{ OPEN } it is a truth universally acknowledged

[inthemoonlight]

who: Cecelia and OPEN!
what: out and about in the inhabited area
when: March 13-18
where: downtown inhabited area
warnings: n/a

{ at work; march 13th-16th }

Cecelia is fortunate she has some talent that is useful in this place. A young lady's skills were meant to attract a husband and little else, and through unconventional means, she had already obtained that once. The occupation of musician isn't really considered proper for a woman of her station, but her "station" doesn't seem to exist here anyway, so what harm is there in it? It provides her with an income and she enjoys doing it. With so many options for food in Riverview Quarantine, the establishments compete to bring in the customers and one way to do that is through live music. While many young ladies learned the pianoforte, Cecelia's talents lie in the harp. She doesn't have her own here, but her employers provide the instruments for her. The harps are large, pedal harps that she tunes manually before each performance. At restaurants, she is usually seated on a small, raised platform so the diners can see her, where she performs slow, relaxing music, but at the cafes, she is tucked away in a corner or near a large window. It is also in the cafes where she can easily converse with the patrons while playing jolly tunes with a faster pace. Whenever her shift is done and she's leaving the restaurants, she then has time to talk.


{ out shopping; march 17th }

It must be a comical sight, this woman in her Regency dress staring with alarm at a silver sequined mini skirt on a mannequin. She's utterly baffled as to why anyone would wear such a thing. Not only is it far too revealing, but it doesn't even look comfortable. Curiously, she reaches out and touches a sequin, frowning at the texture. It feels terrible! She already knows of a tailor who will make her whatever she requests, but her collection of clothes will be slow to grow as she waits for her next paycheck. Personally tailored clothes cost more than this ready made selection, after all. And so she's just looking to see if anything here can work for her. Perhaps a dressing gown and nightdress? Slippers? Oh, is that a perfume bottle? She wanders over to a perfume counter with testers and picks up a bottle, lifting off the cap and turning it over with a confused look that's becoming standard for her. How is she meant to apply this if the cap is hollow, and not tapered glass to apply the perfumed oil to her wrist? Someone please save her before she sprays perfume into her eye.


{ floor 2; during a power outage; march 18th }

While the loss of electricity may be a big deal to some, for a woman who grew up in a time before electricity or gas lighting, Cecelia is perfectly at ease. Candles provide more than enough light for her, and she's delighted that they smell so pleasant! In her time, candles for the elite were made of beeswax and tallow for the lower classes. She recalls heading downstairs to speak with the head of the household maids and the smell of beef in the air. With the random loss of electric light, Cecelia has stocked up on a plethora of scented candles and has them lit throughout the communal floor, though she's tried to use ones that smell nice together. The kitchen has peaches, the living area an ocean breeze, and the bathroom is sweet pea. She sits next to a window, using what natural light is left in the day plus those blue ocean candles on a nearby table to read a book from the library. She has a lot of history to catch up on, but she's happy to set down the book and chat with whomever comes through.

Comments

power outage==forgive scott he's an idiot

[toolatetochangethename]

Scott's an electrical engineer. Without electricity he's got, uh, nothing!

Still, he's got some downtime between shifts at the power plant trying to get systems back online (there was a big thing about sewage that he did not want to get into in any way, shape, or form), so he's pillaging the second floor kitchen, because the one on the sixth is completely out of peanut butter, which is a damn crime.

He's got a jar of the good stuff--chunky, of course--and is heading back up when he spots her. Huh.

"You...uh, some kind of historical re-enactor or something?" Like those Williamsburg people, in those funny knee britches and wigs?

shopping

[spellslots]

Things Taako is probably going to do: burn the allowance he was given upon arrival entirely on clothes because everything is very shiny and he has no self control, like some sort of shitty magpie building a nest.

He's eyeing that sequin skirt, but is briefly distracted by Cecelia in her dress (kind of a weird fashion choice, but you do you) struggling with the perfume bottle, and decides to take a little pity on her.

"You spray it, like--" He makes a gesture to demonstrate how it works, as if pressing his finger down on an invisible nozzle, "It's gonna come out that little hole near the top, try to point it away from, uh, from your eyes. Unless you wanna get perfume in your eyes, I can't tell you what to do."

At work

[greatcleavage]

Truth be told, the sound of harp music had drawn him to the cafe in the first place -- not that he objected to the food, of course, but given the choice of places to eat he preferred the one with music that reminded him of his proper home world, where minstrels and bards often performed at taverns. And the harp was sufficiently distanced from the chosen instrument of one particular bard that it brought back no memories, good or bad.

So he took a seat close by, not interrupting when she played but offering sincere applause between songs where appropriate. And at the end, when she at last rose from the instrument, he shifted slightly closer in his seat. "If you were a singer I'd buy you a drink to soothe your throat, but I honestly have no idea what the equivalent offer would be for a harpist..."

power outage

[staystrong]

There's the (not-so-)friendly pitter patter of (not-so-)little feet up the stairs as Clementine pokes her head up into the second floor block. She doesn't spend much time in the communal housing area anymore, but she still stops by sometimes because the bed is technically still hers and there are sometimes good supplies to be had. (There's also the issue of baths. The water in her new house isn't running yet.)

She's used to places not having power too, though for different reasons than Cecelia. Sometimes you'd come across a community with a generator or two running, but those were few and far between.

It's the scent that's drawn her up here, and she wrinkles her nose as she looks over at the young woman.

"You can smell all this downstairs, you know. Are scented candles all they had?"