notfaking_it | (no subject)

The gala had been a bit of a bore.

Lily was used to it, mingling with investors, the people who essentially paid for her to be a dancer, and she was usually good at it. Even tonight, she doubted anyone noticed that she was bored, but it had gone on long and all the champagne in the world couldn't make it end any quicker. She passed by Nina several times, pausing long enough to talk to her, to laugh about something that had been said, but she knew it was encouraged for them to be as social as possible and so she moved on after a few minutes.

It was something she was good at, even at her worst, and Lily smiled and laughed as she knew she was supposed to.

Between conversations, she set down her champagne flute and slipped toward the bathroom, her purse in hand. Raising her hand as she passed Nina, she grinned, then slipped through the bathroom door, glancing down into her purse for her compact as she crossed toward the mirror. Her heels clicked against the tile floor and when she glanced up, at first it seemed that nothing was wrong.

But the bathroom was gone.

Beyond the mirror she had glanced into stretched a long, golden hall and Lily shifted, moving away from the mirror to stare at what had appeared. She blinked, then turned back toward the bathroom door only to find it gone, replaced with a beautiful hall, the walls adorned with art she'd never seen before, rich looking and lush.

"What the hell?" she murmured.

Threaded | Flat

He was doing the dishes. Then he wasn't anymore.

He didn't have to - of course they had a dishwasher - but there was something about the process that felt almost meditative. The running water, the warmth, looking out the kitchen window at the city at night, the sounds of Eleanor watching television or listening to music in the next room.

He blinked and all of that was gone.

There was still water, and it came from a massive and ornate fountain in front of him. The thing was marble and gilt and carved with graceful, draped figures. A woman with a bow and arrows. Another woman with a sheaf of wheat.

A man with lightning in his hands.

He stared up at it, briefly oblivious to the people who wandered around the huge domed hall that contained the fountain, sitting on benches, talking and laughing. Hardly anyone looking at him.

There were columns, more gilt, richly painted murals on the walls. It was beautiful. But he didn't want to be somewhere new. Not now. Brow furrowed, he looked around, beginning to be quietly desperate to catch sight of someone, anyone, who was familiar.

I was late for work. Not very late, but late enough that I was rushing more than I should have been, Father. Had I not been in such a hurry, I might have seen what was beyond the shop door before I stepped through it. The strange hall I find myself in is like nothing I've seen before, golden and beautiful.

But it is not Darrow and it is not Rapture and that puts me ill at ease. I'm not ready to go to another place, Father, I'm not ready to be torn away from a life that I still feel I'm just beginning to live. Where are you?

"Father! Hello! Is anyone here?!" Father where are you?

...Mother?

Nina, unfortunately, wasn't quite as much of a natural at parties as Lily was.

She smiled and chatted and even laughed, and there were moments where it even felt good to be the focus of attention for so many strange eyes, but even after a year of working to feel more comfortable in her own skin, she spent much of the evening feeling lost.

Watching Lily disappear through the bathroom door, Nina finished off her champagne and then slipped through the crowd after her, but she was stopped along the way by a donor to the company, a middle-aged man with eyes that lingered a little too long on places other than her face.

When she finally escaped, she pushed through the bathroom door, Lily's name already on her lips, but it echoed down a long, unfamiliar hallway, and when she turned, she found more of the same: ornate columns, gilded in gold, a wide open atrium and imposing marble statues.

"Hello?" she called, her voice wavering, her small, beaded clutch falling to the marble floor with a clatter.

Even with their group larger than before, even though she felt a little safer as a group of four instead of just a pair, Lily didn't particularly like Atlantis and it wasn't anything she could quite put her finger on. There was nothing wrong with it on the surface. It was rich and decadent, over the top in some ways, though that actually might have been a little endearing had she still not felt some strange undercurrent of discomfort.

"Everyone's headed to the same place," she said, watching the flow of people move through the halls. The people she'd spoken with had mentioned a party of some kind, a gathering, and that seemed to be where everyone was going now.