TEST DRIVE #6

[fairyfoes]

TEST DRIVE MEME

Considering apping to EACHDRAIDH? Why not give the setting a test run here! OPTIONAL SCENARIOS 01. ARRIVING IN THE DRABWURLD. The Seelie and Unseelie courts welcome you with mirthful revelry and hearty food. After you have been briefed on your purpose here, you will find an endless feast and a night filled with entertainment to placate your concerns. Mingle with new arrivals, sneak down the castle halls and make sure your eyes are always on your glass; fairies and imps have no bias when it comes to tricks! 02. THE STATION. Looking for a little slice of home? The Station gives you all that and more. Take advantage of the wifi, have a cup of fairy-brewed coffee (the one they didn't spit in) or sit back and relax on the patio. You can even move your things into one of the available rooms! 03. WILDCARD. Your own scenario! Explore the Drabwurld or simply take advantage of your Locket!

Comments

[shewasvery]

"Only by you. Please." A make-yourself-comfortable gesture at the chair. "So where do you hail from, Mr Gray? And I suppose 'when' is an apposite question as well."

She watches him carefully; his face is just as she remembers, of course, but his voice and manner seem subtly different. How and why—that's the important thing to figure out before she says anything that might cause trouble.

[depicted]

He takes the place, and when she proposes the question of time, he must laugh. "It is, I've found. London, 1881. The summer of. I've been caught up on a few things, up to the very early 21st century, but I tend to feel a little behind when people are of a more—modern make." A pause, and then he adds, perhaps with a hint of a pout, "One young woman from that time period suggested only school teachers and elderly women address others in a manner I would consider rude to avoid. So I must ask if you would rather be Victoria or Mrs Lowell, as I find I can't tell any longer."

[shewasvery]

Now it's Victoria's turn to laugh, whilst at the same time being enormously relieved, for this Dorian will be a much simpler proposition than the one that she knows. And who knows—this younger self may shed some interesting light on the man he will become. Pity there isn't a way to get this knowledge back home. Or perhaps there is and she only needs to find it.

No matter. Social niceties first. "I am neither a school-teacher nor elderly—at least I like to think I'm not." Teasing, a faint suggestion that he may have inadvertently insulted her, though he really hasn't. "Do call me Victoria, if you like, and might I call you Dorian?"

[depicted]

Of course it turns him red with embarrassment, gets a ducked head, breaks the confident he has built up over the past couple months so he blurts out a flustered, "No, of course not, you don't seem like either—" and if he weren't inclined to agree with her suggestion already, the possibility of offending her would have made him insist, "Yes, of course, you may call me whatever you like."

A much simpler problem to handle.

[shewasvery]

What a charming blush, and how terribly sweet. Not enough to make her feel bad about what she's done to the monster he will become (has become? tenses are so tricky), but enough to make her gently reach over and pat his hand, reassuringly. "I'm only joking, Dorian. This must be quite a curious place for you. Familiar as a fairy-tale and yet so full of alien things."

[depicted]

He takes the reassurance as he gets it, even if such contact from a woman still elicits from him a sense of its impropriety. But people are different here, he knows.

"Yes, Mrs—yes Victoria. It is certainly something rich and strange. But it has a beauty, and a value in that."

[shewasvery]

She chuckles softly. "You are an artist, Dorian? Or perhaps a poet?" Pretending all innocence. Then, almost as an afterthought, "It's Miss, by the way. Not that it matters, of course, as we've dispensed with that."

She shows her left hand, ringless. Her nails are short and well-manicured, bare of polish, and the backs of her fingers are flecked with tiny scars here and there—from burns, perhaps, or nicks from a blade.

[depicted]

Oh. He doesn't notice the particular details, but he does witness the lack of ring. "My apologies for the assumption. But no, I am not much of anything, truth be told. Rather, I am a gentleman. That doesn't much carry over here."

[shewasvery]

"It's quite all right. My goodness, it's been some time since I heard 'gentleman' used in that sense—if indeed I ever have, outside of books. It's a concept that's gone quite out of fashion in my own day."

(The idle rich never go away, of course. Victoria has little patience for idleness, herself; her family may be wealthy, but idle she has never been.)

[depicted]

"I have been told that times change," Dorian says, but part of him dismisses it. He is certain that whatever his descendants do, his family will not lose what it has had since Elizabeth's day. "A hundred years seems to make a fair difference in social relations of all kind."

But Dorian hasn't caught up enough that he would think to ask Victoria what she does. Such a question still registers as insulting.

[shewasvery]

It's a good thing he actually doesn't say anything about descendants, or Victoria might not have been able to maintain her composure.

"Arguably the gap between your era and mine sees more changes than most," she says. And then, quite unable to resist: "Motor-cars, thinking machines, pocket-sized telephones—why, women even have the vote, in my day."

[depicted]

"So I have heard!" Dorian's attention focuses on one thing, and very eagerly: tiny phones. "A friend of mine, Dave Stutler, showed me his own mobile phone and a recording of his pet dog on it, with sound and colour and pictures of emotions. And we played a game called 'Tetris' we played, just on a small screen. I only wish technology functioned outside of the Station so that we could have more of it."

[shewasvery]

"Tetris!" Victoria laughs. "My goodness, Dorian, I'm surprised you came up for air from that one. After a while of that, one starts to imagine little blocks filling in gaps between words on a page, or in a skyline. Perhaps it's just as well such things are only limited to one place in this land."

She reaches into her bag and takes out her own (tiny, glass, cased in leather) phone, which of course does nothing at the moment. "You see, I've got one of my own. But I deleted Tetris off of it quite some time ago."

[depicted]

His eyes widen; it's even nicer than the one Dave showed him. "How pretty! What games do you have on it, Victoria? Do you have any videos recorded on it? Or music?"

He has yet to actually see anyone use a tiny phone for the purpose of telecommunications.

[shewasvery]

She's trying very hard not to just start laughing at him. Boys and their toys... "Oh, there's a sudoku game—something to pass the time on the Tube. A little music—Baroque chamber music, if you must know—and, yes, some videos and photos. And sometimes I do actually use it to call people." She smiles. "It's convenient, really, to have so much in one's pocket. Though I find it makes some people lazy thinkers."

Victoria embraces modern technology, but she can be a bit old-fashioned in her attitude towards it sometimes.