Test Drive 1

[concierge]

Welcome to All Inclusive's test drive! Anyone is welcome!

Guidelines

• Please make sure you are familiar with how we play and what characters are allowed before participating.


• Writing should be in para/prose just like in the main game. That means no brackets, no asterisks, etc. No network posts, please.


• No anonymous comments.


• We very strongly suggest NOT writing your character's first time at the Nexus, but rather a random scenario once they've gotten more used to the idea of the place. The shock and surprise of new arrivals and subsequent info dump by whomever meets them tends to be one note.


• Entries to the test drive may be of any length. However, if your intro (top-level) comment is of normal post length and you are proud of the quality, you may use it as an example on your application.


• Feel free to tag around the meme with any character you already play or are considering, even if they don't have their own intro comment.


• If your character is accepted into the game and you have permission from the other involved players, you may consider test drive threads as game canon. You may also linkdrop them to the main community if you choose.


• Please use the header below for your intro/top-level comment.

Header

<b>Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Location:</b>

Name: The character's name
Canon: The character's canon
Location: Choose: Somewhere in the hotel or grounds or through a door

Comments

[averygoodshot]

"You look well," he tells her, his chair angled to face hers, hat dangling from a knee. "I am not sure that I will be much help in understanding this place."

They are being so formal; it's disconcerting. He scoots closer, to the edge of his chair. "What is it that you last remember, your Highness?"

[somanyopinions]

He made it so difficult to maintain any appearance of royal indifference—Not only here, but often at home as well, his demeanor ill-suited for subterfuge. Her natural reaction was a quickly flicked glance about the room, assessing who might be near. Even here, she could not fully believe that the walls did not have eyes.

"From France? My bedroom," she replied without quite thinking, and then looked quickly down to her book again with a small smile.

"I've been here before," she clarified, rallying, and looked up to him again. "I suppose it's safe to assume that you arrived through a different door. I think I would have remembered you being in my boudoir."

[averygoodshot]

It is safe to assume that, yes. Aramis smiles. But he asks, "You have been here before? In this hotel? When?" And he must ask, "and the Dauphin?"

[somanyopinions]

"Yesterday, and the day before," Anne answered. "Only a few hours at a time. Today is admittedly the first I haven't been completely overwhelmed by it all." It took some time, too, to realize that time had effectively stopped back in France, making her disappearance less of a concern.

"The Dauphin is at home," she slowly began again, carefully watching Aramis. "I had been debating whether to bring him through next time. There is a cradle in my room here, you see. As if they knew."

[averygoodshot]

The thought of being able to see his son in peace, without fear? It's enough to put Aramis back on his proverbial heels and he looks away for a moment.

He has no right to ask for that; he made a promise and will honor that. And yet, "It seems a shame," he says as lightly as he can manage, looking at Anne again, "to have a cradle and not use it."

[somanyopinions]

Try as Aramis might to appear casual, the look in his eyes was a shot to her heart. She had often thought of how their situation must prey upon him, but had only witnessed the extent of his struggle in glimpses. There had been so little she might do to alleviate his pain before now.

Still, even as her heart was insistently tugging her toward his plight, her mind couldn't help but wonder at the consequences such an action might cause. She glanced again to the book in her lap with its troubling discrepancies, but then smoothly closed it and set it aside.

"I wonder," she said, gently extracting the fabric of her skirts from the scattered volumes around her, "whether you might escort me upstairs?"

[averygoodshot]

"Of course," he says, brow furrowing. "... are you all right, your Highness?"

His queen, she had called herself, a trifling term: she was everyone's queen. But she is his queen. He rises, hand extended to help her up.

[somanyopinions]

"I am quite well," Anne promised him as she accepted his hand and rose to her feet. "I have a gift for my most loyal and honorable protector," she added, and afforded him a gently pointed look. "But I must fetch it from France first."

[averygoodshot]

Ah, his heart. The feel of her hand in his is enough to make him realize just how lonely he's been.

He tucks her arm into his so they can walk together. "It does seem difficult to get used to this place," he notes.

[somanyopinions]

Too familiar, Anne, her mind launched up, a part of her staunchly unwilling to assume that there was no one of consequence to witness them here. Even so, her fingers squeezed reassuringly against Aramis' arm, and she did not draw away. They were perhaps balancing upon the edge of propriety, but surely there could be nothing obviously untoward about walking together, even so close as this.

"Indeed," she quietly agreed. "Have you been here long?"

[averygoodshot]

"Not long, no," he tells her and yes, he does consider propriety in how they walk, not holding her too close. But would he not seem rude to walk apart from her?

