st_ormbreaker: (Because that's what heroes do.)
[personal profile] st_ormbreaker
MY BROTHER LOKI IS HERE, I THOUGHT EVERYBODY SHOULD KNOW THAT. WE DON'T LOOK ALIKE SO HERE'S A DESCRIPTION SO YOU KNOW HIM WHEN YOU SEE HIM:

• LONG DARK HAIR
• VERY GOOD AT TRICKS AND TRICKING PEOPLE
• USUALLY LOOKS LIKE HE'S UP TO SOMETHING
• SCOWLING MOST OF THE TIME
• LOOKS HAPPY WHEN HE'S SCHEMING

PLEASE BE SURE TO SAY HELLO TO HIM AND MAKE HIM FEEL AT HOME.
st_artliving: (girl don't care)
[personal profile] st_artliving
Xavin, for the most part, hadn't actually bothered keeping regular hours at her little coffee nook. She spent some time there most days, how long depending on how many people wanted coffee or how interested she was in whatever books she'd selected for the day.

Today was probably going to be a longer day, if only because she'd had to restock a little from the kitchens. She'd found a little cart to haul things and was currently engaged in putting her supplies away. Milks and whipped cream into the little refrigerator, beans stashed in their cupboard, disposable cups stacked and non-disposable cups cleaned and put away. (Some people liked those, particularly if they didn't intend to leave the library. But it meant that her kitchen time included doing dishes, which was often more fun than drudgery. Especially when she accidentally overdid the soap.)
st_ormbreaker: (Hella charming.)
[personal profile] st_ormbreaker
to: ALL

I HAVE BEEN LEARNING ABOUT ART FROM MACK AND I AM WORKING ON MY OWN GRAPHIC NOVEL.

THIS IS MY FIRST DESIGN.



ORIGINAL CHARACTER DO NOT STEAL
st_ubby: (siblings)
[personal profile] st_ubby
It was hard to believe Vex had been at Madonna Inn almost a year. It felt both far longer and not nearly that long.

It also wasn't anything to celebrate. Unlike today, which demanded to be celebrated. Not with anything big or flashy. No surprise parties, thank you! But drinks certainly. Not like last year, though, when Vex hadn't been here at all, and Vax had attempted to drown himself and her absence in booze. It was their birthday and they were both here to raise a glass together.

So drinks. And cake, because birthdays had always meant cake, even when Vax had had to swipe it for them, or cut a purse to buy it. So when she slid into a booth in the bar, wearing a shirt Percy insisted she needed, she set a plate with two cupcakes, one almost black with chocolate and espresso, the other snowy white but flavored with mint, on the table between them and kissed her brother on the cheek, pleased to see he was wearing the shirt to match. They were twins, after all.

"Get us a drink," she said with a bright grin and a twinkle in her eye for the person passing by. "It's our birthday."



(tag either twinnie's TL, or get them both by request)
st_ackeddeck: (girl on fire)
[personal profile] st_ackeddeck
Usually when Emma couldn't sleep, she cooked. Last night had been the opposite. She'd started trying out new marshmallow variations, completely lost track of time, and spent most of the night in the kitchen instead of doing reasonable things, like sleep. She'd grabbed a nap in the wee hours, though and another after lunch, and now was wide awake.

She also had batches and batches of homemade marshmallows.

Around sunset, Jag helped her set up a table near the pool and outdoor bar, that she loaded up with the marshmallows, graham crackers and other cookies, chocolate and berries and spreads and bacon. Anything somebody might think of that would make a good s'more, from the traditional basic graham, milk chocolate bar, plain marshmallow, to bourbon marshmallow s'mores with smoky bacon. If the inn was anything like the castle, word of mouth would spread quick enough, and the food wouldn't go to waste.

Jag had started a fire right beside the table, but after having had his own fill of s'mores, he had left Emma to meeting the demand of other hotel residents. He was sticking around to make sure the fire was behaving just right, though. So he was lying on his back a little way from Emma's table, and the fire he was still controling, weaving and sculpting additional fire between his hands, keeping a distracted ear on what was going on nearby.

[tag Emma or tag Jag. food and fire, what could be better?]
st_rangepalette: (illusion magic)
[personal profile] st_rangepalette
One afternoon, Lillith had been out for a walk, appreciating the slant of the spring sunlight and the hints of new color in the landscape. Curnen's music, from the new violin which Lillith believed to have been belonged to someone in her family, had filtered through the bushes and trees, and mingled with the sunlight to dance and dapple the lawn and the pathways.

