Demon Marcus, Sunday

[myownface]

This year was going to be different.

Yes, Sparkle was well aware that the switching of a calendar from one year to the next was really just an arbitrary marker of the continuation of the steady passage of time, and that any one grouping of around three hundred and sixty five days was more or less the same as the next, fundamentally. Something as commonplace as the passage of time from one day to the next didn't automatically wipe the slate clean and guarantee an improvement in the days ahead.

And you know what? He'd heard that fucking argument from so many people who thought they were sooooo much better than the people who were hoping for an improvement in the new year, he was pretty sure that if he heard it one more time he was going to punch something and scream. Or type at them loudly in all-caps. Sure, the simple passage of time from one year to the fucking next wasn't going to change anything. Of course it wasn't. But the New Year had been traditionally used as a symbolic starting point for people to choose to change things themselves since for-fucking-ever, and if Sparkle wanted to use today as an easy-to-refer-to marker for the change he wanted to see in himself, he was going to just go right ahead and do that, high-and-mighty haters with their heads up their asses be damned.

This year was going to be a better year. The world could throw 2016: Part Two at him, and if he had any say in the matter, he wouldn't be caught off-guard by it this time around. He'd stand up and clench his fist and yell in its stupid fucking face. Then he'd save his own damn self for a change, or remind himself that this too shall pass, or, in an unprecedented turn of events, remember that for once in his life he wasn't alone, and he'd ask somebody for help.

2016 was over, 2017 was going to be better, and Sparkle was going to kick it off by leaving a postcard that he'd photoshopped himself that morning, of Milady the Fish in his tank taking in last night's ball drop in New York, for Alluka to find on her next shift. Then maybe he'd contemplate his lesson plan, or take inventory on the winter clothes while the weather was more or less behaving itself.

Or just take a little while to breathe.

[OOC: Open! OCD-free because pfft, starting 2017 on a lazy note works just fine for me.]

Covent Garden Flowers, Sunday

[2_old_for_this]

So, there were apparently new people in town. Did new people need flowers? Did old people need flowers to welcome them? What that even a thing?

Peter had no clue, but that along with the new year seemed as good an excuse as any to open the shop and open the doors in the fairly warm weather and let the scents of green things, flowers, and herbs lure people in to buy things.

After a bit of thought, Peter dragged an old sandwich board out of the back and set it up in front, writing: Happy new year! Sale on flowers to brighten your days, houseplants half off to anyone moving in!

There was also still a smaller sign in the window: Now hiring!
The shop was open!


[Open post, no OCD!]

Groovy Tunes, Sunday

[that_oldsaying]

Wearing her ATs to work—and having taken the long way around the island to get there on them—had been fun, but it hadn't really left her tired, which was both good and bad because Alluka felt restless as she talked to the stereo for a bit, and then had tea with her toys.

This restlessness led her to peer at the instruments curiously and doubtfully in turns.

She knew they made noise (or music, if you were good at it) but she didn't have any idea of how.

They looked kind of intimidating, actually. Just... being there and wrapped up in mystery.

Groovy Tunes is Open!