+ Somewhere a Grandiose Carnival Was Going on in the Sky +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: Everyone!
Where: The grounds of the Mansion
When: March 9-16
Rating: PG-13 (warn if you go higher)
Summary: The Red Queen has thrown a carnival for everyone!
The Story:


From Friday, March 9, through Friday, March 16, the gardens and grounds of the Mansion will be a sprawling a carnival. The masked, unspeaking vendors will be selling trinkets and running free game booths. Carnival rides, exhibits, and foods represent all of the various cultures of those currently residing in the Mansion.


Of particular note, and perhaps incongruously, everything is decorated with red hearts.

Use this log for any and all of your carnival needs!

Comments

[directed]

[She sees right through his play at words; Rip doesn't often presume to speak for others, even when he quite readily will take the responsibility of directing a course upon his own shoulders. In this instance, although he's been purposely vague in his sentiment he does indeed mean Peggy's estimation in his eyes rather than any others. She has proven herself capable and clever alike, stubborn to a fault but rooted so often in worthy causes, determined to do right for the world and those she holds dear. Whatever woman Sharon grows-up influenced by, Rip stands in admiration of the person Peggy is now, in this place and its unmoving time.

But he knows better than to admit as much aloud. There are lines they still refuse to cross, smartly so. Even when Peggy leans once more against the post, a peculiar look in her eye and a warmth to her cheeks that Rip doesn't think had been there a few heartbeats before, he won't confess to the truth she's already figured out—much to her relief, if the way Peggy zigs again is any indication.]

Oh, it's more insidious than that. How many people do you honestly expect to know some random latin phrase like the one presumably on the box? [Rip doesn't know exactly what it says, but he can guess it's something relatively unknown simply by the willingness of anyone to contribute. Peggy likewise calls it obscure, and Rip gives her a beat to put it together before he finishes the thought.] They've set it up to create the very memory they then steal away. They've created something that seemingly no one would have reason to resist. A pure memory, without whatever rigors one might assume they must normally go through to pluck words and phrases from our minds.

[mucked]

It's entrapment.

[ oh, perhaps not in its hardest sense. there is no lurking sting operation that she can fathom -- although in a few days' time she might come to view the whole carnival as a sting operation. for now, with her abandoned plate of funnel cake pitched thoughtless in one palm, she's thinking more about the box than she is the bustle that surrounds it.

but here's the funny thing: since learning the word and its meaning, peggy has been biting her cheek all day and leaving that very ridge she now knows how to name. she chews the bitten up skin, just now, with a thoughtful silence. and maybe she feels just a little 'entrapped' herself, thinking about a gesture and a language and a pair of words she would ordinarily be ignorant of. ]

What motivates the ones who give it up willingly, I wonder. It can't be pure charity.

[ she has her sneaking suspicions; she wants to hear rip's first. ]