isleofavalon | best foot forward [OPEN]

Entry tags:

best foot forward [OPEN]

🧙 WHO: Cecelia & OPEN
⚔️️ WHAT: assorted happenings/questings
🕒 WHEN: early/mid-march
🗺️ WHERE: in & around Camelot!
⚠️ WARNINGS: none in prompts; if issues arise, the content will be tagged

o1. the cinderella situation - camelot, shopping areas
[Cecelia Ardenbury is not very great at the pauper life, and she knows it. she grew up wanting very little where material needs are concerned, and her understanding of "making do" is skewed by the world of fiction.

still..."make do" she must.]

Have you...any system in place of...lending your wares? [her smile is a touch pained as she speaks to one of the workers at a clothing boutique. her hand goes up almost in pefect timing with their eyebrows at the inquiry.] I know. Strange, yes? And you've got little cause to trust me. But is there any collateral I can offer in exchange? Surely others from other lands have found themselves in such a situation, and as it stands, I can't work in this...

[she sighs down at her gown, utterly ruined by the days of travel and strife she's found herself in upon arrival.]

...Unless you have some simple cleaning that needs done in exchange instead, I suppose...

[or someone with coin to spare feels moved to lend her a hand.]

o2. the sorcerer, re-apprenticed - outside camelot

None of this magic is really mine, is it?

[a small tongue of flame dances above hand, bouncing from fingertip to fingertip while she's seated on a stone along the side of the road leading back to the city. her journal is in her lap, and she scratches away notes while idly juggling the flame. a slender, goat-sized unicorn lay at her feet, seeming to doze while the half-elf woman murmurs to herself.

a chilly spring breeze snuffs the flame out, and Cecelia sighs.] Not mine in the slightest... [her spark,the flames she could conjure on her own from her own blood and heritage...

she shivers, hugging her arms to herself.] Nh. I'm...not used to feeling the elements like this, either... [she sighs.]

One hell of a square one...this is so vexing...!

o3. wabbit season - Camelot
[ye gods, the indignity... fetch questing?? what is she, level 2?

be strong, Cecelia. it's just a dumb animal. and at least it's not like she has to crawl through mud or brambles? this is actually quite gentle. yeah! this'll be fine! this...this is fine.]

Right, then...

[animal handling: one of her greatest failings in her ages of training. Cecelia frowns down at the array of fuzzy lumps currently populating this little cafe, then at the photograph provided by the app.]

Is it you, hm? I'd quite like this to be over quickly, so--

[she puts her phone away in some hidden pocket within her dress and tentatively reaches down to pick up one of the bunnies, looking like she's about to lift something potentially radioactive, letting it dangle at arm's length until, naturally, it begins to fidget. the second it does, she yelps in alarm, letting it drop and bound over to whomever else is on the case.

still in bunny-hold pose, her expression struggling to contain her disdain:] Gods...

o4. the randomizer - varied -- Camelot adjacent (this bitch can't afford a ride yet)
[wild card me, i fuckin DARE U.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Nothing Morgan has going back home needs him, not really. He's quite lucky in that respect.]

Well, I do know that people come here from both different points in the same timeline, and alternate versions of our own realities. That's not proof, but I think it lends the concept some credence.

If they truly are from the same realm or not. [she tilts her head.] As irritating as it is to consider, there is the possibility that there are realms where variations of ourselves are not currently trapped, and are instead living their own lives at this very moment.

Possible, yes. I met someone here who knew a me from her world. [What with being his daughter and all. Morgan shrugs, because he knows perfectly well he should have found that a lot weirder than he did...] Whatever the case is, I think ultimately whatever is done can be undone. If magic can bring us here, magic can put us back -- at the precise moment we left. So the goal is to make sure it does, right?

Mm. [with some doubt in her tone, her eyes down at the journal in her lap:] A unanimously shared goal is...quite the stretch, I think. But I can settle for a, mm, motivated majority in such a case, yes.

Now, to be fair. [Morgan raises a finger to emphasize his point.] Some people might have a very legitimate reason not to want to go back. Ideally, we ought to find a way to accommodate them. I think we can get most reasonable people on board so long as we take into account such contingencies!

[her mouth tugs in a brief, crooked smirk.]

Wouldn't it be quite lovely to find we have a solution that pleases everyone by the time we really knuckle down into the thick of things, mm?

It totally would!

[And Morgan says that sincerely, honestly, and without a touch of irony or sarcasm. Sure, he knows it's unlikely, but how much worse would it be to not try at all out of cynical assumptions?]

Besides, I could see someone sabotaging our progress if they thought the result would end up doing them more harm than good. It's not really fair to ask people to go back if they believe their own world will be trashed for their absence, right?

