tampered | ♚ OPEN LOG ][ no wonder you're late

When; Oct. 6th, Mad Hatter Day curse
Rating; G - PG-13
Characters; OPEN
Summary; On a day that you can be sipping tea with friends one moment, passing sugar with an enemy the next, only only to find yourself eating cake with a deity, this is merely one of the tables the City's inhabitants may find themselves dining at.

Log; Xanadu was always a lovely place, forever green and in bloom, and today was no exception, even with the many celebrations, small and large, quiet and boisterous, friendly and unfriendly, going on throughout the City. This table was large, from whence, no one may know, but it was set for as many need come, as many would come, tugged along by a merry curse that shouted clean cup, move down at whim.

Teas of all kinds, tea cups and saucers, biscuits and cakes, all available and scattered over the rich green cloth that topped the wooden table and trailed off in to the grass below. At the head of this table, a rare sight- one of the City deities, out for all to see who were lucky- or unlucky- enough to arrive there. A small hat perched atop her crown, of bent saplings, the leaves and a single flower serving for decoration as she beckons you enjoy the seat and fair that she and the others, that the curses have provided you.

As long as it last.

Note; See here! Mark your subject lines with "open" or "to ____" if you like. Prose OR comment log style is alright. Sabine will speak with any marked "open" or "to Sabine". Enjoy, and feel free to pop your character in and out as it pleases you and the curse description goes!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Teddy blinked at the stranger sitting across the table from him that had just spoken. He could have sworn he hadn't planned on showing up at some random tea party hosted by a lady with a tree for a hat, but he'd learned that this was how stuff worked here. Quickly, he went about lifting the lids to a few nearby teapots.

"Erm. Which one is that?" he asked as he peered into one pot and -- having no idea if it was chrysanthemum or not -- moved onto the next.

"It's the one that looks yellowish, with dried flowers in the bottom of the pot."

Roiben bypassed putting the honey on his biscuit and simply ate it out of the jar with a spoon. Human food was strangely devoid of sweetness and the wild of the woods, in Roiben's opinion. But the honey and cakes were quite nice.

Teddy crinkled his nose. Given the fact that his tea-drinking experience was limited to snagging a Snapple from the vending machine during lunch back home, the stranger's description wasn't particularly helpful. "Um," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck apologetically, "they all are kind of yellowish with flower bits and stuff in them." He lifted another lid. "No, wait, I take it back. This one just has twig things in it." He pushed that teapot to the side. Definitely not that one.

Eventually, he hazarded a guess and nudged the pot in question across the table towards the stranger. "Ta da?" he hazarded with an expectant half-smile.

Roiben opened the top of the pot and gave a sniff, then shook his head. Ironsiders had such poor sense of smell. It was from living with the poisonous stench of metal in their nostrils all the time, Roiben was sure.

"This is lemongrass tea, but I suppose it will do."

Teddy gave the stranger another withered, apologizing look. "Sorry. I'm not really big on tea. Where I'm from it usually it comes in those little bags on strings, clearly labeled and everything." He held up his hands to make a vague three dimensional shape. "In boxes with bears on them wearing pajamas and reading bedtime stories to one another."

Realizing that running at the mouth about sleepy time tea (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51GTKKXNB9L._SL500_AA280_PIbundle-6,TopRight,0,0_AA280_SH20_.jpg) wasn't the best first impression to make on a stranger, he picked up a cookie and shoved it in his mouth. The chewing made him look preoccupied.

Roiben stared back at the other man, plainly confused.

"Why on earth would bears drink tea?" he asked with a furrowing of the brows. "Or wear nightclothes?"

Even the mischievous bearskin shapeshifters wore actual clothing and they normally drank blood or good honeymead. Sometimes both together.

Teddy squinted back at the guy, clearly confused as well. This was definitely some form of different-folks-different-strokes multiple worlds culture clash about to happen, he could tell. "Well. I don't think the bears actually drink tea. They're probably a metaphor for our, like, inner children or something. Who just want to be in a cottage in the woods in front of a fire being snuggled or some subconscious stuff like that." Teddy nodded in the hopes that this would somehow make his point make more sense. "So -- if they are a metaphor -- they'd have to wear pjs. Or else it'd be obscene."

He went about vigorously eating another cookie.

"Bears do not snuggle," Roiben advised, his tone skeptical. "They eviscerate things quite messily. Do your inner children often eviscerate?"

They certainly ate like bears. Roiben observed the disappearance of another cookie into the young man's mouth with bemusement.

More blinking came from Teddy's side of the table, coupled with a fair amount of staring. Like he was waiting for the stranger to suddenly point and laugh and turn out to be the City's version of Ashton Kutcher and all this was just an elaborate ruse to get Teddy deity-Punk'd. But he didn't.

"Um. I don't really feel comfortable making a blanket statement about everybody's inner child eviscerate factor? But I can safely say that my inner child definitely avoids -- uh -- entrails. In general. On principal."

The way this conversation was going, there wouldn't be nearly as many cookies needed to fuel it.

"Good." Roiben nodded and scooped another spoonful of honey into his mouth.

A decade ago he would never have dreamed speaking of death and violence at the tea table. But after so many years eating and drinking from the same table as Nicnevin, and in some instances actually being the table she ate off, such horrible discussion points became more natural. They did not even turn his stomach anymore.

"Preserves?" He offered the jam jar, absently.

Teddy gave the stranger a quick, measuring glance before taking the jam jar from him. He dug up a few heaping teaspoons of the stuff onto a cleared off saucer; as he went about eating a few more cookies, he used it to make them even sweeter and a little tart.

"You know," he eventually said, trying very hard not to sound rude. With a free hand he mimicked the stranger's motion of scooping honey out of the jar and into his mouth. "That sort of qualifies as double-dipping."

He licked thick honey from his lips.

"It would," Roiben's grin was brief and terrible, "if I were going to share."

Teddy eyebrows lifted again. It wasn't that the guy sitting across from him was inherently creepy, but in a way -- he sort of was. He looked down at his empty cup of tea in an attempt to not be rude.

"Uh, yeah. That's a fair point. I bet that's a pretty likely outcome here, huh? You with the not-sharing of the honey."

The thing was, this was Roiben being casual. If he wanted to be creepy, there were much more efficient ways to go about it. Then again, this might be the sort of thing Cornelius complained about when Roiben traveled Ironside. His attempts at human were never very good.

"Why should I? It's a small enough pot and there are plenty others on the table should you wish to enjoy some."

♚ OPEN LOG ][ no wonder you're late

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