#conchordia

((lmao let me post this when everyone is asleep

so i was worldbuilding stuff for conchordia and then i got inspired and well

idk i feel like enric is too much of a flat character sometimes and the process of actually joining cch was ambiguous so heeey two birds one stone

shoutout to lunatama my betabby keep being fabulous gurl

dont actually read this my writing is atrocious))

a thing with fancy fonts for darling bori's birthday

it is awful

i am posting it so that you can tell me how awful and wannabe artsy i am

also in case you want to watch alden die which is a thing

inevitably, bori and i made our ocs all 50s-like. I used by best third-grade cursive for their names

BONUS:

Christmas Eve, 1913

‘Why is it that British society partakes in such mysterious, pagan traditions?’

This odd thought was the first that occurred to Mr Enric Lécuyer that afternoon. He had fancied a bit of a brood on the middle of the hallway rug before the Christmas party, his attention concentrated on the bundle of white berries in shiny dark leaves that was nestled into the corner of the doorframe.

It was rather trite, was it not? The employing of these objects? He was sure he had read it a thousand times.

Lorra would tell him, gleefully, that these poor Englishmen were so very sexually stifled that they needed such frivolous Celtic superstitions to vent all their hysteria. Enric was of the mind that they were simply so conservative in their values that they could not give up these sorts of things if they tried. Out of kindness and respect for his elder sister, the young man neglected to inform Miss Lécuyer that she, herself, often used the passion-under-the-mistletoe trope within her illicit publications that she foolishly assumed he was ignorant of. He was sure that society would not take their cues from Lorra’s bodice-rippers, in which covert mistletoe passions often led to the undoing of garters and wanton screams of the socially inappropriate in small, dark corners.

Mr Lécuyer made the very innocuous decision to leave the offending plant pinned there, from where his sister no doubt had plans for it. He would not want Lorra to get cross with him if he removed it, after all.

Enric ambled away, like a grazing sheep onto greener pastures; solidifying the unfortunate, truly trite route the story thread was condemned to take.

“Cheryl, let’s go sneaking.”

Miss Elsa Reinhardt swilled her champagne glass, eyes darting around suspiciously in an all-too-familiar checking-for-witnesses pattern. The Lécuyer drawing room was full of the low murmur of conversation, and the soft plinks of Christmas music from the far corner. Noel Phillips had to give her credit in her impeccable (and likely purposeful—) timing; she must have lay in wait, not unlike a corseted panther, for enough handsome gentleman to swarm upon Miss Lécuyer as to confirm her inebriation and peals of gay laughter. As for the Mr Lécuyer, he, too, was occupied in a rather more acceptable manner. Noel had observed him for the past half-hour conceding to accompany the pianist on his violin at the plaintive urges of the Misses Lécuyer and Reinhardt. Enric looked rather at peace; the man deserved a holiday, after all. Noel was nevertheless awed at the lengths Elsa would reach to as to ensure her sleuthing went undisturbed by authority figures.

Noel’s only retort was a rather offhand, “Should you be drinking, Elsa?” She was not any particular level of intoxication, but her cheeks were rosy and her laughter ubiquitous despite her natural idiosyncratic speech. He was sure this was merely only a minor handicap on her faculties, but it would rapidly exacerbate if he did not remove the champagne flute from her slender hands.

“You’re such a mother, it’s Christmas,” she said, far too hotly for the sentence for which she was charged.

“You’re Jewish.”

“You are a paperboy.” A paperboy that had, unfortunately, been stuffed into a formal suit for the occasion. Noel had already discarded the jacket somewhere in his impatience at the restriction of movement in the shoulders. The puerile row was going nowhere, so Elsa put the flute down impatiently on a side-table and pressed her fingers into the starch white of Noel’s sleeve. Elsa felt her cheeks burn hotter, and she decided that putting down the drink was a very good idea.

“I’ve never seen this house in full. It’s much larger than ours is, isn’t it? I want to see if there’s really a dead body hiding in the wall-plaster.”

Noel’s eyes grew to the size of tea-saucers. The reason for his companionship was very clear, given his corpse-magnetism. She was hoping he’d accidentally trip over a ten year old corpse in the darkened corridors of the Lécuyer estate, was she? Making a little soft noise of protest, he made to deny her request, before Elsa’s pleading dark eyes made the silly decision to bore into his. This would not do at all. Sighing deeply, shoulders slumping in defeat, he nodded and began resolutely loosening away at his tie. He thought that he ought to at least ensure complete head rotation in his stiff collar.

