fairynuff | TEST DRIVE MEME

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TEST DRIVE MEME

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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!

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[ Ned has a question. Well, Ned has a few questions. One: why him? Two: what even was that? Three: who are all of these…people? He is unsure whether or not that would be the best suited term, but it seems rude to assume otherwise so he settles for that, for the moment. All around him people are talking, eating, and generally carrying on in a way that makes him feel strangely separate, as if he is one unreal component to the scene playing out.

A clumsy misstep backward as he almost trips over someone's errant foot, however, proves this is false: the rather pointy eared fellow sends him a glare and Ned mumbles an apology as he tries to disappear into the substantial crowd.

Short-lived retreat that it is, he tugs at his collar and slips down the nearest open looking hall. Here the noise dims and he finds it pleasantly cooler, a moment to lean against the wall and just breathe. His hands don't quite shake. Funny, he thinks, though it does not feel especially so; his calm around the dead has increasingly been without compare, but thrown into whatever this is has him spinning. Then again, he never was too fond of change and this takes the cake.

Or the pie, rather.

If he tries to go back over how he got here, it just feels that much sillier. Could it be a dream? He exhales and rubs his face with both hands. Pull yourself together.

He probably should have been paying more attention (what's a Seelie again…something about death before dishonor…something) when he was more or less debriefed on arrival but he was occupied -- just a tad -- you know, internally gaping and wondering what in god's name he ate before going to sleep that caused him to trip so thoroughly. Now it's been hours and well, that likelihood feels less and less probable.

Which is. You know. Great. Not. Great. Oh boy.

Ned leans up off the wall and stuffs his hands in his pockets half for safekeeping and half because lord knows what else he's got to do with them. He lets his feet wander farther down the hall, away from the main hub of activity. Ned loves people but for so long it has been at a careful distance. Only a chanced few have ever come through that quietly engineered bubble, and only recently -- the one is old and new all the time. Change is not his specialty and he knows it, so he channels his calm and holds onto it as best he can.

Take it in stride.

What else can he do? ]

[ Many are gathered, some folk Legolas can recognise with a touch more ease than others. His eyes see a lot, yet in this strange new world he can't quite let himself be reckless and assume that all he sees is all there is to all those unfamiliar faces about him.

The elves of Middle-Earth are not too subtle with their... otherness, if you will, radiant with what seems an inner light in their pale skin and pale golden hair (at least in the case of this one particular Sindar) and standing tall and proud, graceful and ethereal; it seems like not much, compared to the subtly upswept tip of an ear that always easily gives away the descent of the individual, yet it speaks on its own all too well.

Or it tended to, back in Middle-Earth.

Legolas catches a curious sight with the corner of his eye. He turns towards the slight commotion and remains focused on it curiously. There, this man apologising to one of the fairies: something oddly familiar about him, yet all the rest, dress and manner, wholly unfamiliar.

With startling ease, much learned among the many thick and dense branches of the forest of Mirkwood - it is the same, for the branches would often move with the whispers of wind, Legolas weaves through the crowd, following where he saw the curious man disappear. There, this hall, and there he is walking farther along and away from the celebrations.

On the stone floor, his step is silent, perhaps only the soft fabric of his robes shushes quietly with the motions, with each swift stride, yet one wholly unhurried. Long legs simply carry him swiftly. ]

Are the celebrations not to your liking?

[ He asks once within an earshot, once he hopes he won't startle or frighten the stranger. Still a couple steps left before he can confirm for himself just what exactly it was that drew his attention in the first place. ]

[ For his own part, Ned is tall. Fortunately for him, the ceilings here seem to be fairly accommodating, so when he leaps an impressive height further into the air, he is saved from hitting his head. The voice to his right...or left... (he's not sure now, having done a complete 360 in the least graceful of ways) takes him by surprise, suffice to say, and when he faces the source his own expression bears strong resemblance to a fish in its bowl. Blub. Blub. Blub?

Not exactly. But close.

Even from a soft yard or so away, this stranger is striking, carries with him a presence Ned will not call good or bad so much as something he cannot ignore. He has the fleeting thought: nice hair. It reminds him of the television commercials. He has, by now, edged into full-on rudeness by not replying and this catches up to him the way his whole arrival seems to keep doing so: abruptly.