This is what he tells himself. "A week, perhaps, at most." The days here, with so little to do, tend to blend together. That was his thought, anyway, before he saw her. "Have you been here long, your Highness?"

See? They are merely walking, merely making conversation. Nothing to see here.

[somanyopinions]

"Only the few days I mentioned," Anne answered. "Today has been the first I've dared more than a couple of hours. I'm pleased that I did," she added, looking up at him with a faint smile.

"Have you been able to return home at all?"

[averygoodshot]

"Not like you have," he says. In fact, the idea sounds as outlandish as this place does. Or, "perhaps I haven't found the right door." Again, that idea is so ridiculous as to make him laugh.

[somanyopinions]

He was from a different timeline from her own, then, as she had seen him on duty only yesterday, tossing her covert glances as he trailed after the King.

"Have you tried the lift yet?" she asked as they paused before the elevator. "The mechanics are quite extraordinary." Like so much else in this place.

She pushed the call button and then tugged Aramis inside the car when the doors parted. Clearly delighted, she leaned forward to press the button for the 3rd floor.

[averygoodshot]

That's what he was trying to determine and he doesn't know how to ask.

That would be determined soon, he hopes. For the moment, her smile at how this modern mechanism works is far too charming. He smiles, too, watching her. "The means of heating and lighting, too, is quite remarkable."

[somanyopinions]

"The future brings more advancements than I could ever have imagined," Anne said. In the sudden intimacy of the closed car, she found herself turning in towards Aramis as she spoke, only to sway quickly back when the bell sounded and the doors again parted.

"Many of the books in the library have accountings of things that have not yet happened," she continued, schooling her features as they stepped into the hall. "I can't help but think that there must be great benefit in having some idea of what's to come, even if our God-given destiny is set."

[averygoodshot]

"Is that what you were reading in the library?" Aramis asks, having just barely caught himself as he'd leaned forward to meet her, taking a moment before stepping out of the car to follow her. "Something of France's future?"

[somanyopinions]

"I was," Anne admitted. "Of the Dauphin."

If there was something unnatural about her wanting to be assured of her own child's future, every mother must be thusly apart from nature. Now that she'd confessed, she was glad, relieved to have someone she might speak to of her concerns.

"You'll be pleased to know that he proves a worthy king," she said, but then frowned. "But there are differences in the circumstances of his birth which I am unsure what to make of."

[averygoodshot]

A worthy king.

Ah, how Aramis would like to take a moment and savor that? Except what she's said.

"What differences?" he asks, noting her frown, growing somber himself as he faces her.

[somanyopinions]

Paused there in the hall, Anne opened her mouth but then faltered, her expression going pinched as she glanced around them. They were alone but still she felt terribly exposed. Seizing Aramis' hand, she drew him swiftly to the end of the corridor where she opened an ivory-colored door with a golden 'A' wrought into the wood instead of a number.

"I apologize for the abruptness," she said once she'd closed the door behind them and fastened the lock. "Even here I can't help but wonder who is lurking and listening."

The room was vast and gilded, much like her rooms at home, with a canopied bed at the far end and a sitting area nearer the door. She clasped hold of Aramis' hand again and drew him inside.

"I am not 37," she explained, brow furrowed as she looked up at him. "And I lost only one child, not four. This book— This history, it is accurate in accounting everything else of my life. Yet it says that I was so long in becoming pregnant that all hope for an heir was lost, so much so that the conception was considered a miracle from God."

[averygoodshot]

Holding her hand between his, Aramis's first impulse is to sooth her, to sooth away the the consternation on her face.

"Are you sure it purports to be a history and not to be a fiction of some sort?" he asks carefully, not wishing to upset her further. "... perhaps they got the facts wrong."

[somanyopinions]

"Perhaps," Anne allowed. Her understanding of this place was so limited, it wasn't beyond the realm of reason that she had been mistaken. Yet she could not quiet the part of her that felt certain her conclusions were correct.

"Have we changed things, Aramis?" she quietly asked him. "Have we altered God's plan?"

[averygoodshot]

With a sigh, Aramis meets her gaze. "I do not know. But," he adds, in great solemnity, "I would like to think that our God would not begrudge us of our love."

Of that, he is certain, even if there is so little else that can be sure.

[somanyopinions]

The worry was not entirely dispatched, but Anne smiled fondly nonetheless, reaching to place her free hand atop his. "This is why I need you around. To remind me when I've become irrational."

[averygoodshot]

"I will happily provide what I can, your Highness," Aramis replied warmly as well. "Be it reason or company or more."