strangetrip | [GP] Réveillon & New Year's Eve & Check-In

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[GP] Réveillon & New Year's Eve & Check-In

Emma had said, during Winter's Crest, that she missed a tradition from home called réveillon. She seemed also to miss her cousin, as Lillith missed hers. Since she wished both to learn to cook and to be of comfort to her friend, it had been decided they would make a réveillon dinner for New Year's Eve.

Yet when Emma began to lay out the courses -- oyster soup and potato & leek soup, salad, a gumbo, venison roast, cheeses, and creme brulee, plus several hors d'ouevres not yet decided -- Lillith quailed at the size of the undertaking. Surely she would wish someone to assist who could contribute more than roasted rabbit, wheat or potato flour dumplings, and koláč.

Since Sunny likewise missed her family and would certainly wish a distraction, when she entered the cafe where they were planning, the other two seized upon her almost at once. Sunny could hardly resist their dual entreaty, even had she wished to, and Lillith thought she seemed even more ready for company than previously. Of course Sunny had offerings of her own: jolloff rice, peppered chicken, and fried plantain.

Between they three, the planning and the cooking were very nearly merry, and Lillith kept them liberally supplied with champagne (her personal favorite), too. By late afternoon of the eve of the new year, they had begun lining tables with dishes, and enlisted the help of other friends to make the evening event widely known.

Of course, in addition to the réveillon feast that took over the steakhouse, alcohol flowed freely, lights sparkled brightly, the nightclub had music for dancing. And at some point the Inn or Caroline or Regina hung mistletoe from several of the primary entrances and exits so that unless one wished to or was unaware of the tradition, no one (not even any new arrivals) need greet the new year unkissed.

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Cark plumes of smoke pour out of the open-oven. In between a few coughs, she says, "Can you get the batteries out of the fire alarm?"

She gestures up at a round, white box up near the ceiling. Rey was used to shrill noises coming from droids, but she wasn't particularly fond of the sounds of alarms.

Rey reaches through the smoke and pulls out a tray of blackened biscuits, then steps away from the still-open oven, coughing.

This was turning out to be a disaster.

"What are batteries?" Pike yells. She's got no idea how she's supposed to get up there, so instead, she takes off one of her gauntlets and chucks it up at the little screaming box. Luckily her aim is true and it smashes into the ceiling with a satisfying crunch and the wailing stops.

Then with a quick control motion, she kicks the oven door closed.

"Are you hurt?"

Rey manages to stop coughing just long enough to watch Pike pitch her gauntlet up at the fire alarm. Her eyes follow the gauntlet as it falls down to the floor with a dull thud, then immediately turns to face Pike just in time to watch her kick the oven door closed, trapping the few remaining plumes of smoke inside.

"Thank you," Rey manages to rasp out. "But I'm fine. I probably just... overextended myself. Cooking isn't exactly my forte."

And neither, apparently, was handling three different dishes at once.

"I'm Rey," she says. "I think I've seen you around, but I don't think we've ever been formally introduced until now. Did you come here to cook?"

"You're welcome," Pike laughed, causing herself to cough just a little. "Cooking isn't an easy thing. Are you sure you didn't burn yourself?"

Reaching up, Pike took the liberty to turn off the other burners that were still going and then ushered Rey to a nearby chair. "I'm Pike, and I'm a healer. You should sit for a bit. Smoke is no joke."

"I was going to do some baking but didn't have anything in particular planned."

"I'm sure." Rey doesn't protest as Pike leads her to a chair. A year ago, she might have resisted, or thought it strange that someone was so concerned about her. But after she left Jakku, she realized that her experience on the desert planet wasn't the norm. This was.

"I've dealt with smoke plenty of times before," Rey says, smiling at one particular memory. "Mostly on ships when they were overheating, or struck by enemy forces."

Still, that didn't particularly dampen the smoke's effect on her. Her chest was hurting. Perhaps sitting down a bit was the right choice.