He shakes his head...only to contradictorily nod it. Ah... ]

It's not...I don't... [ use your grown up words Ned for god's sake! he clears his throat, starts over, ] ...Sorry, what are they celebrating?

[ Oh one other thing... ]

And also I, I think I'm here by mistake...

[ Seriously though. He means: whose dream is this and where is the emergency exit. He swears some distance beyond the blond in front of him that he saw something with wings and it wasn't a butterfly.

Of course all this being flabbergasted is rich coming from the man who can bring people back from the dead.

This will occur to Ned later. You know, the way it usually does. ]

[ How to startle an elf in a couple of easy step: 1-) jump upon being approached, 2-) whirl and spin trying to locate the source of the voice, 3-) stare, apparently. For this man's reaction sure does make Legolas stop in his tracks, almost makes him take a step back and simply stare in return with eyes wide and not quite frightened, but surprised. His head cocked now, expression confused and not threatening in the slightest - at least he had left his weapons behind in a place promised safe - as if approaching a wild beast instead of a... he figures one of the Men.

And for a moment it all startles and distracts him from what drew him away from the celebrations in the first place. ]

I do believe it us our arrival that is being celebrated. For with us we bring hope for their world, do we not? A hope for peace, rather than war and darkness.

[ His voice calm, in a tone that he has known to be soothing for many mortals in the past. ]

Mistakes, I do not believe have been made. It is too grave a matter to allow such, but I am aware that many have been brought here against their wills.

[ And Legolas speaks with obvious apology, still watching the stranger curiously. It dawns on him slowly, very slowly for differences there are many, yet the lines of the face are familiar, awfully so (it might have been something like ninety years since they had last seen each other, but Legolas is the last person on Arda to forget a beloved face of his only family), the cheeks, the jaw, the eyebrows, the voice is similar enough as well though not speaking in the same cadence, not in the slightest calm the way Thranduil always is... ]

[ Definitely should have been paying more attention. That staring from before? Recommencing in three, two, one...ah there we go. They must make an odd picture, one stranger staring at another with all the focus of someone who doesn't quite know what he was expecting but got rather the opposite of what that probably was. At least at first.

When he speaks again however, Ned is facing him and so less inclined to try to hit the ceiling with his skull. Instead he reprises his fish-out-of-water rendition: mouth open, close, open, close. War? Those Seelie people said something about that, now that he thinks of it, but really he has always felt this way about orientations of any kind: the first experience is the worst because he can't focus. Of course he can't remember what they said to him. Part of his consciousness has the sense (or lack thereof) to be indignant, but this person (?) is not the target for his unhappiness.

In fact, he seems rather nice. Also calm.

Ned hones in on that, and while he does not literally feed off of it, it reminds him of his own general practice he had only moments before committed himself to: relax. Things will make sense. Somehow. Keep your head on straight. I am Ned. I bake pies and wake the dead. I am Ned.

He blinks for the umpteenth time and then rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Something about that gesture helps further instill his old calmness and when he lowers his hands to his sides his expression is much softer, at ease for the time being. Not quite a switch, but a decision is a decision. Panic when it makes sense and right now it doesn't. ]

You don't need to be sorry.

[ Without the stranger having said it explicitly, it was clear enough in his tone and if nothing else, Ned has no intention of making undeserving parties apologize to him. The change in Ned has a subtlety to it, the way reverting to one's everyday self tends to contain: like shoulders slipping down out of a hunch or a breath releasing. His smile still seems ruffled but less anxious, less wild animal looking to bolt. ]

[ The more relaxed manner in which this stranger responds is a relief, even if it comes with an odd delay in which Legolas did grow steadily more concerned. But all that is wiped clear when it seems Legolas' own sense of calm has the desired effect. He smiles then, with ease keeping the dissonance between the familiarity and the unfamiliarity far in the back of his mind; the differences, in the end, outweigh the familiarities. No point in letting his own concerns shine through when he's trying to soothe another's.

Still, though, even the height is right and Legolas has to look up, nearly half a head shorter; the width of the shoulders, as well, though the many, many years of battles and fighting are lacking from the posture.

It bothers him none that the response refers barely to his words, but rather to his tone. Legolas shakes his head, hair a silky spill across his shoulders and back. Pale gold, smooth and pliable. ]

I may not be responsible for you being here, but my heart goes out to you and all those who have not answered the summons out of their own volition.

