TEST DRIVE MEME

[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

i tried to resist, i really did

[firith]

[ It would be a feat to ignore the commotion, even more so when his gaze rests on the stranger's face and, well. That's that, he has to go over. He has seen Elladan and Elrohir together and they are truly indistinguishable from one another, yet the differences between himself and the man with his own countenance are striking. He appears ill, as Thranduil has never been, disorientated, angered like an animal backed into its den with nowhere to go. The short dark hair and thinner build are secondary to his notice, mere sands underneath breaking waves of fright that are prone to the eddies of emotion and common sickness.

When the man stands and knocks his cup aside, Thranduil comes upon him from a safe distance, leaving him the table as a barrier he will not pass that allows the unsettled man a meagre barrier. He doesn't wish to scare him further, but Thranduil is fascinated. His own voice is lower than Roy's with an enduring cadence, his eyes a bright grey by contrast. ]

You did not die. [ Easy enough to hear the hushed, anxious words and divine their meaning. ] Do not be alarmed.

I am very glad you didn't c:

[heroyic]

( He rocks back in his chair. The rickety sound of it under his insensate weight, the curl of a voice like woodsmoke shrouding the space between them. Figures, Roy is thinking, thoughts coiled into a spring. His right hand is crossed his left wrist, the knob of wristbone against the fleshy pad of his thumb.

Figures.

He's worked in show biz. He's seen the beauties of the beauties; he's knocked back beers with the best of 'em. This, however, is no gold-buckled hokey from Malibu Beach with a bobcut and false eyelashes. There are stars in the gray firmament of those eyes, Roy thinks, suddenly, nonsensically — it's like craning up and looking into the sky and having the fucking north star look back. This must be a dream or a delusion or maybe Alexandra's appetite for fantasy is starting to spread into the empty crevices of what Roy has become. )

Ha, ha. ( The empty clatter of two wooden syllables, falling from a leaden tongue. But Roy is perched on an edge, his wits slowly returning to him; alarmed is the least of it. )

What do you know. The king of - fairies or angels or Clara Bow's clique of cherry chapstick chiclets, whatever the hell you are - is a dead ringer for little old me. ( Another low bout of laughter. ) You poor bastard.

[firith]

[ Defeat runs through those veins as surely as blood and he isn't sure he likes seeing his own face, albeit distorted in small ways, staring back at him like that. Nevertheless, Thranduil holds his ground with only a curious tilt to his head, staring without apology. ]

I would hazard a wager that given our respective ages, it is you who appears to resemble me.

[ The wryness is understated sass, no hint of it anywhere but in the curl of his tone, for he otherwise remains impassive. ]

What is your name?

[heroyic]

Who knows, maybe I'll grow up to be just like you. Might even inherit the legs.

( He doesn't like it — the scrutiny, the curiously inhuman watchfulness. His fingers beat out a nervous rhythm against the table thought. His index finger slides into a puddle of his spilled drink, and he flinches back into the cradle of his chair.

But he smiles, a curl of a mouth long accustomed to adopting smile after smile after meaningless smile. It's more than he's offered, as it stands. )

Roy. Roy's just fine. You are?

[firith]

[ At the legs comment his gaze flickers down briefly, gauging what he can. Saying nothing on the subject and instead listening to those drumming fingers. ]

Thranduil of the Woodland Realm. You will notice a distinct lack of wings because I am an elf, not a fairy. The Elvenking of my homeland. [ He cants his head and finally gives Roy a reprieve from his unflinching stare, reaching for a fresh goblet and jug of wine to pour the man a drink with seamless gestures, then himself, before going on. ] May I sit with you, Roy?

[heroyic]

[ An indent of a pause. Roy settles his arms over the rests of his chair, sprawling with manufactured blase. A king, is it? Pointy-eared and solemn-faced and pretty enough to make Jesus weep. The similarities between them grow fewer by the moment.

His body only loses the wooden cast of discomfort once Thranduil's gaze flickers away. He looks down at the goblet, but doesn't move to pick it up. ]

Thanks. And, uh — go ahead. [ he murmurs, pleasantly enough. ] Can't say that I've any conversation worth having with a king, though.

