Cécile Jammes
- Ingenious Pilot -
I do *not* dance like a calf in a field!
Posts: 142
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Post by Cécile Jammes on Apr 2, 2009 19:29:44 GMT -5
((The posting dynamo! Juggernaut!))
Jammes almost failed to notice Odette, her eyes passing over the space she occupied barely registering her. But she did, finally, and while Odette was not much of an audience, she was the only one available. Jammes' smile was a little fixed, a little practiced, and lacks the seductive sparkle that often (unconsciously) enhanced her dazzling eyes.
"Odette, darling!" she cried, tugging off her coat and leaving it half-draped over her bed. She was dressed smartly, but if one looked closely one could see that her clothes had not come from the finest dressmakers. Still, Jammes knew how to wear clothes, and while she was not precisely shaped for a ballerina she had an ideal figure for the fashions.
She dashed over to Odette, her steps less informed by the grace drummed into her than they might have been, and bent curiously over the postcards. Always looking at these damn cards, Jammes thought. What did she see in them?
"How are you? It seems like ever so long since I've seen you!"
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Odette
- Masterful Virgin -
Odile to her gentlemen friends.
Posts: 34
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Post by Odette on Apr 3, 2009 14:35:25 GMT -5
Odette turned over one of her cards so as to read the description on the back, the Russian name of the dancer there, as though she didn't already know it by heart. She didn't really even look up at Jammes, and didn't have to; everyone knew what Jammes looked like. There were times when people couldn't stop looking at Jammes. But the other ballerinas knew her pretty well.
"6 o'clock," said Odette flatly to remind her, and so mutely that she might have been speaking into a pillow. "Rehearsal. Where'd you go?"
It was hardly intoned like a question, but Odette's posture did shift so that she became slightly drawn up, inhabiting a smaller but taller space. Odette never went anywhere, and always wanted to know where everyone else had been.
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Cécile Jammes
- Ingenious Pilot -
I do *not* dance like a calf in a field!
Posts: 142
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Post by Cécile Jammes on Apr 6, 2009 11:10:09 GMT -5
It was difficult not to be deflated by Odette's flat tone, not to mention her refusal to recenter her interest on Jammes, but it wasn't as if the girl didn't have enough confidence to carry through on her own.
"Well, if you must know," and she must, because Jammes was going to tell her, "I had to attend maman's funeral."
She flopped down on the bed next to Odette's, her voice trailing off dramatically. One would have been tempted to be suspicious of Jammes' grief, but between the way she spoke and the Great Importance she granted everything, it would be easy to miss (or ignore) the momentary lost look in her eyes. Something awful had happened; it was just that Jammes had no other way to express it than the way she expressed everything else, trivial or not.
"They gave me a few days' leave, to take care of papa."
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Odette
- Masterful Virgin -
Odile to her gentlemen friends.
Posts: 34
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Post by Odette on Apr 7, 2009 11:58:41 GMT -5
Odette was many things - shy, awkward, and defensive among them - but she was not insensitive. More often than not, Odette was more than usually aware of other people's pain or social awkwardness, because she shared them. She was not very good at expressing sympathy or opening up to anyone, but she was more than capable of at least looking sorrowful.
And even if Jammes did not look very sorrowful, Odette could not hear the words "maman" and "funeral" without stringing them together in her mind with a great deal of awful sorrow. Odette looked up immediately, looking very sad indeed.
"I'm sorry," she said, almost inaudibly. "I didn't know. I can't even remember mine."
Although the unfortunately side effect was that Odette could not keep her own sorrows out of anybody else's. She'd never been able to get through them, and so they came out all the time in unwanted places.
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Cécile Jammes
- Ingenious Pilot -
I do *not* dance like a calf in a field!
Posts: 142
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Post by Cécile Jammes on Apr 7, 2009 14:25:28 GMT -5
Jammes had never been one to linger. She had loved her maman, though the woman had been a dreadful bore at times and curtailed more than one pleasure of hers. But she was not immune to the loss, though neither did she yet miss her, exactly. Mother Jammes had been a very pushy, insistent sort of person, not least with her own daughter, and what she wanted for her. Papa, a calmer, quieter sort, had needed Cécile about the house for a few days even if her company was less than somber unless she directly remembered her mother and threw herself into fits of grief, which quite satisfied the old man. She was such a dear girl, after all.