[ He pauses, briefly, his smile twitches a little, taking up a sheepish quality and he ducks his head in a polite incline. ]

But... there is one thing I must apologise for and I beg for forgiveness for startling you the way I did. There has been something familiar about you of which I have caught but a glimpse and it is what drew me to you.

[ Because Ned is Ned, half his feelings may be found in his little motions: the almost urgent way his hands keep reinstating themselves in his pockets, the draw of his brows in small twitches of reaction, and of course the quirk of his mouth often halfway both directions to a smile and a question mark. ]

Well that's...that's really kind of you. [ He means it, ducks his head for a second just wondering to himself how many are here of their own accord and what it means for anyone who isn't. Ned doesn't like overly much interaction, much less confrontation, much much less fights. War -- just the word -- makes him dizzy. Wake up, is a phrase he keeps telling himself between breaths but it's not working. When he glances at him again, it's thoughtful, the trace anxiety from before just a ripple across his surface, if still inevitably there. ] Not necessary, but kind.

[ And Ned has always appreciated kindness even if he did not always recognize it right away. Absently, his hands escape his pockets and he folds his arms across his chest instead, palms under his elbows.

Closer to a smile now, he doesn't think anything of it that he has to look a bit down because his whole life beyond puberty has long since had him accustomed to this. It isn't even a passing consideration that the blond has a specific reason for speaking to him outside of a generous friendliness.

Well, it isn't until he says it is. Ned tips his head further to the side. ]

Huh? [ Articulate. He never claimed to be. Lucky for him. ] I mean, you don't...I'm just jumpy, [ his laugh confirms it, those bottled nerves near palpable in the up-down of his voice. ] So it's not your fault -- if anything it's mine, but...'familiar'?

How?

[ For all his height, the quizzical pinch of his brows has always lent Ned a strangely puppy-dog reminiscent look. Not that he knows, and not that he'd appreciate the comparison especially, but suffice to say his clueless stare does what most ignorance does: drags a few years off quite neatly. ]

[ It's curious, the variety of emotions pass across the stranger's features and all the little motions that speak through the body language; all different, all distinct, all so full of life and quite endearing in truth. It seems he is easy to read like a book and young, so young like many children of the Men though with his bearing resembling that of a Hobbit, or at least some of the Hobbits Legolas knew.

It is, in truth, quite endearing.

At the question he raises a hand, absently without a threat to the gesture and his knuckles are a barely there brush across a high cheekbone, like a touch of butterfly wings, fluttering and fleeting. ]

Your features, but only in the way of the Men. It is not enough to make a mistake, but it is a curiosity nonetheless.

[ His own feelings easily bleed into his expression, much like Ned's, though not so much into his body language. Legolas remains relaxed, but his eyes say what there is to say: they speak of love and adoration, bright in the dimly lit hall. ]

You resemble, if by a fraction only [ Though quite enough to be recognisable and his gaze grows distant now with a light flutter of eyelashes, as if searching his memory - long and vast as it is - for the time that has passed. ] someone I have not seen in... ninety years now, perhaps, it is hard to keep count of years when there is no need for it. It would be a lie to say that it is not a soothing sight, despite all.

But... no matter. [ He ought not daydream right in this moment, lose himself in memories fond and heartwarming and Legolas gathers himself once more without much fuss, reminding himself of manners. ] I am Legolas, son of Thranduil of the Woodland Realm. I may be in a situation similar to yours, but whatever help I can offer, I will gladly do so.

[ One of two things tends to happen when someone tries to touch Ned in any way: he beats a hasty retreat or he freezes into a statue. In this case, it's the latter, but even at that it's not as severe as it ordinarily is. Chalk it up to the nonthreatening and -- in a sense -- barely-there nature to the contact; chalk it up to how Ned cannot possibly miss the flicker of emotion present here. He doesn't move until the other reaches the part about ninety years. Then he has to blink. Still, he holds his silence, listening as the blond continues.

All this time there has been a certain quality of....Ned isn't certain of the word he wants. Elegance? Not quite it, though also not inaccurate. Formality? No. And yes. Ah...something grand? Is it too much to call it that? Then again, is it too much to believe all of this in the first place?

Note to self: you wake the dead. You wake the dead.

It's this near-third persuasion that cements his decision now to at least give this whole experience the benefit of the doubt. When he himself is a creature of unlikely ability, it seems only fair.

