Drink another shot of make believe

edy stage direction: insert some heavily audio-engineered pop beat heard at least 3 drinks in Edy feigned outrage quite easily. She was a teenager after all and so the emotion (or portrayal of it) obviously came quite easily. Even so there might have been a teeeeeeeeeensy bit of truth in it; no one liked being out right rejected after all, even if the offer hadn't been entirely serious. "Garden of what now?" The girl asked with a curious tilt of her head. Whatever it was it sounded like the rest of the flowery words he'd been using, and with her luck, it was probably reserved for good girls as well. Quirking a brow, Edy gave the artist a curious stare. "18. Well, 19 now I think." She corrected. Back in Northwind and Northaven the most started working at the age of about 14, or at least began to, and so when the call had come to start fresh, they basically let anyone with a working reproductive system through. As a Launceleyn she'd started even sooner. Having been raised in the family compound, Edy had been trained to serve the crown from the moment she was born. Then again, to refuse an order from the crown meant certain death for the Launceleyns (and boy was she glad that magical noose has been removed). "Soldier." She said simply with a shrug. Though Edy was long and lean, there were muscles on her bones and if Bastien decided to give her a more through looking-at, he'd notice no shortage of magically-inflicted scars and legs that looked like they could run for days. Smirking, Edy leaned forward against the bar and chewed idly on a fingernail. "And now here I am." She chuckled, fluttering her lashes. "I can't tell if it's a promotion or not though."

Bastien had assumed she had been in her late teens so the age made sense, but hearing she was a soldier was a surprise. His heart softened toward Edrei slightly; to have been a soldier in her youth must have been hard in addition to the unnerving experience of landing here as an outlander. Unsure of what comment to make about that, he decided to explain her question instead. "Oh, it is a story from my world. About the creation of the world. A man and a woman in a beautiful garden, but they are innocent. As soon as they learn about corruption..." Bastien tutted, shaking his head down at the bottles as if 'corruption' was a great pain to him and not something he regularly encouraged. "They become ashamed of their nakedness and hide. God kicks them from the garden...I did not believe this story. But many did." He turned to Edy, curious to see if myths transferred between worlds. "Do you have a creation story in your world?" BASTIEN This tiresome desire to shock and amaze Perhaps I’ll grow out of it one of these days

edy stage direction: insert some heavily audio-engineered pop beat heard at least 3 drinks in Perhaps surprising given just how crude and a lover of more base-pleasures Edy seemed to be, she adored stories. Pipping up instantly she listened at the few details that Bastien was recalling. "What does corruption have to do with being naked?" She wondered outloud. Also unsurprisingly, Edy was a big fan of being naked. But back to the story. "So...perfect garden, they find out about corruption and they get booted? How is that fair?" Thinking back to her upbringing, Edy just shook her head. "Not like that, no. I mean, we can trace the Launceleyn-lineage all the way back. Pretty sure we've just inserted ourselves in all the important bits of history, but there was never anything like that. Just a big magical family bound by a curse, yadda yadda." Edy shrugged her shoulders childishly. Like Bastien she didn't really buy into most of the Launceleyn stories she was told as a child. But, as with most stories, that hardly seemed to matter as long as the majority bought it. And the majority of the Launceleyns definitely did.

"It's not fair, but fairness isn't the game people play in my world." He shrugged, musing over the way things had been in his life before. "The point of the story is to control people...but there is a kind of beauty to it. It's accidental art...propaganda made meaningful." This was a tangent and unimportant, but he seemed to think about it for a while quietly; he tried to remember good things he said to write down later for the inevitable memoir. Edy's response was not what he was expecting, brought down to the much more narrow confines of a family than the cosmic realms of Gods and legends. "It all sounds intriguing. Perhaps it is commonplace to you but to me magic is a miracle I still cannot fully believe exists. Family lines, though, I understand that. My parents were both gardeners, tending to plants and flowers in Paris. When I did not want to spend my life with my knees in the soil there was a fight." He seemed distant speaking about his family, not just the gap of space but time there as well. "...If there is a way to go back, will you do it?" BASTIEN This tiresome desire to shock and amaze Perhaps I’ll grow out of it one of these days

edy stage direction: insert some heavily audio-engineered pop beat heard at least 3 drinks in "Well I'm glad we didn't end up in your world then. Fuck that." Edy said with a dismissive shrug and crinkle of her nose. The teenager didn't follow the flowery prose the man used to describe the story, but it sounded absolutely ridiculous to her. Accidental art? That sounded like an oxymoron. Then again Edy wasn't really the creative or artistic type so it wasn't that surprising that it all sort of went over her head. "Ahh yeah.." She said with another non-committal shrug. The Launceleyns were magical folk. You couldn't even marry a non-magical without threat of death. Well, not even threat. It was a guarantee. Cocking an ear, Edy tipped her head like a small puppy as she pushed out her lower lip. With her family it didn't matter what you did or didn't want. You just did what you were told. Did Edy hate most of it? Well, she probably would have if she hadn't been indoctrinated at such a young age. "And so you decided to do what instead?" "Hmmmmm." Edy hmmmmd thoughtfully before shrugging childishly. "I mean, lots of my family is here. I think anyways. Zariah is the head here, so I guess I'd just do what she said. If she wanted to go back and continue the fight in Northaven, I suppose that'd be what I did."

Edy's easy dismissal of his world made Bastien snort; he admired her spirit. He could have used some more of that in his young artists, he thought. "I decided to do what I loved, of course. I moved to Venice, I became a performer, an artist. I seduced Lords and entranced peasant girls." This was purposefully flowery speech, illustrating with sweeping hand gestures and a smirk. "I owned my own institution in Venice, a space for those who felt their souls being pulled to an artistic path." He had thought, many times, how the shelter would be going without him; he had of course had underlings but he had been the beating heart of the operation, nothing happening without it going through him first. The thought of his room at the top of the building being given to someone else made his heart ache. "Well, if she could. But it seems we are destined to all be stuck here for a while, anyway." BASTIEN This tiresome desire to shock and amaze Perhaps I’ll grow out of it one of these days

edy stage direction: insert some heavily audio-engineered pop beat heard at least 3 drinks in "Souls being pulled huh?" Edy repeated, flashing the dark-haired man a devious smile. She understood almost none of what he said, but rather liked how it sounded. You couldn't just be an artist in Northaven, and so while Edy had been trained to think it a was a superfluous sort of task, the way Bastien described it had a nice ring to it. "Yep." Edy agreed. Then with a playful grin, she quickly hopped over the bar's countertop with a graceful leap. "But if we are stuck here, only one of us needs to be working. And you're definitely the more capable of us." With a wink, Edy bounced her eyebrows before scurrying towards the door to the Rathskeller and out into the streets. Bastien was the only one properly working anyways, what did he need her around for? ~FIN