[firith]

[ Seating himself at the table, he takes a long, slow drink of his wine before answering, gaze sweeping over the rest of the court at the feast until it wends its way back to Roy. ]

I confess that I know of no conversation that would prove stimulating, at present. My thoughts linger on my son's absence.

[heroyic]

[ For all of his rough edges and half-wrought anger, Roy is a singularly talented listener — he knows how to pick up cues, keep the ball running. It's easy enough to settle back into that.

It takes a bit of effort, but he forces himself not to fidget under the renewed cast of Thranduil's attention. ]

I know how that is. [ Maybe. He doesn't know anything about Elven princes, but --

He reaches for his own goblet, thumbing the obscenely large ruby - if that's what it really is - set into the base. ]

Your mind's always half on 'em, even when there's nothing to worry about. [ He doesn't want to elaborate; the sudden cut of his gaze askance is proof enough of that. ] —so, what's happening with him? Did he just miss Dad's curfew, or is it more serious than that?

[ What do Elven princes do? Fight dragons? Save damsels? ]

[firith]

[ He is either talking to a father in kind (and ai, what kind of son would the mortal man with an Elvenking-favoured look about him own?) or someone with significant experience in holding sway, protection, over the lives of others. It could be either or neither, even something else; he does not pry, in turn. They have something of that alike about them.

The facetiousness does not bargain for a rise of any kind, no anger or indignity forthcoming. His resignation to let Legolas go was bone-deep and altering. ]

He sailed far away, several decades ago. I had thought the creatures here would return him to me but I would not wish for trouble to come upon him ere he finds peace in his new life. [ There's a note of curiosity in the way Roy phrases himself, indulged on a whim. ] He would have found this land much to his liking.

You do not, I take it?

[heroyic]

[ There's something frenetic about Roy's attempt to inject levity into his responses: he doesn't mean to be mocking or facetious, not really. But it's easy to fall back upon that when even his usual gloomy self-appraisal is made infinitely worse in comparison to the white spire of an elf (an elf!) beside him.

He takes a clumsy gulp from the goblet before him, swallowing once, twice, convulsively. It tastes like something too rich for the likes of him, burning a sweet line of flame down into his stomach.

The question is meaningless — Roy answers it with an inelegant shrug. ]

Well, at least you don't have to worry about him mistaking me for you. Never know what I could've used the filial piety of an elven prince to accomplish. [ But the words are accompanied by a wry grin, soft enough for his hesitation to lie bare-faced for perusal. Sympathy would be facetious to offer, in this case, where they are strangers at best - better to take humor in hand, instead. ]

[firith]

You are worn with cares you should not yet own, I think.

[ Whereas Roy supplants a crude kind of levity for his pain, Thranduil brooks none of it and speaks with cutting attentiveness that veers sleekly away from the subject of Legolas and into depths ordinarily uncharted between strangers. This man wants to be impressed by the unknown, he senses. Mockery lies beneath a jaded smile, never lofty enough to reach those dark eyes, yet it all amounts to nothing so much as a smokescreen.

If Roy wants a piercing stare back on him (and Thranduil doubts he does, but lessons), he may command it entirely. Not quite a jest and neither entirely solemn, he bandies Roy's words back at him, after a fashion. ]

If you have need of aid, you have but to ask.

[heroyic]

[ For a moment, Roy lets the smile drop away, leaving in its wake only a steady blankness, cordoned in by the lank fall of his hair. ]

Booze and good company, what more could I want?

[ What would Thranduil think, if he knew what Roy Walker had done to his own slip of a child he'd once called daughter?

He looks at his hands. The clean nailbeds. The lifelines bisecting his palms in two.

His smile flickers back on. ]

Some music, maybe; that's all we're missing. Do Elvenkings sing?

[firith]

[ There's an answer in the way he holds his silence and that mirrorless, fractured gaze a handful of moments too long for the pause to be entirely natural. He recalls Legolas telling him how the Hornburg was set upon by ten-thousand strong against the barest sliver of mortal forces at Helm's Deep and thinks he can find an echo of such hopelessness buried deep in the lines of Roy's face.