And the company he's kept so far has been nice besides.

Smile still there, it bears a more confounded look than before even as he returns the courtesy, ]

Nice to meet you. I'm Ned.

[ He feels silly and he can't explain why, so he hurries on, ] And thanks. I....I'm not sure why they called me. Honestly.

I'm a pie maker but...if I can ever help you...I mean, I will.

[ He has the sense that Legolas' words come in on some sort of age-old decibel that belongs only in stories, but standing here he is quite real. Distinct features. Ned won't forget or mistake anyone else for him, certainly. And he cannot shake the immediate and somehow striking sense of memory and...dare he say it...love expressed just moments before.

Just who does he remind him of? Why is it a soothing resemblance? Did you lose someone?

A dozen questions for a couple of answers. Like you do.

On a less soft-hearted note though, that too reminds him to ask even as he realizes it might be very rude: ] But...wait -- sorry you said... ninety years?

[ Ned's face says what he bites his tongue over: You look younger than I am though!!!! He'll have to get used to that one. ]

[ Maedhros lingers in the hallways, soaking up the shadows. For all that he was wrought by the hands of the bright Ainur, made to shine under all illumination , foul and fair — he appears startlingly drab in the dun light of the Seelie court. His hair, a bloody spill across one shoulder, is the only remarkable characteristic he holds: his preternatural beauty has soured in the length of the night he has endured.

He is smoking a pipe, as elves rarely do; the plumes of smoke crown his head, blurring the sight of him. Whatever smolders in the bowl of his pipe, its acrid smell is uncommonly strong.

When his chamber of silence is breached, Maedhros's gaze flicks upwards, a grey-glass weight that does not waver. A mortal, little else.

The silence crowds in again, as Maedhros simply takes another long draw from his pipe. The stub of his handless right arm is tucked into the folds of his robes; he knows how odd some can be about his disability. He does not smile, though there is a softening of his manner that suggests the expression. ]

It soothes the nerves. [ he murmurs, holding the pipe out. This close, he is nearly a head taller than the mortal, the drape of his shadow blotting out those bright eyes. ]

[ Ned talks to strangers for a living but the beauty of the morbidity is that these conversations never last more than a crucial minute. At his beloved Pie Hole, he has for the longest time kept himself to his specialty of being the pie maker, and so his interactions were as follows: Digby, Olive, and eventually Emerson.

And then Chuck. Again.

It must be silly, a grown man feeling his heart rate go willynilly on him like a boy, like a child, but Chuck is -- will always be -- his fondest memory and his most precious present. Even here where she is nowhere in sight. He supposes that may be a good thing; he does not even know where 'here' is. His gaze traveling back the way he came, he narrowly misses running right into the stranger -- alerted first by the smoke and second by the voice, his nose twitching.

As he turns, his eyes fall to the pipe, offered as it is. Then they follow the hand holding it, up the extended arm and finally to the face there, half-shadowed thanks to the angles of the corridor. The hair stands out regardless. Absurdly, Ned is reminded of a cherry only half way restored.

He blinks, looks back down at the pipe then back at the holder. An anxious sweat at the back of his neck despite the cooler air here tells him something to soothe the nerves isn't a bad idea. However, even Ned has a few hesitations about accepting pipes from strangers in dark hallways.

Mostly he thinks he'd just choke on it though.

Well, knows. His smile is half: the upward turn of his mouth even as the other side still seems fraught with those self same nerves. (Because he is.) At least his voice comes out normal.

"Normal". ]

Oh, no thanks. But thanks. Uh.

[ A third thanks is overkill right? ]

That's...nice of you though.

[ Way to be lame. But it's honest, which is a quickly endangering quality in his life -- for his ability, for what he did, for what he didn't do -- so it's something even as the most truly strange part of this whole interaction occurs to him at last: he's looking up.

It's so unusual that his mouth leaps away with his words before he can stomp it out: ]

Wow you're really tall.

[ Ned. Get your life together. Seriously. ]

[ There may be something familiar in the curl of this mortal's mouth. The angle of his nose. Even the strong brow. Perhaps Manwë breathed life again into the heart of Firstborn to create the Men that followed, perhaps Maedhros and this shrinking violet of a man once fought together. Perhaps they fought against one another, in the great kinslayings of old.

