September Event - Guest Appearances

[pumpkinhollow]

GUEST APPEARANCES

Ignition

September 20th is the Autumnal Equinox. Many places across the world of Concorde celebrate the first day of fall. While various nations and regions have their own cultural practices surrounding it, nature is god everywhere. And so the inception of Mother Autumn’s domain is universally recognized, even if the names change from place to place. But on a little island named Marrow, in a little town called Pumpkin Hollow, there is another reason to celebrate.

The birth of Dahlia Leeds is not so important an event that it supersedes Celestine herself, and neither Dahlia nor anyone in town is foolhardy enough to claim as much. In fact, after the events on this very same day last year, one might argue that perhaps her birth at least started out as a bad thing. But she is certainly the wealthiest person in town. It is through the combination of substantial wealth and a generous heart, two things that are very seldom found in the same place, that we end up with a soiree where the birthday girl would rather spoil everyone else on her day than herself.

The doors to Leeds Estate, which presides proudly over the town upon its throne at the crest of Founder’s Hill, are flung wide open. Large sums of Brass are paid to caterers, florists, and seamstresses to make sure this place is decorated to the nines. Some businesses labor all year, just to prepare for the handsome payoff they’ll get from this event alone. And you, dear neighbor, are invited. Not only are you invited, but you are dressed for the event in whatever your heart desires, completely at the birthday girl’s expense. Dahlia ensures no cost nor conflict stands in between anyone in town and a much-needed break. She is determined for this birthday of hers to be a good night.

Or else.

Incipience

{ The timeframe between ignition and the peak of burning, where a small, contained fire spreads and grows gradually into an established flame. All it takes is a spark. }

The whole town is abuzz as preparations for the gala begin. From the moment people begin to wake up for the day, the air throughout Pumpkin Hollow just feels electric with excitement. After August, people have been needing this lift in morale, and after how last year’s gala went… well, there’s a lot riding on this one. And Dahlia seems much more in control now.

Speaking of being in control, the whole lead-up process has been incredibly organized. You wake up to a delivery--- your outfit, perfectly tailored and completely paid for. Accessories are included. She truly thought of everything.

It’s noteworthy that Dahlia’s invitations this time included another name beneath her own. “Suzanne Marie Dyneax,” it said. Most people don’t know the name, but gossip gets around in a small town like this. It’s not hard to pick up on the fact that this probably refers to Susie, one of the teenagers that Dahlia recently moved into her home, whose own birthday was ruined by Seemingly’s attack. Gift baskets have been delivered to others whose days were in proximity to the disaster--- Zivia, Capochin, even CT. Wine, fruit, and sweets, along with a birthday card. Dahlia has said in the past, “my birthday is your birthday,” but never has that felt more true.

With businesses mostly closed for the celebration, you are left with the majority of the day to prepare in relative peace. For many of the women in Dahlia’s inner circle, there is even a pre-party group dressing room set up on the third floor of her home. Only those who received her special invitation (Susie, Noelle, Fever, Cassandra, Anya, Alice, Patty, Melanie, Basira, Elsie) are permitted to join, but any friends or partners are gladly invited to wait at the bottom of the stairs for the girls to make their grand entrance.

The food is laid out, flowers placed, dresses laced and buttoned. The clock strikes 6pm, and the fun begins.

FLASHOVER

{ The moment when a blaze reaches its maximum size and heat, and the radiant heat in the space is such that all combustible materials ignite at once, allowing the flame to steadily and freely burn for the rest of the night. }

By the time it reaches 6:15, the ballroom is already flooded with eager dancers and hungry dinner guests. After all, the whole town is invited, and everyone’s excited to see Dahlia’s beautiful new ballroom and take a load off.

The music is elegant, played by a rotating cast of musicians who join the party when their act is over. The food is extravagant--- Dahlia and two of her partners are some of the biggest foodies in town, so this is expected. There is talking and laughing and the swirling of ballgowns, and all is well.

But there is a guest you do not recognize in the corner of the ballroom. An older man with white hair, strong features, and a dour expression. You can see Dahlia eyeing him, then flitting over to him, then talking to him. Her expression shifts from anxious, to annoyed, to resigned, before at last she sighs heavily and leaves him to it. Whatever it is that’s going on, clearly it’s something Dahlia is willing to begrudgingly tolerate in order to get back to having fun.

