[hr][center][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/b3RmLjEwNi43NjY3NjcuVTJ4dllXNWxJRVpoY21sei4w/bachelorette.regular.webp[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/r7scdkh.png[/img][/center]
 [right][b]Interactions:[/b]  317/Jasper's Art[@NoriWasHere] &  (Apologies to) Jack [@Blizz]
[code](Stumbling All Over) The Halloween Festival[/code][/right][hr]

Faces and masks blurred and became static as Sloane pushed through the gathered crowd huddled around the vendors. She moved with no actual destination in mind, only following after the kneejerk that told her she had to get away and clear her head before she started saying too much. Harsh words were like a stick of dynamite with a wick cut just a bit too long—they could be used to clear out the rocks in someone’s brain, or it could be picked up by someone quick enough and whipped back at the sender, falling at their feet right beside a wooden slat crate that read filled with TNT. It wasn’t as if Anya’s pleas of her attempting to use tact fell entirely on deaf ears. Sloane had been trying (poorly) to keep her sharp tongue tucked away for the past few weeks, but somewhere between drink one and drink four the scabbard had become loosened and liable to slip. 

She just needed to be away from the others, otherwise she’d cut someone and get hurt in the process again. Only she didn’t want to be away from the others. She wanted to be a part of them, accepted as one of them, treated as one of them. Sloane wanted to attend slumber parties and summon demons. She wanted to wrap herself up in a bedsheet and parade around like an asshole. She wanted to tease and flirt and make out and hook up and act like she was a teenager again because when she was a teenager she didn’t have the chance to act like that. She wanted a redo. She was tired of being the responsible one.  She was jealous. She had always been jealous. She was sick of being around not because she was actually liked and wanted but because of what she could offer.  

Wait, no, oh god, the world tilted. She wasn’t just metaphorically sick, she was actually about to be legitimately sick. No, no, no. Her heart tap danced in arrhythmic panic. Her eyes darted around for a place of privacy in a sea of stalls that warped and bent like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. She felt a chill run down her spine. She stumbled, a clammy hand shooting out to catch the corner of a table for balance. The world righted itself. Sloane took a deep breath. She was fine. Of course she was fine. She wasn’t drunk. It was just thinking about the others that had nearly made her violently ill. She was totally in control of—oh no no nonono! There was another sudden surge as she clamped a hand over her mouth. Her cheeks puffed like a croaking bullfrog and then diminished with another false alarm that turned out to only be a muted and dainty burp. 

[i]See?[/i] She gestured to the world that was paying her no attention. [i]Not drunk.[/i]

Sloane looked up and for a moment thought she was about to experience another wave of naus—sorry, “vertigo”—as she came face to face with a canvas painting of bright swirling colors arranged in seemingly random, chaotic patterns. Generally abstract art was not her bag, but it was both somehow absolutely beautiful and deeply unsettling. Was it a Jackson Pollock? A print, obviously, an original wouldn’t be displayed in some booth run by what appeared to be a wild pack of bohemian hipsters. In the center of the painting, isolated away through the waves of warm and vibrant colors by a sea of black, was a lone drop of blue. Sloane felt her throat tighten with a choke, as she never felt a deeper connection in her life to something than she did the little drop of blue. She must’ve gotten something in her eye, too, as it began to well up. Through her blurry vision she saw the initials signed near the bottom corner of the painting: JW. 

Jasper Wilde.

The well went immediately dry, the blockade in her throat cleared by a ragged, heated breath. The abstract dashes and drops became concrete images corrupted by memory. The little drop of blue didn’t just connect with Sloane; it was Sloane, with the black the clothes she had once dressed in to seize some kind of identity with a hope to connect to others. The forest greens and golden yellows and fiery reds spiraled out with splayed roots of a tree, representing the members of the Sycamore Coven, none of which dared to grow near her. She recalled real moments of rooms growing quiet when she entered, of shoulders turning from her when she spoke, of plans being made in front of her face without an offering of an invitation. The faces in the memories were blurred abstracts like those in the crowd mixed with the paint on the canvas except for one that prominently stood out: stupid Jasper, shining and adored by all and irrationally intolerant of her. 

It was a simple leap in logic. Everybody liked Jasper. Jasper didn’t like her. Therefore, everybody didn’t like her because of Jasper. How could someone be so petty and so fucking obsessive to paint an ode to another person’s loneliness, a loneliness that they should be held responsible for? Her lip quivered. Her teeth clenched. Her fist tightened. She punched a hand into her jacket and pulled out her wallet like it was a gun and she was about to go postal. She drew the attention of the art dealer, a young woman with a head full of tight curls and wearing as much jewelry as she was clothing, with two snaps of her fingers followed by a jabbing thrust towards the 18x24 insult.