She had, of course, followed the music to the source, but what she had seen... it had stopped her short. On the station, she had asked, when Curnen's wings returned, what would she see? What her heart saw (far more so than her eyes) now was an answer to that question. Instead of speaking, she had run on light hooves back to her room and immediately begun to put down in sketches and sweeping brushes of paint what she had felt.

It had taken many days for her to complete a painting that revealed Curnen as Lillith had seen her. And it was not, when it was finished, very realistic. Rather it was the shape and lines of Curnen playing, dancing and twining through gentle washes of watered colors that were at once the light, the music, the moment, and butterflies. But there were, around the shape of Curnen, two sparkling shadows, there but not there, suggested but not seen.

When she was satisfied with it and it had dried, Lillith draped it in a piece of silk that had been a scarf. She pinned to it a single white card and on it written a single word.

Wings.

And one evening when no one seemed to be about, she carried it out and then delivered it outside Curnen's door.


- Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. - Phillip Guston
st_artliving: (male action)
[personal profile] st_artliving
Once the introductions to Lillith's friends and the resulting conversation had been completed, Xavin took the lead and walked himself and Lillith outside into the 'woods' area. It was private and hidden, as much as possible, which was important, for this conversation.

It had been a whim, dropping the plate and catching it with a forcefield. Xavin had gone months without using any of his Super-Skrull powers, even in the Inn, and there was no pressing reason to change that. Or at least, no pressing reason beyond a desire to be honest and to properly walk the line between being quiet and non-threatening and being so quiet as to be accused of lying and hiding.

If anyone would accept and understand, it was Lillith. "You wished to know about the plate, correct?"
st_abby: (official_portrait)
[personal profile] st_abby
The calendar of "Kahl-ee-Fornea" was very different to that of Tal'Dorei. But the spring dance had been a good reminder for the Exandrians (one of them, anyway) that the Renewal Festival would take place more or less this time of year, landing always on the thirteenth day of Dulahei. It seemed a fitting time to set the 'small family dinner' in celebration of the marriage of Vex and Percy.

...Yeah, but no. Because Vax'ildan didn't mind a bit of revenge for their having done the thing without so much as telling him for several weeks, and because his sister always deserved the best of everything anyway, the garden had a whopping lot more than that for the happy couple as they opened the doors onto what first looked like pitch blackness. Until the big, white-hot spotlight snapped abruptly on to glare down on top of the pair with blinding scrutiny.

A familiar voice sang out from beyond, his ever-charming booming and crooning amplified to fill the whole of the outdoors by something called a 'microphone,' Scanlan using all his singular panache to belt out a melodic tune:

"There she is, Mrs. De Rolo
There she is, your ideal
The dreams of a million boys and girls who want to find love in Emon City
For Vex may turn out to more than Baroness of the first house of Whitestone and Grand Mistress of the Hunt
There he is, Mr. De Rolo
There he is, your ideal
With so much brooding and tinkering he took the town by storm
With his all-Whitestone face and form
And there they are
Walking on air, he is
Fairest of the fair, she is
There they are - Mr. and Mrs. De Rolooooooooooo~"

A resounding wave of applause, murmuring, cheers, and laughter broke out all around the newlyweds - one such unbridled merry cackle absolutely coming from the bride's brother - and Scanlan's tone changed immediately to a much more vibrant, excited, sporting-event-enthusiasm style of announcement: "Ladies and Gentlemen - it's the DE ROLO FAMILY!"

The strands of bulb lighting popped into yellow-soft brightness all at once, revealing the guests gathered around dozens of tables artfully set with dinner places enough for everyone at the Inn. Each table included flowers, linens, and garlands all matched in smart Whitestone-Blue, darker Owlbear-Blue, black and white with touches of gold accents, all thanks to Caroline's management. The outdoor area so far as one could see had been dressed in one of Lillith's illusions to mimic a beautiful forest clearing at purple-dusk with fireflies dancing, the shapes of buildings and foothills in the distance distinctly cast to look like the city and castle of Whitestone. Ignis and Emma stood by putting a few final touches on what they'd all started calling 'fancy barbecue,' an enormous buffet of haute cuisine smoked and grilled meats with artful sides, a table beside them holding up the massive layer cake Pike had tirelessly fussed into perfection. So many others had come together to help or to wish the de Rolos well - but there would be plenty of time over the evening for them to be thanked and recognized with food, drink, song - there was even an area marked out as a dance floor.