"You bake?" Rey asks, her eyes wide with curiosity. "I'd like to learn sometime. Apparently," she says, nodding a head in the direction of the blackend biscuits. "...I'm not very good at it."

Pike only half listened as the girl, Rey, explained why she didn't need healing because she was already pulling out her holy symbol and casting Healing Word. A golden wave of radiant light flew from her hand and encompassed Rey for a moment. It would only do a little, but hopefully it would help her breathe.

"Better?" Pike asked, "Smoke is tricky. The more exposure you've had to it, the worse your lungs get over time."

She looked down to the burned biscuits. "I do bake. My friends and I owned a bakery back home." She looked down to the burned biscuits and laughed, "Everyone has to start somewhere! I'd be happy to teach you. I've been thinking of making treats on a more regular basis."

Rey feels a warmth, almost like a glow, come over her. She breathes in and finds her lungs catch the air far easier than it had a moment or two before. She inhales, then exhales twice, almost testingly, before she offers Pike her assessment.

"Definitely," Rey says with a nod at Pike. "And if you're a baker, I'd be happy to learn. Back where I'm from, all cooking was basically stirring a powder into a small heated pot of water, and waiting for it to rise." A beat. "It didn't taste nearly as good as the baked goods I've eaten here."

Pike watched carefully then nodded in approval. Everything seemed alright.

"That sounds wonderful! There is that adorable bakery counter by the cafe that has been empty for too long." Pike gave Rey a bright smile, "That way we won't have to eat all of the treats we make."

Rey offers her a small smile. "I think that's a good idea. I'm going to need a lot of practice. But I'm happy to help if you really do think you're going to open shop."

It'd give her something to do when there weren't things that needed fixing. There were entire days where things weren't busted, or at least entire days where other people got to them first.

"Luckily we've got plenty of time," Pike laughed, tucking a flyaway strand of hair back behind her ear. "For now, why don't we give the oven a little break and have a drink together?"

That, Rey can agree to. "Sure," she says, smiling. She's made a few friends here, but she's always happy to make more.

She stands, and heads towards a line of cabinets to grab two glasses. "Did you want a drink-drink, or something else? I haven't learned how to mix drinks yet, either."

"We should probably stick to something non-alcoholic, especially if tonight is going to be the party everyone is describing," Pike laughed and picked up her gauntlet, then busied herself collecting the pieces of material that had fallen from the ceiling as well.

"Soda okay?" And then, dependent on Pike's preferences, Rey fills two glasses with ice, and then their preferred beverages. She hands one of the glasses over to Pike.

"Thanks for cleaning up the mess," she says apologetically, briefly glancing up at the ceiling before allowing her eyes to settle back on Pike. "How long have you been here? I think I've seen you around for a few months now." It's hard not to pass someone by after awhile in the Madonna Inn; the hotel wasn't that large, and they didn't have much of any other place to go, save for when the portal opened.

She definitely doesn't remember Pike from the second batch of people who arrived at the Inn with her. There might have been plenty of them arriving all on the same day, but the details of that first day here weren't something Rey was going to easily forget.

"Soda sounds wonderful, thank you." She gladly accepted the drink then made her way out of the kitchen, leading the way to a little table and crawling up into one of the chairs. "I'm sorry I broke the...thing. Hopefully, it will fix itself like the rooms do."

"I've definitely been here a few months. I don't really understand the calendar here, but it was summer when I arrived." Pike took a sip of the tasty drink and smiled. "What about you? How long have you been here?"

"If the room doesn't fix it, I'm sure someone else with the plaster abilities will," Rey says, taking a sip of her own beverage. "Frankly, I'm relieved when something here breaks. Fixing things was what I did back home."

It doesn't take long for Rey to supply Pike with her answer, though.

"A year tomorrow," she says. "I arrived on New Year's Day last year." She smiles to herself. "Happy anniversary to me, I guess."

