queenoflogs | it was a sin, so sweet and true

Entry tags:

it was a sin, so sweet and true

Characters: Emilia (

howaverage ) & Jules (

typeright ) :: closed
Date: A DAY. AT A TIME. I guess May 22nd, afternoon?
Summary: Smoking, drinking, romance novels. Classy stuff.
Warnings: Nothing comes to mind! Horrible romance novels?

Well, she'd been here a while, now. Long enough to accept that it wasn't a hallucination, and that she probably wasn't going to be going home for a while. A terrifying thought, in and of itself, and one that Jules was quite determined not to address – no, instead she was going to be doing other thing. Happy things! Things like making friends, reading, drinking wine, smoking. Quite a few days had encompassed all those things, although she had to say it was quite the change to find oneself able to indulge in an entire library of romance novels and be able to drink and smoke openly; perhaps it was only realised here because of Em being so very French.

Today was a slight veering away from the norm, though, with Jules happily parked, scribbling notes and ideas and paragraphs of prose down in a notebook. After all, her writing career had been borne of needing a distraction, and if ever there were an environment that, at times, prompted one to need something else to think about (especially the absence of loved ones), the Garden was one of them.

So, there she was, smoke curling up from the cigarette in her mouth, wine to the side, writing pornography. Another day in the life of Jules, and a classy one, at that.

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The thought, although said in a jokingly tone, is appreciated, even if she is rather oblivious to the nature of Jules' writings. To be fair, however, Em would probably not outright refuse to read it, but probably would joke lightly about it. Also, she is very aware that you can't quite force an artist - in this case, a writer - to spit out a masterpiece. The creative mind doesn't quite work like that and she knows it. She lived with an artist for months before she just gave up on him unfairly.

But she won't dwell on that, since that would end up making her depressed.

Em lets out a snort at Jules words, tapping her nails against the glass distractedly. "Too bad neither of those things exist here. Then again, she's missing a few loose screws." And as if to indicate that, she taps the side of her head. "So maybe you'll be able to convince her."

There's a thoughtful pause and she laughs a little.

"You would do great as our Public Relations."

Truth be told, Jules wasn't doing too awfully, it was more that she was a little horrified at the thought of people she didn't know well knowing about the real nature of her writing. She was horrified at the thought of a good many people who did know her well being aware, as well, although those were mostly family. Maybe she'd push herself, try to write something that wasn't totally horrific, one of these days.

"Maybe she's missing said screws because neither of those things exist here." She's got laughter in her voice, again, and picks up the wine and taps a finger against it with a bit of a questioning look, seeing if Em would like any more. "It could be that all we needed to do was make her feel more official as a monarch, or something like that."

A quiet little snort of a her own, and a grin. "Desperate times call for desperate measures, hm?"

Emilia shakes her head. She doesn't seem to quite agree with Jules - although she doesn't say it right away, too busy saying Oh, thank you at the offered wine, pushing the glass towards her for a refill.

"I hardly think that she needs to feel like a monarch. She took us all from our homes. Kidnapped us, actually. I don't know what kind of diplomat does that."

There's a bitterness in her words that she can't quite mask. How could she, anyway? It's not like she needs to - she's in her right to loathe the Queen and her stupidity and antics that make Em have a great dislike for her. In fact, because of those she has developed the habit of brushing her fingers idly against her collarbone where a tiny scar lays - caused during the antics of said carnivorous flowers, as one had taken a good bite out of Em before Tifa managed to rescue her. If fact, you can see it, a white line against her skin, across the bone of the collar.

"Hm, I don't think it's desperate," she shrugs. "You're good with people and you know how to talk. I don't see what's the catch here."

Jules listens as she takes Em's glass and carefully pours her another glass, checking the sides for any drips before resting it back on the table, and reaching for her own glass. Her own silliness aside, Em did have a point. The kind of point that really, in the end, couldn't just be ignored with the hope it would go away. They were all stuck here, that thought making Jules chew a little on the inside of her cheek.

She takes her time refilling her own glass, swirls it and takes a sip before putting together a reply. Despite appearances, she wasn't deaf to the sound and feel of unpleasant emotions. "Not any that would be considered good, to say the very, very least." A little laugh, but it's short and half-hearted. In fact, she's looking down, seriousness filtering into her expression a little.

