parties for days

[follow_the_leader]

Holidays are supposed to be fun. Ema is pretty sure that this is true, at least. Her parents certainly seem excited every year. Normally, she doesn't mind it much. She's not that into parties necessarily, but some of it can be fun. The food and drinks are usually good, and the music, and the outfits. She does love watching the outfits. Some are wonderful, some are interesting, and there's always at least a couple that are just hilariously awful. She's still young enough that she's been able to get away with being shy; there's enough of a 'children should be seen and not heard' mentality that this is still considered Acceptable.

Or it was, anyway.

This year, they're going to a different set of parties, and The Twins are here.

Ema has literally never seen her parents this excited. They usually have opinions, of course, she wouldn't want to embarass them by showing up to an event in an inappropriate outfit or something like that. But this time they are so... into it. Ema doesn't get it. They fuss and hover and change their minds about what she should wear and send her to get her hair done and change their minds again and buy her three different pairs of shoes because they can't decide which she should wear, and...

Ema wants to scream at them. She has to try very hard not to be bitter at the twins. It's not their fault her parents think they're the Most Special People in the Universe. But Ema is feeling both overwhelmed by the attention and, somehow, oddly ignored at the same time. Don't her parents think she'll look nice without all this fussing? Or that she'll know how to be friendly and polite without all of their rules and speeches and injunctions about how to treat the twins? She knows this stuff! She's been a good daughter, she learned it all.

For better or worse, this all goes on for a good while before the weeks of parties actually arrive. Worse, because Ema is now thoroughly (if quietly) fed up with her parents. Better, because she's had enough time to process that it's really not the twins' fault, and she thinks she can manage to not feel like she's forcing friendliness if she meets them.

But really, she just wants this all to be over. By the time the Grand Event arrives she's already been going to parties for a week, smiling and making small talk and behaving just as her parents want her to. She arrives at the party, pastes a smile on her face, and starts to 'aimlessly' wander the edge of the party. She's just looking for a good vantage point, really. See-and-be-seen is best done from the sidelines, in her opinion. There must be a reasonable corner somewhere.

Comments

[scry_before]

There are several reasonable corners, the house is very polite like that. Unfortunately, there is exactly one person who very dearly wants one of those, and isn't allowed to have it. Even on the floater up here - people, people, people. All around him, asking if there's anything he needs, asking how he's feeling, is he all right? Is he enjoying the party? Is he enjoying the people? Are any pretty girls here catching his eye?

It would be an understatement to say he is sick of it. He was sick of it when he was ten. Now he's very definitively not ten, and is somewhere between a quiet, seething rage at all of these useless people, and fear. His mother's not here (they wouldn't let her near a large party like this, anyway, too many risks) so that's - something. But that means Veron's not here, either. He and his sister are alone. But at least they're alone together, right?

And the view's pretty. Not the view of the girls, stars above, no, he doesn't think 'pretty' when he looks at any of them now, he thinks, 'is she planning to drug me like the last five?' Scenery, though, scenery is fine. There's some benefit of putting your house in the most absurdly inconvenient location. Not worth putting a house on top of a nigh-unreachable cliff, he thinks, but hey, it's next to a waterfall. So that's nice.

A girl comes up to talk to him, disturbing him out of 'looking on the bright side' mode. He makes it about three sentences into the conversation to look to his sister with pleading eyes, begging for help. He doesn't want to talk to this person. Or anyone, really, but - this person especially not.