merry merry christmas, and I want you to know

[mansionstaff]

Who: YOU
What: KISSLETOES
When: December 14th - January 1st
Where: Everywhere
Warnings: Sloppy makeouts.

SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT WARNING...



The entire school has become covered in mistletoe overnight. It grows out of the walls! The ceilings! Everywhere you least expect it? HOW CAN THIS BE??

It's probably best not to think about it. Attempts to uproot the plants or burn them away only makes the plants grow back faster. For the time being, it seems the school must live with it.

[OOC INSTRUCTIONS:
+ Post dudes, get kisses!
+ Some (NOT ALL) plants are cursed. If you manage to step under a cursed plant, you will exchange a memory when or if you exchange a kiss. The memories will be first-person and very vivid, and characters will feel like they are experiencing the memory in real time, though in reality the transfer is instantaneous. Memories can be as short, long, happy, sad, or traumatic as you like.
+ If you'd like to participate, we highly suggest making a list of a few memories (with accompanying links/descriptions) that are up for grabs, and linking or posting the list in your top-level comment. Memory exchange is COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. When in doubt, OOC communication!
+ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE TAG YOUR CHARACTERS
+ That's it, we love you.]

Comments

[stopstaring]

It was more than a little flustering for him to draw her in again, like he magically thought she was going to withdraw. But then that had always been a poor habit of hers. At the first sign of uncertainty, she was usually quick to attempt going into hiding. Until the present moment, anyway. Henry was likely onto her.

"O-oh, good! I hope he'd like that..." Because truth be told she knew even less about Yarne. She knew his name, that they were from the same world, and that was about it. (Some kind of rumour that he was Henry's son, but she was still back and forth about future children.) Then her eyebrows rose, "...Are you saying I've never cooked anything for you? I did a lot of that stuff when I was little. I guess not so much nowadays..."

[cruelcurse]

He looked away thoughtfully. "Hmm... I don't know. In fact, I'm not entirely sure WHO did a lot of the cooking during the war," he admitted. "Oopsie~ I really should be more aware of that stuff." He bowed his head forward and slightly to the side, a sheepish smile adorning his features. "Lots of stuff to keep track of. Like who I'm not supposed to curse, who I AM supposed to curse... Things like that!"

He meant it partly as a light-hearted joke. Too bad it was also the truth. Robin's off limits, Sully wants to be cursed, Miriel needs data... Those types of things.

[stopstaring]

"You've been eating food that you didn't know who it was prepared by?"

He was either incredibly trusting or foolish. Or maybe she was just too paranoid. (It could have easily been some of both columns, because Olivia knew her suspicious behaviour had a way of getting out of control.)

"...Isn't it just easier to not curse your friends and if you have to curse anyone at all, curse bad people?" Naturally 'bad' was subjective and Henry's definition must have differed a great deal from hers. But then if she was Henry, she probably would have been the worst mage.

The only mage ever who wouldn't cast offensive spells.

[cruelcurse]

"That's the general rule," he agreed, but his tone of voice carried with it evident doubt. Like it wasn't as clear as that. "I've come a long way since I joined the Ylisseans. Robin forbade me from cursing the lot of you, even if it's for Miriel's experiments or Tharja's desires~ It was kind of a bummer at first, but I got used to it."

The way Henry's treating this situation is as though cursing people is a totally normal thing to do to your allies in Plegia. (Hey Tom, how are you doing? Oh, you're SICK?! Haha, that curse got you good! Have fun not moving for another day.) The truth is more likely that skilled mages like himself are just too messed up to realize or care, and disadvantaged or weaker soldiers have to suffer at the hand of their whimsical spell casting. Such is the way of the food chain, or something.

"Now I just do it if somebody asks me to. Yup."

This made me laugh so hard. Thank you; you are WONDERFUL.

[stopstaring]

Olivia's eyebrows shot up almost off her face and at first she wasn't sure how to respond. Like, she got the message, but she couldn't imagine what living in Plegia must have been like if he had to be told not to curse people he called friends. A way of life there must have been something drastically different.

Nibbling upon her lower lip with some thought, she found her weight shifting between her feet, the way an anxious child would have. "Things were really different for you before the Shepherds, I guess... Did... I mean, do you like it in Plegia more?" Because maybe what Henry was really getting at beneath his smiles and squinty eyes was that Ylisse was too strict.