"I certainly know how to talk, you're right there." Since she's looking down, she doesn't try to guard her expression quite so carefully for a moment, though her voice sounds as Jules as ever. "Someone a little more grounded might be better for the job, wouldn't you say? I might start recommending better colours for her complexion."

She glances back to Em, the movement of her fingers catching her attention and drawing it to the scar. A little frown; without thinking, she leans a little closer to look at it. "What's that from?" Probably none of her business, she realises, possibly something not to be spoken about, but once again she's spoken without necessarily thinking about it properly, about personal boundaries.

Emilia frowns slightly and takes a sip of the wine, thoughtfully so. She isn't actually the type of person that acts, much more the sort that would fare better in reacting, but Jules, well, she strikes her as a very much acting person - one with initiative. She could be wrong, of course, she isn't usually good with recognizing key points in someone's personality unless she knows them for a while.

"Hmm. I still think you would do good," she isn't trying to leave a compliment or anything like that, no. She just can be very honest and sometimes tactless and not even notice - of course, this isn't the case, because it's a good thing she's saying to Jules, but she can be very blunt and very sincere about things when confronted about certain subjects. "Maybe doing that would make her a little more sympathetic."

She is, however, a little surprised when Jules leans in and her reaction is to lean back a little, more surprised than offended. She doesn't understand what she's saying at first, trying to look down only to realise she can't really see the scar, only feel it, and covers it a bit self-consciously with her hand. Her expression is a little strained and she looks at the cigarette on the ashtray, thumb stroking over the slight lump of the scar.

"Ah, it was one of the... things that happened here. Before you came." She looks a little nervous, a little... displeased. "I was--" There's a sigh and she looks at Jules almost as if she's apologizing for saying something so downright ridiculous. "There were briefly flesh-eating flowers." Yeah. She knows how ridiculous that sounds. "It-- It bit me and if it hadn't been for Tifa..." She trails off and waves her hand dismissively, as if to swat away unwanted thoughts. "It was just a big bite, so... it left a mark."

To be fair, she's only telling this to sort of prove a point - that the Queen really is crazy and has no manners and more often than not, doesn't seem to know what she's doing at all.

"I'll definitely think about more tactics to get closer to her heart, then." Reacting or acting depended on the situation, what Jules could bring herself to be comfortable with, or what was as stake. There was adventurous, and then were was scary. Considering what she was about to hear, working out how she'd deal with the Queen was about to get rather interesting.

Realising Em has leaned back, Jules pulls herself back, in turn. She a slightly nervous kind of smile, that default expression of hers tensing a bit as Em goes into her explanation. Part of her just wants to grab onto a random topic of conversation, anything - Tifa, that's rather unusual; short for Tiffany? - and run with it, try to pull the line away from this increasingly alarming revelation being laid out for her.

She doesn't, though. Some things do sink past absurdity, and when it's not a rhetorical and rather a specific person, someone she knows, outlining something awful, then pushing it away is too horrendous. Tempting, because dealing with horrible things that close to you is awful, past anything she ever wants to do, but Jules has had the privilege of her life being easy and nothing terrible happening to any of her friends. Sheltered, really.

Silence wraps around her throat for some collection of moments. She can't quite fathom how to respond, but finally looks at Em, shaking her head. The robots hadn't harmed anyone, but flesh-eating plants? "This place really is terrifying, isn't it?"

So much for the happy, glowy, idealistic bubble. "I'm very glad that you were all right," she adds, before a little more of her wine disappears. "We have landed in a bit of a mess, haven't we?" And that would be a worried smile. Like everything has to be fixed with a smile, somehow.

Interesting would hardly be a word Emilia would use for the aforementioned situation. She nods at Jules defeated realization about the nature of this place and ends up sighing, returning to brush her fingers over the little scar.

Em sighs and grabs the wine glass, taking a nice big sip from it, rolling the glass in her hand idly, watching the wine circle within it. "It can be," but there's a very small part of her that's only thankful to it because it's keeping a certain monkey safe and away from the war.

