strangetrip | [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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"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."

"Vox Machina is a family. We had to give her a bit of a hard time." And again pretty much every time Keyleth used that spell since then. "But things went to the Nine Hells just after that, so we had more important things to worry about than one spell mishap." The Conclave had attacked, and nothing had been the same since.

Family. Corbie hadn't had one of those in almost four years now, and just hearing the word pricked a little. She used her existing momentum to smile past it.. "Yeah, needing to keep not dying'll do that to people."

They hadn't entirely managed not dying, but thanks to Pike and Kash, none of them had stayed dead. Not even ungrateful Scanlan. But Vex had been here at the inn longer than the time it took to defeat the Conclave. "Four ancient chromatic dragons do tend to put things into perspective."

She leaned in to add in a conspiratorial whisper, "Besides, Percy's experiments are far more likely to blow things up than yours, if I had to guess."

Corbie giggled. "I don't practice many things that explode, so... probably!"

"See? You've got nothing to worry about, dear. You'll do just fine." There was a chance Vex was being overly confident, but she trusted her gut as usual.

"But speaking of Percival, I should catch up with him before we get to the kissing part of the evening."

"Oh yeah." Corbie had actually almost forgotten that part. She smiled. "Have fun with that."

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

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