fandomhighdorms | Abominable Snowman Campfire

Well, if that wasn't maddeningly unhelpful, Valentine wasn't entirely certain he could think of something that was.
"I'm still not entirely certain what you were suggesting," he stated. "If you mean to say that, perhaps because my eyes are different then everyone else's I don't see the same way, at least come on forward and say it."
He didn't sound angry or upset, really. He was still suck in ~~drunken~~ tipsy bemused mode.

Naminé nodded, still not looking up. "I just meant that, since your eyes are smaller, it might be harder for the light to pass through them. Pupils dilate to take in more light when it's dark, so as to compensate. If you haven't any, it might always be very bright or very dark. I didn't mean ... to be commenting on them, inappropriately. Your eyes."

Valentine was fairly certain that he had eyes like every other unfinished face hiding somewhere behind his real one. But he wasn't about to carve his head apart in order to find out, really.
"It's an interesting theory," he decided amiably. "But things work rather differently where I'm from than they do here, I've learned. I can see just fine."
So long as he was looking directly at whatever he needed to see, anyhow.

"I'm glad," Naminé said softly. "And you have my apologies, again. I didn't mean to make you feel unusual; I know that that bothers you."

"Bothers? Bothers who? I wasn't bothered. Not in the least." He was so very obviously lying, pointedly looking upward and to the side to avoid any eye-contact. "What's the point of being usual, anyhow? It's too boring. Drab. Not for me. I'll keep my proper face, thank you very much."

"Of course," Naminé agreed smoothly. "Though ... that must be difficult for you. Being the only one here with a - a proper face, as you said. Looking round at all of us with our faces wrong."

"It's like looking around and seeing people with pieces missing," Valentine agreed. "Sort of like looking at muscle where skin should go, if you need a comparison. You know what it's supposed to be, but it doesn't make any sense, ultimately. And it's actually somewhat disturbing."

Naminé stared for a moment. "I had no idea. That it was so unnerving, for you. You do well at covering it."

"Is there something that would help? If we were to wear masks, perhaps. Or would they be so clearly artificial as not to improve the situation?"

"We?" Valentine looked back at her and tilted his head slightly. "I don't imagine that the entire student body would cover what they consider to be their proper faces simply for my sake."
Though it would have been nice.
"I've seen people here wearing masks before," there was perhaps a sour note somewhere in that statement. "They look perfectly normal to me when they do."

"That's reassuring, then. That it does help." Naminé heard the unpleasant note and felt it best to diplomatically move on.

"Possibly not for your sake, you're right. There might be other reasons." She shrugged lightly. "A masquerade ball, for one."

She frowned. "A shame I have no mask. I hate to think that we're conversing and all the while, it seems to you that my face is missing."

Valentine considered this for a moment.
"May I borrow a page from your sketchbook?" He held out his hand. "I've never heard of a masquerade. What is that, exactly?"
Day-to-day life was a masquerade where he came from. There wasn't really a name for it, there.

She handed him the book readily, and offered the crayons she was holding as well.

"A masquerade is a sort of ball - a dress ball, I mean, the formal event kind. For the occasion, people dress either in full costume, or in their usual gowns and suits, but with face masks. The idea is that it is mysterious and you won't know who you're speaking with, dancing with, flirting with." Naminé tilted her head. "I wonder if they ever have one here?"

Valentine took the book, but not the crayons, and considered a blank page carefully for a moment.
"I find it amusing that you can't tell people apart when they are wearing masks, and yet, without them, you all look the same to me," he said, looking from the blank sheet of paper to her and then back again. "Mind if I tear a sheet out?"

"It isn't that we can't tell people apart," she laughed lightly. "It's that if enough of the face is covered, we can't tell who they were before, who they're supposed to be now. Unless you're very close with someone, I suppose."

"We all look the same?" Naminé thought for a moment. "I suppose the disfigurement is hard to see past. And yes, by all means."

"I suppose..." Valentine mused at that for a while as he tore a sheet out of the notebook, handed the rest of the book back to her, and then started to tear the sheet up. "I suppose it's something like that. But then, fac-- masks are so dramatically different... So unique to the person who they belong to. Without them, the differences from face to face just seem so subtle and... unexpressive. I have to rely on voices and bodies and clothing styles and hair around here, and if any one of the above changes, I get thrown off and don't know who I'm talking to anymore."
He picked up the piece of paper, studied it for a moment, and then offered it back to her as well, torn into some semblance of a crude little half-mask.
"There. Now you have a mask. Be ashamed no longer."
There was a pleasant smile on his lips to back that statement up. It wasn't mocking or cruel or snide in any way, really. Why be rude to someone who wanted to make sense to you, after all?

