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 Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:12 pm
Lance ignored the part where she had mixed up the incident with his eye and his father beating him up, but he was laughing with her. Not because the incident was funny but because the elf was laughing herself stupid.
"You've never had a brophew?" He asked her. "It's a very special, family bond."
He pet Dahlia to calm her down from the sight of the laughing elf. To Riasha, he said, "I guess that's where alcohol comes in, doesn't it?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:17 pm
Reaching out, she halfheartedly smacked the girl on the shoulder. "You are a very serious person, aren't you?" she gasped, finally tamping down on her self-control. She filled the girl's cup with ale. Maybe that would loosen the branch up her a**.
"None of my siblings passed the trials, despite being ten times more prepared than I am, so no, I'm afraid none of them eloped and spawned," she added, wiping her eyes. "And my mother would be furious if they did and she had to eat their baby. I mean, she doesn't have any problem eating the hearts of my siblings after they're dead to carry their souls with her, but that's not the same thing." She flapped a dismissive hand through the air.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:25 pm
Lance raised an eyebrow as he said, "She eats hearts? That's... Awkward. Is family dinner weird now?"
She seemed to feel a little badly about the trials, or so he thought. He didn't know what to say to cheer her up.
He opened his mouth and closed it. All that came out was, "Brophew."
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:26 pm
"I guess so," Riasha agrees quietly. "Though I wasn't so serious before I got kidnapped," she adds, perhaps a trifle defensively. "But I've never been very, um, good with jokes." She rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. No one in her camp minded that she was very out going; it just made the rest of them shine more. She didn't realize that some of the other young women were a bit envious; the thought just never occurs to her. Unsure of what else to say, she has another sip of the ale. "At home, we usually just have fruit cider," she muses. "Are you the last in your line?" she asks the elf. "Or are there younger siblings that also have to go through these trials some day?"
"We don't eat any parts of any people," Riasha says quietly. "My people think it's bad luck, while most other people say it's a sin, or at least disgusting," she further supplies.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:37 pm
Jóna nearly spewed a mouthful of ale all over the table because of Lance, but clamped her hand over her lips and forced herself to swallow before she choked. He had just been trying to get a reaction out of her. She almost threatened to eat his cat in retaliation, but decided to hold back.
"They all eat hearts. That's how they achieve their immortality. Absorbing life force or whatever. She doesn't want her children to pass into the afterlife as disgraces, so she carries their souls in her own body by eating their hearts. When she dies, they will pass on then," she explained, wiping her mouth off with the back of her arm. It was a simple fact of life. She figured she would be riding along with her older brothers and sisters in no time.
"She and my dad only have kids one at a time. My four siblings and were born over the expanse of five hundred years. Only two were born in the same lifetime of each other, and decades apart. Mother must have been especially fertile that century. One fails the trials, so they have another, and so on. I've been hearing them already going at it like rabbits in heat this past year or so, so I think she's already trying for her next little failure for once I'm gone," she added with a snort.
"Drink your ale, girl. It'll make you funnier. Even more so as long as I keep drinking mine." She toasted her with her glass.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:51 pm
"I suppose that a lot of couples go through those phases," Riasha says with only a hint of a blush this time. "We can usually tell when their kids seem to spend a night in a different wagon every evening for a few nights in a row, usually for several months in succession." She shrugs her shoulders. "So if someone passes, do they just...stop?" she asks. "Having children, I mean," she clarifies with a blush, and then quickly swallows some ale. After which, she meekly raises her glass.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:53 pm
Lance snorted at the elf's reaction. It worked, at the very least.
"That's... really gross," he said. Like he had so much room to talk about gross. "But kind of sweet," he added in reference to her mother.
His mother would never do that, but he did wonder if the angry spirit of his brophew lived inside her stomach. That might explain the state of his mother's toilet he was forced to use last week. The smell still haunted his nostrils.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 10:57 pm
Grinning, Jóna found herself tempted to take Riasha's statement the wrong way before the girl corrected herself. "Oh, I doubt it. They might let a little more time lapse between each one, though," she shrugged. She also raised her glass, taking a long swallow herself and humming with pleasure as her body seemed lighter than it had a few minutes ago.
"It is the way it is," she said to Lance, still feeling pretty good now that the ale was finally beginning to hit her.
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Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2015 11:23 pm
((I'm a bit distracted; my cousin is here.))
"Still, it seems like a sad tradition. How can parents get attached to their kids knowing they're likely going to send them to their deaths?" Riasha asks Jóna. "I would think it would be very lonely." She opens her mouth to say something, but then her expression gets intensely thoughtful and she looks at her feet.
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Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:19 am
"The way things are," Lance scoffed. "That's total crap. My people used to believe in blood sacrifices to some dude who called himself a god when we first moved underground. It was a century before anyone realized how stupid he was! And he was really stupid. He used to say things like, "let's have underground farms", but apparently cows can't handle our artificial sunlight so they died and we had a feast. Well. Not we. I wasn't alive yet. But they had a feast."
He paused and said, "And that's the story of Thanksgiving."
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Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 11:28 am
Tracing the groove of the wood in the tabletop with her index finger, Jóna took a moment to contemplate this. It had been done for thousands of years, or so she had been told. Nobody relished it, but it was a point of pride. However, if everybody who was born was permitted to chase immortality, they would quickly overpopulate. Well, not quickly, but it would happen. They didn't have many couples actively breeding in the swamp, but things changed. The world around them changed. They had to look to the future, always, because they would be there soon.
"It's the way things are," she repeated firmly. They didn't have to agree. It wasn't their place.
"I've never eaten a cow. Livestock don't fare well where I live, either" she mused, staring into the frothy mouth of her glass.
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Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 11:46 am
"Steak is tasty," Lance said quickly changing the subject. "Go order one. They taste a lot better than gator."
Lance's stomach growled. If the elf agreed to get food, he would, too. Dahlia rubbed up against the elf affectionately. He wasn't sure if he should intervene, but if Jóna was going to eat her, he would fight. The kitten was purring loudly as she brushed her tail across Jóna's nose, and she pressed her fluffy butt to Jona's face, arching her back.
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Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:05 pm
Agreeing to his suggestion, she raised her hand and motioned for the waitress to bring her steak and another pitcher of ale, using what was left of the one she had to top off all of their drinks.
The rodent approached her while she rested her chin in her hand on the table, rumbling peculiarly and butting its head up against her. It was surprisingly soft. Her hindquarters were placed a little awkwardly close to her face, so Jóna picked it up and turned it about face. It was hardly lighter than a feather. Its rough tongue darted out to groom her thumb.
Pesky little thing.
She prodded it, and it instinctively rolled toward her light touches, trying to rub up against her.
"Your rat likes me," she remarked, indulging the thing and tickling it between its silky, triangular ears.
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Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:13 pm
((OOC: Love the new avi, Jade!))
Lance almost burst out laughing as Jóna gave the kitten the attention she wanted. She was purring loudly at the elf's touch, and Lance smiled. At least she had chosen to get a steak, so Lance figured it was a good time to get more food as well.
He approached the waitress and asked her for a caprese. That was Claudette's favorite, so he figured he may as well try it. He waited patiently for it, turning back to Jóna.
"I guess she does like you after all," he said, grinning. "Ever had a pet before?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:34 pm
((Thanks!))
Dipping her finger in her ale, Jóna allowed the kitten to lick it off, wondering what it would act like drunk.
"It's my winning personality. Animals adore me." She thought about the pet question, laughing as she imagined putting a collar on an alligator and taking it for a walk. "No, no pets. Unless you count the slaves. They practically take as much care," she mused humorously.
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