The worried smile she gets, but she doesn't see beyond it - it takes a while for Em to get used to new people and to let them in her life and Jules is relatively new to both processes, so she nods almost in silent defeat, taking another sip of the red liquid, appreciating its texture, its weight, its taste.

"On top of that, one which he did not choose to be involved with."

In a gesture of... something, solidarity maybe, she gently taps her glass against Em's in a bit of mock-'cheers'. Happy topics to celebrate, and all that lark. A little sip, and she's back to wracking her brain, trying to think of some way to salvage it, even in the face of Em's rather damning information.

"Well," she starts. It's the kind of tone people use when they're about to say something really trite and mildly irritating, like when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! "Well, we have been thrown in the deep end, but it's... bound to be some kind of learning experience. I mean, the things we're going through here, they'll teach us all kinds of new things." She drinks down a long draw of wine, inhales the next breath of her cigarette deeply, letting the smoke sit in her lungs before slowly exhaling, just taking a moment and lapsing into silence.

Of course, she'd been rather literally thrown in the deep end when she was six, and that had put her off learning to swim for quite a long time. It didn't bode very well for her desperately hopeful theory. That's hardly going to stop her from trying. "Maybe we didn't choose it, and we still don't want it, but there's something good we can get from it anyway. Glass half-full and that whole thing," she adds, tapping the side of her half-full glass to illustrate.

Edited 2011-05-25 11:06 (UTC)

The chirpy tone followed by Jules silence doesn't bother Emilia and she seems to quietly appreciate that particular moment, cheek on hand, eyes watching but not really looking the shelves surrounding them. She doesn't quite agree with Jules, however, in the sense that it's a learning experience, because she can't really be bothered to translate a traumatic event into learning experience, In a way, it is, no doubt, but for Em, well... She would only go as far as making this a learning experience in the sense that she has learned to avoid everything the Gardens throw at her. And wash them away with wine and cigarettes. Keep to try and maintain a routine, some sort of normality amidst the crazy happenings.

Her eyes go back to Jules once she starts talking again, and although she still looks a bit distant from reality, she is listening to her words. She shrugs a little bit at the tap of the glass and as if to illustrate a point, picks hers up and takes a sip.

"Mine's rather half-empty, I'm afraid," in truth, she considers herself a realist. However, for some people outside, she really is a bit of a pessimist, even if down-to-Earth instead of a chaos and drama inducing pessimist. "But I suppose we have to manage."

"I think 'full' is a nicer sounding word than 'empty'. The way it comes out, it even sounds more satisfying than 'empty', if you are leaving meaning completely aside," she comments musingly, looking at nothing in particular as she taps her chin, and then refocusing on Em. "We can do it, I'm sure. Friends help each other with these things, yes?"

Her smile is bright, and maybe just a little bit hopeful, rather than purely confident, as she lightly knocks her shoulder against Em's. "We'll be fine. You'll see."

She sounds completely confident in that. She feels completely... okay, no, not completely confident. Maybe even a bit shaky, but in her experience, it helps to have someone to give the pep talks and make everyone believe that it'll be fine (admittedly, not with problems quite so immense) and that was a job that traditionally fell to her. With that in mind, and in the interests of lightening the mood in general and avoiding tense topics, she reaches for a book from another chair at the table. "Before I forget, you might want to dread this. It's very, very good. Lots to do with pirates!"

Female pirates seducing noblewomen, having a steamy affair and falling in love, admittedly. Another admission: 'good' as a euphemism for hilariously bad.

The comment makes her quirk her eyebrow up. Artists and creative souls and the kind, how she knows them - them and their little self-musings out of nowhere. It's endearing, sure, but only after she has gotten to know them. Right now? Kind of odd and out of place. She may be judging a little, although to be fair, it does lessen when Jules talks about friends being friends and all that.

Friends are nice. Normal friends are very nice. Jules is normal, so she sees no harm in being her friend. A bit too optimistic and upbeat, but that's a change for all the pessimism she has coiled inside.

She finds the little bump weird, and it worries it that she does. It reminds her that she hasn't had an adult friend, a normal one, one that just felt comfortable around people... in a while. She makes a small sound in the back of her throat, surprised with herself, but doesn't voice her thoughts.

