by complete chance a little more than a year ago. A coincidence. Being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you choose to look at it. I went from the latter to the former. She's gone back to the Spirit Realm, now, but she's still a dear friend of mine.

What about you? Sorey is human, right? How did he grow up just being able to see and hear you?

[oneandmikleonly]

I hope she can at least visit. It sounds like the barrier between the spirit and human portions of your worlds is rather thin, if spirits are seen and used so frequently.

As for Sorey...

[as for Jude's question, he'd never had to think about it all that much, growing up, but after encountering Alisha and and particularly Rose -- and absolutely no other human who could sense them unless they were filled to the gills with malevolence -- he'd had more cause for analysis.]

I don't know. I don't remember if he was able to do it when we were very small. Resonance is so rare, but...I don't remember a time when he couldn't see me and Gramps and everyone else. I think it might be because there was never actually a time when he wasn't with at least one of us, and never a time when he wasn't totally outside a seraph's domain.

1/2

[talim]

I guess you could say that, but unfortunately, it's not exactly the type of thing where she can just drop in.

[ jude can't help but look a little sad. disappointed. he's quick to shake it off, though, masking it as best he can. ]

She has an important duty to fulfill, and that duty is in the Spirit Realm.

2/2

[talim]

But that's interesting.

[ and it genuinely is. jude is terrible at feigning disinterest, and he doesn't have to. he's enraptured by the idea of this world with humans and seraphim living alongside one another. ]

I'm surprised it's so rare. I wonder how a seraph like you would fare in Rieze Maxia, if everyone could see you or not. It'd be an interesting experiment, that's for sure.

[ not that it'll ever happen, unfortunately. ]

I wish I could visit your world, too. I know we don't have much time left here, but I'd like to know what the other seraph are like.

[oneandmikleonly]

...well, as we've seen, some people seem to be coming and going from the coven. It could be that another seraph will come here at some point at some point -- or even your friend.

[a flicker of uncertainty in his own face: what business of their friends would get interrupted to bring them here? what business here would get interrupted if they were to go back home...?

(he's going to lose Sorey to the deep sleep of the earthpulse again someday, at least for a while, and while he's tried to make peace with that fact again, it still scares him, somewhere deep.)

he pushes that thought to the back of his head again where it belongs, and smiles.]

Anything's possible, right...? I mean, look where we are right now.