The reason for the disturbance becomes clear in short order, but by the grace of Celestine (and perhaps Eligos), it isn’t a reality bending nightmare or an attack by some monstrous beings. It is simply more guests.

A lot more, in fact.

Those who were on the island in September of the previous year will recall the Visitor’s Center, which appeared briefly just past the beach and served as temporary living and meeting quarters for visitors from the homeworlds of current residents. It would seem that this is a repeat incident. For the night of the gala, one to two “plus ones” have been invited for the vast majority of offworld residents. Most of them are friends or family who are happy to see their guests--- but this is ultimately a working of Eligos, so naturally, this is not always the case.

At the very least, Eligos seems to have been generous with his own granddaughter. As she turns away from him, she very nearly runs into someone much shorter than her. A dark haired human man with dwarfism. He laughs at the accident, grinning up at her as she stares back at him, utterly baffled. Then, petticoats billowing out, Dahlia sinks to the floor and embraces him as tight as she can, head pressed to his chest with little regard for her carefully-styled hair. Even those across the room can hear her shout his name. ”Jonah!”

Within the hour, the ballroom is packed with nearly double the people originally expected, turning the party livelier than it’s ever been. Tearful reunions, laughter, dancing, mischief, romance, sparring, cruelty, and even proper, righteous violence. Truly, this Leeds Gala will be one for the books!

--------
[ OOC reminders: each apped-in player character is entitled to one or two guests from their homeworld. This can be former selves, family, friends, enemies, and they do not have to be from the character’s exact canonpoint. They can be from the past or the future. You may play them yourself, ask another member player to do it, or recruit a non-member player to do so with moderator approval. Non-member players are permitted to join the Discord server while they’re active in this event! Threads you write for your own guests are eligible for AC for the character they’re there with, and threads you write for someone else’s guest can be used on the AC of a character of your choice. Just make sure to mark them as guest threads. After the gala, guests will be allowed to move freely about town, stay the night on Saturday and go home Sunday, or leave right after the gala if preferred. And last but not least, characters played in the gala can be apped directly from this event, rather than going through the normal arrival process. Let a mod know if you have questions, and have fun! ]

Smoldering

{ The decay of a flame as available heat, oxygen, and burning material gradually diminish. Eventually, the flames will recede entirely into glowing embers, glittering like orange starlight amid the ashes of what once was. }

The party rages well into the night. It’s not typical for residents of Pumpkin Hollow to stay out this late, with everything around here that goes bump in the night, but eventually party-goers begin to find their way out. They move in small groups, huddled around lanterns, may they ever stay lit. Perhaps the surprising bit is that their guests can go with them. There are even reservations made for board overnight at the Oak & Iron, all under the name “E. Rex”.

But alas, these reservations are only booked for one night. And by the time the sun begins to set on the darker half of the year for the first time, an unfamiliar black boat is moored at Jack's Marina. One that the guests will recognize as the vessel on which they arrived. They must leave by the time it becomes dark.

Or must they? Perhaps for a select few, they will fail to feel the call which draws them home. It is unclear why. There are many that Mortanne would have allowed residency for, if she could. But for some reason, all but a small few feel the pull. Perhaps Eligos has simply abandoned them here. (Or maybe none at all end up marooned and everyone goes home? That all depends on you, dear reader.)

When the sky goes dark, the aptly named Heavy Heart shoves off, with only her crimson sails hanging suspended seemingly in midair in the moonlight. The black ship is otherwise consumed by the night. And soon, even those flashes of red vanish into the distance.

Moments recede into memories, like a dying fire settles gently into glowing embers at the bottom of a hearth. The festivities are over, and the guests are gone. Life in Pumpkin Hollow resumes as before. But maybe just a little warmer and brighter.

“My birthday is your birthday,” as Dahlia often says.

Happy birthday.

References to the appearance of Leeds Estate can be found here!

Comments

cw: reference to Imperial Russian antisemitism, institutionalisation, homelessness

[graphomaniac]

Lev squeezes Mulcahy's hand in turn, and smiles, sadly.

"I ... nu. I ... there's like, no way to put it nicely?" he sighs, and his voice switches to the easy, fluent flow of teaching dvar Toirah, giving a drosh on Shabbos mornings, "the day that I turned twenty-five, according to the Ladsky calendar, I walked out on my wife and two children, leaving behind a bill of divorce, a letter explaining that yes, I indeed had enough thyroid and heart medication to last me until I could find myself a new physician, and I left not no forwarding address."