[color=silver]“How much?"[/color]

When Jack decided to stop being Sloane’s shadow and actually approach the woman she had shifted away from the 317 booth and towards the one of the pop-up bars, unaware of the presence of the offending artist, the rest of Sycamore, or the PRA due to the mere separation caused by a few tent flaps. Sloane had found herself an area of privacy in the crowd behind the gathering of drink tents and bars. It wasn’t quite an area that was obviously off-limits, but it was clearly not meant to be an area for festival goers to gather.  It was its own isolated bubble, popped only by the murmur of the crowd and the rumble of approaching toga chants. However, at any moment the chance glance between tents would reveal the lady in red behind them.

Sloane huddled by a stack of empty crates, the painting wrapped in brown paper sitting upon them like a makeshift easel, a drink in one hand, the other gently massaging the bridge of her nose that still stung when she touched it. She didn’t even jump when Jack appeared, merely giving him a slow glance. Her dark eyes were hooded and hazy with a deep disconnect and the drunkenness, and moved with the kind of choppiness of a video that was constantly buffering. There was an entire five seconds of blankness before Sloane’s lips twitched in confirmation that she acknowledged his existence. 

[color=6644ff]"Sloane, what is it that troubles you tonight? It isn't Drake, or [i]me,[/i] is it?"[/color] asked Jack.

[color=silver]“Nothing troubles me, Jack. I apologize for earlier. To be blunt, teleportation never sat well with me. I think that I’m simply just a bit old fashioned in that regard,”[/color] said Sloane. Her words were slow and slurred and accompanied by another strange giggle that didn’t match the somber vacancy in her eyes. She jiggled the red solo cup in her hand to emphasize the pun and pull her focus away from the memory of her parents so confidently rushing through a portal and leaving her behind just like everybody else does. She took a sip of the drink, made a pained expression, and choked out, [color=silver]“I’m good. Really. Say, do you like art?”[/color]

Sloane let go of the cup but it did not fall. Instead, it hung in suspended animation about four feet off of the ground, her hexmark etched next to the recycling symbol on the bottom of the cup. She had one hand in her pocket on her channeler while the other pulled a knife out from underneath her coat. With three quick and shockingly precise slashes she cut the brown wrapping paper around Jasper’s painting, leaving the bottom unsliced so that it draped down from the painting and over the crates. Like the cup, the knife hung in the air as Sloane let go of it. She pulled her channeler out of her pocket.

[color=silver]“Jasper made this piece for me. Can you believe it? Anyway, I love art. When I was a little girl I wanted to become an artist of some kind. It didn’t matter what, as long as it was creative. Only I was no good at it. My father said I just wasn’t born with the knack for art. My mother was more honest about it. She told me I just didn’t have any talent and that I should stop wasting everybody’s time. In retrospect, it was a pretty harsh thing to say to a seven-year-old.”[/color] As Sloane spoke, she began to trace a hexmark onto the painting with her channeler. [color=silver]“I wonder if Jasper’s mother told him the same. I don’t have the talent, it’s true, but I still have an eye for good art. He should’ve listened to his mother instead of wasting paint on this derivative piece of shit.”[/color]

She pulled her channeler back, reached forward, and booped the little drop of blue with her finger. The blue circle and orange cross of her hexmark glowed and then vanished as the paint on the canvas glitched. It became wet again before cascading off of the sheet like a waterfall, splashing off of the brown paper before it tumbled to the ground and sprayed up onto Sloane’s boots. The canvas had been completely reset except for the initials in the corner. It was a beautiful painting of nothing by Jasper Wilde, a critical self-reflection on what the man’s opinions were actually worth. Sloane blinked, grabbed her knife, and turned to Jack.

[color=silver]“I hope you really didn’t come here because you were worried that I might be upset at you, Jack,”[/color] she said, closing the knife and putting it back in her jacket. [color=silver]“You shouldn’t obsess so much about what other people think about you. It is so terribly unhealthy. As long as you’re doing the right thing it doesn’t matter what they think, say, or create. Got it?" [/color]

[color=silver]“An-y-way,”[/color] Sloane grabbed the old fashioned frozen in the air and took a drink. [color=silver]“Since you’re here, could you transfer that piece to my apartment for me? I don’t want to have to carry it around for the rest of the night. Oh, actually, you know what? Perhaps you should take it instead. Consider it a gift. Hang it up across from your bed. That way you can wake up every morning, see [i]Nothing[/i], and think of me. Then you'll be able to remember exactly what else, besides precisely what I may have already asked for, that I need from you.”[/color]

Sloane turned her crooked nose up, waved Jack off with a dismissive shooing motion, and drained her drink.