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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"There definitely should be," Corbie agreed with a sage nod. Then she grinned big, dropping any semblance of dignity. "But I'm pretty sure by midnight we'll all be too drunk to remember one anyway."

"Or drunk enough to make up a new one." Not that Vex was usually one to get that completely hammered anyway. Not without a very good reason. She and Vax had had to watch their backs too long for drunkenness to feel comfortable.

"As long as we can all find our way back to our rooms... or someone else's," she said with a conspiratorial wink.

Corbie snorted. "My other room is probably well on his way to a severe case of whiskey dick, so we'll have to see about that." Not to mention that while it was a regular thing there was zero guarantee that Jackson wasn't trying to seduce someone else and it's just be her and her right hand, but she'd spent worse nights.

Whiskey dick was funnier.

"Oh? You could have something to say about that, if you wanted to, I'm sure." Women could wield quite a lot of power when they put their minds to it. "Do I know your 'other room'? Or is it a secret?"

Corbie shrugged. It wasn't like either of them were secretive about it, but it wasn't exactly something much worth talking about either. "If it were anything more serious, maybe I would, but it ain't. And yeah, you prolly do."

"Fair enough." If it wasn't all that serious, no real reason to talk about it, and Vex was sure she'd notice if she bothered to pay attention. Corbie was a dear, but not close enough, yet anyway, that Vex felt an obligation to pry. Of course there was no need to say who Vex would be going 'home' with at the end of the night. That claim was clear to anyone who'd seen her with Percy, or talked to either of them for long.

"It's hard to believe my brother has been here a year," she said instead. "And so many others as well."

"I can barely believe how long I've been here, and it's only like half that long." Corbie's face slowly changed to an expression of concern. "I still wanna go home. But now it's complicated."

She thought of Vax, who'd seemed happier the past week or so than she'd seen him in a very long time. Of Percy, who'd found a measure of peace here. Then of Whitestone, and the rest of Vox Machina, of Cassandra and Velora, Gilmore and Zahra, Allura and Kima.

"Very. It is possible, though, to both yearn for what we miss, what we're kept from, and yet want to cling to what we've found here. And as we don't seem to have any choice in the matter of where we are..."

Corbie nodded. "I'm not exactly lonely, but it'd be nice to see someone from home. 'Cept that means they'd be stuck here, too. That'd be nice for me, but shit for them."

"It does make things more difficult, doesn't it?" Vex offered her a sad, knowing smile. "New friends are wonderful, but iit's not the same."

Corbie didn't want to think about all of that right now, though. "But old friends don't have flying brooms."

Vex practically twinkled. "Flying brooms are a plus side." Maybe she'd gone about getting the broom in a wrong way, but she'd meant to give Gern a bunch of dragonscales in trade, if he hadn't run off so quickly. And it really was a most wonderful magic item. It had saved all of Vox Machina at one time or another.

"There's so much weird magic all in one place." It was a thought so exciting that Corbie almost started bouncing right then and there.

"Enough to keep a wizard busy for a long time, if they wanted to learn about it all," Vex guessed. Corbie's enthusiasm was so different from Tiberius', adorable really, but some things were true regardless of the wizard.

"If I can convince people to teach it to me," Corbie allowed. "But so far, people are bored enough that that don't sound like a terrible idea."

"Boredom can be a great motivator." Not that Vex had had much of a chance to experience that before coming here. And even now she filled her days with hunting, the boutique, and wrangling the inn's Exandrian males, which was really a full time endeavor and more important if they became bored. Her brother especially was drawn to trouble when there was nothing to distract him.

"That or maybe they don't want the baby wizard blowing anything up," Corbie allowed with a shrug. "I don't really know. But I'll take it either way."

Well that was just silly, and Vex waved it off. "You're a wizard. Things are going to blow up. As long it's not the clerics, we're probably okay."

Well. No one had ever put it in terms remotely like that before. Corbie was supposed to learn control herself, contain herself, keep a firm hand on her power and herself. The idea that maybe the world wouldn't end if she messed up, well...

She grinned fit to light the room all by herself. "Thanks."

Wasn't she adorable! "Of course, darling." Vex put an arm around Corbie's shoulders and gave a warm squeeze, leaning in to add, "The stories I could tell you about spells gone wrong. You'd laugh until you couldn't breathe.

"There was the time, in the middle of a fight with two enormous worm monsters, Keyleth turned most of us into farts."

The laugh and the words tried to race each other off Corbie's tongue, and it came out a little jumbled for it, "She what the fuck?"

"It's actually a very useful spell," Vex allowed, not wanting to disparage Keyleth in her attempt to encourage Corbie. "If you need to move quickly without doing anything else at the same time. But she'd just (sort of) learned it, and didn't realize exactly how it worked. All our heavy hitters were turned into clouds, including Keyleth so she couldn't get rid of the spell or cast anything else. Scanlan got swallowed by a worm. It was just me and Trinket, and Pike, who hadn't been in the room at the time, so had no idea what was going on."

Corbie hadn't had a big screw up like that, but she did know the feeling of just learning a spell and not really knowing what to do with it, so her laugh was loud and raucous, but not without sympathy.

Because that was beautifully ridiculous. "Oh no!"

It was good to be able to laugh about it now. With all the crappy shit that had happened to Vox Machina, there wasn't much you could do but laugh sometimes.

"Luckily, none of us died that day. And we did have Pike there, just in case." Except that Pike could have been the one to die, when she wandered in not knowing what had happened, and drawing the worms' attention. But she was a Monstah, and more than a match for a couple of worms.

"Oh fuck, that's horrible," Corbie gasped, trying to get her breathing back under control. "I hope you didn't chew her out too bad for it, that had to be mortifying."

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

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