Claire Tourneur: Until the End of the World

[monde_finis]

In the summer of 1999, very little surprised Claire Tourneur. She simply wouldn't let shock take away valuable time that could be spent partying away the fact that her life was going to end. Everyone's lives, actually. The nuclear satellite hung precariously over the earth, losing a battle with gravity that would end life on the planet when it

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Re: OOC

[monde_finis]

((Thank you for letting me know I missed it!))

[mid_west_egg]

Nick hadn't seen all too many people since being transported to Hogwarts. Gatsby was the first and most shocking. Gatsby was more shocking than a talking dog.

Anyhow, the upshot of it was he didn't have all that much to keep him busy, and a new arrival could make for some conversation to pass the time. By now Nick began to see how the application worked (he wasn't a Yale man for nothing). He gave a copy of Claire's application a once-over before approaching her.

"A strict diet of caviar and alcohol." He read her own words aloud to her from the sheet of parchment, then looked up to peruse the face of the woman who'd written it. "I've known people who lived that way. A candle that burns at both ends," he mused, quoting a poem that in his own subjective experience was au courant, published only two years ago. "Does it make you happy?"

He wasn't even sure why he asked that. It was the kind of question that asked itself. This cool elegant world-weary woman -- what kind of an answer would she give to a question like that?

[monde_finis]

The last question surprised her a bit. She did not do this to be happy; she did it because she was Claire, and it was what she did. It didn't make her happy, but it certainly didn't make her miserable, so why change?

"Does it make me happy? No. But when has being happy been the point of anything recently?" It was a way of living, a rut that she had fallen into. She had a way of falling into her daily existence. While most people planned their day, Claire's days happened to her.

[mid_west_egg]

"I've heard the saying 'eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die'. The merriment's a key component of that injunction, I'd always thought." It was a mild observation. Nick didn't judge, not until driven to extremity.

[monde_finis]

"Eating and drinking are required to get you to tomorrow, but what if you didn't die then? Does that mean that you have to be happy for the rest of your life?" The idea of forced merriment was more terrifying than prolonged monotony.

[insane_mil_cmdr]

Crais's habitual scowl deepened as he read through the application.

"Pfft. You think life is so precious? Certainly you are not treating yours as if it is."

[monde_finis]

She pointed to the Hufflepuff question. "Can you not read?" she asked in a derisive tone.

[insane_mil_cmdr]

He snorted again. "If you did not believe life in general precious, you would not be in such a state about this 'end of the world' you reference," he replied.

"Life is fragile at the best of times, you know. Civilians simply prefer to blind themselves to it. Soldiers know from an early age their lives are forfeit, if not how or when or why. From birth, some of them. Yet they still manage to get their jobs done."

[monde_finis]

"Congratulations for them," she said, and turned away from the man. Soldier's lives had a purpose. hers did not. Now that it was over, she was irritated to find that she wasn't whisked away into forgiveness or damnation. The afterlife was turning out to be quite similar to her old life, right down to the boring people.

[defense_rests]

((Placeholder, as I will be out most of the day, but I said I would tag and then RL snowed me completely.))

Someone else who was dead, or thought they were dead. Interesting. Mia studied the other woman for a moment. There was nothing judgmental in her expression, just simple curiosity.

"Those who want to complain the most after death are usually the ones least accepting of it," she observed thoughtfully, giving the other woman a polite but friendly smile. "Have you received the 'You're not really dead' speech yet? It tends to get repetitive after the first few times, I admit."

[monde_finis]

Claire had received the speech, in a manner of speaking. What she hadn't gotten was the meaning. Claire thought that if she was really dead, there would be nothingness, not a room full of people. She thought of this room as the life after death taught to her as a child, not an actual rebirth or resurrection.

"The man told me," she said, pointing to Crais. "So you've spent much time talking to people after they've died? Is that what you do here?"

[defense_rests]

((Repost for HTML fail. Sorry.))

"Quite the opposite, actually." Mia was completely aware of the irony of that statement, having come from a family of spirit mediums - but even then, the medium was never present during the actual channeling and thus did not really speak with the head. "I've only spoken to one person who truly was dead -" if taunting and GET OUT OF MY LITTLE SISTER counted as talking - "and one other person who claimed to have died.

"Everyone else I've met here has proved to be alive and well. I found myself on the receiving end of that speech when I came here." Never mind that she had been dead for three years and was used to being channeled by a spirit medium at that point.

[monde_finis]

"So you chat with the living. Is it as boring here as it was before?" If Claire had been sentenced to unending mindless chitchat, she was going to find a way to break out of this life, too. It might just take more creative planning to do it.

[grandmasteryoda]

"Mmm." Yoda frowned thoughtfully. "A very pessimistic point of view, you seem to have. Unhealthy, that is. Bad for your complexion as well as your mind."

[monde_finis]

She could add pessimism to the list of things that had been bad for her complexion. With the smoking, drinking, and lack of rest, it was a good thing she had died young. Also, what room did the strange frog have to talk? "Then you must have been the master of cynics."

[grandmasteryoda]

Yoda chuckled. "When a certain age you reach, all the optimism in the world cannot save your looks. Looked young and pretty I have not for, oh, five hundred years."

[monde_finis]

"Ah. Then at five hundred, you must know a lot about what is good for the complexion."