“Brilliant. You’re an angel, Cheryl.” Elsa clapped her hands, and began sidling out of the drawing-room door, next to which they had conveniently situated themselves. Following impatiently, Noel said a little indignantly, “I don’t want nothing to do with ghosts, Elsa!”

“Nobody said anything about ghosts!” Elsa exclaimed, once they were in the hallway proper. “Only dead bodies.”

This did not comfort him.

“You’d best leave the dead alone, Elsa,” he mumbled awkwardly. “We’d know if a corpse was hanging about, there’d be a smell.” As he said so, he folded back a fresh page of his notebook, a force of habit more than anything else. “And I daresay Miss Lorra would have already uncovered it,” Noel added. “From attempting to find new places to salt away her dirty manuscripts.”

Elsa tripped, and Noel threw out an arm. “Her what?” Elsa turned around, lifting her skirts a little.

“Dirty manuscripts.”

“I see,” she replied quite hastily. Elsa trailed a gloved hand languidly along the corridor wall, tapping the wallpaper quite testily. A sharp patter from Elsa’s fingernails echoed through the hallway. The sound was altogether very solid, and not that of a hollowed-out wall.

“Are we going to break the wall open if it feels the smallest bit hollow?” Noel inquired very dubiously, scratching his cheek and looking the wall up and down. There was no electric lighting in the hallways, still; candelabras burned with bright, dancing lights and put rather strange shadows on both their faces. “Pity, to ruin Enric’s lovely wallpaper.”

“Don’t be daft, Cheryl,” Miss Reinhardt replied quite gaily, pulling up her left glove ferociously as a young soldier might adjust their scabbard impressively for battle. “This house was built in the early 1800s. It’s quite nearly the most ancient house in these parts, I should think. There’s bound to be a secret passageway somewhere— the elder Mrs Lécuyer was notoriously batty.”

“Behind a bookcase?” Noel Phillips was not sure if it was even sarcastic at this point.

“Or behind a portrait,” Elsa put in enthusiastically, bunching up her skirts and the ends of her sash in one hand and beaming at him rather startlingly. The dress was a solid satin blood-crimson, and Noel was quite sure she would not have worn it if she had premeditated this investigation. It radiated, like a glowing foggy red lighthouse beacon in the low light. “Let’s carry on, until we’ve found something likely, shall we?”

Her form of ‘something likely’ appeared to be investigating the plant life within a doorway, some yards down the hallway. Noel hurried to catch up, slightly preoccupied with the reality of ghosts trapped in the wall-plaster. “What is it? Elsa?”

“It’s a plant. I mean, a clue, that’s what I meant,” Elsa whirled around, triumphantly. “I’d bet anything it’s a secret trap door to the roof. That’s why there’s a plant. It leads to outside.”

Her logic made him wilt, just a little. Phillips was not sure at all if this was her idea of humour; then again, she once attempted use of a mark in butter as evidence that somebody had eaten her piece of toast. She could be quite serious, for all he knew. “What sort of plant, Elsa? Let me see,” he pressed, interested now. The house was riddled with pine boughs, but this did not appear to resemble that remotely. As Elsa moved aside, he tilted his head at it a little. It was white, spherical berries within shiny dark leaves; something Noel had seen plenty of this December. “S’mistletoe, Elsa. It’s rather common to put up, now.”

“Only Christmas decorations, then?” Elsa’s smile dropped into a rather faint curve, and her eyebrows sank a little into the quintessential expression of one trying to hide their very large disappointment. Noel felt a swoop of guilt in the pit of his stomach, and said hastily, “There are funny stories, you know. It’s a very popular Christmas plant.” He knew this from the flower shop at which he was employed. “I’m surprised you’re not knowledgeable on these things, you know.”

“What are you— about mistletoe, you mean? Don’t be ridiculous, Cheryl, of course I do.” Elsa bounced on her heels, looking very pleased with herself at her worldly knowledge. Perhaps it was simply Noel’s imagination, but if it served him correctly, she was looking rather inappropriately devious for a lady.

Noel’s mouth went drier than a desert. “What?”

Elsa placed her knee on a side-table rather inelegantly, explaining to the ceiling quite animatedly. “The first Christmas the Lécuyers spent here,” Elsa pushed her weight onto the table, stretching out a hand for the mistletoe, and Noel squawked rather inelegantly at the way she precariously wobbled. Elsa turned over her shoulder, brightly. “Lorra said that if a young lady gets caught under a great ball of it on Christmas Eve, nobody can refuse her a kiss. Or, of course, they can, but then the lady is doomed never to marry.”