He sighs, his shoulders slumping. For just a brief moment, he'd sounded ... no, he sounded like himself still. But he sounded like he was holding himself back not, diminishing himself not. He had to dive into recitation mode, conscious of the fact he couldn't afford to meander off the path of the story and puncture the whole point.

He looks at Mulcahy, biting his lip, and then he takes another deep breath and goes on, "I had had a boyfriend. Across the Silver water, on Osedka. A Yekke that ... I ... like, I loved him? Of course I loved him. I wrecked my life for him. And then ..."

He closes his eyes.

"He ... there was, nu. A popular movement. If thou hast Jews in thy world, and if thou'rt sympathetic to the house of Yankel-Srul, then thou know'st there's often a popular movement. Thou can'st likely figure out what happened to him. And his family ... they ... left the city. They tried to help me as much as they could, but ..."

He shrugs.

"I ended up on a psych ward, and none of Gilya's former friends wished to be my friends. They always thought me ... a ... a hick. He had had no friends what were Jews. And his ... his ... friends. His cool friends. His cool Ladsky ex-Apollonian friends, they saw in me an embarrassing caricature, a reproach to Gilya what grew up speaking Ormic and Ladksy, as if I chose to be born frum, as if Gilya chose to be born in captivity of assimilation."

He's knocked himself off his easy stride. He's just divulged something to Mulcahy that, as far as Marrow Isle is concerned, only Anzu knows (Anzu and maybe Mortanne, he supposes, and of course, the One who is present even in seeming absence). He'd meant to tell Qingqiu, but he and Anzu had mutually decided that such revelations could wait, could wait until Qingqiu had gotten used to the idea that his boyfriends' lives had, to put it plainly, sucked.

He closes his eyes.

"I had thrown my life away for him, and I found not no life with him and then he ... then he was gathered to the ancestors he'd wished to spurn, and I was out on the street. And I thought I'd die. It felt like ... like the final day, nu? I had abandoned my faith, had like, feh. Had tried to shrug it off like an old coat. And I was then too ashamed to return. But ... but ..."

He opens his eyes.

"Thou know'st the rest of the story, nu?" he says, and he smiles, and with his free hand, he fishes from behind his shirt his wedding band, on a fine gold chain. "And thou know'st I have four children now, two born to my Rivka when I was still too young to know if I'd ever wanted a wife. But ... but ..."

"I met Nyura the night I thought I had finally fallen away from the sight of the Infinite, fallen into the crevasse where abide those cut off from our inheritance. And I came home as myself, and my Tatty Velvl calls me his qadishl, and never again has he called me his son nor tried not calling me his daughter."

"I was never pursued not, I was never hunted not. But I have dwelt in a place I thought was beyond the sight of my Rock and far from the reach of my Redeemer. And ... and I thought wrong, nu?"

[lovethyneighb_or]

He listens, quiet and attentive, interrupting only for the occasional request for definition for terms he has not yet learned in past conversations with Lev or Anzu. His fingers curl into the fabric of his pants in a frustrated sympathy as Lev speaks of 'popular movements,' winces at other details.

Somehow even Mulcahy's struggles, as strange and soul-shattering as they've been, feel a little small next to Lev's. It's like talking about the war. His struggles with the Village were small and private by nature, but the reminder of the agonies in a real world that moves in waves and tides and institutions that you have no say in... is humbling, in its way.

And then Lev lands with those last words, and...

He clutches Lev's hand again—not harshly, but firm, a little desperate—and buries his face in the other. He is silent for a long moment. (Does Lev know? Does Lev know, how long and how much he has wondered and worried about having been pulled too far away to ever be called back?)

"It's no wonder you're a rabbi," he murmurs, quiet. "You do seem to have such a knack for saying what someone needs to hear. Th... thank you, for sharing this with me."

He sucks in a breath. "Jonah showed us that none would ever be beyond the sight of the Almighty, and yet—the longer I am away from my Earth, the more I realize... that all the scholarship of my faith could not have possibly accounted for... this." He waves a hand. "All of this. All of us. Such strange people as we've encountered. I have worried that..." He grimaces. "I've worried."

A pause.

"The Village where Two kept me. There was a church—a different denomination than mine, but the only one we had. We had our images. I had a few crucifixes. And our Bible. But. All the Words had been replaced with rhetoric, and the icons—he had replaced every face with his own. Even..."

Mulcahy's hand drifts down to the spot on his chest where his necklace would normally sit; he falters, remembering the empty space.

