[001] drinking champagne made by the angel [CLOSED]

[amourtician]

Who | Jay and Neffa
What | Neffa and Jay meet up
Where | all around the Capitol!
When | an hour after Jay's intro network post.
Warnings/Notes | Jay's already getting drunk. Other than that, none! Yet.

Jay, wearing a ridiculous, neon-pink feather boa, is sitting at the bar, sipping on something that doesn't taste alcoholic in the slightest but, the bar server assured him, most certainly is. He's keeping an eye out for Neffa and trying very, very hard to remain calm or at least to keep the appearance of being calm.

He's freaking out. The comfortable hum of his magic is gone, replaced by a curious cold, quite like the chills during a bad fever. He feels the absence keenly. And he's wound up emotionally, too -- he's already missing Raimut, who was usually never far from his side back home. It's curious to be out somewhere, among people, without the older man's familiar presence. When he first spoke to the bar server, he'd stuttered and tripped over his words. He wasn't even able to look them in the eye! After all, Raimut had always ordered for him.

The alcohol is mellowing him out a little, at least. And he's curious to meet Neffa. A part of him is excited -- he was friendly. Maybe he'll be like Mara! Or maybe he'll be nothing like her but still friendly, which, too, would be grand.

He's getting impatient and starts idly tapping out a rhythm on the bar.

Comments

[amourtician]

Jay bows, from the waist, before realising he's supposed to shake Neffa's hand. He lays his ears back, tips pointing down towards his back, trying to appear humble and contrite. The charade doesn't last -- the ears perk up again immediately and Jay grins at Neffa.

"Yes, darling! Just Jay, I find surnames and suchlike a burden."

He smiles again, trying to make it as dazzling as possible. Neffa isn't bad-looking, he decides, thinking there'd be no harm in making an early ally. "My world is called Mir, but here I belong to District Six. Though I feel those are rather irrelevant details right now. Home is far away and I don't like my District."

Another smile. The alcohol's really gone to his head.

"Where are you taking me, then?"

[lessthanelementary]

Amusement is hard to bite back -combined with Jay's loose-tongued endearments (the sincerity of which Neffa has no intention of asking after), the swiveling ears paint a comical picture. He lets his smile stay purely friendly, though - he can tell he's making a good impression, and the success is cheering.

"Really, I'd be hard-pressed to show you a place here that isn't impressive," he says, inviting Jay with a glance to walk beside him as he leads the way toward the doors, into the bright afternoon. "But I find their skyscrapers most beautiful, personally. You must have seen them from a distance already - they're great glass towers, lit from within and without, and the smallest of them makes a hovel of our twelve floors..."

He pauses mid-excited-gesture, as though something's just occurred to him. "Unless, of course, you come from a world with buildings as large-- one can never assume."

The skyscrapers are visible from here as they are from most of the city, standing (he thinks) as though nothing but the goodwill of the gods and a very expensive contract with a great many spirits hold them upright. He'd learned fairly early on that the Capitol does not startle all Tributes equally, but it was stupid, he thinks, to assume based on appearances alone that Jay comes from a world foreign in the same ways his is. "Should that be the case," he adds, "I can only suggest we choose a direction and walk until you find something startling."

[amourtician]

"The buildings are magnificent," Jay crows. "And certainly a change. Back home, only the Gorod Akademikov has such tall structures! Wurmwald lies very close to the ground. Though ... the glass does make me nervous. Glass is so fragile."

He realises he's about to start babbling and stops himself. Instead, he looks at Neffa and smiles, trying to make it as charming as possible. Maybe, if he plays his cards right, he'll make a friend! Maybe something more.

"But while I'm impressed by the buildings, darling, I'm sure you could show me something more impressive! Architecture is not the only discipline capable of producing world wonders, after all. And I wore shoes suitable for walking."

He has indeed. The heels are broad and square and only two inches high.

"So, ah. Shall we?"

[lessthanelementary]

"Ah, if it's walking you want..." Neffa pauses, considers their route. "The high street skirts the park and goes around the lakeshore..." From one shining thing to another. He smiles. "Yes, I think that's the way we'll take - it's the way I most wish I'd been shown when I first came here."

He starts walking, with more confidence in his direction, leaving space for Jay to come up beside him. "I couldn't have imagined buildings as tall as this before I came here," he says, with a look at the distant skyscrapers, gleaming in the sunlight. "The tallest buildings in my city are the Skytowers, and they only go up five floors. Not like the-- what was it you said? The Gorod....?" He invites Jay to finish with a raised eyebrow.

[amourtician]

"Gorod Akademikov! The scholar's shining city," Jay says, eyes lighting up. He hurries after Neffa, a touch unsteady in his ridiculous high heels. "Five floors? That's a tad pathetic, for a tall building, if you don't mind me saying so, darling."

He almost takes Neffa's arm, purely out of habit -- already a little too tipsy to remember Raimut's not around -- but manages to stop himself in time, even if it does mean jerking his arm weirdly. He moves that arm behind his back and concentrates on the scenery, instead. The Capitol is nothing like he's seen before -- like nothing he's imagined. He's genuinely, a little childishly, impressed and taken with it.

[lessthanelementary]

There's something gratifying in seeing someone gawking as openly as Neffa knows he must have when he first came here. It soothes a bruised ego to feel like the more knowledgeable one between them.