Naminé took the book back and closed it, still pondering. "I suppose that makes sense. You look for different things than we do, so your eyes aren't trained to see in the same way. We must be an endless sea of deformity."

She held the paper over her eyes, feeling oddly like it was a magic rite. "Is that better? I mean, do I seem less jarring to you now?"

To say that Valentine was not staring at this point would be a horrible, horrible lie. All at once, her face had gone from being part of the jumble that he was getting used to around here to something that made perfect sense.
It took covering up most of her face to actually bring to light exactly how expressive her face was. And she had the most haunted eyes he had ever seen.
And he brushed it off, informing himself that this was all because he had only seen a handful of masks since coming to Fandom and it was going to be a shock, of course. And also, he was drunk. And drinking was good for that.
So he nodded dumbly, because she'd be expecting a response of some sort, after all.
"Less jarring, yes."
Maybe if he just tore up hundreds of sheets of paper and gave one to everyone on the island, this place would make more sense to him.

Naminé smiled gently, giving him a few moments to react. If someone's face dissolved into a cubist painting in front of her, and then magically rearranged itself back again, she supposed she would gape a bit herself.

"I shall have to remember this," she said lightly. "Keep it with me, perhaps. Or if we are to be speaking more often, I should get one, I suppose, so we may talk without you feeling I'm missing vital bits of skin."

"Of course," she mused, "if we are to become friends, I suppose it would help if I introduced myself at some point, wouldn't it? So that we mustn't rely on chance encounters any longer." She held out the hand which was not holding her mask in place. "My name is Naminé."

Naminé.
Naminé.
It was a good name. Possibly on par with "Valentine," he decided, saying his name aloud and shaking her hand with a grin.
If he wasn't horribly talkative, it was because he was busy marveling over how easy it was to take the expression in her voice and match it up with the light smile on her lips and the soft look in her amazingly striking eyes.
There was a face to the voice and a name to the face and it was as though a person had materialized in front of him in a matter of minutes.
Of course he was staring.

"Then it's good to meet you, Valentine," she said. Still amused that he was so affected by the change, but then, if everyone but you was missing their faces, it must be very nice indeed to have one person be normal again. For whatever you considered normality. "And you have my apologies. I've found myself in a number of conversations lately where names slip my mind entirely, and everyone must think me odd. Of course, they have good reason for that, I suppose."

Valentine, then. It suited him. Someone with his flair for the dramatic certainly couldn't have a name any less so. Naminé nodded. She approved.

Valentine just shrugged his shoulders lightly.
"I didn't really think to ask your name. I'll have to work on that in the future, I suppose."
Okay. She was apparently amused about something, and that something was probably him and the way he was staring. And his ears were perhaps turning a shade or two of pink because of that.
So he cleared his throat and looked upward again. Ooh. Aaah. Interesting night sky. This is Valentine, looking less stupid, really.

"I wonder how many people would wear one, just while speaking to you, if you carried extras and asked nicely." She considered. "I believe it would be worth trying. Most people here don't seem phased by the unusual, and it's not a very taxing request at that."

And she laughed. "I shall have to remember as well. Knowing people's names does make it much easier to speak to others of them, and to find them again should you wish to continue the conversation."

"As for that," Naminé flushed slightly, staring down at her sketchpad, "I do apologize for not stopping by your cabin sooner. Please understand that ... that it wasn't you I wished to avoid."

Ask people to put on masks so that they'd make sense to him...
There was a thought. He might have to try that, actually.
He grimaced, catching her reference to Demyx instantly and looking back at her to see her flushed and awkward.
"It isn't my cabin, anymore," he said, mumbling faintly. "I'm rather certain that my reason for avoiding Cthulhu is the same as yours. If you need me again for whatever reason, I'm in Kraken, now."
Good old Kraken.
He'd get around to informing the other inhabitants of the cabin that he was there, really. Officially, at least. He was pretty certain that it wasn't much of a secret that he was there, at any rate.
"Kraken spares a good deal of... awkward moments. Probably better all around, I think."

Naminé looked up sharply. "I didn't mean to remind you of unpleasantness," she said. "And I suppose you mean the person, as I doubt the reason is quite the same." There was a weak smile to go with that.

"Kraken? I believe I've stopped by their campfire once or twice. It seems very nice. I hope it's a better experience than its predecessor was."

"The person," Valentine said with a faint nod. He wasn't certain what her reason was in its entirely, really, but judging by the weak smile, he wasn't sure he wanted to know, either. "Kraken is a good cabin-- I'm fortunate to have had a few friends there. But we're to be heading back to the dorms soon, too, so I suppose that won't matter soon enough, anyhow."

Abominable Snowman Campfire - Late Saturday Night

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