"Thanks," Jammes said, leaning onto her side to prop her chin on her hand and draw her legs up on the bed. She wasn't sure how to feel about Odette's revelation, though it didn't surprise her; people lost their mothers all the time. "That must have been dreadful," she supplied. "Who raised you?"
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Post by Tybalt on May 12, 2009 15:40:01 GMT -5
**NEW DAY (Kris and I can pick this up again later.)**
Tybalt was not yet used to the ballerinas' dormitories; they were mostly filled with young girls who only reminded Tybalt of how much he apparently frightened children and older girls who only reminded Tybalt of... well. But today was not so terrible in that he had not at least run into Mercutio on his way there, and that most of the girls seemed to be out to go to places on their own.
The biggest difficulty in this, outside of the prospect of the carnival itself, was that Tybalt had brought a bouquet of flowers that he had only just realized, as he headed towards Meg's dormitory, that he had been holding too tightly. He'd been strangling them, and he was just now, desperately, trying to see if he could see some way to throw them out so that Meg would not realize he had made such a vastly silly gesture on his part and then managed to ruin it.
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Post by Meg Giry on May 12, 2009 16:20:44 GMT -5
Meg's ankle was feeling better by now, though this was largely through her concentrated efforts to avoid thinking about it. She descended the stairs from the dormitory, chatting with one of the other girls until she knew she was out of earshot.
"Are those flowers for me?" she blurted when she saw them, even though she already knew they were. "Tybalt, you didn't have to..."
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Post by Tybalt on May 12, 2009 17:06:08 GMT -5
Tybalt handed them to her quickly, almost mechanically, as though wanting to be rid of them. And indeed the fact that the lean, hardened fighter had had to walk several blocks down the street bearing flowers had done more damage to his self-image than could even be addressed in a Verseplot. "I thought they were... " Rambling. "Are you ready?"
Pick the girl up, take her to the carnival, do things at the carnival that were properly expected of carnival-goers, take her back - this should not be hard. And yet it did not account for all the in-between things, like conversation. How did you get from one thing to the other, exactly? Tybalt was not good at that part of life.
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Post by Meg Giry on May 12, 2009 17:14:38 GMT -5
"Oh- let me get my coat!"
She hurried back upstairs for a moment, picking up both her coat and an envelope that had been delivered for her earlier but she hadn't had a chance to open yet. Meg tucked the envelope in the lining of the coat as she pulled it on over her dress and then bounded back down the stairs, purposefully favoring the injured foot.
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Post by Tybalt on May 12, 2009 17:28:33 GMT -5
Tybalt noticed the way she moved and his brow furrowed, having forgotten her injury in the street of the thing. Hopefully the rides would make it easier on her. Although it was hardly a pleasant reminder, he felt relieved that he could think of something to ask her. In a low voice, soft both in concern and because she had expressed a keen desire to keep it a secret, he asked, "Has your injury improved?"
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Post by Meg Giry on May 12, 2009 17:31:04 GMT -5
"It hasn't gotten in the way too much."
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Post by Tybalt on May 12, 2009 17:36:09 GMT -5
Tybalt took that as a good sign, although it hardly removed the frown from his face. From his own experience, not getting in the way was the best that could be said of pain. Any pain. He nodded. "Can we take a carriage there?"
He didn't see why she would insist on walking now, but all the same...
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Post by Meg Giry on May 12, 2009 17:45:13 GMT -5
"I don't mind, no."
She was smiling again, a kind of shy, pink smile with a lot of looking downward and fluttering eyelashes.
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Post by Tybalt on May 13, 2009 16:52:46 GMT -5
That was good, but the look on her face was making him think of that last time they'd been in a carriage together, and he wasn't sure how well he was going to hold up. If he tried looking at her, he found himself staring, so he only managed to do so in short sideways glances, almost shy ones, as they headed towards the door out. What did people usually do in these situations? They were more cordial than he was, he imagined that would be the case; maybe he should offer Meg his arm, or put it around her back. But even knowing this, he couldn't move it from his side.
He kept more or less silent, too busy trying to figure out how to be polite in his thoughts to actually be polite in the current situation.
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Post by Meg Giry on May 13, 2009 17:02:28 GMT -5
Meg reached over and took his hand.
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