A freshly bathed Trinket in his very own bowtie lumbered up to Vex'ahlia to rumble and lick her face as the pair finally had a moment to react to the spectacle. At ground-level, a small disc-like device with a large serving spoon taped to it had been labeled with marker as Ensign Stubby, rolling its way between tables and chairs while balancing a large, many-times-stabbed basket of flower petals (with a handful left nestled in its giant spoon) on top of its flat surface like a drunken flower girl to finally bump into Vex and Percy's shoes. ...And possibly the best thing about their stunning surprise? That Peter boy had got the whole thing on VHS.
st_oryboard: (laugh)
[personal profile] st_oryboard
Mack caught about ten hours of sleep total since his arrival. Unlike others that had arrived, his was due to excitement. Yes, he missed his grandfather and his friends. But the Changer world wasn't in a war any longer and he viewed this as a vacation. Besides SERIOUSLY, he got the best welcome to a weird place gift ever. No, not the toothbrush and other stuff (no offense Caroline) but what was in his egg.

He'd been given a Clip Studio EX software and a Graphic Drawing Tablet, PLUS pens and colored pencils. Mack didn't waste any time in setting up the software and trying to figure out how it worked. His first couple of attempts weren't the best, but then his character began to look like it did on the paper and he was satisfied. He stuffed everything that had been in his egg, plus he own graphic novels, comic and notepad into his backpack and headed down toward the cafe.

There was plenty of room on the table at a booth to spread out all his stuff. It wasn't busy so he didn't feel guilty about doing it. Soon he was lost in trying to transfer his comic to the tablet and thinking of new adventures of a Kitsune stuck in another world. SO TOTALLY COOL!
st_illsinging: (O Really?)
[personal profile] st_illsinging
The day after talking to Pike, Scanlan decided it was probably time to actually talk to everyone else. He had mixed feelings considering he knew a whole bunch more than literally everyone else. And also some of them were going to be pissed at him. Again.

Several days of rest had done the Gnome good and he moved to sit down in the lobby. A public place was probably good in case there was a huge fight, right? Settling down on one of the couches, Scanlan spoke into his earring.

Hey, so, you all probably heard I'm here already, but here's my official hello and I'm in the lobby if you want to say hi.

Then he picked up his lute and started playing a little, but he was mostly tuning and fixing - it was as if being in a big battle against a god could damage your instruments or something.
st_ingofthehundred: greyston (partners in crime)
[personal profile] st_ingofthehundred
Date: February 1, 2018

After Zahra's had a chance to bathe and rest, she and Kash get the band back together. Only two of the newer members think they're not band members but roadies.

[Here | rating: pg-13 | status: completed | awkward, emotions, family]
st_artingpoint: (contemplation)
[personal profile] st_artingpoint
Some of Jane's memories were returning, thanks to Molly, and she had some intense conversations with Alex about her possible military background. All of this had her looking at her tattoos differently. There was one that was barely visible on her arm underneath a black patch of ink. Molly had done a glamour spell that was able to remove the ink cover but it was still faint. It was clear enough so that Jane could research it and she'd learned it belonged to the Navy Seals.

That got her even more motivated as she sat at a table with a scattering of books around her that had military images, a notebook and a mirror. Jane was in the process of trying to look at a smaller tattoo on her back and try to sketch it. Neither was successful and she was getting frustrated. She needed a way to catalog all of her tattoos so that she could start to see if anything related to any of the memories that were emerging.
st_oneswidow: (Black Eyes)
[personal profile] st_oneswidow
Curnen hatedThe Queen of Argyll” with every fiber of her being. It was insipid for one thing, and for another it was the song she had a habit of falling back on whenever Bliss outshone her. Okay, rather, when Bliss outshone her and it pissed her off.

Curnen was pushing herself too hard and she knew it, but if she didn't spend the entire day with her guitar, she wasn't going to have any chance of re-rooting herself at all. She stayed close to the inn, crossed legged in the grass with her instrument in her lap to keep her from bolting. Apparently she'd spent about a week with the coyotes after the fun surprise that was the last arrival day. She couldn't remember most of it. She barely remembered running away.

She was fine.

This was fine.

The fact that she'd forgotten to comb her hair today didn't mean anything, nor did the way her fingers felt too thick and she played rather like she had months ago, too slow and clumsy to keep up with her voice.

She was singing at any rate. Never mind talking got hard all over again. She was singing.

