Daemon: Wildd | text | backdated to November 20

[tangleofgarlands]

Hello, everyone. I said I wasn't going to be the official PR person for the masquerade, but as this is the second time I'm making an announcement I suppose I am for the time being.(As an aside, if public speaking is something you're comfortable with, send me a message.)

At any rate.

If you've stopped by Mandy's Masquerade in the last two days, you'll have noticed the lights are off and the doors are locked. Unfortunately, we have to do a bit of cleanup before we're ready to receive customers again. For the moment, we are closed until further notice.

We aim to be back up and running by Friday, although I will make another announcement if we hit any delays. Since our inception, we have aimed to be a safe haven of sorts for anyone who finds themselves in need of one, and these refurbishments will allow us to return to that mission with confidence.

With apologies for the delay and much gratitude to all of our patrons, past and future,

Arthur Stuart
co-owner, bartender, & PR person, apparently

Comments

daemon; Gildad

[smileslie]

[because it's not like they're both holed up in the house rarely out of sight let alone earshot of each other or anything. But there's moments when even she's not up to talking right now]

Thanks darling.

And you're a great job. Really I hated actually writing the press rubbish, I was always better at the in person wining and dining sort of thing.

[tangleofgarlands]

[In fact, Arthur is responding from less than three feet away, during a lull in the verbal conversation. They've set up camp in the living room, dragged pillows and blankets and makeup onto the floor and tried their best to push all of the horror of the last few days back out of the forefront of their minds.

It's working, sort of, but they're both exhausted still, and Arthur is feeling raw enough that a puff of air might send his mental fortifications crashing to the ground. It might not be the healthiest thing, but for the moment, he's fairly sure they both need to block out the rest of the world for a while.

He blushes when he reads the message, and shoots her a fond smile. It's hardly the first time she's called him 'darling', but it still catches him off-guard with a surge of warmth.]

Anytime, love.

Actually, if you don't mind reading them aloud, I don't mind writing them--it's the public speaking that makes me nervous, but I always got decent marks on papers.

It's easier to come up with something that sounds smart when nobody's looking at me, but I'm a bit of a mumbler when I have to read it aloud in front of people.

[smileslie]

[it's strange for Mandy to not feel like moving, much less talking. She doesn't like it, even at her worst in the days after things fell to pieces she was--sometimes manically, she realizes in retrospect--throwing herself into something. But maybe she needs the quiet, as much as she doesn't like it. But her nerves are less raw than numb right now, which is something. Maybe.

She smiles at him over Gildad, who has been acting a little more like a real cat the last few days, resting on her lap]

I think that could definitely be arranged. You're certainly better at the editing business and all that than I was, at least in words. Give me an poster or ad spread to layout, no problem. But if I'm not speaking off the cuff, forget it.

[tangleofgarlands]

[Wildd alerts Arthur to a new message from its perch on his shoulder--it's taken to combing through his hair with its beak, and he's not sure if it's an attempt to comfort him like Gildad curling up in Mandy's lap or if it's just normal bird behavior. At least their daemons, unlike their real-world counterparts, seem to get along fine.

He reads through the message, then looks up at her. She's tired--he's tired too, but she looks defeated, in a way.

Without a word, he scoots over and leans back against her leg, head resting on her knee.]

That'd be brilliant. I have the opposite problem--ask me to improvise and I freeze or try to play dead until the attention's off me.

Someone we both know told me I think too much, which is probably true.

[smileslie]

[the contact surprises her a little, but not unpleasantly. It's just still strange to be touched, after...what happened. She still doesn't know how to contextualize everything 'Brian' said, or if she really wants Arthur to understand it and why it's left her so out of sorts even though she'd been living with it for well over ten years.

She only hesitates a bit before she reaches down to very lightly stroke his hair, to acknowledge that she appreciates the contact]

Well, I did sort of want to be an actress, once upon a time. So I guess it comes naturally.

That's not always a bad thing. Some of us do the exact opposite, and sometimes that's great but sometimes it gets us into a mess without exactly realizing how we got there.

[yes, they both know exactly what mess she's talking about, the thing she threw herself into so quickly without thinking about why it might not be the best idea]

[tangleofgarlands]

[A few times, when Arthur was very small, he'd done exactly this with his mum--they'd all be sitting in front of the telly, he and his brother would be on the floor, and he'd curl up next to his mother's leg and put his head on her knee while she ran her fingers through his hair.

The memory is so vivid and startling it steals his breath for a second, and he leans his cheek against her and shuts his eyes against the sudden wave of painful, shimmering nostalgia.

The moment of silence stretches on, slow like treacle, but when it's over Mandy is still there, warm and real against him, and he can breathe again.]

You'd be an amazing actress.
I'd have choked if you put me onstage, but I did move scenery for a production of Twelfth Night in secondary school, and I enjoyed that a great deal. The lights were always off when I was onstage, so I didn't have to worry about anyone watching me.

I think there's also something to be said, though, for being able to jump straight in without dithering about and thinking yourself out of trying at all.

[smileslie]

[Mandy feels that small bit of tension--she might not have been as good at reading Brian as she should have been until it was far too late, but she's generally good at reading other people, and maybe Arthur more than some others because of the difference in the man she'd first met and the one now who is barely more than a boy--so it doesn't take her much to figure that maybe Arthur's mind is taking him somewhere unpleasant. It's not like that's been an uncommon occurance for either of of them lately.

She might have spoken to other people, or even him like she did in that awful room, but that doesn't seem right now. She just reaches out, brushing his hair back from his face until she feels him relax. Gildad doesn't seem quite as haughty as she sometimes does, rolling over in her lap and stretching almost like a real cat]

Well. I think I was on a much larger stage for a while there. There was always some vague talk of me maybe doing some stage work or something after the tour was over, but that sort of got put on the back burner.

Well, some of that not thinking was due to being high as a kite. But I also already had people laughing at me for being the ditzy American, so it didn't matter so much if they laughed for other reasons.