Memory is a strange thing, as he has come to find.

Maedhros does little to hide his scrutiny, though perhaps even the attempt would have been in vain: his gaze has ever betrayed the legacy of his father's inner flame. Everything burns under Nelyafinwë's eyes. ]

Maedhros the Tall, I have been named. [ He speaks softly, but without gentleness: this is the voice of one accustomed to obedience. ] One of the few of my kennings that I did not find immediately offensive.

[ He pauses, long enough to again fill his lungs. Wreathed in smoke, he looks like a native of the fae court: his hair too-red, his face too-white, his single hand curled like a many-legged insect about the bowl of his pipe. The elegance of elvenkind sits well upon Maedhros's features, but he wears it with something less easy to bear. A quietness that speaks of secrets that will devour upon revealing. ]

And you, son of Earth? What kennings shall I gift you, who prefers the shadows of empty halls to the glad tables of mead and meat?

Edited 2014-03-28 10:39 (UTC)

[ Ned's eyebrows don't seem to know what to do with the first response, first pinching then raising then smoothing down to vaguely neutral, or thereabouts. He does not mean to stare, does not mean to many things in his life it seems -- a sore lack of conviction, some deeper buried part of him is plenty aware -- but he does stare. The speech fits the image, is his first thought and he can't put his finger on where he even gets off assuming he knows what those puzzle pieces look like to begin with. He watches the trail of smoke, lets his otherwise rudely overlong gaze follow it the way one stares up at a jetstream painting its way out of view. How strange to feel so apart and so addressed all at once. Eyes circling back to the pipe itself and the slender clutch about it, he wonders -- irrelevantly -- exactly what this stranger is smoking.

If he does it for nerves -- Ned is rife with doubt on that one -- or if it is a habit -- perhaps -- or if it is simply something he can do and to do. It doesn't matter but errant thoughts are errant thoughts. Ned stuffs them back behind his eyes; he has a lot of practice in trying, at least. ]

I'm glad it's not offensive. [ He says because it's true, a second quirk of that half-smile reemerging. Something apologetic rests around the pie maker's very posture, like he's sorry for being there, sorry for intruding except that everywhere here is an intrusion because he does not belong. This, he is at least aware now, is no special circumstance. Most seem drawn in from various elsewheres and yet.

Well he thinks this fellow looks more fitted to the setting than he himself. But then again, What does Ned know?

Not much.

He continues, ] M...Maedhros, right? Ah, I'm Ned.

[ Just Ned. He touches the back of his head, that absent, need-something-to-do, semi-anxious tic that follows him around in such similar gestures as that. ]

I'm not much for parties.

[ Assuming that's what all those celebratory goings-on happen to be. Peering through the wreathing smoke, he asks before he thinks better of it, ] What about you?

[ He didn't see any No Smoking signs in the hall, but Maedhros seems particularly...what's the word...stern? No. Severe? Maybe. Aloof. That might do it. Ned has only just met him but is downright struck by the realization he can't imagine him laughing. Not a laugh anyway.

And stupidly, his mind goes to Chuck. How sad that would make someone like her. How he loves that, though he never wants her to be sad.

Reeling it back, he blinks. Still neutrally pleasant. Still Ned. Still fine with the comparative quiet. Smoke and all. ]

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TEST DRIVE MEME

ned | pushing daisies | arrival / around / god what am i doing :(

eheheheh cute things clearly- my apologies, couldn't help myself

ahahfedsjlefkwsd no apologies pls this is so great /)_(\ <3

JUMPY DAD LOOKALIKE HAHA Ned you precious dork, this is amazing

ahkfesdj im enjoying it so much ;-; lmfff lego YOUR FACE LMFDSLJSF;LS

sdkjh HAHA I AM GLAD!! man, he'll like Ned once he stops weirding him out so much lmfdsfj

mklsdklnefds SOB SORRY LEGOLAS 8< ned is such a spaz hahaldsd

never be sorry!! it's cute :> and Legolas is quite patient! also legit not flirting...

jlskdf <3 <3 baw legolas ;-; your dad love cries deeply

kuuuuuuuuuuuu

rierierierierie ihjkefijkfsdfjlekfdsijpeofklsdjpewflsd facehands

no no don't do that /kisses your nose c:

/burrows in your wall...creepily...cutely...D8