Legs cross as he eases back on the table in an elegant slouch all silver robes and long blonde locks spilling over the edge, a thumb running along the lip of his goblet. Not unkindly, he replies once that brittle smile is back in place on Roy's face. ]

Not when revelry such as this serves to drown them out.

[heroyic]

[ Not unkindly, yes, that's the shape of it. That's the shape of life, one plodding day after another, nothing kind or unkind or great or wretched. Just — one long stretch into gray perpetuity.

Roy takes another inelegant mouthful from his goblet. It's not enough; a third and a fourth swallow soon follow. ]

C'mon. If you sing anything like you hold yourself, T'm sure every damn fool and fairy in the room would shut up pretty quick.

[firith]

[ The way he looks at Roy speaks volumes for his opinion of being goaded into singing. He's not certain how long or how deep the scars are, carried by the mortal, but it's at least apparent there is something wounded about him. His temperament, more so than his physical aches, conjure up imagery of a bush unnecessarily growing thorns. That's more than likely the reason he sets his drink aside and selects the only song that comes to mind; the last one that was ever sung by the Grey Havens and heard by Legolas on the shores of Middle-Earth.

A low dirge, thrumming and rich with a version of Roy's voice that again, like so much else about them, sets each apart by countless leagues. There's the loss of his child in the lilting Sindarin which translates its meaning without necessarily having to be understood, clearly his mother-tongue. ]

Fanuilos heryn aglar
Rîn athar annún-aearath,
Calad ammen i reniar
Mi 'aladhremmin ennorath!

A Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
I chîn a thûl lin míriel
Fanuilos le linnathon
Ne ndor haer thar i aearon.
A elin na gaim eglerib
Ned în ben-anor trerennin
Si silivrin ne pherth 'waewib
Cenim lyth thílyn thuiennin.

A! Elbereth Gilthoniel
Men echenim sí derthiel
Ne chaered hen nu 'aladhath,
Ngilith or annún-aearath.

[ It isn't particularly loud, having been sung for Roy, but there's a certain lull in the surrounding conversations when he finishes and what fairies have gathered around the cutlery have a slow pulse to their iridescent wings. Judging by the choice of his song, there isn't another forthcoming. ]

[heroyic]

[ Roy watches,reduced again to naught but a dark sweep of a gaze and the white knuckles of his hands about his goblet.

He knows nothing about the Ainur minstrelsy, nothing about Ilúvatar's gift, nothing about the wellspring of starlight taken form in each of the Eldar. And yet the song is enough to crack open the door — there's something beyond, grief like the cruel tip of a hook. He can feel his heart beating, the rushing of blood through the narrow confines of his body. To feel so much, to live so long, to hurt and to hurt —

And then it's over, and the raucous fairy-wrought mirth settles back into place around them. For a moment, Roy cannot throw off the silence that has taken him by his throat.

Then: ]

Wow.

[ He jerks up, spine straightening from its quiet curl — his teeth are set against one another. A swipe of his hand across his face, to remove the evidence of his emotional reaction to the song, but even that is of little help; his lashes are dark and clumped. ]

Wow. Damn. [ A huff of laughter, to lighten the heaviness of his tongue. ] If the king thing doesn't work out for you, let me know. You could make millions with that voice.

[firith]

[ Roy ought to hear joyful Elvish songs. The weaving of illumination under Varda's veiling stars which first touched the Eldar is beautiful, he knows, and the song is one close to the hearts of all elves, but to hear the woodland call of summer and crisp green leaves, new life — it would prove far more healing. Those verses no longer lie readied in his breast these days, not easily exhumed.

The surrounding din closes back in on them and what lightness Roy offers to veer the subject away from any awkward emotions is immediately picked up by Thranduil, in part because he has no idea what manner of compliment he received albeit actually being one. ]

Millions of what?

[ Songs, he supposes, but who would want to make millions? That's a little much even for the Elvenking himself. ]