Edward, Edward. The Fisherman’s Song. A Maid in Bedlam. She Moved Through the Fair. Wake Up, Little Maggie. Black is The Color. Wind and Rain. And round and round and piercing through swanned the fucking Queen of Argyll. Round and round so many times that the words began to lose all shape and she knew she was just saying meaningless syllables but they still sounded like words and still the feeling wouldn’t go away or get any better and and and--

And if you could have seen her there
Boys, if you had just been there
The swan was in her movement
And the morning in her smile
All the roses in the garden
They bow and ask her pardon
For not one could match the beauty of
The Queen of all Argyll
st_rangepalette: (lillith)
[personal profile] st_rangepalette
Excited by her cousin's arrival, Lillith called her friends and asked them to come have champagne with her in the bar. She did not say why, because she wanted to tell them in person. But because she did intend to show herself for who and what she was, she did not use her alter self spell, only her disguise self spell. Her human face was the one that they were used to, but she allowed her veil to have her paler skin -- and because it pleased her, she made her blonde hair a soft pink.

Kitty was tending the Silver Bar and had music playing for people to dance. Lillith took advantage of it to twirl and spin, kicking up her heels with glass after glass of champagne. When she tired of dancing, she fond a place to perch, if she had company, where they were. If not, on the edge of the bar to chat with Kitty who she did not know very well but seemed very kind.

At one point, she thought she saw Kashaw's friend Molly in the lobby and she hopped down off the bar. It was not Molly, and she lost her footing as she dropped down, pitching nearly headlong.

[OOC: post is open for anyone, but specifically arranged with Sunny, Coby, and Jackson. Jackson will catch Lillith when she falls, but otherwise, tag her as you will. She appears as a paler, somewhat more delicate version of the self she's been showing but still human. If you want to run into her after she's dropped her illusion and appears as a Tiefling, please let me know, and then go right ahead. Backdated to 2/3]
st_opsummoningme: (demon days)
[personal profile] st_opsummoningme
Freedom from her bonds had given Illyana more than freedom of movement. It had returned to her the use of her magik and her ability to teleport. These abilities had, in turn, allowed her to finish making ready the library for public use. It was less about collecting books and media from around the premises (and some from Limbo, or donated collections harvested from the Otherworlds) and arranging shelving and seating, most of which had been relatively easily done. It was more a matter of laying the appropriate wards, and negotiating the finer points of the old-fashioned catalog and check-out system, which included odd donated items such as sporting equipment and electronic devices available for rental. Xavin's espresso machine counter necessitated a mini-bar refrigerator, glass-domed cake stands for assorted pastries brought in from the kitchen, and various cafe sundries.

Repurposed from what had been the 'Garden Room,' the library space with its high wooden ceilings, chandeliers, and landscape murals over busy floral carpet still looked somewhat like a touristy banquet hall, yet the area was now also highly saturated with layered magic. The hodgepodge collection of random books and so on were fiercely protected by these magics. When needed and as possible, worn volumes had been restored. The books could not be damaged nor marred from here on out, at least not by coffee spills nor page-tearing or inconsiderate attempts at margin notation. Nor would they leave the boundaries of the library area without proper dispensation, simply stopping mid-air and dropping should the attempt be made at the threshold. Ask at the Desk for Assistance With These Items, prompted the signs on several glass display cases featuring certain perhaps unsettling curiosities within - books in arcane languages, skulls from indeterminate creatures, and artifacts such as a green glowing cube suspended on a chain. At said desk, a gleaming service bell sat waiting, should the staff be needed and not clearly present.

Illyana finished affixing the large engraved plaque to the wall beside the double-doors, and then returned to attend the newly opened library with little fanfare:

Madonna Inn Expanded Public Library

Established ~01.25.2018 Earthly Gregorian Calendar

Open All Hours

Volunteer Staff on Duty as Schedules Allow

Classes & Tutoring for Most Subjects Available Upon Request

Donations Encouraged

Disruptive Patrons Will Be Zealously Evicted
st_rongheart: (casual?)
[personal profile] st_rongheart
It had taken a good three weeks for Sora and Peter to gather enough materials and also enough nerve to put on the fireworks that Peter had felt were missing from New Year's. They'd filched, over time, a pile of steel wool pads and an embarrassing number of whisks. Why they needed those things, Sora didn't exactly know.