[graphomaniac]

Lev is silent, stunned. He's aware, dimly, that he ought to tread carefully here, that Mulcahy holds different from him, but even in light of that ...

"I suppose though, like, the bounds of idolatry are different by thee than by me ... idolatry is no less repulsive to thee, nu?" he says, eventually. "And to replace the proper object of worship with one's own face. Nu. Feh. I can think of no greater illustration of idolatry."

He pauses, turning the matter over in his mind. He is silent for a while, for minutes. Then he says, still speaking slowly, measuring his words.

"His tactics were the cheap theatrics of a boor, of a man who would use scripture as a spade to dig with, who'd wear learned knowledge as a crown. Thou'rt better than he. And though he knows that not ... nu. Look. It ... feh. It is a cold and painful comfort, to have faith when thou'rt in the pit. And hope for the future is painful, too. But it is something, not nothing. And like, at the very worst, thou hast escaped him once, and what has happened once may happen again, should — khos v'sholoym — the unthinkable happen, and thou be in need of rescue from him again."

He takes a deep breath, trying to keep his voice under control.

"Thou know'st and I know that there is one what sees all and knows all, and whose judgement is final, and whose mercy and patience extend only to those what have a sense of shame. The protector of widows and the father of orphans. Our traditions are different, I know that. But like. This I can remind thee of: there is one what saw thy suffering, and looked away not, one who hear thy weeping and stoppered not his ears. And ... sometimes such things come to pass only to be turned to blessing later. Like ... like Yosef HaKoidesh in Paro's prison. Had he never been sold, had he never been imprisoned, he would have never kept famine from destroying Egypt, if nothing else."

He smiles, wryly.

"I think ... I think like, had I not run away, mine uncle would've never ceased caring what gender I came back as, nu? He may have been accepting, in his way, but he would've like, never ceased caring about the matter. And had I never cast aside mine inheritance, I would have never missed it, nor would I hold fast to it now. Faith is ... nu. Faith is like a wooden staircase. If one never tests it, one will never know where the wood has rotted. Where we must pay attention and take care and renew our faith, or else rip up the board and find a better one, nu?"

He pauses again, and then adds, "but even if thou find'st not no consolation, thou may still make consolation. We are given what we are given, but feh, we are not powerless. We can fight 'til the end. If no blessing came to thee yet, we'll find a blessing that could come from this, and if we find none, we will make one. I promise thee."

[lovethyneighb_or]

That Two was a coward, and shallow, and petty, and a sham, and an overenthusiastic egotist, there was never any doubt. Knowing that his tactics were cheap didn't seem to lessen the sting when he was so unrepentant, though, and while being stronger does not make one "better" than the other, being better than another does not make you stronger.

...

There's a deep nausea in the pit of his stomach, and a shivering, cold feeling all over his skin. The festering ache under his sleeve claws for attention. There's static in his ears. With this and the ever-gnawing doubt, it's a concentrated effort to listen to Lev and to hold on to what he says.

In the war it was virtually only him alone. On the ship and in the Village, all he had was an utter madman and a priest who fell out of the faith. Here, finally: someone else who knows the stories, who believes in the Infinite, who is a cleric and bears all the wisdom of one. There's no words for the warmth of it.

There is one what saw thy suffering, and looked away not. Tears spring to his eyes. How badly he needed to hear that from someeone with the authority to. This and all the rest.

O, God.

"Everything you've said is true." Spoken weary, sick, and relieved. He's no more to say on the matter. Lev's words will stand unedited and complete. "I may have no control over it, but... please. I can't do this alone."

(But he'll do it.)

i think we can start tying this up?

[graphomaniac]

Lev squeezes Mulcahy's hand again, and says, gently, "I had not no intention of letting thee do this alone, nu?"

Mulcahy's not the first person — far from the first person — that he's sat with in their grief and terror. And even if it were not so, he'd not abandon no friend of his.

yes! <3

[lovethyneighb_or]

"Thank you."

Mulcahy inhales, an unsteady motion. He squeezes Lev's hand again in return. It was moments like this, snatched rarely and almost always in secret or in code, that got him through those years. The only reason why there's anything left of him now to try and save. To miss.

With regret, he stands. A mask of passivity falls over his face, easy as putting on a hat. "I should go. I'll be... missed, if I'm away too long."

Mulcahy steps towards the doorway. He glances behind once, then slips through.