[in an exhale:] Geopolitics is obnoxious enough without spanning realms upon realms, I wager. But moaning about it will change very little unless I were to moan at possible agents of change, hmm? Here's hoping I can, mm, spare the would-be saboteurs the expense and procure what information is needed to reach happier outcomes in a timely fashion.

[a beat.

then, with a shrug:] Or I get what is needed to get myself out first. That, at the very least, has merit to me.

[Of course. Always a catch, isn't there. Morgan looks at her sidelong.]

If you can do it alone, then people can do it individually, y'know. Better off promising to share that knowledge and getting help than hoarding it and having people sabotage it.

[there's a want to roll her eyes that she fights. instead, she just sighs a bit.]

Perhaps, but...there is something to the problem of too many cooks in a kitchen. Or irons in a fire. Or fairies afield. Whatever saying is common, you know what I mean, I'm sure.

[Try not to judge, Morgan tells himself. If she truly believes that being here could be putting her own world or the people in it she values in danger, then what seems like a selfish desire is only reasonable. So, schooling himself, he keeps his tone and demeanor as light as before.]

Kinda too late to stop that from happening. They give us plenty of free rein here, after all, so anyone who wants to start digging into that can and will.

Something I dare hope has been ongoing well before I washed up here. [but something in her tone shows she has a lack of faith. her eyes move beyond him, out toward the landscape stretching ahead.]

Free rein, yet tethers all the same, mm. No escaping that, doubtless, but far easier to come to heel when the parameters are-- [beat. she blinks, then her gaze darts back to him in a wary way.

she clears her throat.]

...Doubtless, I could ramble on endlessly, it seems. Pardon. Did you have something of mind to sit down and discuss?

[Someday he will make some cheerful and optimistic friends for a change. Someday.]

[To her question, he shrugs.] Oh, in part I was just concerned because of your expression, and in part I wanted to actually speak to someone I'd had such exciting adventures with. [A flicker of a smile there, too.] I'm also helpless before a pretty face, of course, but that was surprisingly low-priority for me this time.

[she smirks for a moment.]

Surprisingly, you say? A priority shift? Did your brush with death change things up?

No, no, it was just the first two things I listed. It's so rare I get to speak with someone for the first time that I already have an adventuring history with, after all! [Seriously, how often did zones of silence come up? Though she might be put out by Avalon, and understandably so, Morgan considers it quite the grand adventure.]

Ah. [she nods, her mouth still quirked.] Yes, that--rather uncommon, mm? Though that makes me wonder how chatty you happen to be in combat when enchantments aren't in play.

If I'm taking it seriously, a lot, because I need to make certain the other people around me are handling themselves without looking.

[A moment's pause and then...] If I'm not, a lot, because I'm generally a giant dumbass. Ooh, is that decorous to say?

[It's not a word he'd hold back on in even formal circumstances, but that's him and her standards have already proved different!]

[she lets herself grin for a moment at that. amused:] It's rather demeaning to say, sir; never freely offer others material they can use to criticize you. That sort of thing needs to be earned.

[Smiling, he drops her a seated bow, hand over his heart.] Ah, but my lady, I wear that title with pride. An inability to laugh at yourself is no virtue, and no matter how barbed the criticism, it can't catch if you don't resist it.

Does that not bite you later on down the road, when trying to lay foundations for new relationships? [she quirks an eyebrow.] Or...do you find most company you mean to keep is keen to agreeing with your self-assessments? [and to hell with the rest? would that it could be so for her.]

So far so good. No problems here in Avalon, at least. It's easy to make friends when you're easygoing, don't take offense to things, and have a really adorable familiar. Heck, you can strike the first two.

[Considering what a rough time he'd had making friends before he learned more than a few things, yeah. No problems at all, he can vow.]

Ha. [not a proper laugh, more just a flat note of regard. that easy, huh?] And you've no pressing matters to attend to in your allegedly-frozen homeland?

I am very fortunate in that regard, yes. Even if it isn't frozen, as you suspect, my affairs can manage themselves without me for a bit.

[Privileged position, and he knows it. That's why he's doing his very best not to judge those who are willing to do whatever is necessary to get back home.]

Mostly I just miss my friends and family, of course, but I don't let that get me down.

I pray that fortitude lasts, however long this abduction winds up being. For your sake, of course.

[herself, she wavers between a practiced patience and the looming dread of being stranded without backup. the lack of her own magic makes her lean more toward the latter, while being observed by strangers -- even fair-faced ones who have rescued her before, like this one here -- bids her save face.

apparently she's something of a trapeze artist.]

Ha, don't worry about me. I'm resilient and lucky in equal measures. I'll hold the fort so other people have a place to come back to, metaphorically speaking.

[And even if he doesn't, he's got no business at all dumping that on others. He's done plenty of that in the past! Now's his time to give back.]

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