Once everything was gathered up, Sora and Peter met outside, a safe (probably!) distance from the Inn. Peter showed Sora how to stretch out a pad of steel wool and jam it inside a whisk, then he attached long ropes of webbing to the ends of the whisks and fastened them to the ground. While he did that, he cheerfully explained how the webbing worked and how he was sure it would stick to the ground right and everything would be fine. There was a lot of math and other things Sora did not understand at all, but he was absolutely confident that Peter was right.

Once everything was fastened properly, Peter gave the nod.

Sora called out the Keyblade, stood in the middle of the webby circle of stuffed whisks, and cast Aeroga. Swirling winds came out of nowhere to lift up the whisks and spin them in the air, held in control only by the webbing ropes. Next came Thunder - bolts of lightning to ignite the wool in the whisks as they spun. (Peter had been sure that Fire wouldn't work, it had to be Thunder. And he was so right!)

Then the boys settled, more or less, to watch their homemade fireworks spinning and throwing sparks.
st_rikingblueeyes: (Um...)
[personal profile] st_rikingblueeyes
"Throw it."

Corbie gave a start and stared at the other girl. She couldn't think of any circumstance under which she might do such a thing. Books were precious, and so rare in their tiny bubble world. And even in the small amount of time they'd been truly a part of Corbie's life, she'd learned to treat them with a kind of reverence. But Sunny only smirked and said again, "Throw it. It's mine and I'm saying it's okay."

Still, Corbie hesitated and looked around, as if expecting somehow to be punished for it. But there was no one by the pool but the two of them. In the dead of winter it was still 60 degrees outside with bright sunshine, but that was still too cold to get in that water for most. Fully clothed and keeping to the deck chairs, it was definitely too cold for them.

So the slim green volume by the title of Fast Facts for Free Agents flew from Corbie's hand to land further down the deck. Where it lay for a moment before sprouting legs--so many legs--and crawling back to Corbie and into her lap.

This, naturally, set Corbie's skin crawling and she looked ready to throw the thing again, which made Sunny laugh.

"I'm nobody's teacher," Sunny said with a shake of the head. "I'm still learning, myself. Spend some time with Isong. I hate her, but she knows what she's talking about."

Corbie frowned at that. "Then why keep the book?"

Sunny grinned sharply. "It fuels me."

At which point, Corbie backed away from the big girl with big hair and her strange green knife, but still started thumbing through the text to see what she could find.

Truly, Sunny didn't consider herself advanced enough to teach. She was still trying to make Ndibu level. And while that was far more advanced than many Leopard People got, as a free agent she knew that standards for her would be much higher than others. Wasn't that the story of her life.

So while Corbie eventually went over to the pool and started playing with the water, Sunny kept one eye on that and focused most of her attention on another book written entirely in Nsibidi. She had read it many times, read both the stories it contained, which she thought of as its day face and its night face. What she was looking for now, lightly experimenting in chalk on the ground, was which symbols might be the best for creating a spell to get the hell out of here.
st_hotflashes: (Confused school)
[personal profile] st_hotflashes
Liz was enjoying the various people offering her lessons. The Inn gave her a unique opportunity to be exposed to a variety of subjects she wouldn't normally take back home. Back home she had her eyes on a science degree in university. Here, she decided to ask Piotr to teach her some art. Liz was under no illusion that she would be good at it, but she thought it might be something nice to practice when Kitty was busy or she had read all that she could read.

For her first lesson, she was supposed to draw the hallway in perspective. When she had originally reached for a ruler to measure and be precise, he had said it wasn't allowed. So now, she was out in the hallway with a pad of paper and some pencils and an eraser. She sat on the end of the hallway with her back to the wall, trying to sketch what she saw down the hallway. There was a look of frustration and a lot of sighing and erasing.

(ooc: Find her in any hallway that's convenient for your pup if you like.)
st_ealthless: (serious art)
[personal profile] st_ealthless
Pike had received Percy’s warning over the earring to stay inside and away from the main building right as she was stepping outside of her room. There, standing in the hallways, it took her a few seconds to put the pieces together. But as her eyes fell onto the sign on her door, everything clicked. The plaque read ‘Romance’ and had a bride and groom looking odd into the distance on it. The only thing Percy would recommend she stay away from was something that reminded her of Scanlan.

She wasn’t ready to consider about why ‘Romance’ made her think of him, so instead, she channeled her frustration somewhere else. That stupid sign needed to go.

Of course, she’d tried removing it before and it had always come back. But that wasn’t gonna stop her from trying again. With a practiced motion, she slipped her gauntlets on and began tugging at the wood.
st_rangepalette: (violet girl)
[personal profile] st_rangepalette
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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