"They're very tall floors," he says, with mock affront and no real ire. "But your scholars' city-- that's inspired!" Ristopa had its students' quarters, and he'd been far from the only apprentice studying under a magician in the Street of Crows, but the idea of packing a great crowd of academics into one place was a cheering mental image. "It must make the scholars a good deal easier to keep track of."

[amourtician]

Jay's not embarrassed in the slightest. The sense of wonder the Capitol inspires in him is too overwhelming. The shock of his recent arrival is starting to wear off, somewhat, and he's even able to put the whole deathmatch thing out of his mind, for now.

"I think that's the idea, yes," Jay says, with a small laugh. "I do wish I could go and study there, study magic properly, but I'm ... ah. Disqualified."

[lessthanelementary]

Two things pique Neffa's interest: First, of course, there's that word, disqualified, sinking claws into his curiosity, begging him to dig harder-- was a quirk of the system responsible, of the same kind that guaranteed he'll never have an elementalist's education? Or was it a quirk of Jay himself that kept him out of that scholars' city?

But then, on top of that, blowing trumpets, waving banners, is a better word, one he's not heard used so casually in weeks: magic. Suddenly, it's an effort to keep his friendliness as distant as he's been holding it.

"Are they so selective there that they'd disqualify the interested before they're tested?" He lets an interested sort of affront creep into his voice-- How dare they! He hopes it'll be read as sympathy, and an invitation to Jay to explain further.

[amourtician]

Jay picks up on Neffa's interest immediately and is all too happy to keep talking.

"Oh, it's ... it's complicated. I was tested, though not by anyone associated with any of the colleges. But ... ah. They told me that my raw power far outweighs my ... potential for control. They refuse to teach those they think are too strong, because the stronger one's magic, the harder it is to get it to do what you want, not what it wants. I was given rudimentary training to stop me from accidentally setting things on fire when I get too emotional and sent on my way."

His face darkens and he looks at his feet. This next bit is hard to confess.

"And ... ah. My family ... we're ... we're foreigners of the wrong religion and refugees, to boot. They don't care how high my father's status was back in the old country, they only care about ... quotas and ... fairness."

His voice gets quieter and quieter, until he's mumbling. He shifts his gaze to the Capitol at large, but avoids looking Neffa in the face. There's no reason to assume, he tells himself, that people everywhere else like immigrants and refugees more than they like them in Tulun.

[lessthanelementary]

....Too strong. Neffa has to bite back an incredulous laugh. Too strong to teach? Gods, he realizes, he's managed to find the closest thing to an untrained elementalist in their ridiculous mix of otherworldly denizens. He's managed to ingratiate himself to Surri's brighter-colored, more flamboyant counterpart. Of course he has.

Jay's sudden quiet is a more interesting tell than whatever latent power he's left behind, Neffa tells himself. "Strange, to refuse you an education and speak of fairness." He keeps up sympathy, because this is not the time to start a discussion on his personal views on the fairness of inborn magic. "Are disgruntled foreigners with the power to set fires with their irritation not a cause of some worry to them? Even ivory towers are flammable." He lets the breeziness of his tone speak for how little he cares where Jay comes from - no point making an issue out of it. Really, they're all foreigners here.

[amourtician]

Jay smiles, but it's grim. He appreciates Neffa trying to joke about the situation, but the rejection sits heavy on his mind.

"They care about fairness for their people," Jay says. "Not for the likes of us. It's ... ah. It's complicated, darling."

He take a deep breath before going on.

"They're trained to deal with the likes of me, dear. And ... ah. They've long since ceased making towers out of flammable materials, I'm afraid."

Another smile. He manages to inject a little bit of humour into this one.

[lessthanelementary]

"Probably a wise precaution," Neffa concedes, "if they're truly determined to disfranchise their talented so... systematically." He shakes his head in genuine wonderment. "In Ristopa, the elementalists are required to spend a year on the road, looking for their own. In the interest of public safety, you understand. Untrained magic has destroyed cities, among those born with the good fortune not to have to pay for it."

He doesn't want to think about Surri, but it's hardly avoidable, following this line of conversation. He remembers well all the traditions, all the restrictions, all the limits the elementalists bound themselves in, for fear of finding that their power could use them against their will; he remembers what Surri was capable of, and everything that his abilities prevented him doing. Jay and Surri are nothing alike in personality, so far as Neffa can see, but the limits that come with power - that, he thinks, must be something both their worlds understand.

"Were you taught, then?" he asks. "Not with the scholars, I mean, but... elsewhere. In Ristopa magic is passed down through apprenticeship."

[amourtician]

Jay shrugs his shoulders and averts his gaze. He begins fiddling with the hem of his sleeve, worrying at it with his slightly spidery fingers. Eventually, he says, "do you ... does your world not have ... undesirables? It does not matter how talented I am, darling. It wouldn't matter if I were almost pure spirit and could alter reality to my whims, if I am of the Tribes, of the Tribe of Maam to boot, I am not fit to educate."

He takes a deep breath. It's painful to articulate that, to think of it, to explain it so plainly and baldly.

"Plus, ah. My family are poor."

He looks back at Neffa and tries a chipper smile that he does not feel at all. Having to confess his social status like this is rather humiliating and he's wishing he'd lied.

"I was taught, yes," he says. "Ah. Taught how to control it, how to smother the inner flame and keep it at a low burn. And then I ... found apprenticeship for another sort of trade altogether."

The smile that turns up now is entirely genuine, but there's something slightly odd about it, too -- it looks just a little like the beginning of a pained grimace.