[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

[splinten]

You talk like your soul has a will of its own.

[Which is actually interesting to Dirk? The souls he knows are, you know, pretty much just The Essence of Being. No independent will.]

[lalliho]

It does.

[Well, part of it, anyway... The other part kind of is will... Souls are complicated. With some reluctance, he draws his legs in and rests his chin on his knees -- it's an action that makes him look closed off, but his muscles are markedly less tense afterwards.]

It's my luonto. They're like...guardian spirits. But they're your nature. I used its energy a lot, so it had to go away for a while. I had it under control.

[splinten]

[It doesn't seem to bother Dirk; honestly, he is not familiar with social interaction to read too far into social cues. He's more likely to read people as combatants: weak points closed off, muscles tense and ready to fight or relaxed.]

I'm not familiar with the term. Is the idea common in your world, or I guess maybe your culture?

[Dirk honestly looks a little sheepish, in that inexpressive way of his.]

Souls aren't really a thing I ever had a chance to research. I sort of just got the info dropped on me one day, in the manner of, "Hey, your magic superpower is Heart, which basically means Soul, and that's why you've spent your entire life having weird sleep issues." Which seemed kind of stupid to me, but I guess sleep being connected to souls checks out in your universe too.

[And that's the honest truth: for all that Dirk is collected and likes to seem like he Knows Things and is in charge and competent, he honestly knows jack shit about souls and what he's supposed to be doing. He is lost and has been making it up as he goes along. He feels vaguely responsible towards weird souls, since he's supposedly a God of Heart, but he also just doesn't understand and he feels like he is supposed to. He was made a God and given no guidance on how to be one.]

[lalliho]

[Lalli gives him a measuring look, like he's trying to weigh the sincerity. It was easier when he could see eyes... Eyes were easier than voices, for him, since he'd always had horrible, melancholy words of the dead as background noise, and gruff-sounding speakers at his sides.]

...Not really. But -- [Hmmn. He picks up a shrimp, expertly slicing through the breaded layer with his nail and peeling it back like it's some lab specimen he's experimented on time after time.] ...I'm my soul and body. There's a place for both. In the soul place, I can wait for my luonto to come back, or keep hold of my barrier to keep away evil spirits. Or try to get someone to hear me.

[Lalli sighs, setting the breading down.]

I thought I could find someone if I made it so Qri's magic had to fail and I stayed there waiting for my luonto... [Well, he got himself into a magic coma.] I failed. I'm too far from anyone else who has a place like that.

[splinten]

[It can be hard to read Dirk's sincerity, and the shades don't help. Dirk isn't exactly an expressive person even without him, and his voice tends towards a neutral monotone more than any particular inflection. But his body language suggests at least attentive focus and interest. The truth is that this means the world to him, and he isn't even eating.]

So it's related to your magic. Is that why you and Emil are different? [Emil's soul isn't quite like Lalli's.]

[lalliho]

[Pfh. Lalli has to scoff humorlessly at that.]

There are a lot of reasons Emil and I are different. [However,] If you mean his soul, yes. He's not a mage. They don't have them in Sweden.

[splinten]

[He doesn't jump in with, "It's the same with my best friend." He honestly isn't sure if Lalli's comment suggests the same feeling, the weird sense that that person is better in some way, kinder, more worthy. Even if that's what Lalli means, he doesn't want to bring it in. The conversation is already delicate enough.]

I remember old legends used to say that the Finnish were famed for their mages. Like, super freaked out the Vikings left and right. That may not have been in your world's record, though. It depends on where our worlds' deviations are rooted.

[lalliho]

[He gives a short nod, going back to picking apart food to eat piece by piece.]

It's sort of like that. Iceland, Norway, and Denmark have mages, but they're all the same I think and Finland is different. Sweden is just dumb so it's the only one that doesn't believe in magic.

[you know, out of all five countries]

[splinten]

[Yeah he really has wanted to ask about that, and now feels like the time.]

Okay, yeah, not believing in magic seems really fucking stupid when mages are a literally visible thing.

I have to ask. Are those five countries the only option?

[lalliho]

[What a time to ask... Their speeddating time is coming to a close... But at least Lalli seems more open to the discussion, now that Sweden is confirmed to be idiots and they're talking normal stuff instread of prying into his bad decisions.]

Op...tion?

[????]

...It's only those five left, if that's what you mean.

[splinten]

[And so Dirk's last comment is a rather chill,]

Oh, so like, the rest of the world is dead?

[lalliho]

[As is Lalli's... Everything is Fine.]

Yes.

[Have a tiny wave as the chairs float away...! This chat wasn't so bad, in the end. Apocalypse, no big deal.]