Maybe he would go back to Plegia if he had the chance. And if he did, would he willingly turn himself against the Shepherds? Would he willingly turn himself against her? It was a chilling concept.

(o˘◡˘o) I'm glad, huehue

[cruelcurse]

Henry hummed and glanced away thoughtfully, even though his answer hardly took any thought. He'd already thought of this kind of thing: Ricken had asked about it, and countless others wanted to know the same. It used to be a more difficult assessment for him to make, but he was fairly certain now of his true answer.

"Nahhh," he replied airily. "Plegia was alright, but I think I've grown to prefer Ylisse over it. Ahaha~ Ylisse has more forests, and the animals are friendly. Plegia has that too, but there's lots of desert." As though this was the most important factor.

Truly, his preference ran deeper than that. The people of Plegia behaved differently in comparison to the people of Ylisse. In both places, Henry would be a black sheep but for different reasons: Plegia's people were terse, suspicious, and unfriendly, while Ylisse's people were polite and usually nice. These were generalizations, but it was based on his experience interacting with villagers and such. He wasn't terribly loyal to Plegia to begin with. It was a country that held good memories of his past, but plenty of bad to outweigh the good. He felt like Olivia would have been able to guess which he preferred, but she was without the knowledge of his past. It was no wonder she asked.

He could, at the very least, offer explanation further than his preference of their animal populations. "Plegia's not so great anyhow." Henry waved a hand dismissively. "I don't miss it or anything." Being Plegian and therefore being Grimleal, however, he could understand her thinking that he might have some attachment to his country. Grimleal thought of it as holy ground, or something.

[stopstaring]

She was oblivious to the deeper reasons behind it all, or what Henry really thought, so she had to take everything he said at face value. And that was probably for the best. Other people probably questioned the sincerity of his explanation and truth be told that if they'd not already spent the time together that they had, one of those people equally would have been Olivia. But in those moments that she stood with him and waited patiently for his verdict, she didn't feel any sense of wariness that she otherwise could have.

Instead, she gave him a small smile and she nodded. "I think it'd be understandable even if you did. People can miss homes. You can dislike memories there, or people there, and still miss the place itself. Or maybe it's not the place you miss, but what it stands for." Homes meant families, right? Olivia supposed a home could mean anything to anyone and not everyone would view one as the same.

"Plegia doesn't know what it's lost," she continued gently. "But Ylisse is just beginning to know what it's gained."

[cruelcurse]

Henry laughed. "You think so," he mused, tilting his head. Even if she was certain, he couldn't put his faith in the idea that he had any place there. He had no plans of going back.

But, of course, he had that thought when he first arrived at Smash Academy. Then Yarne came along with some claims he didn't know anything about. About him being his father in the future. Then he went back to the Ylisse looking for Panne and anybody else, really, trying to figure out what he'd missed along the way. What he'd neglected to learn.

Thinking along that train of thought reminded him about his supposed future with Panne, and the muscles in his face tightened. Was he supposed to fall in love with Olivia, then? Only to marry Panne instead? He thought he'd fallen in love with Panne just by pure thought alone, staying awake and letting his thoughts wander about the possibilities. It was true, but having Olivia physically there, standing in front of him...

All of this occuring to him at once left him feeling confused.

Henry stood in front of her awkwardly, distantly.

[stopstaring]

It was true, that had Olivia known of his sentiments, she could have agreed. She'd spent plenty of time trying to turn over the concept of Inigo in her mind. She never forgot anything he said. According to him, she was to be the future queen of Ylisse. She was nothing like a queen, though. She didn't look like one or act like one. It was hard to picture it. And she'd thought about asking Henry what his opinion was, but maybe he wouldn't have one.

And considering how he sometimes made her feel, she had to admit that she thought it'd be more than a little awkward. About as awkward as it would have been to ask Hayato or anyone else who seemed to take an interest in her.

Henry's silence didn't go unnoticed and as per the usual, Olivia took that to mean it was, in some way, her responsibility. "O-oh! Should I not have said that?" On the verge of a frown, she lessened it to something not quite so transparent, but still held a noticeable amount of concern and uncertainty. "I-I guess that sounds silly when I think about it. I mean, Plegia was your home and everything. It's not like just because you spend years in Ylisse that it feels like home, after all."