"Fixing things? That sounds fun! Have you met Percy? He likes fixing things too." She smiled, "I have a spell for mending, but I'm not sure if it will work on something like this."

A whole year. Pike knew that people had been here for awhile, but she hadn't realized it had been that long. "Sounds like the perfect day to start baking lessons. Maybe we'll start with a cake to celebrate."

Rey shakes her head. "No, I haven't," she says. She's made a few friends since arriving here, but she hasn't come close to meeting everyone. That might have been plausible at the beginning, but now the Madonna Inn held a lot more people now than it did then.

"What does your mending spell do?" Rey asks, brows furrowed. Then quickly, she adds: "I've never made a cake before." She's eaten them, though -- only after she'd arrived here.

"I will have to introduce you, he's wonderful and loves to fix things," She made a mental note to instruct Percy to stop by the kitchen one day.

"Mending lets me repair a single break or tear in something, like a broken chain link or a leaking waterskin." She looked at the pieces of...well, she had no idea what that material was called even though it was everywhere. "I might be able to put this back together piece by piece, but I don't think I could make it functional again. Want to see?"

It was a cantrip, so she could do it all day long if she wanted to.

Edited 2018-01-23 17:18 (UTC)

"Definitely," Rey agrees. She'd only learned to repair things from trial-and-error. She was curious to know if there was something Percy knew through a formal education that she didn't know and could learn.

"Yes," Rey says, nodding eagerly. She'd seen lots of magic since coming here -- healing and elemental magic mostly. But she hadn't seen repair magic at all.

Pike picks up two of the pieces and, after a a few tries, manages to find an set of edges that matches. Closing her eyes, she casts Mending. Golden light pulses from her fingertips, into the material, and concentrates in the jagged crack.

As the radiant light fades away, Pike holds the joined piece out to Rey. All signs of the break has vanished.

"Ta-Da!"

Rey takes it into her hand, then looks down at it, and then over at Pike, and then back down at the object again.

"That was magic?" she says, turning her attention back to Pike for the second time in just under a minute. "You just... fixed this thing?"

And it's clear from Rey's expression that she's impressed and excited and curious all at once.

"I have seen so many different types of magic since I've been here, and I have never, ever seen anything like this before."

"Yup, it was magic," Pike laughed, before picking up the next fractured piece and working to find where it fits. "I use it a lot to do little fixes to my armor after a battle. It's great, but only for things that are less than a foot long."

"Where I'm from, there's a lot of different kinds of magic. It all kind of depends on where your power comes from. Some of my magic can be used for fighting, but a lot of what I can do is about healing, or fixing, or protecting."

She closed her eyes again and fixed another little piece of the thingy. "Does your world have magic?"

"We have something like it," Rey admits. "We don't call it magic, though. We call it the Force."

Rey gestures up, and the fractured piece Pike holds in her hand rises up, floating in the air. She spins it, and then lowers it so it's within reach of Pike's grasp.

"I don't know how magic works where you come from... but I didn't realize I could use the Force until about a year and a half ago." She smiles lightly. "I was looking for another Force User who could train me right around the time I ended up here. And I ended up finding a new teacher here, instead. Master Qui-Gon."

"Oh wow!" Pike watches with wide eyes, "You didn't use an incantation or gesture or a focus or anything! That's awesome."

Pike thinks back to her childhood and when she began healing, "I was very young, but I didn't get formal training until I was older. I'm glad you have someone here who can teach you! Did you know of Master Qui-Gon before?"

Rey smiles. She's not sure what an incantation or a focus are, but she figures it's a compliment.

She's about to ask how Pike ended up getting formal training, but before she can, Pike gets in a question of her own. "No, I didn't know him," Rey says, shaking her head. "He's from the same galaxy that I am. But a few generations earlier than me, back when the Jedi were more than a myth."

[GP] Réveillon & New Year's Eve & Check-In

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