Blinking back to reality, she looks at the book given to her and takes it, turning it around to read the summary. She sighs a little boredly and quite disappointed, still looking at the book while she talks.

"That's quite thoughtful of you," a beat. "I'm getting rather tired of these, though. Do you get tired of reading the same thing again and again? Feels some of these are all the same with different names." She offers another shrug. "I'll give it a try anyway."

Jules is used to a little judgment, being thought of as a bit odd - more often shallow, vapid and then shallow again for good measure, but still judgment. She just hums a little, and if there is any chance of her picking up on that judgement, slight as it was, she'll be ignoring it and smiling.

And, naturally, sighing sympathetically, but not in an especially sad or depressed fashion. More wistful, really, like she's hoping for the day when there will be more books. “Mm. I just think of them as silly fun, myself.” Her smile suggests she really does find something funny, but she won't be specific as to the reality of it. “I actually used to do book reviews before I got into writing. A lot of romance novels. After a while you really start running out of things to say, and need to make extremely imaginative use of a thesaurus to try and get around writing the same thing about eighty different ways.”

A relaxed little shrug. “At the very least, it will make for a nice paperweight that's good for starting conversation.” With that, she leans over to Em and gently taps her nose. "I really will get to work on something more interesting."

"Oh, that sounds relatively interesting," it's said in a very genuine tone, actually, not mocking nor feigning interest - Emilia is hardly a person to do the fake interest bit, the very least. "A bit challenging, but interesting. I could never do that, though. When people ask me what I think of a book, I tend to go with yes or no."

She smiles a little embarrassedly at the confession, idly scratching a finger against the side of her neck.

But then comes the nose tap and Em, not wanting to be rude, leans back slowly instead of jumping a bit at the sudden contact like she almost did. She frowns slightly, a subtle shift of her expression. She isn't angry or bothered, but Em is not a person much given to physical contact, especially not with people that she hasn't known for that long, but she isn't so rude that she would slap away a hand. She can be extremely blunt and to the point it is almost too honest, but, again, that's only when she is around people she either knows for long or isn't exactly interested in befriending. Given how Jules is neither, she keeps herself in check but also keeps her distance.

"I think the weather can be a better conversation starter, in this case."

Uncomfortable with homosexuality? Hm, not as much as she could have been if her best friend wasn't gay, if one has to be honest. The time she has spent here and the terrible romantic adventures of the books in this library have also helped her a little bit, but there is still some part of her that's... confused, if one would want to be politically correct about it.

“Very enjoyable. I met some really nice people through it, too. Lots of... personalities, you could say.” One could call Jules a personality, herself, but she pays that no mind. “Some books are hard to give a summary that does what they evoked justice, though, which is simultaneously frustrating and extremely satisfying when you get it right.”

Jules grins a bit, shaking her head at Em's embarrassment. “To be fair, 'yes' or 'no' is often good enough if you're being asked whether you recommend a book, an you're sparing the interviewer any chance of giving the story away, which is also good. There are definitely perks to not talking as much as the people who do it for a living.”

Her eyebrow arches just a little at the shift back and the comment, but the expression is made less apparent by her laughter. Jules is the kind of person that laughs with her whole body, once she gets going – nose crinkling, shoulders shaking and her whole body doubling over. A lot of the time, though, what people get is Jules laughter: lite, a tamer, controlled laugh that just bubbles up out of nowhere to break awkward situations down and stave them away, a nervous habit. She's not laughing amazing hard now, but she does grin, and the shoulders do shake a tiny bit. “That is extremely classic of you. Like something from a Jane Austen novel.”

"Ah," she arches her eyebrows up. Although she had been living in America for quite a while, Emilia has always been very close to her French habits and the French way of thinking, so celebrities and the like have never been something that interested her much. Sure, she enjoyed going to the cinema and all of that, but their actual lives did no interest her. "That's nice."

What else was she supposed to say?

The shift on the laughter doesn't register. For Emilia to understand and catch subtle things on people, she has to have spent some time with them. Jules is a relatively new person in her life, so while she's catching on to the basic, superficial stuff, the little things are not something she is attentive to - she has never quite been much of a people's person anyway.

