[Second Life] The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

[meat_mooks]

Ah, the Fairplay Christmas Pageant. It took place in the Fairplay VFW Hall every year, which, due to the regular needs of the town had received enough money to expand the hall to use it for most community events. People filtered in and out all night so that most families in the town made an appearance at some point. There was punch, egg nog,

Comments

Mingling

[meat_mooks]

The main thing to do at the pageant was to mingle in between raffles, plays, and Christmas games. Teachers could talk to students they only ever saw in class, business owners could talk to other business owners, everyone could talk to the mayor and pretend he made perfect sense.

[ooc: Mingling subthreads are go!]

Re: Mingling

[icanhashat]

Jayne was dressed...comfortably for the evening. One could even go as far to say nice.

But he still felt horribly out of place.

Clad in a ugly brown and beige sweater with a diamond pattern on it he lurked about awkwardly by the snack table with a little plate of cookies and some fruit punch.

Why was he even here this year? His daughter had made it very clear she didn't want to go. The kind of clear that in his house resulted in her yelling hurtful things at him and slamming the door. Even with such blatant disrespect he couldn't bring himself to discipline her.

So while she was out having fun he was at the town pageant watching the other families mill about and silently wishing he had one of his own that would play along with his silly sentimental traditions.

He popped another cookie in his mouth and chewed slowly. This was just another place and another day. Nothing special about it anymore.

[boundlesslight]

Corinne was simply passing through, waving delicately and playing her part as a wholesome teenager. By luck, she happened to focus on someone in the crowd.

The man looked...cozy, for lack of a better word, but alone. As she was, and lacking any spark of holiday spirit. Painfully familiar.

"Happy holidays, sir," Corinne said quietly, curtsying as she was expected to do. "Are you well?"

Pleasantries, sir, but there just might be a spark of genuine concern behind them. Coming from a teenager, though? Her motives probably appeared questionable.

[icanhashat]

Jayne blinked slowly and glanced to his side to see if she meant someone near him. After settling that she meant him he gave a curt little nod. "Um...yeah thanks."

OK Cobb think...who was this kid? Seeing as he was janitor at the school she could be any one of them, but maybe she was a friend of his daughters? The same daughter who was off doing god knows what.

Best to remain guarded. It wouldn't be unusual for a kid from the school to be addressing him just to inform him of a spill or some such. "And you?"

The Mayor's Speech

[meat_mooks]

The Mayor made a speech every year at the pageant. It never really made a whole lot of sense. This year, what would make even less sense would be what happened after...

[ooc: Plot post. This will be a single subthread with some weird stuff happening in it. Reactions go in the next subthread]

[meat_mooks]

When the music cut off, Mayor Westling approached the stage; a handful rolled their eyes or made a quick whispered comment to their neighbor before giving their full attention. He waited patiently for the crowd to quiet down with a smile, hands resting on the lectern.

The words that came out of his mouth when he finally spoke, though, were feminine, warm and motherly; and, oddly, sounded in their heads instead of audibly.

|| My name is STA'C K'LTRRB'TXFT, but you may call me Stacy. ||

The mayor's mouth continued to move, streaks of color escaping and drifting through the air. They spread throughout the room, looping their way around some people and going through others, changing their appearance

Reactions

[meat_mooks]

Only they could see it. Only some of them understood that something was wrong, and some of their expressions in the crowd marked them as the only ones that could.

Instantly, most one of them could look across the room and know who else had seen what they'd just seen just by the expressions on their faces.

[ooc: Mingling subthreads again, but this time, after the event in the Mayor's speech, so obviously don't start reacting here until it's written out.]

[meat_mooks]

The cursing got a few gasps from some elderly women around him, and his father, thinking he was talking about the mayor's speech, slapped him upside the head.

"HAROLD!"

[alterniantaurus]

Martin had been just... staring silently, watching the scene in increasing horror. The weird feelings he'd spoken to Kang about hadn't gone away... in fact, he was pretty sure he was starting to crack. Flashes of weirdness, the recurring nightmare he could never remember the next morning, and now this.

Harold's outburst snaps him out of it, and he stares wide-eyed at the other boy. Martin's never had much of a pokerface; it's pretty obvious he saw it too.