My fair faire

[sunflowerfields]

Who: Erryone
When: Day 170, right before leaving for Heartstone Manor
Where: The cookhouse
What: dinner and a show A crash course in table etiquette, and/or your chance to get your bad behavior out of your system.
Warnings: Watch your damn language.



With the threat of behave or die hanging over their heads, Hinawa is feeling very nervous. She's only tangentially familiar with the rules and regulations of formal dining and mingling, having only experienced it for the first time during the Celebration, and for the most part she's just a simple country gal. The last thing she wants is to get everyone in trouble because she used the wrong fork, and she can't help but feel like she's not the only one, so she comes up with a plan!

She only hopes it'll be enough.

[This is a mingle-ish! Jump on in!]

Comments

Miko Nakadai | OTA

[pullingamiko]

Sooooo this sounds like the worst. Fancy clothes, table manners... Miko, for one, can't see why they have to go somewhere like that, of all places. At least the Celebration only got fancy right at the end. Right before, you know. The vampire attack.

Which, frankly, has her even more suspicious that something will go wrong here. She kind of wonders if she can hide her knife in a stupid fancy dress.

First, though, she apparently has to worry about the whole fancy dinner thing. She is outright pouting, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, looking more like an angry middle schooler than a teenager.

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

"If you go in with that attitude," Zecora commented from across the practice table, where she was cheerfully experimenting with the best ways to eat at a table like this and still be fancy while being a zebra lacking any sort of digits,
"Our host will surely think you're rude."

[pullingamiko]

Miko, who apparently has no concept of not being rude, groans and lets her forehead drop onto the table with a thunk.

"He's gonna think I'm rude no matter what, y'know. I can't do this whole... fancy dining thing! It's so dumb."

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

"Of course you can! Give it a chance.
You need not sing and skip and prance.
Listen to me, for this is sense:
What you need," Zecora said, pausing half a beat for emphasis, "is confidence."

[pullingamiko]

Miko just... turned her head enough to look at her. Frowning. Pouting, actually.

"I've got plenty of confidence, this is just stupid and I don't wanna do it!"

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

"Like so much else which you might voice,
You do not really have a choice," Zecora said philosophically.
"Though this path may be filled with strife
Doing what we must is, I fear, life.
Will you scream at this new test?
Or will you try and do your best"

[pullingamiko]

She considers that for a few seconds.

"...What if I scream at it now, then do... something resembling my best later?"

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

Zecora actually chuckled at that. Not a bad way to look at things, honestly, if she were to offer an opinion...

"That's more of a start.
So long as in your heart
You still try to learn
Lest ignorance burn."

[pullingamiko]

"Yeah, yeah..." She sighs and shifts position to thunk her head down on the table.

Then, after a moment of thought, she turns to look at Zecora again, frowning thoughtfully. "...Why d'you talk like that, anyway?"

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

Funny. Ponies never asked why she spoke in rhyme, but humans always did. What a curious cultural divide.

"If your native tongue rhymed naturally,
You too would rhyme instinctively."

Which was proved, Zecora had learned, by her time as a human -- in which she had not rhymed at all.

[pullingamiko]

“So... it’s like an accent.” Makes sense, she guesses. “How does a whole language rhyme, though?”

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

"The only answer I have got
Is to ask how this one does not."

Really, it didn't make sense to her at all, though she'd accepted it as a self-evident truth. She had to assume non-zebras just thought very differently in some ways than her own kind.

[pullingamiko]

"Well, I mean, the words just..." She gestures, somewhat pointlessly, at the air in front of her. "It can rhyme, like in songs and stuff. But usually you gotta be trying - though I guess sometimes people do rhyme on accident. 'S just not how it goes automatically, y'know?"

[zebrarhyme_everytime]

"And in my home tongue it would be a fight
To not rhyme, try as you might."

The answer was not quite direct, but Zecora was trying to encourage Miko to see just how her viewpoint worked from Zecora's side.

[periphrasing]

Peridot's here. She's mostly observing everyone else, trying to pick up some tips and tricks without interrupting to ask questions, because that just seems the most prudent way to go about things. It'd be hard for her to miss that scowl, though. They haven't talked much since Portland, but she remembers Miko's temper well enough.

"Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a human look so mad about food before," she comments, eyebrows slightly lifted.

[pullingamiko]

Miko huffs, slouching down further in her chair and hunching her shoulders. "The food isn't the problem! Food is one thing, manners and rules and fancy people etiquette crap is another!"

[periphrasing]

"That, we can agree on," she snorts, settling back with a flick of her tail. "We really can't afford to mess things up for the Ringmaster, though, so at least be thankful that you have some prior knowledge of how this stuff works. I have to learn it all from scratch!"

[pullingamiko]

"Why would I know how it works?" She honestly sounds downright offended at that. "Like, I get that you don't 'cuz you're an alien, but this isn't a... basic human education thing."

She pauses, then adds, "And if it was I forgot. Like, the moment they told me, I definitely forgot because I don't care."

[periphrasing]

"Well at least you know how things like meals work! I've never even eaten anything!" She frowns vaguely. "Not unless you count that soda I put in my mouth and spat out that one time. Or all the stuff in Portland, that I definitely don't have any proper recollection of."

[pullingamiko]

“Uh… well.” This seems like it should be easy enough to rectify. Miko kind of… gestures at her food. “You kinda just put it in your mouth? Then you chew, then you swallow. Y'know, quick three-step process.”