Turned loose by the flock of ghem women who'd selected him as their canvas for the peculiar (but, as he's coming to realize, so very Cetagandan) contest of dressing willing exotics for the party, Kaidan arrives in the gardens alone. With enough time between escape and arrival to suggest he's taken a private turn down a hallway or two to make sure he can move smoothly in the unfamiliar sweep of robes, he lingers for a moment at the entry to the space, expression complex beneath the artfully graduated blue of his facepaint.
There's so much life here, so much Earth-descended life, in all the hues and colours of a homeworld he'd last seen as so much rubble and ash. Homesick is not a feeling Kaidan Alenko has had much contact with since he was eleven years old and watching Earth shrink for the first time through the viewport of a shuttle... and yet.
Only one thing for it, especially with his head crammed so full of the previous night's secrets: Find the bar, and have an artful drink or two to better pretend the moment on the steps didn't just happen. Kaidan's elegantly subdued robes rustle with the briskness of his passage.
b. dancing monkey
The music is somehow more alien at times than an asari orchestra, but the fact that it's not the heavy, throbbing bass of most of the bars in Citadel space actually works in Kaidan's favour: he's officer enough to have been to more than a few military balls, and conscious enough of his own dignity to have gotten a few lessons on the basics of formal dance. (Not everyone can own the Shepard Shuffle)
Even if the steps are archaic to Cetagandan eyes, there's a novelty in that all its own, and he does a little social information-gathering here and there when he can convince a partner out onto the floor. That it's an excuse to swap information privately with some of his fellow exotics is another archaic tradition too.
c.discernment garden
Maybe it was those elegant drinks of ealier, but Kaidan's found himself enjoying the evening enough, despite the World's Most Pretentious Science Fair aspects of some of it, that when he makes his third pass near the entrance to the discernment garden in the course of mingling, he's willing to give it a go. With a strong start on sight and hearing before crashing on determining the exact tactile difference between fabrics of varying thread counts and materials, he's redeemed himself somewhat on smell and taste... and is now circling the final installation with a look of deep bemusement. Art is subjective. Some of it is really subjective.
d. morning-after migraine
Art, as it turns out, is not only subjective it can result in being subjected, if you are one Kaidan Alenko, to a full five sensory experience known as the worst migraine he's had since well before the Reaper War. The discernment garden may have won him some more goodwill from their hosts, and thus a little more room to operate before he starts rousing suspicions, but as a chaser to a room full of perfumes, bright lights, sounds, noise and still more perfumes, it's taken a heavy toll.
The light and sound sensitivity are old friends by this point, and he's taken refuge in his bunk to try and wait them and the deep consuming pain and pressure out. When getting to his feet to use the head in the middle of the night results in so much dizziness and nausea that he ends up throwing up into an elegantly sculpted trash can, that tears it. "I... Ugh. "If anyone asks," he mumbles to anyone awakened, eyes closed to slits. "I'm going to the medbay."
Cetaganda: Party!
Turned loose by the flock of ghem women who'd selected him as their canvas for the peculiar (but, as he's coming to realize, so very Cetagandan) contest of dressing willing exotics for the party, Kaidan arrives in the gardens alone. With enough time between escape and arrival to suggest he's taken a private turn down a hallway or two to make sure he can move smoothly in the unfamiliar sweep of robes, he lingers for a moment at the entry to the space, expression complex beneath the artfully graduated blue of his facepaint.
There's so much life here, so much Earth-descended life, in all the hues and colours of a homeworld he'd last seen as so much rubble and ash. Homesick is not a feeling Kaidan Alenko has had much contact with since he was eleven years old and watching Earth shrink for the first time through the viewport of a shuttle... and yet.
Only one thing for it, especially with his head crammed so full of the previous night's secrets: Find the bar, and have an artful drink or two to better pretend the moment on the steps didn't just happen. Kaidan's elegantly subdued robes rustle with the briskness of his passage.
b. dancing monkey
The music is somehow more alien at times than an asari orchestra, but the fact that it's not the heavy, throbbing bass of most of the bars in Citadel space actually works in Kaidan's favour: he's officer enough to have been to more than a few military balls, and conscious enough of his own dignity to have gotten a few lessons on the basics of formal dance. (Not everyone can own the Shepard Shuffle)
Even if the steps are archaic to Cetagandan eyes, there's a novelty in that all its own, and he does a little social information-gathering here and there when he can convince a partner out onto the floor. That it's an excuse to swap information privately with some of his fellow exotics is another archaic tradition too.
c.discernment garden
Maybe it was those elegant drinks of ealier, but Kaidan's found himself enjoying the evening enough, despite the World's Most Pretentious Science Fair aspects of some of it, that when he makes his third pass near the entrance to the discernment garden in the course of mingling, he's willing to give it a go. With a strong start on sight and hearing before crashing on determining the exact tactile difference between fabrics of varying thread counts and materials, he's redeemed himself somewhat on smell and taste... and is now circling the final installation with a look of deep bemusement. Art is subjective. Some of it is really subjective.
d. morning-after migraine
Art, as it turns out, is not only subjective it can result in being subjected, if you are one Kaidan Alenko, to a full five sensory experience known as the worst migraine he's had since well before the Reaper War. The discernment garden may have won him some more goodwill from their hosts, and thus a little more room to operate before he starts rousing suspicions, but as a chaser to a room full of perfumes, bright lights, sounds, noise and still more perfumes, it's taken a heavy toll.
The light and sound sensitivity are old friends by this point, and he's taken refuge in his bunk to try and wait them and the deep consuming pain and pressure out. When getting to his feet to use the head in the middle of the night results in so much dizziness and nausea that he ends up throwing up into an elegantly sculpted trash can, that tears it. "I... Ugh. "If anyone asks," he mumbles to anyone awakened, eyes closed to slits. "I'm going to the medbay."