“Let me get that.” Noel nudged her shoulder quite tentatively, until Miss Reinhardt had reluctantly stepped down from the side-table. Giving her a bit of a disapproving look— she was in a skirt, was she not, it was worse than climbing cemetery gates— he scampered up the table, not unlike a squirrel up a lamppost.

“The mistletoe. Get it.” Elsa pointed, rather imperiously, as if he was her Golden Retriever and not a human male.

Noel sighed. “As you wish, Miss Reinhardt.” He reached, sardonically, to tip his cap, before realizing it was not on his head. Ah, yes; with a sinking feeling, he recalled that Elsa had forcibly removed it from his head, as part of a battle to make him look ‘presentable’. He longed for his hat rather miserably, and carefully untied the mistletoe from where it was affixed to a wire. “Why do you need it? You’re not planning something, are you, Elsa?”

“Of course I am planning something. I am planning to save everyone’s lives.”

Elsa caught the large ball of mistletoe in her arms when Noel tossed it down, and gave Noel a rather scandalised look at his ignorance.

(Naturally, on the inside, she was merely impressed with herself for successfully catching it. She fancied it very intrepid.)

“Mistletoe is highly poisonous. What if we managed to poison one of the cats? The poor dears should not be driven to suicide, all for living with Mrs Lécuyer.”

Noel gave a humourless snort for the liberty of her jab, slipping down from the table as it creaked ominously. “Where shall we put it?”

“On the side-table.” Airily.

“Whatever of being caught under it, Miss Reinhardt?”

The hallway went very quiet, and Elsa’s face took on a rather queer expression, akin to being hit with a saucepan. Noel hastily broke eye contact. Elsa raised her chin rather daintily, smoothing her ruby skirt over her knees and clutching the mistletoe to her chest. “You’ll have to kiss me, Mr Phillips.”

Directing his comment at Enric’s lovely wallpaper, Noel gawked and said very eloquently, “What?”

“Kiss me.”

“Elsa!”

“Cheryl,” Elsa Reinhardt began in a dreadfully soulful, wounded voice, eyes widening maniacally. “You are the most selfish boy I have ever met. You’re going to deny me any marriage prospects and watch contentedly as I die an old maid?” A dull flush crept up her cheeks, despite the champagne flute lying abandoned in the drawing-room.

“You don’t want to get married,” Noel reminded her— and speaking frankly, the very idea of Elsa getting married to a rich and unpleasant stranger put a very bad taste in his mouth. “And, anyway, it’d be nothing but contentedly,” he added, in a shameful mumble; no, he would never be content with Elsa marrying. But this had nothing to do with humouring her and Miss Lécuyer’s silly superstitions.

“It doesn’t matter. Kiss me.” She was downright imperative now, and Elsa’s face was approaching the shade of her dress; that he was procuring arguments against the entire idea was beginning to deeply offend her in a way that made her somewhat uneasy. The two of them were permitted by fate to sleep under trees overnight, run away to islands, and intentionally cause a rather spectacular train crash— but he would not entertain the idea of kissing her innocuously?

“El-” he began to say uncomfortably, tentatively touching her arm; but Elsa, her face furiously flaming red, had impatiently dropped the mistletoe between their feet and leaned forward. The moment she did, it was as if a wall had begun to crumble; Noel leaned to meet her, a brick fell, their noses brushed. This was far too intimate for an action to meet a demand; but they kissed anyway, a tingling spread despite only the lightest brush. This was unlawful. This was very unlawful, like one of Lorra’s Christmas special monstrosities, and it seemed to occur to the pair of them at the same time- kissing in a dark hallway after successfully sneaking out from a party is not something you do to your investigative assistant. Elsa tentatively pulled away, eyelids dropped; she bent down to pick up the fallen plant, saying quite breathily as if nothing had happened, “Cheers, Cheryl, now I shan’t die unmarried.”

Noel was too busy looking rather petrified with terror. It had suddenly occurred to him that Mrs Reinhardt may wish to hide his body if she found out he had been engaging in wanton throes in a hallway with her only daughter. His dead body. He made a bit of an ill expression.

“Cheryl?”

“Yes?” he whispered.

“Here.” Elsa placed the offending piece of vegetation into his hands, saying very sternly despite the way her eyes were flitting from place to place. “We’ve got to get rid of this. It’s poisonous. I suppose Lorra set it up for a laugh.”

“You knew this was here?”

“Shhhhh, darling Cheryl, your voice is making annoying noises.” Elsa turned on her heel, skirts swishing, and marched on very smartly, hurriedly patting down the dark coils of her hair. “We’ve got to be finding dead bodies, haven’t we?”