"Classic? I'm not from that far back - '93 is a perfectly modern age." No, it isn't, but hey, it is for someone who is from that year. She's taking the wine and sipping the rest of it, putting the glass back on the table but pushing it away from her. She's all set for now. Crossing her arms on the table, she leans her cheek on her them and sighs, closing her eyes. "I wouldn't mind reading Jane Austen for a change." A bit nostalgic.

Stupid place.

"'Personalities' is a bit of a euphemism," she admits after a moment, laughing a bit. "Some of them were just a little..." She tries, perhaps in vain, to think of a gentle way to phrase it. "Pretentious and egotistical, I suppose you might say. Real characters, you know? You'd think they'd written something befitting Tolstoy, rather than a colourful romance novel that just barely avoiding plagiarising The Scarlet Pimpernel." Her next little sigh is amused, and she shakes her head. "People can be a bit odd."

And perhaps it was time for the world to spin right off its axis, with Jules commenting on how odd people could be.

Another laugh, this one more relaxed again. "I was teasing, although I am sure you'd look lovely in a bonnet." A little shake of her head. "I think it hasn't quite sunk in for me, yet. I'm still finding these books rather comical." It was so funny, though, to think of someone from the same world, but in the past. Maybe less strange than other worlds, technically, but thinking of the fabric of time folded over and tangled up was mindboggling.

Then, as was so often the case, a thought struck her from out of the blue. "There are so many good books you can't have read!" You'd think she was announcing some horrific tragedy.

Em smiles a little at the description of those people, picking at the hem of her sleeve distractedly as Jules speaks, nevertheless listening to her. She looks up from her idle task and smiles a bit; it's good that Jules considers some things odd. It means she doesn't lack of common sense - at least, not entirely, as Em sometimes wonders.

But, ah, there is an arch of her eyebrow as the mention of a bonnet comes up. She does find History an interesting matter, finds the whole Jane Austen era quite romantic, but she hardly thinks she would fit well in their frilly dresses and quite fancy parties. Em is a bit of a simple girl like that, after all, and it shows in the way she chooses to present herself, simple clothes, long hair always in a ponytail or a bun, quiet and modest manners beneath all the French bluntness.

She smiles just a bit when Jules announces she was just kidding and shrugs. It's not that she can't take teasing, but an introvert like her sometimes takes them seriously. No harm done, however, and she stops picking at her sleeve, shaking her head slightly. "I don't think I find them comical at all." The word would not be comical, no. "But it is all that we have. I was thinking of addressing the Queen about this censorship." Idle thought, not entirely serious. She would hardly be proactive in this type of situation.

"Hm," it's an amused little sound. "I suppose I have a lot to catch up, but I figure I will get to 2007 without much trouble. I'll just be older." And then apparently that is a weird thought because now she is imagining herself with fourteen more years standing there next to Jules. It seems to bother her slightly and she shakes her head, pushing those thoughts away.

Edited 2011-05-31 18:22 (UTC)

"You don't?" She sounds surprised. It's the reaction she's rather come to expect, though admittedly, that was largely from her friends, the ones in on the joke and the silliness. "You don't find the melodrama and the cliches entertaining?" Curious, more than anything else.

Then again, she did have a point about censorship, really. Tapping her finger against her lips, she slumps a bit against the table, and sighs. "It goes past the books, too. If you try to use the internet here, all you get are wikipedia articles on romance. It's terrible." But, she laughs a bit - much as she always does. "Maybe that could be my first order of business as representative of the women of the Gardens." A little grin, raising her shoulders and stretching a bit, she looks extremely pleased. "It sounds rather fun." It did, actually, if perhaps rather more serious than her usual endeavours.

"I suppose so. I'm sure you will be extremely classy and refined. If we run into each other, I'll have to insist on fourteen years of birthday dinners to catch up." She seems complete unfazed, but it is a strange thought, almost disturbing, in a way, that things were so mixed up and out of order. "It's a shame I don't make a habit of memorising lottery numbers, or I might have been able to give you something interesting to take home with you."

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